The Comedian era un proyecto de Pete Townshend, un cuento corto que iria escribiendo en un blog, lamentablemente este proyecto solo tuvo 5 posts y fue borrado debido a criticas de algunas personas.

Por si a alguien le interesan estos 5 posts de el cuento The Comedian de Pete Townshend se los ponemos aqui, estan en ingles.

The Comedian – 1

Remember I promised to start another BlogBook? The first page is below. This story will differ from
The Boy Who Heard Music because in this case I am going to incorporate both jokes sent in by Bloggers
(with source credits) and I will take advice on to how the story might evolve. I read this first page
on IN THE ATTIC a few month ago.

I am not alert as I should be. I am writing a story after all. I should be at least as sprightly and
sharp-witted as I am on stage before an audience. But I’m afraid last night I drank too much. Booze.
My weakness. Booze. My strength. Facing a hard crowd is easier with a few bevies inside me. I am a
comedian. That’s what they call people like me. ‘They’ being the rest of society: the press, or the
arty-farty bunch who do serious theatrical or musical work on and around the stage. They laugh at us,
but don’t take us seriously. One would think we comedians accept it as a given that we would never be
taken seriously. We don’t take them seriously by return. We don’t take ourselves seriously. But we are
serious about being given a stage. Most of the stages I work on aren’t worthy of the name. Just wonky
wooden rostra that would as easily serve for school assembly or W.I. meetings. I play small clubs,
pubs, and get the occasional television show or radio production. The problem with radio and TV is
that what I do must be scripted. At least in the clubs I can say what I like.

Forgive me then. I beg your indulgence ladies and gentlemen, if I burp, hiccup or lose my thread. I
have a hangover. I said what I liked last night at Smolensky’s in Putney High Street; did I get away
with it? Only time will tell. For we comedians, like everyone in society today, are being pressed to
refine our work so that it offends no one. How can you make people laugh and offend no one? I think I
offended a few people last night. I must be patient. I have to wait to see how long it takes for the
word to spread via those who thought I was funny to those who deduce that I preached hatred and
racism. It shouldn’t take long. I have an admission to make: I set out to offend last night. I am sick
of this job, sick of being told what to say and what to think. I am sickest of all that I am judged
for being judgemental. If that isn’t a spiral of hypocrisy worthy of a session on The Moral Maze I am
– as the expression expresses – a foul-mouthed, raging homophobic, Islamaphobic, misogynistic, racist,
right wing berk. Or, I might be described as revolutionary soldier of truth. In truth, as my Jewish
lawyer used to say, in that revolutionary truth, I am a comedian.

The Comedian – 2

I was born and bred in Walleston, a market town on the upper Thames between Reading to the east and
Oxford to the west. In my youth I was one of those kids you see when late at night you drive through
little towns like this and see a mixed group of four or five boys and possibly a couple of precocious
girls hanging out in a bus shelter, or under the portico of the Corn Exchange. It was in such places I
learned my trade. I would never have survived if I hadn’t made people laugh. I was the one who for
some reason, in the early eighties, decided never again to cut my hair. I was old enough at fourteen
to make such a decision and stick to it. Today, at thirty-four years old, my hair is prematurely grey,
a beautiful silvery colour that many women find extremely attractive, and swings around my shoulders.
I don’t know why my hair stops there, it grows all the time and I never, ever cut it; I think it just
falls to pieces when it reaches any sign of resistance.

My upper body is not exactly an obstruction. My shoulders are not broad. But I mustn’t take this
deprecation too far in my attempt to paint you a picture. I am about five foot ten inches tall, I
weigh one hundred and eighty pounds and my skin is a rather pasty white. Even so, some people call me
an attractive man, and my hair – lacking in stamina though it is – is my best feature. If I weren’t so
dedicated to avoiding cliché here, I would say my hair was my crowning glory. I might say that my hair
was a terrific attribute if it were not for the fact that the word attribute itself sounds like it
could be a hair product for men. Attribute, softens, conditions and seasons all at once. Seasons? I
wouldn’t succeed in an advertising agency. You see though what I mean? The word suggests attitude,
brutishness and generosity, a good mix.

The Comedian – 3

I would very much like, in order to nullify the effect of my hangover, to leap into a description of
Ellen, my first proper girlfriend from those nights hanging out in Walleston town square. When I feel
nauseous, sexual memories can distract me. And Ellen distracted me. I think many young men probably
have an Ellen in their life somewhere. Many of them have a male version of Ellen (Elbert?). All that
matters is that whoever is first in your life to bring you to one of your first ten orgasms while
thrusting a finger into your ass will always remain prominent in your sexual memory. If that person is
a man he may swing your sexual life forever towards the homoerotic. In my case, the finger in question
was female. The ass in question was male, and belonged to me. With the warmth of this memory my
hangover already feels slightly less extreme. How does that work?

Ellen was the daughter of the local hotelier. She was short, dark haired, brown eyed, with a dry wit
and a sharp-featured prettiness that belied her sexual maturity. At the moment of penetration, mine
not hers, we were both sixteen and I had just made her laugh aloud. I had said I felt as though I was
impaled in midair on her first finger, as though she were balancing a lightweight doll. As a result of
her outburst of laughter she thrust her finger even further into my behind and the result was helpless
ejaculation. Ellen didn’t need tricks like this. She had splendid breasts for such an elfin girl:
loose, low and lush; she was a luxurious creature. My hangover has gone completely. I’ll come back to
Ellen later.

When I do I will tell you more about she and I when we were young. I promise there will no more
descriptions of sex. My mission here is to bring you into my life, literally. I know that I will be
unable to do that if I keep indulging my memories and my fantasies. I want to describe who I really
am. But the occasion described above was how my sexual life began: this was my First Time. If you can
imagine me twirling – Ellen looking up at me, her control over me an absolute like none I would ever
encounter again in my life – you will know that the memory distracts me from pain only because it is
so painful.

The Comedian – 4

Last night on stage, I started, I thought, quite gently.

‘You ever wonder why you have to buy designer gear? Why every now and then you must have something
from Prada, with the little silver lable with red and black writing? All we know – we suckers for
Prada – is that we must have the white stretchy t-shirt with that little red lable. This year the
lable is plastic. Plastic. After the first wash it goes hard and crinkly and digs into the back of
your neck, and itches and irritates. When you rip it out, you must set it aside carefully, its worth
more than the t-shirt. It says ‘Prada’. Ah. Now if the red lable is so covetable, how we must hanker
after Prada shirt buttons. At some distant future time, envisaged by Shri Dalai Llama Avatar Douglas
Adams, a stash of Prada shirt buttons will be found, and there will be great celebration. There will
also be confusion. For where are the garments to which these buttons were once attached? Well they may
bloody well ask there in the distant future. For back here in the twenty-first century, you pay two
hundred quid for a Prada shirt for the privilege of watching the cuff buttons fall off within two or
three days. They use plastic thread. Plastic! It’s slippery. What’s wrong with cotton? Have you
noticed that they give you a little plastic bag with spare buttons when you buy something absurdly
expensive like this? That’s because it’s assembled in China and in the Orient they’re having a bloody
laugh at we Occidentals. “Oh Ha!’ they say. “Wee saw wiv prastic fred wot fawls awf weel frarst”. And
if they weren’t Chinese, they would attempt to add the words ‘very slippery’. Spare buttons? In a
plastic bag? You need a plastic bag with someone inside it who can fucking well SEW – not spare
fucking buttons. Sorry, I didn’t mean to swear. But this is a cool shirt isn’t it? Really cool. Nice
shape. Slightly stretchy as all Prada stuff is nowadays, for fat blokes I think. Prada, watch out.
Those stretchy white t-shirts that cost £85, with labels that itch and scratch, have been emulated by
M&S; for £12. Seemingly brilliant, but possibly a mistake. You see Prada t-shirts are the only item of
clothing you can safely buy now that bears the Prada lable. No buttons you see. So if you want the
lable, and I want the lable, t-shirts it is. The M&S; version will never take off. The labels are far
too sensible.’

That was how I started. I could tell by the response, a good one, that I was working a more
sophisticated crowd than usual. So I thought I’d move on to virgins.

The Comedian – 5

Suddenly I feel a wave of nausea. The hangover rushes back. That’s because the word ‘virgins’ has
triggered something deep inside me. Not erotic I’m afraid. Virgins as in Marys. I need the ‘Bloody’
not the ‘Virgin’. I’ll just knock myself up a snifter. A third vodka, two thirds V8 juice, some
Tabasco, a little dash of nutmeg, some pepper, and my own special addition: four ground up Propaine
tablets for the effect of the paracetamol and codeine. Lovely. If it doesn’t make you feel better it
will make you throw up. Lovely. No, actually not lovely at all, but when you have a hangover almost
any sensation is better than the prevailing one of impending doom. Better the doom arrives and takes
its course rather than it is impending, Or, if you’re lucky, the doom will subside and be replaced by
a growing feeling of bonhomie and contentment, for the worst has passed. The future beckons. In other
words, time for another bevy. I drink. Wait a moment. I do not vomit. Yes, I think we have swung to
the light rather than the darkness, and I can continue. All is well. Where was I? Virgins.

Pause. Definite pause, an absolutely certain frozen moment. Fear. Mmmmm. Can’t do it. Not yet at
least. I’ll build up to it. My joke about Prada went down OK. But quite a few of the punters
complained that a T-shirt costing £85 would be out of their range. They wondered if I was really,
really rich and famous. If you need to ask you can’t afford me. It was humbling though when one of
them slipped me a note explaining that £85 buys him his entire year’s supply of underwear.

Still frozen. Me that it is. Building. I feel ready to begin. Again, last night, at the Richmond
Comedy Club, run by my friend Tim who refuses to countenance any Political Correctness of any sort,
and – as a result – calls himself Tim when his real name is something else, I launched into my first
Politically Incorrect set of jokes about Muslim Terrorists. Now it’s all right for Tim (AKA: unknown,
whereabouts untraceable) but my name is up in lights. Indeed I am known across the breadth and depths
of the Richmond Comedy Club, and any fanatic, enraged by my insults to the Prophet, could follow me
home and burn down my mansion. It’s actually someone else’s mansion. In fact it would be counter
productive really to burn down Challcott Mansions in Kew Road – where I live – because it’s owned by
Hussein Hassim, my very charming Muslim landlord.

Nevertheless, the research taken up by the radical fanatic tends to fall short of that which might
prevent innocents being caught in the crossfire – as it were – of their rage. In any case I do not set
out to insult the Prophet. I’m keen on him myself. I’ve read all his stuff and I think he had it all
right for the times. His times. Wasn’t it the fourth century or something? Rough times to be a
Mesopotamian I can tell you. I was worried about leaping in too deep, even though I am quite clearly a
partial Muslim, I know – for example – that Muslims don’t have a lot to do with curry. Anyway, I
started with my Mustapha joke.

‘There is a theory going around my house at the moment, I said. I call it the MUSTAVSHAGGEDIM theory.
No offence to any Al-Qaeda chappies. This is not a branch of any Mullah related wing of insurgents,
like the MUSTAFAVIRGIN, or MUSTAFAFAG.

It goes like this. If someone female and of dubious talent has a hit record, her indoors(1) says:

‘She must have shagged him’, meaning the artist’s record chief or record producer.

If the female concerned, of dubiously genuine boobs, has managed to secure a big double spread feature
in a tabloid she says:

‘She must have shagged him’, meaning the journalist or editor of the newspaper.

MUSTAVSHAGGEDIM. Sounds a bit Aladin don’t it?

Anyway, I’m starting a new club. It’s gonna be called the: YOUHAVENASHAGGEDMETHISWEEKMONTHYEAR club.
It’s what I’ll say to her indoors when she asks me to phone up one of my bigwig showbiz buddies to get
her a gig.

All right then, I probably won’t really. I’ll probably stick with the YESYOURPROBLYRIGHTDEAR club that
I base on the KEEPHERSWEETANDYOUMIGHTGETLAID theory.

That’s the other theory going around my house at the moment.
KEEPHERSWEETANDYOUMIGHTGETLAID. Doesn’t sound at all Aladin – however hard you rub it.’