16: Are people really that stupid?
Jules muses stupid people, as well as running another upcoming comedy night in a gorgeous stately home, the utter joy of Altitude, the reality of teaching, and she worries about going a bit mad when her dog dies.
Transcript:
Episode 16: Are people really that stupid?
Jules O’Brian:Hello, this is Jules O’Brian with the “Avoid Excessive Cleavage” podcast. The podcast for anyone who wants to grow older gracefully or disgracefully and the podcast that says “no” to inspirational quotes and unsolicited advice.
So first of all, something that’s really bothered me this week, I mean, bothers me in general, but I’ve particularly noticed it more this week, I think. People who comment things like “not for me” and famous successful comedian stuff that they post online.
Why do people do that? And you see all the time, someone who’s clearly successful, clearly made a career and is clearly still making a career out of comedy, beloved by millions of fans and then someone underneath their clip comes in going, “not for me.” What is wrong with people?
It blows my mind. Imagine going to a pizza restaurant and standing next to a table full of people enjoying their meal and shouting “I don’t like anchovies.” Don’t eat them then, no one asks. I don’t personally understand how anyone eats olives. But I’m not about to march over to them
when they’re mid–Martini and tell them that they’re wrong. So I don’t understand this whole thing of people thinking that their opinion is a fact, especially with something like comedy. Comedy is so subjective. Some people adore Stewart Lee. Some people think Mrs. Brown’s boys is the pinnacle of
entertainment and you’re allowed to. That’s how taste works, doesn’t it? Imagine if there was only one type of comedy or one kind of music or one genre of film. It would be such a crushingly boring world. Just let people enjoy things. God, people get right on my tits.
Anyway, another thing that people are still talking about a lot online. The drama, the Stephen Graham drama, but still going strong on Netflix, “Adolescence,” so much being said about that. Still loads of buzz around it. One of the things being about the way
that it portrays school life. And I saw this massive, sort of, ranty post from a secondary teacher online. And he was furious about how teachers were being portrayed. He said it made them look tired, depressed, overwhelmed, and he was saying, “It’s not like that where I work. It’s full of
young professional teachers.” I thought, “Oh, mate, I want to work where you work then,” because the thing that struck me about Adolescence was that it felt like an actual honest depiction of what being in a secondary school is like now. In this post, this guy was ranting on about how during fire drills,
kids all line up in total silence and fights are always dealt with swiftly and severely. And I’m thinking, “Really? Are you sure about that? Have we both worked in secondary education? Can we really have worked in schools that are so vastly different?” Because I just thought that
the depiction of teachers as being absolutely at the end of their rope and being completely acceptable for kids to talk over you and pretty much do whatever they feel they want to do in a classroom these days. And just, you know, the moment you try to achieve anything,
something would happen to stop you when you’re just about to get mid–flow or you’re just getting a lesson going. School life now is, I mean, I only, I was only a teacher for 16 years. And those first, I would say the first 12 or 13 years were chaos, but brilliant chaos.
You know, it was great, I loved it. Kids were—teenagers are teenagers, and they always have been and they always will be. But those last three or four years of teaching, things changed and I don’t know what made it happen or how it happened, but something shifted. And teaching just became like,
I’m going to say it more like I imagine it would be working in a prison. In fact, I know somebody who went from working in a prison to working in a secondary school and they said, I’ve been in situations where at this point, if that person, that student over there was an adult in a prison and they were
displaying that behavior at this point, there would have been some severe action taken, you know, and that’s kind of what we’re dealing with now. But I don’t know, I just, I thought that Adolescence did a really good job of that, but maybe I’m wrong, who knows. Okay, so something a little bit cheerier,
something else that’s coming up on the 11th of May, which is a Sunday, Tal Davies and I are running our third comedy night at Middleton Hall in Tamworth. It’s a gorgeous venue, proper sort of stately home vibes, loads of free parking on site, a bar, the grounds of beautiful,
it’s going to be a gorgeous spring evening. I mean, fingers crossed for that because you can never be quite 100% sure with British weather, but yeah, hopefully. It doors open at 6.30, comedy starts at 7. So, you know, as it’s a Sunday night, that means it’ll be pretty much done for kind of 9.00—9.30. So if
you are anywhere within that sort of area in the Midlands at all, I can’t recommend it strongly enough! We’ve got the brilliant Adam Beardsmore opening, he’s done work with the BBC. We’ve got Rachel Baker on, she was a Funny Woman Finalist last year, and closing we’ve got a fantastic Nick Page from
“Britain’s Got Talent.” So, you know, it’s just going to be a fabulous night. I’ll be hosting, so hopefully it’ll be tied together with my usual ramblings. So, yeah, what’s not to love, basically? Also, as I say, it’s, because it’s on Sunday, it’ll be done quite early. So that’s always nice.
And it’s, what I love about that night as well is that it’s not one of those nights where you have to worry about sitting on the front row, you know, so many gigs that I’ll be performing at. Oh my God, I don’t know what people think is going to happen to them if they sit on the front row, but people
get genuinely frightened of it. And there’s absolutely no need to feel like that at the Middleton Hall gigs, it’s cheeky, it’s funny, it’s good–natured, and it’s just a lovely way to end your weekend. So if you are around on the 11th of May and if you’re in that sort of area…. Or, why the hell not,
make a special trip out, just go to Middleton Hall anyway, it’s a gorgeous, gorgeous place. Yeah, it would be fantastic to see you there, come and say hello. I’m just, well, I got back on Saturday from the Altitude Comedy Festival in Mayrhofen, in Austria. Oh my God, what an experience.
I was so nervous before I went, so nervous, I can’t even, I don’t know how to explain the anxiety that was coursing through me. It was full of pro comedians, people I’ve admired for years, both live and on the telly. I was very, very aware of being the new girl. I didn’t want to put a foot wrong,
you know, I didn’t want to seem overly keen and be that sort of cringy, oh God, look how, you know, you can tell she’s not used to this sort of thing, but I also didn’t want to come across like some kind of shivering woodland creature in the corner, you know, being all, “Oh I’m so frightened.” So, I wanted
to make sure I sort of was able to strike that balance. So I made sure that, you know, I didn’t have more than a couple of glasses of wine here and there, although I did enjoy the wine still, but, yeah, I, you know, played it safe and, well, frankly, I just had the best, most brilliant, gorgeous time.
It was wonderful and it’s kind of one of those, it’s one of those things that I’m enjoying more now that I’m back and I’ve sort of relaxed and I’m looking back at it and going, bloody hell, that was amazing. I can’t believe that I did that. I can’t believe that it went so well. Any imposter syndrome
that I had—and I had a lot of it,—but that was purely mine, you know, nobody treated me like I didn’t belong. People were so welcoming and just kind of embraced me into the chaos and brilliance that is that festival. And if you are somebody who loves comedy and if you are somebody who loves skiing,
although you don’t have to ski, (actually, I didn’t ski while I was there,) but I did go up the mountains a lot and sat drinking coffee or drinking wine, looking at the mountains, at the snow covered mountains like some sort of woman out of a margarine advert, but it was just stunning. It felt like I was in
a little bubble. In fact, I described it at one point to one of the crowds I was playing to; I said, “I feel like I've joined a cult, you know.” Somebody shouted, “You have!” I think that kind of sums up the vibe. You know, it’s just got such a lovely feel to it when you’re there and yeah, I wish I’d
take a more photos. I wish I’d…. Do you know what I do wish? Actually, I wish I hadn’t taken or tried to take a skiing lesson in the UK before I went over there. I feel like that was a terrible mistake, a really terrible idea completely destroyed my confidence. I was a total disaster on the slope
over here just falling over panicking, generally making a complete tit of myself. So by the time I got to Austria, I’d already sort of mentally decided that skiing wasn’t for me. But if I hadn’t done that, I think I would have at least given it a go over there. You know, lots of the other comedians,
the non–skier comedians just kind of went for it anyway and even if they weren’t very good at it and still couldn’t quite get to grips with it, they just had a bit of a laugh, you know, and they just kind of threw themselves into it and went, oh well, you know, and just had that experience actually
over there. But, because I’d done that to myself and humiliated myself over here, it really, really put me off. So yeah, lesson learned, don’t try doing a warm–up crash course if you’re prone to humiliation. Just throw yourself into it when you get there. And whilst I was over there, there were a lot of
Irish comedians participating in the festival. And I felt this overwhelming guilt that I haven’t felt before about my culturally appropriated name because my stage name is Jules O’Brian. Now my actual name is Julie Brain. When I was a teacher, I was Miss Brain, but that makes me
shudder now. I would never want to go back to that again. But yeah, when I was teaching, when I first started doing comedy, just as a hobby, you know, just to open my nights and whatever sets would be recorded and sometimes uploaded online. And wouldn’t you know it, a group of kids
one day found one of my very, very, very early open mic gigs. And well, you can imagine, can’t you? It did the rounds of the school and blah, blah, blah. And so one day I got this really naughty year–nine class, and I just about managed to settle them down. And there was a, actually, a girl I got
a very soft spot for: she was very naughty, but really quite sweet in her own way. And she just suddenly shouted from the back, of course she was at the back, from the back of the classroom. “Miss, I seen you doing stand–up comedy. And you said you’d show your man, you’d show a man your boobs for £50.
And I say, good on you, miss.” But can you imagine that was, that was the lesson gone, destroyed. I mean, in some ways it was very lovely because I spent the whole lesson just talking to them about what I was doing and why I was doing it. And as I said at that point, it was, they probably saw something like
my eighth or ninth appearance on a stage, you know? And yeah, they were, but they were actually very cute about it. Asking me so many questions. So when I look back at that now, it’s quite sweet, but it did do the rounds of the school. So I’m sure you can well imagine. And I got called into HR,
oh god, it was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life having to sit opposite a head teacher who was saying, “Okay, well, take me through the things that you say then when you’re on stage…” and having to say, God, having to sit opposite somebody, you know, your superior in
a completely out–of–context situation, across the desk from, from this head teacher. And I’m saying, “Okay, well, I say, these days I’m less of a slag, more of a predator. And then I say….” Oh, God, it was just so, you know, it would kind of be, I guess, if you switched it around like getting on stage and trying to
make a comedy audience listen whilst I went through an analysis of Sonic 43, you know, just why that it’s not meant to happen in that environment. Yeah, painful to say the least. Anyway, what came out of it was, “Okay, well, you know, if you’re going to carry on doing this, there’s several things that need to
happen…”, one of which has to be a name change. So, okay, so, well, you know, what’s it going to be? And at the time, Dawn Porter had not long previously married Chris O’Doward, so she’d taken the ‘O’ and become Dawn O’Porter. And I thought that was really lovely. I just thought that was kind of a sweet,
cute thing to do. And so people call me Jules anyway, because like the same first name is Julie. And I thought, well, I’ll just, okay, I’ll go with Jules and I’ll just grab an ‘O’ like Dawn did and I’ll switch the ‘I’ and the ‘A’ in my name. So it goes from “Brain” to “Brian.” So Julie Brain turned into
Jules O’Brian. And yeah, I do feel like I’ve culturally appropriated something that I have no right to do. So I can only apologise to people, but it’s too late to change it back now. I feel like it would be a bit weird. Plus, I like Jules O’Brian more than Julie Brain. Julie Brain sounds exactly
like it is. You know, it couldn’t have been born anytime other than in the 70s. So when I was at school, at high school, all the girls were called Julie or Sharon or Tracy. And yeah, Jules O’Brian just sounds so much cooler. So yeah, apologies, apologies for the cultural appropriation, but there we go. We’re
all just going to have to try and maybe get over it together. I don’t know. Also the thing that annoys me about it is that very often it will get spelt the proper Irish way on posters. So “O’Brien,” B-R-I-E-N. Yeah, I don’t like to correct people because it’s not even my real name anyway. And also,
I don’t know, it just feels like something that I’ve messed up, but hey, hopefully, I’ll never get cancelled for it. Fingers crossed. Something else that I kind of wish I could change, the photos that were taken of me at Altitude. Oh my god, why are all low–angle photos so offensive? Who invented
the upward chin shot and why they’ve not been arrested? I saw some pictures of myself that thought, wow, I really need to sort this situation out now. A problem is that I have no will power, and I hate the gym. And every night I tell myself, tomorrow I’m going to the gym, tomorrow I’m
going to start the cycle again of going to the gym. And every day I find about 23 million extremely valid reasons not to go to the gym. I need to go. I can feel the muscle wastage happening, you know, I have no thigh strength. If there’s a step, if there’s no step to get out to a slightly
raised stage, I basically have to be, I have to be winched up by the poor MC like a reverse trust fall, it’s awful. And there’s just I feel like I’ve got no stamina anymore. God help me if I do get into another relationship. And anything requires, you know, lower body endurance because I don’t
I don’t think I’ve got that anymore. But yeah, as regards the sort of the will power during the day when it comes to food, I’m absolutely fine. I can calorie count like a queen. But the evening hits, and if I’m not out gigging, the wine and chocolate whisper to me from the kitchen in their seductive
little way. And I give in because it’s cosy and it’s lovely and it’s comforting and life is short. And then the next day I hate myself again. And so it goes on just this vicious circle. So if anybody has got any magic hints that aren’t just “Stop eating chocolate,” I’m very open to suggestions.
Maybe I need to call a hypnotist at this point. I’m not sure because very little else seems to be working. So I do this: I sit there drinking my wine, eating my chocolate very happily while Alfie, my lovely old dog lies next to me snoring his head off. And he’s getting so old now, he’s 10 or 11,
we think. We’re not entirely sure because he’s a rescue because his little eyebrows and the brown bits of his face are going gray. So fast, every day he’s going grayer,—and whiter. I say little, but he’s not. He’s got a massive head. He’s part mastiff, part pointer. He’s a really big strong lad with a
very smelly vibe. But he is my little soul mate when it comes to the wine and chocolate lifestyle. We’re a right pair. I love him very very much. I don’t know what I’m going to do when he’s not here anymore. I don’t like watching him age by the day. His line next to me now, probably thinking,
“Yeah, right back at you love.” Because you know I’m doing it too. But I do. I worry about the time when he goes. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do. I’m worried I might go full Norman Baits. You know, like “Yes, this is Alfie still lives here. Don’t touch him. He’s sleeping.”
Well, maybe I could get an AI Alfie just for company. Even if all he does is eat the post and wee on the carpet when visitors come, you know, out of excitement. I don’t know. Last couple of things. My car needs work. £600 worth of work, apparently. Something to do with the gearbox, or the clutch, or
something equally vital–sounding. When I change gears now, it sounds or it feels crunchy,— like something that shouldn’t be crunchy. So, I’ve asked someone who knows what they’re talking about and they’ve said, “Yeah, this is what you’re going to need and that’s how much it’s going to cost.”
But I’m doing this ridiculous thing where I just kind of hope it fixes itself like a twisted ankle, you know, with your body, generally speaking, if something hurts, if you ignore it, it kind of goes away after a bit, doesn’t it? And I know cars don’t self–heal, but I also don’t want
to spend all the money on her because I spent a load on it last year as well. It’s only a little Hyundai i10, but it’s been a proper little trooper. It’s taken me all the way across the country. It’s taken me up Welsh Mountains, through floods, and snow. You know, we’ve bonded. We’ve been through
a lot together. But my best mate just bought herself a convertible. And now my little Hyundai feels like it’s a shopping trolley in comparison to that. So I need something reliable for comedy gigs, which my car is, not something flashy and sexy and exciting. But I want something flashy and
exciting and sexy. The temptation is real, but I know that if I don’t fix this car soon, I am going to end up stuck halfway down a country lane at midnight with no gear stick and no dignity. Thank God for AA call out, I suppose. So, time to put my grown–up head on and just deal with it. Well, anyway,
that’s it, I think, for this episode. Thank you so much for listening, if you have. I always love it when somebody says to me, “Oh God, I listened to your podcast, by the way. It kept me company when I was driving from A to B,” or whatever it might be. So it always comes as a lovely surprise and it’s just
really nice to know that people are taking me on their little journeys with them, or whatever it might be. So yeah, thank you very much for listening, if you have. And I’ll speak to you again soon. Take care.