Election Comedy Video

(and I didn't write this one...)

Well Done Channel Four

An enormous poster by Waterloo station today brags "Channel 4's Alternative Election Night". A flyer enclosed in my copy of Private Eye today bears the same legend. So what could possibly be the alternative to the three posh white straight able-bodied guys that are Brown, Clegg and Cameron? How about three other posh white straight guys: Jimmy Carr, David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker. Inside the leaflet they claim a fourth pundit - Lauren Laverne. Of course she's not a comedian and on the ensuing pages there are "hilarious"* quotes from the boys but all we see of Lauren is a picture of her looking really pretty with a lot of make-up on.

Which dictionary are they looking up the word "alternative" in?

* Depending on your taste in "hilarious" that is.

New Super Sandra Video

Please watch it and vote for me/add me to your favourites/forward me to your friends. Thanks!

Super Sandra on David Cameron - watch more funny videos

Look! Feminist T-Shirts!

Good - pretend to be straight so some stupid guy buys you dinner.

Better - invite your girlfriend to join you and watch as he frantically plies you both with drinks in a futile attempt to engineer a threesome.

Best - send him home to play World of Warcraft while you and your girlfriend head over to Stand-Up For Women, May 19th, Comedy Pub, Oxenden Street.

Or have I missed something? T-Shirts available from one of those crappy tourist places on the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street where despite the evidence presented about you are apparently "not allowed" to take photos (ooops). Tickets for Stand-Up For Women available from clair@object.org.uk. Guys welcome, just not the sort of dickheads who go round in T-Shirts like this one!

What The Hell!!

I am a little bit angry today...

Someone has reported my comedy sketch about the election to Facebook as "abusive" and rather than look at it and realise there is no reasonable way anyone could take offence ... they've broken the link! The irony being that I post up links all the time to stuff here on the blog where I'm quite actively talking about very sensitive political issues like religion or abortion. But they've never taken those down. Well if you want to see it you can still do so on the blog (it's here). And if you have a website please put the link up, I am missing out on huge numbers of potential audience.

I can't express how angry I am about this. Especially when Facebook has not taken down (though I know I for one have reported it as abusive) the group page "FUCK OFF WITH YOUR TRAGIC STATUSES ABOUT HOW "MEN R ALL TWATS" you slut." which operates with the tag line "Go run infront of a bus. You DUTTY MUGGY BITCH.". Really - that group exists, you can go look if you're on Facebook. Clearly that is not offensive whereas a woman in bunches talking too fast about David Cameron is...

I was in the process of making a sequel to the sketch, now I am starting to feel it might be more productive to bang my head against the nearest brick wall. So let me say finally: AAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Awesome Comedy Show

If you live in London (or can get here somehow) I am hosting an amazing comedy show in aid of women's rights org Object. It's May 19th and the details are these...

Comedy Night in aid of OBJECT.

Helen Keen - Star of "This Is Rocket Science" (Edinburgh 2208 & 2009). A regular writer and performer on BBC Radio 1's late-night comedy show "The Milk Run". Helen has also written for the last two series of BBC Radio 4's "The Now Show" and various Channel 4 TV shows including "The Friday Night Project". Winner Channel 4 New Comedy Writers Award 2005.

Miriam Elia - Writer and star of "A Series of Psychotic Episodes" on BBC7 and winner of BBC New Talent's "Show me the funny" competition. "A glimpse into the future of British comedy" The Guardian.

Jessica Fostekew - "a highly charged motormouth of a comedian, working though her brilliant and brutal material at such a pace that you think she'll run out long before the time is up. Thankfully, she doesn't, and we're treated to twenty odd minutes of raucous stand-up." Three Weeks

Shelley Cooper - Edinburgh Festival regular since 2003. "Not to be missed" The Scotsman. Star of BBC3s Killing Time and BBC Radio 4's Storyman.

And introducing Ruby Basara. Hot new talent. You saw her here first!!

Hosted by feminist comedienne Kate Smurthwaite - just back from warming up for Omid Djalili. "Reminiscent of an excitable, slightly irresponsible head girl luring impressionable fourth formers into some illicit fun. You'd have to be made of granite not to warm to her.' National Student, `A powerhouse of observational wit' The Spectator, `Comedy that cuts through the crap' Three Weeks, `There is very little for me to write here. Honestly. Nothing at all. It really was that good.' Broadway Baby.

Plus raffle with prizes including an ipod shuffle and a bottle of fizz!!

Venue: The Comedy Pub. 7 Oxendon Street, Piccadilly, London SW1Y 4EE.
Nearest tube: Piccadilly Circus.

Tickets: Tickets in advance £15 from OBJECT. Raffle tickets £1.

To book tickets please email clair@object.org.uk

Other info: Pub is over-18s and sorry not wheelchair accessible though we will do anything we can to help if you let us know.

All female line-up. Food available (and drinks, obviously!).

Reading List For Today

I don't really have a unified theory of what's wrong with masculinity today. I will say that the answer seems to me to be clearly something - last week I saw a stag do in King's Cross in the matching T-shirts with nicknames on the back and those nicknames included "Kiddiefiddler Ken" and "Rohypnol Rob". However I do worry we have reached some sort of turning point when the supposedly science and nature channel Discovery is showing men cutting down old growth forrest while suspended from a helicopter. Witness: Extreme Loggers. Presumably they have to keep it away from the climate change documentaries in the schedules...

There was a very very moving show on the BBC today (yes, one I wasn't in ... I know!). Women, Weddings, War and Me follows a young woman who arrived in the UK at the age of five returning to Afghanistan to see how her extended family and other Afghanis are now living. It's available on iPlayer for seven days.

The BBC One show Can You Train Your Brain? before it comes, for me, under the heading of I Can't Believe It's Not Science. The news that expensive "train your brain" computer packages don't work is hardly news. If there were any evidence to support them the manufacturers would probably by now have convinced the government to hand them out in schools with lunch vouchers. The problem for me though came when it was announced that [insert name of generic messy haired white male presenter here] was to attempt to drive a London Taxi using "only the power of his brain". Now this I would watch, in fact I would happily devote years of my life to studying the art of moving vehicles using psychic power only so that watching Top Gear would become a weekly pleasure. [Me drifts off into blissful dream of Clarkson frantically running round the test track pursued by an array of vehicles...]. But of course in fact the vehicle was moved not using "only" the power of his brain but also the power of petrol and a complicated mechanical and electronic system that caused the vehicle to react to changes in brain activity.

On to more serious matters. For the benefit of anyone who follows the hardline anti-choice position on abortion - take a moment to read about the Mexican ten-year-old who is being forced to carry to term and give birth to the foetus created when she was raped. And Mexico isn't actually one of the countries where abortion is totally outlawed. It's just illegal in some regions and after 14 weeks.

Please watch this and vote for me!

Super Sandra Party Political Broadcast - watch more funny videos

And Woman's Hour

I'm also in this episode of Woman's Hour on Radio Four. You only have til Wednesday to listen to this though.

More Big Questions

You have until Sunday to see me on this week's edition debating support for working mothers and the shocking thought of allowing gay couples to use B&Bs like everybody else. Click here.

About Face

Yesterday David Cameron said "There’s a contrast in this campaign, frankly: no new ideas from Labour, a negative campaign all about attacks and trying to scare people and very positive agenda-setting ideas from the Conservatives.".

Today the Tory manifesto was launched and facebook was kind enough to show me an advert for the Conservatives facebook page. I clicked of course, since advertisers normally get paid per click and I feel at least some of Lord Ashcroft's money should be spent on me! The page had at the top the new manifesto, and right next to it a very, very unflattering picture of Gordon Brown and what I can only describe as, well, I suppose an "attack"...Almost seems like Mr Cameron just says any old toss he thinks we want to hear and doesn't even bother to check if he own party website directly contradicts what he says. Well in the interests of political balance I would hate to put up a picture of Mr Brown here on the Cru-blog and not one of Mr Cameron. Here's one that really brings out his natural warmth and humanity:What a smug over-paid slimy misogynist git. Also pictured: Peter Stringfellow.

Yes, Exactly

Can I just say a big resounding "Yes, exactly" to everything Bidisha says on here and alert all those poor confused people desperately trying to get more women onto their overwhelmingly male comedy shows...

Bella The Welder

If you have nine minutes to spare this evening I guarantee this is more moving and interesting than whatever's on TV...

Idea of the Week

Dastardly duo Dawkins and Hitchins are looking into the idea of having the pope arrested for covering up child abuse during his upcoming visit to Britain. It would appear that it all comes down to the issue of whether he should receive diplomatic immunity (a notion which I find quite repugnant in many ways, surely political leaders should be held to more account than the rest of us, not less). I suspect they will find a way round it but it would be awesome (a) if the pope was arrested and (b) if the trip was cancelled because of the risk.

Independent Analysis

I'm featured (with a huge photo) on page fifteen of today's Independent On Sunday. Article about sexism in the financial services sector where a new report shows the pay gap is now 60% for salaries and 80% for bonuses. You can read it here.