A bit of background: Theo van Doesburg was the leading figure in the development of geometric abstraction following the era of Picasso’s cubism, fostering contacts with devotees of Dada and the Bauhaus, preaching the austere geometrical principles of De Stijl – the art movement he founded – and thus becoming a sounding board and transmitter of ideas for the diverse network of artists who shared his vision. Moved by the idea that art had to improve the lot of the masses by coming down off gallery walls and going into the streets, Van Doesburg wanted to create the kind of art that is universal. He sought to establish a visual vocabulary comprised of elementary geometric forms comprehensible by all and adaptable to any discipline. Despite being the founder, it was not Van Doesburg, but Piet Mondrian who became the artist most commonly associated with De Stijl art movement, especially since he achieved major celebrity when fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, in his fall collection of 1965, featured shift dresses in blocks of primary color with black bordering – a design inspired by Mondrian.

It was not easy to enjoy the exhibition: Van Doesburg’s incessant zest for order and rationality gradually becomes stifling. There is a distinct lack of human element in the works exhibited. Instead, art is rationalized with cartesian formulation and mathematical precision. The work entitled Arithmetic Composition, for example, is a mathematical arrangement based on the ratio 3, 6, 12, 24 on a grid displaying the progression of four diagonally aligned black squares. It is a piece of work that is sombre and precise, not to mention terribly self-important. Van Doesburg justified the work as a way to express simultaneity and time sequences in space – an artistic expression of the 4th dimension, if you will. A lot of the art works present had unsentimentally functional names devised with cold clinical detachment: composition V, composition XX, counter-composition VI, counter-composition XII, etc. With a little derivative ingenuity, one would be able to figure out that the “counter-composition” pictures are the likeliness of the original “composition” pictures tilted at 45 degrees. Incidentally, innocuously tilting the paintings has often been speculated as the primary reason for the fall-out between Van Doesburg and Mondrian: Mondrian never accepted diagonals and insisted on horizontals, whereas van Doesburg proclaimed diagonals to be superior because of their dynamic aspects, and featured much of the diagonals in his art. They found their differences irreconcilable and thus declared a split in their friendship.

Although De Stijl appears to be lacking in appeal as a method of painting, its simple functionality and inherent equilibrium shines through in architecture and everyday design. In the rooms of architecture, there are more madly intricate assemblies of coloured cubes and rectangles, but here they serve a more tangible raison d’etre. Model of the Small Ballroom, Café l’Aubette, Strasbourg, a wooden miniature ballroom designed by Van Doesburg, invites one to peer through the doors into a space of lively balance, where the exuberance of colours is contained by the rigidity of lines and grids. Room 5 of the exhibition was dedicated to De Stijl typography, which is inscribed with a square or rectangle, with absolutely no curves. The typeface is a succinct representation of the artworks in this exhibition – structured, ordered, meticulous, remorselessly simple and unapologetically loud in the invariable use of capital letters. There were also aesthetically pleasing examples of invitation cards, signage and advertising posters incorporated with geometric visions that exude a distinctly modern feel, even today.

Nevertheless, 10 rooms later, one is left with a gasping need for the fluidity and natural curvature that had been present in the earlier works of Van Doesburg, as displayed in the first room. In De Stjil, the artist is a mechanic who manufactures and assembles. With the serialization of artworks, the proliferation of grids, lines and angles, and the mathematical mechanics, one cannot help but feel that to De Stjil group, art seems like something to be controlled, contained and rationalized, rather than expressed and set free. This is a far cry from the “spiritual expression” that art should be about according to Wassily Kandinsky, the man who had once been a source of Van Doesburg’s inspiration. Still, the key of avant-garde is the overturning of what has come before, so we must not be surprised. While it is not difficult to understand the De Stijl notion and desire to elegantly combine mathematics, art and musical symphony, it is much more difficult to appreciate the end result. Modern art has, too often, been a series of very good ideas that gave birth to very ugly manifestations.

Van Doesburg and The International Avant-garde: Constructing a New World is open until 16TH MAY 2010 at the Tate Modern

The premise of the show is simple – five people cook dinner for each other over the course of a week. The guests mark the host after each meal and then, the following day, move on to the next house. The contestant with the highest score at the end of the week wins £1,000. My friends and I have actually seen all the episodes. My friend Lois even recognized someone in an episode from about three years ago on a bus, and could tell me all about the episode she was in. Though the idea is simple, it is one of the funniest shows on television at the moment. It’s amazing that there have been so many good moments on it that have come out of nowhere, such as a snake crapping on the table, drag queens and an ever present belly dancer.

Celebrity Come Dine with Me is also over-the-top brilliant and is like a special treat. This version also provides us with some surreal yet amazing moments involving celebrities. Peter Stringfellow’s sink collapsing or Jan Leeming flirting with David Spinx are some of my favourites to date. It is also the anomaly of all celebrity reality TV shows, the longer it goes on, the better the guests are getting, which is something to be treasured.

The trouble is that my obsession doesn’t end there; it just continues to the other granddaddy of TV cookery shows: MasterChef. Members of the public compete with each other through various rounds to be crowned the one and only MasterChef. There’s nothing better when eating your breakfast than to watch some random people panicking about the dish they’ve made and then looking like they’re about to cry when Greg tells them it has too much salt! It has all the best elements of a competition-based show. John and Greg are brilliant hosts; their presenting skills extend to randomly shouting things like ‘cooking doesn’t get much better than this’ and then eating amazingly large spoonfuls of whatever food is on offer as though they have been starved for a week before filming.

I may love The Wire but I’d happily sit through Brummies eating sushi off a worryingly hairy man any day!

When it comes to this Baltimore based cop-show there are essentially two groups of people. Those who absolutely love it and those who haven’t seen it. The Wire’s novelistic density is unrivalled in the medium heretofore. Each show is a labyrinth packed with an array of plots and sub-plots that would make a palace-coup seem simple. The characters without exception have an epic depth to their personality, customs and even language. No two individuals will react in the same way to a given scenario and by the end of a few episodes you will have grasped the intricacies of each protagonist.

Ostensibly a police drama, The Wire is so much more. It’s an epitaph to American Industry, a sociological study of Baltimore and an induction into the drug industry all in one. The show spans the class divide; it engages with people who we would otherwise find repellent and makes them loveable. And it has what literary critics call ‘negative capability’. The capacity to step into the shoes of multiple individuals and explain life as they see it.

The visuals of the city are also exceptional. It gives a glimpse of the realism this drama generates, when I say I am aware of which season of the year a particular group of episodes has been filmed in. Series 2 for example, which tells the story of a bunch of dock-workers, starts in the depths of winter. The men are as hard as the crates they move and the visuals of crisp winter days radiate this sentiment. There is an atmosphere to this part of the story, something which grows beyond words and speaks to the audience on a level they probably didn’t know television could reach.

Another aspect of the show I love is the drugs and the drug industry. Set in an urban area with America’s highest crime rate, the show doesn’t skimp on the hardships and degenerate behaviour which make up daily life. Having watched five seasons I now feel well-versed in the micro-economy and unique social relations that make up this seedy aspect of society which seldom gets reported. This is real.

Finally, The Wire delights on a verbal and philosophical level. The ironies of life ‘on the edge’ and the absurdities thrust on so many of the characters are often distilled in pithy axioms which help the mind savour each episode. A drug baron lectures a lawyer, ‘I got the shotgun, you got the brief-case what’s the difference’, while the short life expectancy of the low-level drug runners is summed-up at the chess board. ‘The pawns get capped early in the game’.

So I implore you. Set aside the revision books this Easter. Invest a hundred quid in buying the box sets and settle down for a month of exceptional television. The world would be heavenly if people watched a television show about hell.

To be or not to be. That’s not really a question. However, the existence of free will remains a debatable issue. Do I make the decisions which govern my life or does someone / something else make them for me?
A great many of our decisions are made for us by the times we live in. Virtually nobody these days thinks it’s acceptable to be homophobic or racist. But that is not a consequence of millions of rational minds individually coming to the conclusion that prejudice on those grounds is illogical. While a few leading intellects might have realized the folly involved, the vast majority of people have simply accepted new cultural precepts and gone with the flow. Our characters, then, are products of the times we live in. Do we think it’s acceptable not to stand when a figure of authority enters the room? Or to heckle someone of a different race? These questions are answered primarily by our circumstance rather than our innate faculties for reason.
All sorts of social prejudices and customs also govern us. I would love to be a film maker, for example. Unfortunately, in this life independent film-making is incredibly expensive and there are very few positions available doing that type of work. Instead, because Law is better respected and the pay is considerably greater I have decided to pursue a career in the legal trade. Thus, the nature of the world has once again foiled my true self; I am coerced into doing something I don’t really want to do.
Another source of restriction, is our upbringing. According to George Bernard Shaw ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’. Our formative years and the expectations of the world which we take from them are probably the single biggest determinant of how our lives will turn out. Expectations and results have an alarming correlation. Parents who demand that their children go to university invariably have children who go to university; those who have a burning love of books will often impart this onto their offspring. Our class prejudices, our life expectations and a great deal of the knowledge which shapes us comes from our parents and their values. And we have absolutely no choice over who they are.
One of the most intriguing ways in which inequality is driven into us is through expectations. Peter Mandelson, hardly a fan of Socratic dialectic, was philosophical enough to spot that in a just society ‘an equality of opportunity’ was not enough, what is needed is an ‘equality of expectation’. That is, people around you and you yourself need to have high expectations if you are to achieve in life. Being an excellent mathematician is not enough if you regard university as being snobbish and pretentious. Alternatively, parents who succumbed to alcoholism and drug-taking may be far more willing to accept the same traits in their children rather than enforcing a work ethic. What you are expected to be is usually what you become. If you are expected to get drunk at the pub on weekday night or leave school to take up a menial job – chances are, that’s what you’ll become.
The Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset noted this dilemma. ‘I am me and my circumstance,’ he said. Our class, age and nationality all make us act in certain ways. Gasset was quick to spot that this aspect of our own character was not chosen, nor was it biologically predetermined – yet it is inevitably going to change who we are.
A child born to a middle-class household with both parents at home is likely to enjoy a more prosperous and cultured existence than someone who is not. Just as the student who can draw on a wealth of financial and emotional support from home is likely to do better in their exams.
However this argument can be taken too far. Those who blame their circumstance are shifting blame away from themselves. When the law castigates someone for a misdeed it does so because each human is fundamentally responsible for their own lives and the course that they take. The suggestion that a character flaw is society’s fault rather than the individual’s is evidently invalid. Society is nothing more than a collection of individuals.
Even so, the individual and the aspect of society they are part of are entwined. That doesn’t mean we should condone violence on the basis that someone grew up on a rough estate. But through understanding what drives people and sections of the population to do certain things, we will be better placed to stop them doing wrong. Understanding and forgiveness are not the same thing.
Why people are who they are is also an important subject for politicians. If we judge where someone is in life solely to be a consequence of their own actions then we are unlikely to help them. If people are poor because they haven’t worked hard enough then state hand-outs and social security appear an injustice towards those who have done well. Alternatively, if we think people who have ‘failed’ in life have done so through no fault of their own then the inclination to give such unfortunates a wedge of cash for their troubles grows.
Thus how we think other people came to be should be as important as who they are.

What’s your creative process like?
It’s a mixture of moments of spontaneity and having to sort of work at things and I am not very good at the working things bit. I’m trying to work on being very good at that.
I tend to be quite impulsive in the way that I write, a lot of the stuff just comes out very suddenly and sort of at random moments. I improvise a lot, by myself and with the Guillemots all the time we write stuff, we’re improvising. I am sort of concerned with the way we do improvise that something very true happens and we can then sort of work on it too much and lose that atmosphere that was there originally, and with Fly Yellow Moon that was kind of the thing of this record, the majority of it was sort of spontaneous and not entirely finished when it got to the studio, I like that because you can sort of hear, certainly ones like “So Brand New”, (the) second track, ones like that it really almost was the first time I really sung it, like “Faster Than the Setting Sun”, we decided to have a run through, so Jamie started playing and we got to the end and we were like “Err…., were you recording that?” and he was like “Yeah! That’s alright.” It’s lovely like we’d never played it through before, and that was what we used for the record. I really liked that because I think you get something quite genuine that maybe you don’t get. There are benefits of playing the song for months and then recording it but with this record it was sort of just about capturing moments.

Love seems to be a recurring theme in your work, is there a reason for that?
It is and it isn’t. It’s weird because it does feel like an album with a lot of that in it but when you actually go through and listen to the lyrics it’s only really the first three tracks that are sort of actually what you could call love songs really, and then after that the other songs like “High on the Tide” is about getting away and trying to get your head straight, “Faster Than the Setting Sun” is sort of after an argument and quite a fraught song, “Firebird” and “Don’t Be Shy” is all sort of introspective. I’m trying to push for something more in terms of what you write, but you can only write what naturally comes out. It wouldn’t really sit right if I tried to write, unless it comes out at the moment of anger or something like that. It’s just not what I’m good at, I think I tend to write in quite a romantic way and it’s not necessarily quite the same as writing about love. It’s to do with the way I just sort of tend to be quite gushy in the way that I write songs, it’s just how it comes out. I don’t really know why, but I just tend to get very touched by music.
To a degree of course you tend to write from experience. You use what’s happened in your life and you put that into the stuff you do. But it’s not like, “this is a love song for this”. A lot of songs I trace back to certain moments but it doesn’t mean it’s about that moment I sort of have an idea in my head about what I am writing about and sometimes I don’t. Like a track like “Firebird” on the record I don’t really know what’s that about, I just woke up one night, couldn’t sleep, heard a tune, and then you just find the lyrics and it just comes out I’m not really sure exactly what it’s about but you’re aware of a sort of feeling in the air and you sort of capture that thing.

Do you have to work hard at the lyrics, to get it right?
Well no, you don’t have to work that hard. Generally it comes out quickly, it depends, sometimes some of it will come out but then you need to work at the rest of it. Something like “Firebird” sort of came out in like 20 minutes.

Do you have a favourite track in the album?
Genuinely proud of the whole thing, maybe like “So Brand New” is like my favourite track, just really fun to record, I just like the way it sound but I just like the whole thing.

Is there anything you would like to explore in the future, musically?
God yeah, there’s a million things I want to explore. I feel like I’ve only just begun I want to really makes groundbreaking original music but at the same time I love writing song, that’s the thing with this record I’d rather try to do something that’s really out there, something very traditional and focused that just fitted how I felt. I also really want to start writing lots of instrumental music, really want to get into film soundtracks, I want to start writing pop songs for other people, I want to write more classical music.

Has your music evolved?
I definitely think it has evolved, and I think probably my standards are higher so that now maybe what I think is a shit song I would have thought was good five years ago. It’s weird also how some things, certain sounds and certain call patterns; like I remember how 10 years ago I can just sit there playing that bit. And that’s the thing, some of those things that make me feel something, sometimes I wish I didn’t, because I am a total sucker for quite cheesy records and certain changes that just bring out this sort of emotion and you could say that that’s just too easy but I mean it’s what I naturally find myself doing and I think you can’t be too contrived and try to be something you’re not too much, it would just seem a bit false I think.

Is there anything you would like to go back and change?
Don’t think so, there plenty that I think I’ve done, that we’ve done in Guillemots that I think could’ve been better or that we didn’t do that right, but I don’t wish we could go back and change. There’s stuff that we’ve done that I am really proud, and I’m happy with the way everything’s gone, *smiling*. It’s not something I think about too much, i was talking about this last night, about how the tiniest moment has this massive impact on your life, like when I met Greig and the Guillemots, it was only because me and him both got dragged, me by my brother and him by his partner to go and watch this weird comedy programme that they were both taking part in and neither of us wanted to go, and we both got sort of “Come on, you’ve got to come and support me.” and we both met.
And you trace that point to that tiny little decision and that had such a massive influence on so many people’s life, like my life, his life you connect to the rest of the band, and the people that work with the band and all this things come out from this one tiny and anything could’ve happened, I could have gone a different way and something else could’ve happened, you just never know. But I don’t sort of look back on my life and think, “I wish I hadn’t done that”, it doesn’t mean like there are things that you look back and think: “I could have seen how I could have done that differently and maybe that would have been a bit more sensible,” but there is a difference between thinking that and actually wishing it. I think I would only really regret things if I didn’t think I had tried my hardest at the time and I know I have, I know that with the Guillemots, I know that with both the Guillemots albums. Whether or not there are things I think are right or wrong, now, I know at that time though, I just did my best. I know with this album I did my best and I think as long as you think that, you haven’t got any cause to regret anything, I would say.

This album seems ‘a step out of this place and time’, would you say that?
It’s certainly a very ‘unfashionable’ sounding record. It doesn’t sound like a kind of cool modern thing at all, I think what it is, is that, it sort of sounds timeless but not retro. I didn’t want it to sound like it was trying to be old but I didn’t want it to sound like it was trying to be new either.

Being a law geek who ventures outside the house only to go to occasional classes and to buy DVDs, it may come as some surprise to say that I’ve never been to a gig before. I told this to my fellow PartB people and most of them nearly had a heart attack or a stroke with shock – the music editors nearly spontaneously combusted right there in the office, quite the fire hazard. This was all a big preface to the news that I was in fact going to my first gig sometime next week, to see Los Campesinos! at KOKO, of which I was almost compelled to write an article to get a newbie’s take on gigging.

The night started off on a sombre note, with one of my friends reminding me of how shit LC! are and how I was going to have a horrible time and that I would regret going and other such put-me-downs. He quickly shut up when we changed the subject to his own deficiencies in musical taste. S Club 7 was mentioned…

And with that, me and my guides in ‘gigging initiation’ were on our way to KOKO. Upon arriving – two hours late, which is apparently normal, and missing both support acts – I was slightly surprised to find that my conservative attire of a shirt and jeans was not completely out of the ordinary. Having expected the cast of Skins to have procreated with the cast of Misfits in a gigantic Topman orgy and release their spawn in KOKO, it was pleasantly surprising to see at least one pair of normal jeans for every five/six pairs of skinny jeans. Take that, me, for relying on ignorant stereotypes!

Before the gig started, I kept asking inane questions like: “How will we know when they come on?”, “Will there be something telling me to turn my phone off”, “What about photos, aren’t there copyright restrictions?” Suffice to say, these didn’t go down well, and the groupies and fans alike kept glaring at me to shut the fuck up. But before I could be lynched and have my decapitated head placed on a spike outside the Tower of London, the band themselves came on to a deafening cacophony of cheers.

So, to the gig, which was, contrary to the expectations my disgruntled friend had put in my head, really very excellent. Despite my concerns that he’d be too shouty, Gareth Campesinos! kept his vocal chords remarkably in check, taking care only to vocally explode when the emotion of the song deemed it strictly necessary To make up for this, he proved his flexibility by occasionally gyrating quite provocatively around the stage. On top of this, the song selection was really good, managing to get a mixture of hits from their previous albums and most of the hits from their new album. The only slight niggle on my part was that they replaced the sublime “We’ve Got Your Back” with the less sublime “I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know.” This was simply a minor blip in an otherwise flawless set.

The only thing that slightly marred the whole experience was the lesbian couple standing in front of me who had obviously no desire to be there, and decided to drown in their disappointment by eating each other’s faces off via every orifice. Upon being accidentally touched by one of them – who proceeded to not apologise and not make any movement, thinking that my leg was some body part of her partner – I quickly moved away, gaining some irrational homophobic stare for not submitting to their disillusioned foreplay.

But, apart from that, the whole experience was really very good. On being chided by the nameless S Club 7 friend when I returned, I simply retorted with the best retort one can retort with: Fuck off!

The Brewis brothers are clearly extremely gifted musicians, who write songs (under the banner of Field Music) which are intricately arranged, structurally complex, and traditionally evoke XTC, Steely Dan and the Beach Boys. None of this makes their music particularly easy to love – though their Geordie voices are thick with region, they rarely let their emotional guards down, hence why some critics have labelled their music cold and mechanical and knowingly tricksy.

None of this can prepare me for witnessing them live – an environment which accentuates their flaws as well as their virtues. Augmented by Ian Black and Kevin Dosdale on bass and guitar respectively, the band launch into Tones of Town opener, “Give It Lose It Take It” amidst found sound, glockenspiels, rousing piano and thoroughly excellent drumming. For a few songs at least, the playfulness is plain to see, and the predominantly Sunderland-bookish crowd rewards them with a whole lotta love.

When the band cut to newer material, taken from the recent Field Music (Measure) double-album, the response is notably muted, because the band have to an extent abandoned the bucolic textures of their earlier work, in favour of a more guitar-based aesthetic that owes much more to Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac and, on occasion, Queen. However, bereft of the intense personalities bestowed upon these progenitors, the songs sound strangely lurching and mathematical. Though Field Music are, individually, some of the funniest, warmest and most virtuosic musicians, the sum is sadly less than its constituent parts.

All the more infuriating is just how playful and quick-witted the band seem in between songs, where they deal with all manner of obstacles, from troublesome electricals to the bassist’s Hawaiian shirt. The Prince-meets-Sunderland funk of “Let’s Write A Book” is very much the exception to this disappointing revelation – for once, the groove is remarkably simple, and it evinces the band’s personality. For the middle chunk of the performance, songs like “Something Familiar” and “Each Time Is A New Time” are dispatched with maximum skill (replete with tasteful bluesy guitar licks) but less-than satisfactory enjoyment.

I have really loved Field Music for far too long, championing them to my friends when their chips were down. Now, after a three-year hiatus, I find it hard to empathise with their new direction which, though on record comes across as lovingly crafted and “makes sense”, doesn’t work that well on stage. Though the band pad out the pure Field Music work with excerpts from their solo albums, I left with mixed opinions of a band who I thought I had really figured out.

I don’t advise you read this article. What follows is dishonourable in the same way that fox hunting is dishonourable. It amounts to bullying. The poor fox doesn’t stand a chance. Neither does this author. Unlike our vulpine fugitive, however, this vermin sprung himself. We’ve been getting e-mails for weeks asking us to review this book. Apparently a copy was sent to the Beaver office. It’s since – worryingly – disappeared. Luckily, there are a couple of chapters posted online. I can’t guarantee the digital word is, verbatim, that printed. I can guarantee it’s not going to morph into Tolstoy on the page.

I’ve spent whole minutes of my life trying to unearth the real name of this guy, not least because I didn’t want to besmirch my Google search bar with his pseudonym. Aaron Sleazy (A.S.S henceforth) is the disquietingly proud author of Sleazy Stories: Confessions of An Infamous Modern Seducer of Women (S.C.A.M.S from now). On his website, A.S.S informs us that his credentials ‘include an MSc from the London School of Economics’. It might come as a surprise that not all LSE grads become world-leaders, bankers or astronauts. Some take the path less travelled by: they become pick-up artists.

The chapter I read is called “Do you want to fuck me?” I don’t even want to read this, so we are not off to a good start. Besides, it’s a misleading title because nobody ends up having sex. One night, A.S.S goes off to a club called The End, apparently on his own, where he spots a familiar group of pick-up wizards. They too have changed their names to make themselves sound more like superheroes: ‘One of them, Dr Yen, walked up to me to tell me I was a monster. My reputation apparently exceeded my actual level of skill’. A.S.S is modest enough to admit that his skill-level (he frequently refers to himself as if he were a Top Trump) is not, yet, ‘Monster’. I suddenly find myself fascinated by the Pick-Up Skill-Scale. What’s below Monster? Vampire Bat? And then what? Poisoned Frog? Field Mouse? I sense A.S.S rates himself as a Fanged Barracuda, but it would be nice for him to spell it out.

In fact, A.S.S is always leaving out tantalizing pieces of information. Like here: ‘“I need some drugs. Do you have some coke?” she suddenly asked. (I don’t do drugs, even though many believe the opposite to be the case).’ Do they? Why’s that then? Or here: ‘Later on she even said that she wouldn’t need anything tonight. However, I have reason to suspect that she snorted a line somewhere in between’. Do you? What reason? The sneaky Sleaze always keeps us guessing. It’s cute how he likes to make himself sound like a detective though (‘I have reason to believe…the opposite is the case’, and so on. Over and over).

That modesty I mentioned earlier doesn’t last, mind. Here’s A.S.S after leaving with a girl he ingeniously nicknames ‘Sunshine’: ‘After we got off the bus she wanted to buy some chocolate at a nearby gas station. This was when I realised that I only had one condom with me. I wanted to stock up and get a couple of extra large ones but they did not have any. Instead I bought some regular ones, but those usually lead to a rather bad experience.’ Poor A.S.S – like forcing a baby into a balloon. I completely understand. I’ve found that a well-restored 14th Century cannon, a prosthetic arm or a tube of Pringles – preferably paprika – does the trick in an emergency.

The Pringles should particularly appeal. Aaron Sleazy is also Aaron Quite Hungry. He’s forever eating. Here he is, safely back at Sunshine’s place: ‘I still played it cool. Instead I should have pinned her down and railed her right there. We took a break to eat some more. Because I felt stuffed I lied down and we cuddled for bit’. OK – so the retrospective rape-wish ruins the effect of the snuggy embrace, but we can forgive him that. Cookies, anyway, are still the way to a Monster’s heart.

My favourite quote from A.S.S’s chapter is also the most confusing. Out of nowhere, A.S.S gleans a weird and wonderful insight into his own complicated moral maze. At least, I think he does: ‘I liked this girl. I used to think that women who treat you nicely only do so because they don’t want to feel like sluts. However, I have later learnt that they have no scruples about using you only for your penis if this is all they desire. I was too concerned about “being in control” and thus acted aloof. This meant that I blew a chance to get to know someone as a person.’ I don’t really understand this, but I am now worried – this is turning into Jane Eyre. Has our arch-player gone soft – literally?

Luckily we’ve nothing to fear. A paragraph later and A.S.S is over it and back in action. This time he means business: “I grabbed her hair and fucked her head with a few good thrusts”. Nice bit of headfucking there. Sunshine begins to morph into a horse undergoing a medical examination: “I kept a grip on her blonde mane and yanked her head back and forth while I was administering forceful thrusts with my pelvis”. He then administers two milligrams of morphine and prescribes some antihistamines.

Soon after, Sunshine experiences a devastating orgasm that arrives ‘in multiple waves’ and leaves thousands without food or shelter. A.S.S’s honesty here is not only commendable, it’s hilarious: ‘She may even have squirted a little bit. I am quite sure that a small load splashed against the palm of my hand but I could not verify it because she had only lit some candles.’ A.S.S’s need to empirically verify Sunshine’s seasonal downpour proves one thing: you can take the pick up artist out of the LSE, but you can’t take the LSE out of the pick-up artist.

‘Sleazy Stories: Confessions of An Infamous Modern Seducer of Women’ by Aaron Sleazy is, it turns out, at Alice Pelton’s house. She was going to write about it this week but opted to describe anal ovulation instead. Turn to the back page for a drip by drip account of this miracle of rectal expulsion. Incidentally, if you do find you’re missing any of your porn magazines, sex toys or shit-specked petri dishes, it’s always worth checking with A.P before making the long walk to lost property. (But I do love her).

After improvising his way to the final of So You Think You’re Funny in 2005 and then winning the Hackney Empire Best New Act Award for 2010 with his three-man impro hip hop band Abandoman, Rob seems destined for big things. Indeed, after asking to meet me in an exclusive Soho private members club, I couldn’t help but feel he may have already made it. But after meeting him, it became immediately obvious that he’s just a down-to-earth Irishman who loves what he does.

Lets start at the beginning, how did you get into comedy and hip-hop?

Comedy came after hip-hop. I got into hip-hop for the very first time, and went ‘this is amazing’, it was House of Pain. You know the way you always look up to the guys who are three years older than you? Well, the coolest guy, the one I perceived as being the most popular guy, he loved “Jump Around” by House of Pain. I was twelve, he was fifteen, he was a Scout, and we went on this trip and that was all he played, him and his mate. And they would rap all the lyrics – I remember thinking they were like Kid and Play from House Party! They kinda swapped over rhymes and stuff, and I was like ‘this is dope, it’s the greatest thing ever!’

Then about a year later I went off to Irish College where you live in the west of Ireland for three weeks in a place that speaks Irish, you live with a family that speaks Irish and you go to a college during the day. This guy who was in my room was really into Body Count – Ice-T’s metal group – and that’s all he would play. It still makes me giggle – it’s the crudest album I’ve ever heard. So when I left Irish College, I was like ’so I think I really like hip-hop’, bought a Snoop Dogg album – Doggy Style had just come out – and then became the only guy in my year who liked hip-hop. Even the guy who is now Ireland’s biggest rapper who was in my year hated hip-hop – he was a big Nirvana-head.
As an Irishman who only grew up with very much commercial radio, the first time I put in Doggy Style, and it had all these routines like in between the songs it has all these fills – as a 14-year old who’d never heard this before, it was such a big deal. And it was like ‘I didn’t know you could do this in music’. Then I got into Public Enemy – that was the first concert I ever went to see and they were phenomenal. It was kind of embarrassing as well, because Ireland didn’t really have a band to open – they had this one called Grasshopper who were all guitarists singing songs and opening for like the best hip-hop group at the time. I remember the sound guy came on stage, and he was black, and a lot of the audience thought he was Chuck D, so they started chanting ‘Chuck, Chuck, Chuck’ and I remember thinking, ‘this makes us look retarded’.

And it went from there. When I was sixteen I started a little hip hop crew – for one night, and we gigged. We were called Two Sac and the Enormous DIC, because we really loved Beavis and Butthead and dick jokes.

So this is kind of the beginning of a natural progression into comedy already?

Yeah, kinda. Connor Deasy – the lead singer of The Thrills – as well, was two years ahead of me at school, and he’d seen us that night. I asked him why The Thrills weren’t there, and he was like ‘we’re too big’. So I was like ‘what a dick’. Then two years later I saw him on the cover of Rolling Stone, and I was like ‘nope, he was right!’ So Two Sac and the Enormous DIC were never really destined for fame and fortune.

Anyway, from all that comedy kinda came in 1998 when I started debating in school after I crushed a vertebrae playing rugby and couldn’t do much else. But English debating was full up, so I had to do French debating. And I don’t speak French. So what I did was to write speeches in English, and give them to my older brother James, who got an A in French. He translated them and gave them back. But I still can’t read them. So he has to give me phonetics. So I end up doing this entire series of debates for a year but all off phonetic cards. So essentially, if I didn’t sell it with huge performance I was screwed because people could heckle you in French, and I wouldn’t know what they were saying. So we’d prepare on the back of these cards generic rebuttals, which would all start with me praising them on what a good question they’d asked. These performances became larger and larger to the point that people would crack up. I’d be so angry and banging my fists, and strutting about, and everything was pure emotion. People would be pissing themselves laughing – and I wouldn’t know why it was funny! I remember one time I got a giggle and a round of applause, because my brother had put in a joke, and I hadn’t even asked him to.

At the same time as this, I was going to comedy clubs where you’d see Dara Ó Briain as a 25-year old, and Des Bishop, Mark O’Doherty (David O’Doherty’s older brother) – and I just went ‘bang, that’s what I’m doing!’

Then I went off to university and it took another five years before I had another ‘fuckin’ hell’ moment when I worked with Jonzie D. He’s a big rapper from the 90s who now runs huge hip-hop theatre shows – half of them are breaking conventions, where people like Diversity and Flawless came through, and half of them are theatre shows. So I did a show for him where I freestyled the whole thing, and I killed. And it was the greatest feeling I ever had on stage. I was like ‘wow, this is insane’ – I’d never mixed comedy and hip-hop, let alone feestyled a routine that got a bigger applause than I’d ever got doing stand up. Then a month later Jonzie cast me in a show with Bashy and Soweto Kinch – both MOBO Award winners. And that was when I started thinking ‘I could do this’.

So I booked a month in Brighton, and took down a show that was nothing but a few thoughts and a guitarist and freestyled. And it’s just grown ever since from that.

So freestyle came quite naturally to you?

Yeah, it did. When I was 18 I started freestlying without much concept of me freestyling, which is kind of a weird thing to look back on. People always say ‘when did you start? Can you teach me?’ and I’m just like ‘well, I was 18 and I’d be drunk, and I’d freestyle’ and I don’t know where it came from, apart from listening to hip-hop.
And impro, I adore. When I did stand-up, for the first two years I had one joke, maybe. And I got to the final of So You Think You’re Funny? – every single word improvised – which was nuts, because it wasn’t intelligent, but it worked. It was much more natural for me than going, ‘this is my joke’ – I hate that. For many years I’ve been envious of people who are writers. For me it’s just get on stage and see what happens.

That’s a good niche to have. You just won the Hackney Empire Best New Act Award; you must be pretty pleased about that?

Yeah we were thrilled. The whole thing was really good. As a band we’ve only been together for a few months, not long. We got together one night when we were on the same bill – James [another member of Abandoman] doing music, I was doing my rap thing, and I just asked him to join me on stage. We did that twice, and then my favourite rap group, Atmosphere, came to London and I blagged my way into being Atmosphere’s support act at Scala. We didn’t even have routines – we wrote them backstage. When we sound-checked, Slug from Atmosphere asked us what we did, and we had no idea what to say! But we went out to a full hip-hop crowd and it was lovely. And then we’ve more or less worked together since then.

Hackney was a big date in the diary. We went out to 1,500 people – we’re not used to that. And, yeah, we just blew them away – I’m still surprised. We got a standing ovation, which we couldn’t see because of the lights. It was quite insane when we won. When they were announcing fourth place I was like ‘cool – if we get fourth place, I’m happy’, then fourth place got announced, and I was like ‘cool – if we get third place, I’m happy’, then third place got announced, and I went ‘cool – I really want to win!’
Winning has been a cool thing – the main thing for us has been that Irish hip-hop that’s improvised doesn’t sound very good [on paper], so having Hackney in our back pocket is phenomenal.

Would you say it’s been a bit of a turning point, where people start to take you a bit more seriously as a comedy act?

It has. The kind of gigs I was getting before Hackney were mainly me as a compère. And since Abandoman has taken off, I’ve changed the focus of my direction. I really want to take the band to comedy clubs – but it’s always hard. You’re kind of back to where you started as a new act. So its been lovely having Hackney behind us for that. It allows us to go ‘look, it doesn’t sound like it works, but this is something we have won.’The nice thing about this whole project is that we can do hip-hop clubs too.

Do you get a pretty good reception there?

Yeah – they’re lovely places. They’re really into it because they are looking at different things. They probably enjoy the comedy, but they also are more aware of the freestyle, its capacities and what goes into it. And we try to bring something to hip-hop clubs that they maybe don’t get a lot of. And we seem to get very good receptions.

So have you got any big gigs lined up in the future? Are you going to Edinburgh?

Definitely going to Edinburgh with the band, which will be very good. We’re also working on getting back to Ireland more. And we have a bunch of other great shows coming up in London too – we’re doing the Bloomsbury Theatre. We did Daisy Lowe’s birthday party recently – she actually talks about us in Vogue magazine! We did the BRITs afterparty last week. We just have more and more cool gigs coming up each month.

Are you interested in doing the summer music festivals? They seem be gaining profile with their ‘comedy tents’.

We’re actually trying to get into festivals more at the moment. We did Bestival last year. It was very cool, so we’re trying to get more of those. What’s really cool is that the band can play a music stage as well as it could a comedy venue – when someone comes in with a comedy show that also works musically, there’s quite a bit of excitement there. Which is why I think Flight of the Conchords really works – musically their stuff stands up, the same with Tim Minchin – his music is fantastic. A lot of people are worried that musical comedy will only work in a comedy club – and in some cases that’s true. But those guys can play both rooms. I’m not saying we’re in the same league, but that’s kinda what we’re trying to do.

Would you compare yourself to Flight of the Conchords? It could easily work in a TV series couldn’t it? An Irish impro hip-hop crew that moves to New York?

No, but it could work. We’ve got a few ideas like that, and places we want to experiment with actually. Drama stuff especially. I write for a hip-hop touring show, and I’m a performer in that as well. So it would be interesting to do something like this with Abandoman. At the moment we just play songs, but it would be interesting to try and open that door and maybe do something more dramatic with songs in it. Possibly something akin to a hip-hop musical?

Is that the long-term goal, then?

Well, the long-term goal is just performing like this for life. That sounds so cheesy! I’m taking that back! My long-term goal is just that it gets to the point where we can tour easily. To be able to continue doing what we’re doing now, but on a bigger and bigger scale. I’d love to tour with music bands as their opening act – that’s something we’re trying to work on more. That would be dope. And then getting to the point where the act stands on its own feet, and we’re able to do music venues as well as comedy ones. Music venues are like the Holy Grail for me. Well, maybe not the Holy Grail, but they’re what I aspire to. I think I’ve always seen them as really impressive places to do live concerts.

People go to music venues with a slightly different attitude don’t they?

Yeah, when I used to go to hip-hop shows back in Dublin and people like Ugly Duckling were coming through and doing these live shows that had all these different elements – really good interplay between the MCs and the DJ, and the whole thing was really fun and really silly. That’s what I’d love to take to our hip-hop shows. Like Kanye West when he did Late Orchestration, that was a show! In music shows, the great live performers are the ones that give you a great show – The Flaming Lips, for example – they give you a great production that is so much more than you could ever get from listening to their records. That’s what we’d love to do.

What about Comcomedy [the first place I saw Rob on stage; a great venue for up-and-coming comedy acts] as a venue? It’s the only place I’ve really seen you. What are your thoughts on it?

It’s definitely one of my favourite shows around. They’ve been really great to us, and we’re looking at shooting more stuff with them – they’re really cool people.

Do you feel like you get a good vibe at their live nights?

Yeah, they get really good audiences. I think it’s probably something to do with them having a good space. And they get really good acts too, that are often really experimental. It’s brilliant. It’s different from the ‘one man and his mic’ experience of other comedy nights, a really varied bill.