A Day In The Life Of…Wil Hodgson
Wil Hodgson
My body clock is a bit more normal these days than it used to be. When I was about 22 – and I’d first started doing stand up – I’d sometimes stay up smoking and watching old cartoons or tapes of 80s adverts that I’d traded with other geeks online* until about 6am and then sleep ‘til 3 or 4 in the afternoon. This was particularly bad in the winter as I’d seldom, if ever, see any daylight. Nowadays I don’t smoke and I usually go to bed about 2 or 3am at the latest and surface at 11ish. I reckon this is about as normal as I can get it for the time being. When you’re a comic your energy level needs to peak around 8pm so you can’t really be ready for bed at 9pm.
I live in a makeshift flat on top of a hair salon in Chippenham. It was originally two disused storerooms to which I added a telly, DVD player, a bed, a haywire shower that may scald you half to death without warning and all of the Care Bears, DC and Marvel comics, Oi! and Ska records , old VHS videos, boastful self-aggrandising memoirs of gangsters, Garbage Pail Kids, Usborne Supernatural Guides, Spice Girl dolls, Janus spanking magazines and Hasbro WWF action figures that I’ve accumulated over the years. This was all well and good when I was a single man, but since my girlfriend moved in I’ve had to downsize somewhat, exiling to the loft items such as my extensive collection of Roland Rat memorabilia to make way for trivialities like her clothes and personal possessions.
The salon my flat is on top of is not one of your trendy salons where women go to get spray tanned and French House blasts out of speakers . It’s Chippenham’s oldest salon and it’s pretty much God’s waiting room. Some of the old dears sleeping under the driers have yellow post-it notes stuck to them. One day I had a look at one and it had a name, address and next of kin written on it. I guess that’s so if they pass away of heatstroke or something they can be quietly taken away without waking the others up.
I listen to a lot of music in the day. I never have the radio or MTV on. My interest in current music came to a sudden halt about ten years ago. Therefore I have escaped a lot of musical ubiquity over the last decade. I have never heard that Rebecca Black thing, I’ve probably heard Katy Perry stuff in shops or whatever but I couldn’t swear to it. This isn’t a good thing because although my main affiliation is punk/skinhead (Skunk?) and I mainly listen to punk, reggae and soul, I’ve always loved pop music.
The first music I truly loved was Madonna and Michael Jackson and I still love both artists to this day. I was onstage in Wrexham when the news of Jackson’s death broke. One person got a text and blurted it out and suddenly they were all a flurry of phones and blackberries. I therefore had no choice but to start talking about Michael Jackson – I talked of watching the Thriller video for the first time at my mate’s house, and getting Bad on cassette for Christmas, and playing Moonwalker on the Megadrive. Two hairy teenagers in long sleeved Cannibal Corpse t-shirts scoffed. I guess they were hoping for the sort of “ha ha he’s a nonce” type stuff that’s never sat well with me. Every record from Dangerous onwards was utter shite though – I’ll concede that – and I was cheering as Jarvis invaded the stage at the Brits. At that time I just couldn’t see Jackson as the man I’d idolised as a 9 year old.
As for Madonna I was properly in love with her between the ages of 11 and 16. I remember when the In Bed With Madonna film came out – I envied those dancers that got to hang out with her. It was the sort of music you’d get called a poof at school for listening to. Everyone took the piss out of that Sex book but when my old man brought home a copy one of his mates had lent him I was spellbound. Even the page where Vanilla Ice was bumming her. I used to have a Vanilla Ice haircut with the white streak at one point. Seeing him bumming Madonna made me feel vindicated. Anyway I’m rambling here as usual.
I go to the pub most evenings. I drink in a pub called the Three Crowns Inn, which is one the oldest boozers in town. It’s a chilled out real ale type place where you can actually have a conversation instead of just listening to loud shite music while surrounded by living proof that the Society for Cutting Up Men had a point. There’s a good core of regulars propping up the bar most nights in the Crowns:
Brian is in his 70s and ex-RAF. You can tell immediately that he’s ex RAF because of the tache and the pipe. For double ex-RAF points, he smokes it hands free. Like Popeye. Last Christmas when there were sheets of treacherous ice on the ground me and Brian left the Crowns at the same time after drinking about 6 pints each of some kind of mental 7.5 percent pale ale and Brian slipped up and did a full 360 midair before landing flat on his back. Not only was Brian not dead but his pipe was still alight. Unbelievable. They must teach you that in the RAF during your parachute drill.
Rob Jones is a councillor and a canal boat enthusiast. He’s also ex forces. I like drinking with ex servicemen they’re invariably really chilled out, particularly if they’ve seen combat, and have great stories. It never ceases to amaze me how some blokes are content to sit and yammer on about what they’ve done on Call of Duty or whatever when they could be in a proper pub listening to proper war stories. Dangerous Dave is another regular. The name makes him sound like a shady, nasty character but he’s actually named after his terrible darts playing. When he’s on the oche it’s like that old Strongbow advert where the crossbow bolts are flying everywhere and sticking in stuff.
And then there’s Frank. Frank’s the resident right wing pundit. He sits wedged between the end of the bar and the coat-rack, drinks Stella and offends my liberal sensibilities with his eulogies to Mrs Thatcher. He knows a hell of a lot about soul music, though, so we have a bizarre social relationship where we’re as likely to be debating the Con Dems as which is the best track on the Skull Snaps LP. On a Friday it’s very often Keskins for a post-pub kebab. No salad, just ketchup, onions and chilli sauce. I’m one of their best customers. You don’t get tits like mine eating falafel. One day I’m going to jog past eating an apple and scare the shit out of them.
*This is before YouTube made the mailing of VHS recordings of 1981 ITV showings of Star Wars with the ad breaks left in unnecessary.
Wil Hodgson is on at The Stand Comedy Club, in Edinburgh, at 3.35pm until August 28th. Further information can be found here.
