Thoughts of the day.

When the internet first started to really connect the whole world, some of us -me included -thought that this would be the great 'coming together' of humankind. I thought that from this easily accessible international 'link-up' there would flow more understanding, solidarity and hope. Now, all these years later (not that many), those hopes seem more and more naive.   When we post stuff on sites(twitter and FB for example), do we ever ask ourselves why? Why is it so important for us to air and vent our gut instincts and knee jerk reactions to events and news items? Most of it is just a emotional reaction to things, I call them 'first instinct' reactions, with that I mean it's mostly what we think ,before we have all the facts or background. We read a headline and immediately we form an opinion, mostly before reading up on the details, because we want to be first with a point of view, the online forums are about speed, about being the first with an opinion ab...

Well, I for one didn't see that Trump victory coming. To be honest I felt sorry for the U.S. citizens having to choose between the two candidates on offer -ok, I know there were independent  candidates but in the US they don't have a chance. As someone said on Twitter 'in 8 years we've gone from hope, to a president that was endorsed by the KKK'. It seems to me that we are witnessing a worldwide distrust of politics, (that we then go on to give our trust to corrupt business leaders is another question) the political establishment has lost all of it's credibility. The sentiment of the people that voted Trump is in some ways also that of people who supported Bernie Sanders, or in the UK Jeremy Corbyn and even the Brexit voters. It seems a contradiction but it's really not. A lot of people are feeling disenfranchised by the political elite and turn to other alternatives, I guess a lot of Trump voters saw their vote being a vote against 'politics as usual...

It's the first of November and we all know what that means, we are now entering the 'dark months' . Months of grey miserable skies and not much daylight to compensate. I always find Autumn and Winter a time for contemplation, a time to look in the mirror and take stock. Spring and summer are the times to be playful, zestful and even maybe irresponsible. But Autumn and Winter bring out the amateur philosopher in me. So please excuse me while I indulge. In these days of 'social' networks and twitter fame, a lot of people (me included) get drawn into the constant stream of bickering, adulation, shit throwing and narcissism these networks offer. We count 'likes' 'retweets' and 'followers' like it actually means anything, as if  it will make us happier or more contented -spoiler alert, it doesn't. If anything, it makes us more resentful toward those with a different argument, more success better photos etc etc etc. It's as if we are now a...

There is an agreement in Belgium to sign the CETA deal with Canada, we can all go back to sleep now, the power of global economics has beaten local worries and questions about sovereignty yet again. The whole debate made it clear to me that 'europe' is not and can not -ever- be for the people it claims to represent. We call it the E.U. 'European Union' we used to call it the EEC, which was a little bit more honest, because that included the extra 'E' for economic. It's all about trade and economy and that takes first place above local and cultural concerns, or working practices. Multinationals rule the world, for them it's easy , more and more produce is being concentrated in less and less hands, hands that don't have to reckon with 'democratic' elections -all the CEO's and corporate magnates have to do is make sure the shareholders keep increasing their dividends and they are in the clear. Politicians have to get elected every few years...

This morning I spent an hour in the cafetaria of our local hospital, to be honest it’s more like a bar. I was at the hospital after giving a friend a lift (he was in for a check-up - finger up the bum- man stuff).  The cafe at the hospital is typical Belgian, a guy in dressing gown a few tables down - obviously an inmate - ordered a dark brown Belgian special monks beer -it was 10:00 am. With the beer came the little bowl of nuts which had probably been given to a few customers before him, nuts that had been fondled and touched by all sorts of disease ridden patients I fantasized.  You’d think that a hospital café/bar would only serve healthy snacks and drinks, but it was quite the opposite, cakes with lush cream toppings, beer, toasted sandwiches with artery clogging cheese fillings, all on sale. It’s as if the hospital had created the perfect business model - curing people while creating the next generation of patients/customers.  It’s the times we live in, eve...

what’s real?  what’s true?  Who’s who?  Who’s you?  Used to trust a smile used to trust a friend , but now it seems just a means to an end. Living the dream, being a theme now just a part of someone elses scheme. Need to stay free, not be theirs ,just be me. Talking my talk not thinking of a fee.  In the end what’s real what’s true?  The only thing that matters is what makes me me,and not you. 

He's a grey suited mouse that travels Business Class, His boss pays the tickets, his boss owns his ass. Wears the clothes of the herd, grey suits the normality, Being conform is his reality. Meeting to meeting, plan to plan, Believing he's 'made it' serving the man. Then boredom becoming he envies the free, But credit card debts mean he cannot flee. His wife needs more money she's bought a new cup, even more plastic to fill his void up.

I spent last weekend in the UK , a city trip, a luxury , two and a half days of walking the streets of my favourite districts of London. As always my partner and I stayed at a Hotel in Shepherds bush, easy access to the Central line of the underground and walking distance to the hip and trendy shops, boutiques and coffee bars of Portobello Road. Not that we buy a lot, it’s just fun to see what the ‘trends’ are in the selling of shit we don’t need. How many different ways can you sell coffee for example? now it seems with pumpkin flavour- ffs! who thinks all this commercial bullshit up?  How many Banksy rip-off postcards and wall art can you put up in your home,office or den?   Whether you buy the shit you don’t need in Notting Hill or in ‘street wise’ Camden, it’s still just part of a global lifestyle market, the stalls, shops and traders all selling stuff made in some child sweatshop.  The biggest ‘shit you don’t need’ market segment is -of course- food. Foo...

Calling ‘Ms’ Clinton a feminist is like saying Michael Jackson was black; If she’s such a feminist why would she get her cheating husband in at the convention to endorse her candidacy. Shouldn’t she have spoken out against men that cheat on their women? While Bill was in the oral office getting his dick polished, where was her feminist rage?  She uses all the glass ceiling and feminist bullshit to get votes, and it’ll probably work. Have black lives ‘mattered’ more now that Obama has been president? if they have then it hasn’t trickled down to the police yet.  ‘Ms’ Clinton is an establishment figure, a corrupt politician, an acceptable candidate for the establishment, Bernie Sanders was a threat to their supremacy that’s why he didn’t get the running mate status he deserved, there again this is the States, he’s lucky not to have been shot with all his ravings about a ‘fair society’ Bernie is a communist as far as rednecks are concerned, so he got off easy.  Thus ...

It’s not a case of being uninspired,it’s just that I have nothing more to say. Nothing, I don’t know how to solve muslim terror, just as I do not know how to stop corporate greed from making the planet unihabitable. I just do not have the answers to anything, and why should I ? I don’t run for any political office, I try to get likes on my facebook and twitter accounts that’s all, and to get likes you don’t need answers you just need random comments, knowledge of the given subject isn't necessary, and the less politically correct the better.  I should stay away from social media, it makes me unsociable, but I can’t. I tell myself it’s part of my job, to be ‘out there’ and ‘in the mix’, but it’s not - I’m a comedian and it’s that what I am known for, not for my political stance or solutions -those I do not have.  That’s why I write this blog, silly as it is, it’s just one more way of being ‘out there’ and ‘in the mix’ being part of the modern world and showing that I have ...

 I sit here every morning and write three pages of ‘thought flow’ before breakfast, or coffee or even before any talk with my partner, it’s what I call ‘clearing the head’ . This is not that by the way, what I write in the mornings is strictly personal and will never be seen by anyone other than myself, it’s a privacy pact I have with myself,  knowing that it will never be read by anyone else makes it easier to be totally honest with the thoughts that rush through my brain.  We humans, poor us, we have the ability to think, to form opinions and random thoughts, to be able to be abstract in our mind - it’s the base of our creativity , also the source of our turmoil and pain.  I sit here in my little room that I pompously call ‘my office’ and stare out the window, every now and then my eye is caught by somebody walking , driving or cycling by. To me they are just people, others, unknown - they each have their own stories to tell. Our experience is always only ...

I only ever got to know one of my Grandparents, 'Grampy Williams' my fathers father, he lived on his 'small holding' with Aunty Peggy and Uncle Frank. I don't know how he got the small farm, must of been an inheritance, because Grampy Williams couldn't have worked for it, with his two 'clubbed feet'. He was well known and well liked in Oldbury on Severn, he used to be the local postman, when I arrived on the scene he had already been retired for some time. Grampy Williams occupied one bedroom and the main living room downstairs, Peggy,Frank and the occasional guest -me for instance- shared the rest. In the summer if it wasn't raining Grampy would sit outside watching us work in his garden always with his dog by his side, he never spoke a lot, just watched us working. Grampy, never clean shaven, always wearing his flat cap and waistcoat, he smoked a pipe and would now and then inhale snuff, his snuff box always in the pocket of his waistcoat, stain...

I'm always amazed when I hear people recalling their youth, in detail. I wonder how much is fact and how much is optimistic fiction. I try sometimes really hard to envisage how it was back then, before about age sixteen when everything seems just a blur, some moments stand out, but there are never any real details, just fleeting visions,my mind as it is now, interpreting the few memories I still have. Sometimes the memory gets jogged, it can be a certain smell, a song, a random moment when I get thrown back to some distant past . So it was this afternoon,I was gardening, a pastime I really love, even more so now in the age of constant deadlines and things not to miss, hypes, social media updates and two hundred mile an hour lifestyles. A garden, however small, is a retreat a place where we can regain some sense of being human, nature will not be rushed. So there I was, doing some weeding, a bit of trimming and replanting some plants that didn't seem 'happy' in the pla...

It has come to the stage that a politician can do (almost) whatever they want, whatever policy or decision that effects us and is detrimental to the planet and all our lives, as long as they post a photo on social media with them lovingly holding a kitten ,or eating the newest food trend, or saying how much they love Adele's new album they will probably be elected.  Politics has become the (less) popular arm of the entertainment industry, and we watch and dope ourselves up on a constant stream of other shit that hits us on all sorts of media and 'smart-phone' 'content' and in the end we can't tell reality from fiction and good from bad, it just all becomes a tickertape of nonsense,useful only as a means to get some 'likes' or 'followers' or an emoticon posted on our page by someone calling themselves 'friend' when we haven't even met them. Welcome to our little 'Brave New World' now take the pill and shut the f*** up!

So within the next couple of weeks the UK will be run by a woman (again) no problem with that most politicians are all sexless zombies- dick or no dick, gender doesn't come into it, it's all about policies. It's just been such a helter-skelter couple of weeks, it's a good job there was football on TV to keep us calm and sedated while this non-violent political coup was taking place. We get what we deserve, more people watch football than they do news or politics, so don't come running and crying when the shit starts flying around. Europe is deteriorating fast, but it's summer. In the summer we get back to more or less normality, the essence of being human, enjoyment and laziness! and  we don't give a shit about what politicians are doing.We just want to get away, lie on a beach, go for walks, paint the kitchen, tidy up the garage, bbq ourselves to early death ,anything but be involved. That's us ,that's humans, we pay politicians to take care of e...

Did I miss something? Ok, the weather has been bad, we're all feeling a bit sorry for ourselves because the sun isn't doing the dance that we want it to do, there's a huge deflated feeling about our football teams- here in Belgium and England- I get all that . But what has just happened ? In England politics has suddenly become the new reality soap, with behaviour that would make a banana republic blush, it seems like the 'in -out' referendum had not a lot to do with EU membership after all and has just been 'used' as an excuse to start a bar-brawl in all the mainstream political parties. It's like a husband-wife scrap in a bar and everybody else just starts joining in. Scotland thought that the EU would welcome them with open arms but they forgot that the Spanish (and lesser) France has independence issues of their own to deal with in Basque areas and Catalonia, so Scotland gets support in the form of "oh hi there, welcome you know where the fri...

The good thing about football is the way it shows us how shallow some political 'beliefs' are. Take nationality for example, in a lot of European countries there is political friction about migrants - yet every european football team has at least one or two players that are children of -or first generation- migrants, they can kick a ball so they are the good ones. I was watching a game I think it was Turkey against Czech Republic, one of Turkey's best players was a young 18 year old 'Turk' who was born and raised in Denmark, Dad was a Turk, Mum was Danish. The lad spent his whole youth in Denmark, was football trained in Denmark, school in Denmark, but he plays for Turkey, no problem but where is the logic? In the German national team ,one of their best players -is -so say- Turkish, his Mum and Dad are Turkish ,yet he plays for Germany. All very interesting, and I love it, getting to choose which nationality you want to be should be extended even further, I...

That time of year.  I’m writing this blog entry sitting outside in the garden, my favorite hideaway, a place -although small - that reminds me that we humans - we ‘sapi-apes’ -are just one small part of life on this planet. The sun is shining and, at the beginning of the summer, that puts us off guard, the sun shines and we think ‘good times’! “lazy days and crazy nights” (unless you’re of my generation then you think “did I remember to get mosquito repellant?”). The harder the sun shines, the less news and political showmanship interests us. Politicians posturing on television seems all too tiresome when you could be outside sipping your favorite cocktail. The summer is also the time when my ‘core business’ -stand-up Comedy - takes a hit, people don’t need us to have fun, they have pools and drinks and music and friends, laughs are there for the taking, nobody needs a person with a microphone and sharp wit telling them what’s funny. Still love it though! So bring on the...

I feel sorry for 'But' often misused, a parachute for the hypocrites. "I don't agree with Terrorists but…….." "I'm not a racist but…….." 'But' is the buck of excuses being passed. Poor But, but still, but otherwise is ok. -------------------------------------- The Caliphate, the Caliphate, a disneyland of blood and hate. --------------------------------------- 'Ex Pats' - Transgender Irish? -------------------------------------- If god exists he/she is sleeping on the job. ------------------------------------- The world definitely needs a pause button, let's take 5 and chill out, we've started taking ourselves too serious.

I went to a funeral yesterday, my neighbors mother , I'd never met her or even seen her but as a mark of solidarity in grief and support for my neighbor ,I went. A funeral is always a moment to reflect, it made me think of my own funeral whenever that will take place, I wonder how many people will be there, how many will have fond memories and how many will be there out of sympathy for the family? Not that it will influence me, I'll be dead. Death, the only thing that money,influence and importance cannot change- we all die, some of us can delay it, but in the end it happens to all of us, as someone once put it 'Death is the great equalizer'. So if it is going to happen to us all it's pointless dwelling on it, it'll be there fast enough, when? we don't know, so let's just carry on with life and try as hard as we can to enjoy these precious moments before death, life. We don't ask to be born, but it happens, then we are who we are, where we are,...

Seeing as I’m on stage a few times per week it may sound strange that I would consider myself an introvert, and yet that is how I would describe myself. I have never felt at ease in a group, even when I played football I never felt ‘part’ of the team. In a group of people I have always felt as if I was on the outside looking in never knowing how to act or what to say, and usually over compensating and being a complete idiot or bore.  Now I have resigned myself to my ‘introvert me’ and I must say it feels good. This doesn’t mean I’m a ‘loner’ or not up for meeting or working with others, it just means that I enjoy wholeheartedly the time I spend on my own and don’t feel bad about it. I try to avoid situations where I’ll we with large groups of people (except at football matches, but there is no ‘small talk’ in a buzzing stadium). There will always be (of course) the feeling of not fitting in, seeing as we live in a more and more extrovert society, where everybody is judged on...

So I'd better not mention Erdogans name on this blog or it might spoil my holiday in Turkey. Erdogan is the embodiment of political leaders we thought were long gone, ok Putin comes pretty close, and the Korean with the funny haircut is a blast but Erdogan is dangerous, why? because the leaders here in the west are sucking his dick and bending over for him because they want him to help with the refugees and the conflict in Syria. Suddenly I'm really glad to be living in 'the west', not because of our politics and our international meddling and fucking up of other countries, but simply for the fact that I can insult and swear at any leader I want without having to fear death or imprisonment. Ok some local lord mayor or politician might -back stabbingly- try to get a show cancelled in a village hall ,but that's it, nobody dies. So better choose another holiday destination then. Allies, that's a funny name for the musical chairs I've witnessed in my life, ...

The retirement age is increasing ,every time I watch the news it seems the age gets higher and higher. At retirement age people used to be given a clock or a watch as a gift by the employers, now you are so old when you retire -you don't have that much time left so you get a stopwatch- "happy retirement your time starts now!" I'm not total vegetarian, I'd say about roughly two third vegetarian you know, 'meat and two veg' sort of person. Being white and anti racist it's hard- we have to listen to all the shit racists don't dare say to migrants. I go to the Ardennes on holiday there is hardly any network coverage for my cell phone! then I see migrants getting off boats when they arrive in Europe and they're phoning home!!!!! We might not need their culture but we do need their network providers. One heart failure death and ten reanimations at this years ten miles event in Antwerp - Start to run isn't a health programme it's mor...

It's easy to see why ancient people worshipped the sun, it makes us feel alive, it creates life and makes us friggin' happy. What do we get from other gods? Madness - and the hope of of better afterlife -maybe. I love traffic updates on the radio - "just letting you know why you're stuck watching your life drain away on the motorway today" They say crime is going down in Antwerp, three weeks after they arrested four cops for extortion and violence, ………….. But the sun is out and that makes everything better, except now we have the 'what to wear' crisis!!! Too early for shorts, sunglasses a must, and trying to hold the gut in- quicker than a diet and good for the stomach muscles. The sun is only great when you live in a country where it's mostly 'grey and rain', then the sun can be welcomed like a liberation army. In hot countries the sun is like a dictator that gives people a shit life and skin cancer. A few more months and we can all...

When I was young- now and again I’d see white dog shit on the street, you never see that anymore,has dog shit become more PC?  When they want to be elected Politicians are our best friends and they tell us about all the nice things they want to do for us, so we vote for them and elect them and they become our worst enemies, and do lots of shit that harms us and future generations, who are these psychopaths? and how can we tell them apart from other babies at birth? or even before birth and abort them.  Everyday we pass hundreds of people, at work,in cars ,on foot ,on the bus ,while cycling and in line at supermarkets, who are they? Let’s just hope that most of them have had a good day and are not contemplating a messy suicide anywhere near us.  The internet has become a room where millions of people gather to attract attention to themselves, byte size friendships for byte size egos.  So, what do I do to relax? I take a ‘giving a fuck’ time-out. E...

Language is considered the greatest gift of us homo sapi-apes, because of it we teach, exchange truths (and lies) make relationships, exchange experiences and can use it to avoid violence. But if language is so important, which nobody will deny , then listening and the ability to hear what people are trying to say instead of the actual words coming from their mouths must also be on a par. But do we listen? or do we just hear what we want to hear? After all it's tiring to have to adjust your point of view because the counter argument is made with 'truths' you hear for the first time. Most of us form views about everything from terrorism to tennis, politics to pop music and we make a personal 'view' on the argument at hand and that becomes our 'thoughts' on the subject, although never written in stone once these 'thoughts' are formed we, generally speaking, look for evidence that we are right. Is it not so that this is how we listen to others? Try to ...

Education, tailored for kids of the rich. Get 'em together, teach 'em how to snitch. The feeling of privilege taking the reins No blue or red just black in the veins. Let 'em have it boredom is their thing. Kick down their doors ,don't knock or ring.

It never ends-terrorist attacks, panama papers, war, corruption...... We sometimes forget that there is also good news, good news -all that stuff that never gets reported because it doesn't sell newspapers or get TV ratings up up and away. Even when the bombs hit Brussels two weeks ago there was -during those horrific attacks - good news going on, all the people who spontaneously helped in whatever way they could - the soldiers/medics/police and ordinary people who rushed to the help of fellow humans in need. These people get less press than the psychopathic lunatics that launched the attack, but they are just as important if not more. Humans would have never have made it this far in history without the help we give each other in times of need, we weren't the strongest of all living things, if we wanted to survive we had to learn to work together, singularly we were the weakest, collectively the strongest, and that is what awakens in our instinct when it comes to survival.  ...