Craig Campbell: My living hell

Written by: Craig Campbell
Published: Wednesday 5th November 2014

Craig Campbell isn't feeling great at the moment, as he explains below. Strap in...

Thanks BCG for giving me this outlet to vent my living hell...

Several years ago my shotgun-blast-hole back pain came on so strong that I had to forgo bouncy type exercising (running... "lucky you!" most happily non-exercising-types will say!) to avoid spasming and the subsequent lay-up. I'm now reduced to less impact resultant exercises, like swimming, walking and... gazing at stuff. I'd do anything to embrace those tear filled torturous trotting days again.

When recent back agony merged to hips and shoulders and then amped itself up past the fabled mark of 11, I assumed - as I crawled to the clinic - that over-training during back-to-back adventures in the mountains of Sweden and Norway for our now postponed-until-October-2015 Save the Children fundraiser show at the base camp of Everest (Boom-Slam, mid-winge HUGE standuponeverest.co.uk plug!) might be the cause... but, very unfortunately for me, ha ha, it wasn't.

The training drew the monsters out of their synovial fluid flooded caves, but it was the clinic crawl to have some noisy/radiation-y peeking via MRI/X-Rays that confirmed, depressingly, that rather than the easy to rest or massage-out macho-dripping brag-worthy ailment of 'over-training', I had instead inherited a heaping dish of early onset osteoarthritis with a couple massive dollops of hip impingement sauce.

Before you ask, I checked and, be damned, but there just wasn't a spoon of curability in that soggy disintegrating takeaway bag, to help a fella gobble that awesome news back with! Oos.. Oee.. Don't worry, it's new for me also.

Oss-tea-o-arthritis you say!?? Arthritis?? But Craig, you're so... so young!!?? Yes... Ha, ha, ha, ha, aaah. That's the HILARIOUS bit... :-(

Osteoarthritis (OA), if you weren't aware, is a debilitating bone disease that brings me into a scraping, clicking, creaking hope-and-cartilage deprived barn dance with 8.5 million Brits, about 27 million Septic's and presumably some other less statistically driven nationalities' "sufferers" or maybe even "glee dancers" (depending on how mental they might be).

OA can be bravely battled with breakthrough genius-inspired medical 'advancements' like mitigating pain by bolting 'spacker-handles' (I'll be reeling that term out a lot more often now that I am one!) on the side of your jacuzzi, or sliding an inflatable donut under your hot-poker seared ass-cheeks... all to dream of knocking .001 of a milligram off the opium dose you'll require to avoid the need to pullover to bawl during a short drive to the shops.

I've been laying up in bed torqued out on anti-inflammatories, in the hope that a reduction in swelling would reduce the pain that the swelling itself was in turn causing, and further might allow an encouraging return to former form, with a PB (personal best) short stumble across the room.

Now it is into its third shrieking week and, as is stated within its listed universe of potential side-effects (glad I've given seizures and death the swerve... so far) I've likely got permanent tinnitus. This is akin to seeking out the loudest noises you can hear in a machine shop by sticking your unprotected ear inside any spinning robot vibrating off its mounts, one that has shards of metal or a rooster tail of sparks being ejected from it...

Luckily, the wince inducing dog whistle like surging sound waves become most pronounced at night, or in quiet times when you might wish to rest or recover... otherwise it could become REALLY annoying. Never thought I'd envy the deaf...!

The surging waves aren't contained only to the shrill, unlubricated steel being drilled within my ears, but thankfully manifest themselves also in tremors pulsing under the skin, down both legs and arms to the tips of all my l'il piggies and thankfully again over my face and scalp also, as I'd hate for the oily pimple-pocked top bits to feel left out...

In a late and so far failed attempt to source a pharmacological cause for the "Stuka perpetually diving down my ear canal" (or "my little blessing" depending on whether you're able to psychologically equipped yourself to celebrate railway spikes being driven into God's pilot holes on your skull), I desperately discarded the anti-inflams and painkillers and even the "piss into a hurricane" remedy every c*nt on the bus loves to tell you about the second that "diseased bone" is mentioned outside of any conversation that isn't teenagers referring to STD tainted sex... glucosamine, and fellow "miracle" chondroitin.

The decision to forego meds has, of course, only served to ratchet-up the agony that I snap to attention in following short exhaustion-induced naps, while squeezing not one dribbley-drop of greasy potentially volume-reducing relief into the dry axle bearing that whines at a pitch higher than the tone of this blogspot spinning around the inside of my head... a head which incidentally seems, unbelievably, to be bucking the trend of all the other health issues rapidly appearing on radar (unless my eyes are now f'cking with me also) by having hair still willing to ooze out of it. My hair is a further indication of how little my Quack knows because, when he said I had a hair-piece, he was holding something else and wasn't even looking at my head!?? Oy Vey!! Bah Dum Bump, I'm here all week, try the veal... tip the wait staff, hell, knock'm right over...

As the largest and smallest bones in my body ache in incurable chorus with a pain that at least isn't ball or bone cancer, yet... (sorry if you've ball or bone cancer and you're reading this... If you have, stop, please, I won't/can't be offended, unless you take a phone call during one of my shows)... my fingers are crossed for the ears...

So if you wish me well, as many so kindly have following my first show back after the diagnosis (a wonderfully giving Sheffield audience/group-of-witnesses were tolerant to my meandering madness/performance/recital) then please focus on the ear/skin part of what's currently ailing me, as they - as opposed to the bones bit - at least have a snowball's chance in hell of recovery.

The saving grace of this situation, and my hope in it, is that though they are few (I'm a see-through onion slice of a niche!) I have amazing fans, so much so that I "attract good audiences" is often remarked upon by other performers I work with (on the rare and great times this happens... Festivals, The Lumberjacks...).

I'd love to widen that audience by collaborating with others, more often outside of the shows I book or create directly with friends (who I'm thankful don't yet suspect my ailments are contagious), but my management team seem confounded, unable to knock down doors or even produce the keys to one of their own.

To be fair, several annums back I was shepherded to a read I should've have the sense to avoid... 8 Out Of 10 C*nts (considered an apprenticeship appearance to earn the chance at future establishment fellating). I assume that "chance bed" was fully considered to be shat when I suggested Obama may have been visiting Ireland to apologise for being a war criminal (of course in jest... slightly... and certainly obtuse enough you'd think to crack a giggle). An earth-shattering accusation only for those who are unfamiliar with Hague conventions or who fail to glance beyond the deeply probing Telegraph's picture of Kate Middleton's dress d'jour to see the escapades of the Nobel Peace prize winner's armed forces across our struggling globe...

My, perhaps erroneous, assessment was met with the collective exasperated gasp of the nitwits in the room, whom I suppose believe international rules of decent conduct (simplistic as they are: Murder, State and/or otherwise, remains annoyingly illegal) are only to be foisted upon the enemies our criminally corrupt politicians point out for us, rather than to equally govern humans in general.

Luckily and thankfully I still find great virtue in entertaining small disparate groups in darkened basements across the planet some of whom still possess these simple ideals! I say 'luckily and thankfully' not because I desire to be in a TV club that won't have me, but because luck and thanks is all I have left!

At least in these sparsely populated dungeons a more honest message than mainstream success (and its associated opinion stifle-ment) can be shared... after-all, once your income barely covers fuel, what bar to your honesty remains?

I proudly personally respond to every and all message/s I receive on Facefuck (Craig Allan Campbell) and on Twitballs (@moosefucker) in a way that I wouldn't be able if my fan #/#'s swelled (I hope you're out there and doin' well Stan).

I continue to be successful telling jokes, well more accurately humourous tales, despite the effort of few others to help me do so. I haven't recently dropped my phone in a toilet, and I don't think I've got Ebola, or at least the Ebola I used to have seems not to be getting worse... Har, Har...

The horizon has me looking forward to agony... No, sorry... was distracted by the spike of pain shooting up my thumb as I typed that last "o"... looking forward to performing the closing tour dates of Thrilling Mic Hunt to small crowds in too large rooms (except Bristol where I'm notorious! Or more likely there's been a grave miscount), while pondering adding more dates in less ambitious coliseums in the Spring, spurred by the steady enquiries I receive online to return to burgs I've already played, where either press was so greatly lacking that the messagers missed it, or that - and very much more likely - that I attract very disorganised types...

Or to play locals I've not played before (Ireland!!?), which my grinding disintegrating bones are longing me to drag them to.

I'm mid-edit of a funny (to some hopefully) reindeer hunt that I filmed and will make available for viewing at moosefucker.com... if the buzzing pressure in my head that's making the thumb I'm using and my body progressively twitch, allows.

December - baring new developments - wraps up the UK leg of the tour and shunts Mic Hunt over to Switzerland and Norway finishing on the 7th, just in time to spend the rest of the month in bed (or in the dirt, if how I feel right now is to judge).

The New Year begins as it has for the preceding 8 times: in the Canadian mountains with opiate willing for my sure to be my swan-song snowedincomedytour.com snowboarding/comedy extravaganza, returning likely duct-taped to a spine-board for an erectionless Valentine's appearance at Dave's Leicester Fest in the mid of February.

There've been murmurs of interest from NZ's comedy fest to have me back in April (Ok, one guy in one toilet) and both the Glastonballme and Edinbone fest's follow quickly afterwards. Edinbone is where I'll be launching my next tour show which, as I write this, I feel I'd have a better chance of building a life sized replica of a Cheops pyramid-shaped bungalow out of dry sand with my increasingly twitching nose than doing...

Then EVEREST FFS... For the kids!

Thanks for giving me your time and this space. As the shutters are thumping and the wind picks-up, it's time to grunt back my gluco'/chondr' tablet and, ironically, as I'm feeling the need to take a slash I may as well check the weather-vane to figure out which direction to face...

Craig Campbell is currently on a UK tour with his stand-up show 'Thrilling Mic Hunt'. Info and tickets available here: www.craigcampbell.info