Avatar Nish lives on

I decided I was too “hairy on the go” and needed to cut down on a bit here and there. The most obvious place was the top of my head so I decided to go for a haircut.

Modern life dictates that if you do not have a preferred barber or hairdresser then you have to choose the one that’s most convenient for you. I have tried a number of places over the last few years and can’t quite settle on one. They’re all fine, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing too special to go back to though (apart from the one where they gave me lots of coffee and made a huge fuss over my haircut however it cost twice as much as usual). There are two barbers near my work so I opted to walk past both of them, gauge how many customers were in each and select the one that was the quietest.

I meandered into the barbers with a queue of one and a half in front of me (the half was already in the chair and almost done by my eye but then spent another ten minutes having very little to nothing done to his bonce) and took a seat next to a glass cabinet of hair supplies and accessories.

It was a warm day so I stared nonchalantly out the door and around the room. It was then that my attention was immediately brought to the collection of items a little above my eyeline:

There it was. Nish Man hairspray.

In my mind what happened is that our mythical status grew and grew so much that we spread to the outer parts of Europe and Asia. There a large group of Turkeys (Turkians, Turkish? Turkpeoples) decided that in order to spread the word of how talented and funny we were, they turned us into an aerosol. I know it’s not the greatest explanation but what were you expecting, really? It’s me here, everyone.

It’s a legacy of some kind I suppose and one that will make your hair a good hair. I had a look and there are other products available for all your grooming needs including wax, hair wax, hair on wax hair, volume powder, styling powder, hair on wax powder, eye gel, eyebrow powder wax and strong fixative yellow.

Now available in all good barbershops.

Avatar Famous faces

We went to the theatre this week to see a musical, a big West End production of the Wizard of Oz. It was great.

I wasn’t the one who booked the tickets, so I didn’t see the list of performers until we were standing outside the theatre, where I could see all the famous names lit up across the big screens on the front of the theatre.

Just look at this all star cast!

I recognised almost all of them straight away, as I bet you did too.

  • Jason Manford is a stand-up comic who has carved out a successful musical theatre career. His voice is amazing!
  • Ashley Banjo made his name as part of dance troupe Diversity on Britain’s Got Talent.
  • Georgina Onuorah is a rising star of the West End, having transferred to this production from a run in Oklahoma! and before that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella.
  • Dianne Pilkington has been in one show after another since the late 90s and is a real star of the stage. I last saw her in a production of the 39 Steps at the Criterion.
  • Louis Gaunt makes his breakthrough performance here, having previously appeared in Bridgerton and The Larkins.
  • Christina Bianco as you already know has the most amazing voice, so I was thrilled to see her on the cast list.

There’s another bloke listed up there as well but I can’t recall seeing his name anywhere before. Maybe he’s new or something? Anyway, I don’t remember seeing him in the show.

Avatar Action Ian

Earlier this year I posted about an emergency bean grab, prompting a comment thread in which Ian accused me of telling the worst fairytale ever; we went on to work up a much better one that might work as a graphic novel. I then drew the fairytale as a very short comic graphic novel and got a post out of that, achieving the rare but satisfying feat of having a Beans post spawned organically out of the comments on another.

Well, in an unprecedented move, I’m rolling it over a second time, because this post has been spawned by the comment thread under the fairytale comic. Winner!

The point of all this is that Ian liked the way he was portrayed in his first cutaway, the one where he was showing how brave he is, and suggested he should appear that way in some movie posters.

And lo, it was done: here’s Brave Ian in two of this summer’s biggest action movie hits.

Avatar Logical dreamscape: the TV reboot

I woke up the other morning and felt genuinely sad that the dream I’d just had wasn’t real.

It was about a TV show, you see. I think in my head somewhere was the memory of my recent discovery that The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is now being remade as a serious Netflix-style drama called Bel-Air, now in its second series of ten glossy hour-long episodes with spectacular production values, grappling with issues of racial tension and culture shock. Well, my brain said, if you can make a big-budget serial drama out of the Fresh Prince, you can do anything.

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Avatar Fame at last

My job sometimes involves me being awake in the middle of the night and doing strange things.

One strange thing I’ve had to do lately is find ways of making phone calls to Australia on behalf of some people at the other end of the country. Normally, you see, OJ Borg does the overnight show on the wireless, and he has a mobile phone in Australia that he rings every day at 2.15am. He then has a chat with whoever answers it, and he asks them to give it to another random Australian in time for the next show. Lately, though, his phone system has not been allowing him to call Australia, which is a real disadvantage for a feature of this kind.

Our involvement in this madness – making phone calls to Australia in the middle of the night – has escalated steadily over the last month until it reached a point where they wanted to explain what was going on to their audience. So I was asked if I would mind explaining.

I didn’t mind, though I was very tired and not sure I was making much sense. That is why this happened.

Then, half an hour later, it was time to make the call. I didn’t say a lot because it wasn’t connecting and I was busy pressing buttons and checking things because I was very worried I’d done something wrong, but I hadn’t, it was just that the mobile phone in Australia had no signal.

My agent will handle all requests for signed photos. Also, I am now taking bookings for the panto season.

Avatar Moosin’ Aroun’

Adventure unbound, shockin’ the groun’, he’s…

You’ve seen his HILARIOUS YouTube videos and now it’s time for Moose, the plucky dog, to take his show on the road.

He’s coming to your home town (or somewhere nearby, geographically speaking) with his patented over the top sense of humour.

Expect antics, japes, jokes, capers, shenanigans, pranks, larks, escapades, romps, frolics, high jinks and even a few special guests.

Tickets are onsale now. VIP passes are available but only while stocks last!

Book as quick as your fingers can type!

Avatar Four Word Reviews: Freak of Nature

You remember Anastacia. She had that massive, powerful voice and a stage persona that was pitched on the borders between sexy and fierce. Her big worldwide smash hit was the super-catchy “I’m Out of Love”, which topped charts of every kind in 2000, including those unrelated to music. Knowing I’d be listening to this album, I’ve had “I’m Out of Love” stuck in my head for several days. It turns out that was from her first album and this is her second. It’s not on this album. It’s still stuck in my head, though.

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Avatar ‘Iansurance’

Modern life sucks. We all know this and it’s reached the point now where there’s no point saying it because everyone knows it. We all need a little humour in our lives to raise the spirits and keep the home fires burning. Given the recent decline in the state of the country, doctors are prescribing laughter more and more for curing most common ailments. I rubbed a chuckle on a bruise the other day and felt much better.

I have been toying around with ideas for sitcoms for years now. Chris and I even challenged each other to write pilots for sitcoms in unlikely places (remember that?) way way way back in the day. Now that I have taken the leap into a brand new place of employment it’s only right to use my skills to aid the rest of the human race. I need to show the world that even though things are pretty pants right now you can forget all your troubles for around 24/25 minutes each week with my sitcom, ‘Iansurance’.

The main character is some berk called Ian. He works as a service agent at the Clifford Makin Insurance company. He’s on the phone most days and, boy, does he get into some hysterical comical scrapes. The thing is that Ian daydreams so the time between phone calls his mind drifts into bizarre places: sometimes he’s a horse flying through the sky, sometimes he’s a clown handing out leaflets to cats about making sure they have a mouse pension for when they retire and sometimes he imagines that every time he speaks rainbows shoot out of his mouth and they explode into chocolate muffins when they collide with solid objects.

His boss, Gloria Cookiesnatcher, doesn’t know about Ian’s daydreaming and continually praises him as the best on his team even though he’s the most lackadaisical of the bunch. The times when he suddenly wakes up to take a call saying, “Eugh, I didn’t know peach trees were flammable!” are laughed off as part of his quirky personality. Tsk tsk, there goes Ian again, he’s such a zany character.

As a strange twist, the love interest is the coffee machine. Ian loves coffee a lot. It’s what powers him, gets him through the day, fuels his imagination. The machine in the corner of the kitchen area doesn’t have a name but he refers to her as Susan with two e’s i.e., Sueesan. He doesn’t remember why he started calling her that nor why he assigned gender to an inanimate object. Ian professes his love to Susan each and every morning for handing him the wake-up juice. She responds by handing him said wake-up juice.

We’ll fill the rest of the roster with some wacky office types, a snidely cleaner, a religious man, two cats that we can hear the thoughts of and, I don’t know, a wise old woman who lives in a cupboard.

I am in the process of writing the first few scripts and expect a lot of attention when I’m done. Best jump on the golden gravy train trip now, guys.