Stand-up routine - Kids and cars

Haven't done one of these for ages.

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So you're driving down the road minding your own business.

You're fiddling with the radio 'cos it's just gone two and Steve Wright's show's about to start. "Gotta find Talksport! Gotta find Talksport! And bloody quickly too" you say to yourself.

Phew! Your stabbing at buttons has paid off in the nick of time just as the news is ending.

You carry on with your journey and become engrossed in a phone-in where, Dave from Pinner, is telling the host that it would be right and proper to bring back hanging, maybe even introduce the electric chair or leathal injection, and if they're looking for somebody to pull the lever or press the button, then they need look no further.

The host tells Dave "You'd have to kill me first if you want that job Dave"

And then it happens…

You looking ahhead and suddenly you spot it. In the back window of the car in front. "Princess on board" One of those fuc**ng stickers! And that's it - your day's completely shagged.

Six months of anger management classes all turn to shit in an instant as your mind becomes possessed by evil and twisted thoughts.

Why do parents think their kids are soooo special? Don't they look at how their friends' kids are? There's no problem spotting that *those* kids are the spawn of Satan so how come they can't spot it in their own? What makes their own kids so different?

But oh no! Their little Stefans and Emilys are the future aren't they?

"We have to leave the world a better place for the children haven't we?" they say. Do we bollocks! What about us? Don't we count once we've had kids?

Stefan and Emily are evil personified, they don't deserve the world, but the parents just can't see it can they?

"Oh yah, Stefan's down for Eton and Emily's off to Geneva to a finishing school for young ladies". Why bother, they'll still be odious little shits by the time they're 18 and what will the parents have to show for it?

Bragging rights that's all. Oh yeah, and about forty grand's worth of debt.

"Stefan's going to join the treasury as an intern" An intern? What the f**k's an intern? Oh yeah somebody that gets shagged by the American President. Intern?! Give us a break! Over here they're called apprentices or trainees mate!

"Emily's going to Cambridge to study Art History". Whoop de feckin' doo! That's what we need all right isn't it…another art historian! Somebody with an upper class accent telling us that it's 50 million quid well-spent to save some bloody drawing for the nation.

Never mind that the health service is in ribbons and that there are people starving to death and having their homes repossessed left right and centre

But art historians are taught to tell us that the flotsam and jetsam of society ought to take an afternoon out of their troubled lives to go to an art gallery and marvel at the wonderful brush-strokes of Titian. That would put their financial woes put into perspective.

Sure thing Emms! Waxing lyrical about Titian's divine brush-strokes will be something to tell all the other homeless people about, under the railway arches in a few month's time as they pass the meths bottle around, won't it?

So anyway you're following the car with the "Little Princess" sticker and you're wondering if you should maybe try and ram it but then just as you're closing in foot pressed hard-down on the accelerator...

You think of your own kids. A smile flickers across your face and your heart swells with pride. Little Wayne's not a bad lad really, a course of the right treatment and he just might kick that glue-sniffing habit of his, who knows, he still might end up playing for England.

And as for little Shazza… she's a diamond she is? A good surgeon would sort that nose out and with one of those patch things that squint could be fixed couldn't it?

She could be on the cover of Vougue before long, either that or on Jeremy Kyle - "My dad's caused untold misery by insisting on my plastic surgery"

The rage slowly ebbs away, you start to mellow-down and you spot a Halfords.

"I wonder if they've got any of those Little Princess stickers in there?" you say to yourself.

You pull over and go in to buy one.

Oh, anyway here's me bus. Cheerio now.

Nice.

I like the fact you turn it away from an anti-kid rant which is a fairly common stance for stand-ups.

As a minor technical issue, perhaps you could replace the second ref to Titian with a different artist.

Cheers Ponderer. That was the twist that I wanted really.

We are *all of us* no matter what we say - those of us who have kids of course - fairly besotted with them.

It's very difficult to judge just written down but it wasn't really for me, I didn't see anything beyond the rant. What I mean is it didn't seem to be a comedy routine, just you airing your views. I may of course be wrong and when you perform it you sell it perfectly.

I'm too frightened to do stand-up *breaks out in cold sweat*

I think that this would work OK, but as you say, only if the delivery is correct.

There's a rant in the middle but there's also a start and and ending too, both non-ranting, which I hope would not make it seem like one continuous rant.

Possibly a short first-person story rather than a stand-up routine in my eyes. But yes, as already stated, depends on the delivery.

Quote: Blenkinsop @ January 25 2009, 1:04 PM GMT

Cheers Ponderer. That was the twist that I wanted really.

We are *all of us* no matter what we say - those of us who have kids of course - fairly besotted with them.

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I think that's why it worked for me, as a breeder my hackles were rising when I expected the usual crap I see from lazy stand-ups, so it was nice to have my expectations subverted. I'm not sure whether it would work for a typical stand-up crowd but I liked it.