Hello there. It’s been a busy but exciting week, so I thought I’d write down what I’ve been up to as, although things have been quiet on here, lots has been going on out there in the real world.

I’ve sorted my Edinburgh venue for the Awkward Situation show – Just the Tonic at the Caves. I’m in the bar which is a great little venue at 16.55, which is a nice time for my kind of show.

And my free show Reasons Not to Kill will be at 1.10 in the Speakeasy at the lovely Voodoo Rooms where I’ll be singing a load of nonsense to consenting adults and adapting lyrics at the last minute should they bring children.

Exciting media tit update now; I had a call on Wednesday evening (17^th March in case you read this in time to check it on the iplayer) asking me to appear on Tony Livesey’s 5 Live show that night – obviously a guest cancelled. They were talking about a sea shanty band from Cornwall, The Fisherman’s Friends, being signed up for a million pound record deal. And to celebrate that fact needed someone to sing listener’s shanties to the tune of drunken sailor. The very lovely Matt White of BBC Manchester recommended me to them – thanks Matt, you’ve created a monster.

Now, hand on heart, I promise I did not sell myself as a sea shanty singer, which was, of course, what I was introduced as. Tony soon revealed that ‘Matt Tiller knows nothing about sea shanties,’ but I had learnt the two chords (E minor and D) and the sequence needed in order to fulfil the ‘drunken sailor’ requirement that my contract stipulated.

Someone, I think it was Geoff from Stockport, who was an actual sea shanty singer (and probably jealous that he hadn’t been booked for the gig) let us know that not all sea shanties were sung to the tune of drunken sailor. But Geoff, give us a break, the listeners had to be given a template for their shanties otherwise the whole thing would have descended into chaos. And no one wants that. And I didn’t want to learn any other shanty chords.

I had written a few shanties in case – one about Tony’s show I did play and the others were topical. It was St. Patrick’s Day and loads of people were unnecessarily inebriated on the streets of Manchester City Centre, so out came this:

What shall we do with drunk pretend Irish

What shall we do with drunk pretend Irish

What shall we do with drunk pretend Irish

With their stupid hats on

They’re staggering and swaying

I try not to bump into them I’m praying

Oh just cos it’s St. Patrick’s day

And they’re not even Irish

Cos they’re so drunk they can hardly stand

I shout at them and demand

To confiscate their Guinness cans

Cos it’s only lunchtime

And this one is dedicated to Gordon Brown who’d had a bit of a bad news day…

Whoops I forgot how much we spent

Whoops I forgot how much we spent

Whoops I forgot how much we spent on defence

And I used to be the chancellor

Wooah the economy’s scuppered

I hope I left some pennies in the cupboard

When the next lot get in they are bugg… in trouble

And I’ll go and sell my memoirs…

You’ll notice the one above uses the hilarious comedy song staple of pretending you’re about to use a swearword, which would’ve no doubt brought howls of laughter across the studio had I played it. But the listeners very kindly wrote lots of silly shanties and they were duly played, mostly, but not exclusively, in tune, I think.

The whole thing was quite bizarre, but a lot of fun. I’ve never been on national radio before and it’s intense, which is what makes it so good, of course. Once we’d come off air though, Tony and his team were very lovely and said they’d have me back and even sounded sincere. Next time I’ll be a ‘death metal nu folk trip grime’ expert. No problem.

And finally big up the Ruby Lounge massive on Thursday (I think that’s what the kids say) as I went down to film my mate Phil Davies – a very fine singer songwriter and the excellent band who should be massive, Dirty North. Also on the bill were Taylorandthemason and headliners The Indelicates, who were both very good indeed. I’ll post links to the videos when they’re up.

On top of that things have been busy and good in the world of the day job. Making excellent progress with a couple of projects that I’m very excited about, gearing up for the second series of Lunch Monkeys and preparing for the live extravaganza that will be Sketch Pistols at Band on the Wall next Sunday 28^th March…

Right. That’s enough for now. Got to read some scripts and write some material to play at Comedy in Progress at Fuel in Withington tonight.

Lots of love

Matt

x