Covert Japes

An emergency short story, as I rush out the door to get to opening night of my play in the Abbey Theatre Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet, many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep

• 0:41Speaker 00

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• 1:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Get down on your hands and knees for the cardinal's tumescent erotic bees, you scandalous Anthony's. Welcome to the Blind Eye Podcast. This, this is an emergency podcast. What I mean by that is, I'm having to record this very, there's noise in the background. I'm having to record this quite frantically and rapidly. Some unplanned chaos presented itself to my schedule this week. I'm quite busy at the moment. My big tour of England, Scotland, and Wales, that's just a couple of weeks away. And right now, I have a play. My play is opening in the Abbey Theatre up in Dublin. I shouldn't be doing those two

• 2:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  things at the exact same time, but it was out of my hands. So last week, I had to fuck off over to England to do some promotional work for the tour. I did some lovely podcast appearances and some interviews. It was great crack, and I'd scheduled everything perfectly. I was gonna come back Thursday morning and give myself four days, four solid days, to research and write this week's podcast. But just before I was leaving on the plane, I felt a tickle in my throat and a pain in my bones. I got hit with the flu Thursday morning, and my two little kids got hit with the flu. So I spent a good four days in the

• 3:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  fucking trenches, wiping three noses, shoving paracetamol up my hope, and staying hydrated. I'm fully recovered now. There's a little bit of a frog in my throat, as you can hear. But I lost. I lost four days. Four days where I couldn't, I couldn't research, I couldn't write, and I definitely could not record. Unless you enjoy listening to a person who's sniffling and has swollen tansies. And now I find myself in the situation I'm in right now. I'm recording this on Tuesday morning, and I have to leave in about 20 minutes, because tonight, it's opening night of my play up in Dublin in the Abbey Theatre, and

• 3:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  I, I must go to that. So I don't even have time, I don't even have time to talk out of my hole for an hour, and give you a phone call episode, which is usually what I do when I'm incredibly stuck for time. So I have to press the nuclear button this week, and retrieve my emergency episode. The emergency episode that I have prepared for when this type of, when this exact thing happens. And I'm a bit pissed off, because I was, I was saving this for when I'm on tour next month. I'm gonna be away for two weeks next month, and I was hoping I could deploy the emergency episode. We gotta do it this week. Because I will not miss a week. If I can show up, I'm gonna show up. And also, if I am showing

• 4:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  up, out of respect to the people who come here every week to listen, that's why I'm doing it. I wanna deliver quality and not waste your time. Before I deploy the emergency episode, I just wanna say, so my play, Animals, it has been running for a week in the Abbey Theatre. Now, tonight, you're listening to this on Wednesday, which means it's last night. So last night, we'll say, was the opening night. But I'm gonna speak in the present tense. Tonight's the opening night, but it has been running previews for the

• 5:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  past week. Preview shows are like, like the practice show, rough around the edges. It allows the director, the cast, the crew, a week to do the show in front of a live audience, and then learn what is working and what isn't working, once an audience are physically present in the room. And then changes get made. So tonight is the opening night, the final play. The response from people who've seen the previews has been phenomenal. Lots of people walking away with all types of conflicting emotions and giving it a 10 out of 10. So it feels wonderful to be a part of that. And just for myself regarding the play, I've just got that feeling in my belly. You can't fuck with this. As

• 5:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  a piece of work, it's doing what it needs to do. What everyone involved is trying to communicate, and what does eventually communicate on stage, those things are congruent. It's solid as a rock. So when you have a piece of work like that, you're in that lovely, confident position of, you know, I don't really give a fuck if people like it or people don't like it. These things actually don't matter, because I can see that the work is solid. So, other people's opinions are other people's opinions, but you can't really fuck with this. There's too many unique voices, and too unique a vision involved. The play has, it's a aesthetic autonomy. It's operating on its own terms, its own formal logic. So

• 6:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  external judgments, or taste, they're kind of irrelevant to that. They're valid, but they don't shake the work. The work is a rock. So it's a lovely feeling to go into opening night with that, and to be a part of that. Me personally, with the play, it's based on several of my short stories. The highest compliment I can give it is the director, Dan Colley. He adapted several of my short stories, but he managed to zero in on all of the, the bits in my short stories that are biographical. So even though they're

• 7:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  different characters that I've written, there's bits of, of me in there. So the play for me, to be in the audience, to see it, it's quite fucking uncomfortable, because it feels a bit like my funeral. And it feels like it's holding a mirror up to quite eccentric parts of myself that I'm a bit ashamed about and embarrassed about. And I try and get these aspects of myself into stories as a form of catharsis. Irrational thoughts, anxieties, fears. I, I write these things into my characters, because flow state provides me with a feeling of safety, where I can engage in emotional catharsis, getting emotions

• 8:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  out in a safe way. But when I see them up on stage, isolated, mirrored back to me, it's actually really uncomfortable for me. It's really challenging. And for a piece of work to be doing that to me, that's phenomenal. That's, that is, that's one of those things you wanna do with a piece of art. The thing with fucking art, whatever form it takes, writing, dancing, painting, music, whatever the fuck you want, skill, talent, virtuosity, being good at what you do, craft, aesthetic beauty, ugliness, discord, these are all, these are all parts of what, what makes art. But the thing is, how many times have you engaged in a piece of work and...

• 8:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  The person doing it is just incredibly talented. It's a guitar player who is perfect at playing the guitar, or a painter, and they're so skilled. The painting that they're painting looks like a photograph, there's so much skill involved. But the work doesn't hit you. Beyond, wow, that person is so talented, look at what they just did. The work doesn't hit you. In my opinion, what makes a good piece of art is when you engage with it. Does some little transformation happen within you? Are you, are you a slightly different person than who you were before you encountered that piece of art? I mean, music is a great one for that.

• 9:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Especially if you're sad or heartbroken, the way that music can help you transform and understand your emotions. That that's an example of what I'm speaking about there. The song itself can be ugly. I mean, I'm talking about the music of Nirvana there. Thirteen years of age and I'm hearing a song like Something in the Way for the first time off Nevermind. I'm trying to navigate the, the new complexity of emotions and hormones that are going through my body because I'm thirteen. And then Kurt Cobain comes with this song, Something in the Way. I don't really know what it's about, but it helps me to understand the feelings that I can't put words to. And that song is aesthetically quite poor. And that song is ugly and wrong.

• 10:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what I mean by that is when Kurt Cobain was in the studio between songs, he was lying back on a couch with an acoustic guitar that was out of tune, an out of tune guitar. He was singing that song, humming it, grumbling it, while lying down with his chin tucked into his chest, breaking every rule of how you should play guitar, how you should sing. But the producer, Butch Vig, heard him and said, don't fucking move. Stay where you are. I have to tune the guitar. Don't tune the guitar. Stay the fuck where you are. Keep doing what you're doing. And Butch Vig moved the microphones over to him and he recorded that song,

• 11:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  lying on his back on an out of tune guitar, singing in a way that the human body shouldn't sing, with his chin tucked into his chest. And then on the chorus, and this is what makes this song really special, on the chorus suddenly, cellos come in, orchestral instruments. Instruments that you, a sound that you associate with classical music, virtuosity. Music being done the quote unquote right way. Instruments that have no business on a grunge album, but they had to get the cellos and make the cello players put them fucking out of tune. They had to tune the cellos down to match Kurt Cobain's shitty out of tune guitar. That's wrong. It's ugly. It's simplistic.

• 11:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's not aesthetically beautiful. There's no virtuosity. But yet the song is capable of, for me as a listener, when I was thirteen, when I was a thirteen year old teenager, it, it allowed me to have inner change. I transformed. I was a different person, a different human being from, from before I heard that song and after I heard that song. And I kept listening to it and I still listen to it today. I'm just using that as, as an example to illustrate the point of that's good art. It, it can create a sense of a little transformation in the person engaging in the art.

• 12:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  And you don't need, art doesn't have to be perfect or aesthetically beautiful to pull that off. And you can have art that is absolutely aesthetically perfect and it doesn't create that feeling of change. It can be boring, but you can have complete virtuosity and that will create a sense of personal change. Listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan's version of Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix. It's like an eleven minute guitar solo, which very few people would ever be able to play. Absolute perfection in terms of what a guitar can do. And if you really lock into that song, it will bring about that little inner, inner transformation. It did for me when I heard it and that's why I keep listening to that song. I'm getting on a tangent now.

• 13:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just while I'm here, another fucking example, another example of how a piece of, we'll stick with music, can bring about internal transformation in the listener, while not exhibiting virtuosity or aesthetic beauty or obeying the rules and technically being ugly. The song Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones, nineteen sixty-six. Not necessarily the entire song, but the female vocal three quarters way through the song that transcends the piece of work from being a really fucking good blues rock song. From being that to transcending into something otherworldly and cosmic.

• 13:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's the vocalist, Mary Clayton was her name. She was a gospel singer and The Rolling Stones were recording that album, sixty-six, in Los Angeles. This is, this is when, when you were recording a fucking album back then, it was expensive. So it was about five in the morning, the lads were in the studio and they'd gotten to Gimme Shelter. That song was emerging, it was being written. And as Mick Jagger was singing it, the lads were like, it needs something more. This needs a female vocal. They rang up Mary Clayton at five in the morning. She's in bed. They say, you need to get to the studio now. We need you now. This is your only chance to do this vocal.

• 14:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  She gets to the studio immediately in her dressing gown with curlers still in her hair. Tired, she hasn't had breakfast, she hasn't been able to drink water. She hasn't done any vocal warm-up whatsoever. She's done no rehearsal. She's breaking every rule. And then when she gets her shot at singing, it's grimy and croaky and she's doing her best. And at one point, because she hasn't warmed up at all and she's got curlers in her hair, her voice fucking cracks. It cracks between notes and all of that is ugly and wrong. And a professional voice coach would say, what the fuck are you doing? You're doing it wrong.

• 15:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  But without that one bit, without Mary Clayton's vocal and her voice cracking in that song, I don't think we'd be remembering that song the way we do. It might just be another Rolling Stones album track. Her vocals made it cosmic. They took it to, into outer space, into the land of flow. And you as a listener, when engaging with that, you will have a little transformation inside yourself. When you read a good book and you inhabit the worlds of the characters in that book and you begin to care about them and you become absorbed and long after you've read that book, memories of reading it come back as if they're real things that happened in your life or a dream that you've forgotten about.

• 16:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's because that art, that writing, has caused that little transformation, that little transformation within you. And that for me, that's one of the, the very important things that a piece of art should be doing. Allowing the audience to experience some little transformation. They leave feeling differently from when they entered. Internal change has occurred. That is, the play in the Abbey Theatre, Animals, does that. And I want to thank the, the director and the fucking cast and everyone at the Abbey, part of the production, who pulled that off. Everyone is at the top of their game.

• 16:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's an honour to be a part of it and I can't fucking wait to, to see it, to see the final, final piece tonight. Is there anything I'm apprehensive about? It's gonna receive reviews and the one thing I'm apprehensive about, not good or bad reviews. If it gets a bad review, it gets a bad review. Like I said, the work is so solid, I don't give a fuck. That's someone's opinion and they're entitled to that. Similarly, if someone thinks it's good, the work is too solid, I don't, I don't care. What I am concerned, worried about, the play is very artistic because it's based on, on my writing, on my stories and I'm an autistic person who writes.

• 17:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  But the autism dials are turned up quite high in this fucking play and it's mental. It is fucking mental. My stories are mental enough already, but when they're all placed very closely together in a play and acted out with humans on stage in front of you, I come away from it going, is there something wrong with me? That's one of the uncomfortable feelings I get with this play. It's, is, is this surrealism or am I actually mental? Is there something wrong with me? It reminded me of feelings I get when I, when I would get anxiety and my imagination would run away

• 18:11Blindboy Boatclub?

  and my imagination becomes my enemy and becomes the, the play threw a bit of that at me and I had to groan myself. I'm worried that a reviewer is gonna throw me into the outsider artist category, which is, it's a very elitist term and it's quite offensive. It's a label that's given to the art that's made by people who might be mentally ill, people who could be mentally disabled in some way. It's closely tied with the savage art, which is art that's made from, art made from non-Western people, African tribes, people and stuff. People who didn't receive formal artistic training.

• 18:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's, it's very, it's an insulting term. When you call something outsider art, it's like going, this is really good, but I don't think the person really knows what they're doing. It's more of a product of their madness. Like it's good work and stuff, but we're not taking it seriously. And I get, I get concerned of being thrown into that fucking category because I'm an autistic person. And why, why it's insulting is, no, I'm a fucking nerd about art. I went to art college, I have a masters. And that's not saying having a masters in art makes me better than anybody else, but I'm saying it's, it is evidence of serious, deep, passionate engagement with art and a capacity to be, to have criticality around what art is.

• 19:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  So if I, if I make a piece of work that's good, it's like, yeah, that was deliberate, that was on purpose. It's not some autism magic, that was a deliberate thing on purpose. So I'm kind of nervous about that possibly happening because.

• 19:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  The reviews for, because this is the Abbey Theatre and it's the National Theatre, it's quite arty farty. It's fine art territory. It's reviewed the way theatre is reviewed. It's reviewed the way opera is reviewed or an exhibition of abstract paintings. It's framed and reviewed as serious art. Now, it is serious art, but you don't have to be in the Abbey Theatre or in some fancy gallery to make serious fucking art. You make serious art in your bedroom. What is serious art? Well, the artist is deeply passionate about what they're doing. It's not just to earn money. It's not just to follow a trend. It's to fulfil the need for self-expression. So, anyone who's doing that is making serious

• 20:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  art, regardless of the medium. My issue is with the, not with serious art, with the serious art world. The serious art world operates on solemnity. Solemnity is the performance of seriousness. It's not to be serious, it's to perform seriousness. You know what I mean? You walk into a fine art gallery, everything is white, and suddenly you feel intimidated. And you look at the artworks and you, you don't understand them. You feel it's not appropriate to ask questions in case you look stupid. You read the statement of intent about the piece of work that's using words that you don't recognise and

• 21:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  don't understand. And then you come to, you come to appreciate that, ah, this gallery, this space here, this isn't very welcoming. I can't, I feel kind of dumb. I'm scared that people beside me are gonna think that I'm dumb. I don't feel welcome here at all. I'm quite scared. I'd like to leave. That's solemnity. The performance of serious, seriousness. And the fine art world does that. To inflate value, to inflate the monetary value of art, it's bollocks. The enemy of solemnity is humour. The enemy of solemnity is silliness, humour, comedy, having a laugh. Now, why? Because solemnity often hides absurdity. So, when you start introducing humour or laughter there, the solemnity doesn't work anymore

• 22:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  and it exposes the absurdity. What the fuck does this have to do with my play in the Abbey Theatre and my fear of reviews? I've got a plastic bag on my head. I have a podcast. Having a podcast is not very cool. One of the most uncoolest insulting things you could be called today as a podcaster. Now, again, that's bollocks too. A podcast is just a space, a space that you fill, fill it with whatever the fuck you want. It's gonna be difficult for any, any serious theatre critic who writes in arty farty language, who upholds

• 22:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  the solemnity of the fine art world and the theatre world as their job. It's gonna be really difficult for them to write about this play in the Abbey Theatre and then be like, oh, by the way, it's written by this cunt from Limerick who wears a plastic bag on his head and is a podcaster and used to make novelty songs. Because I'm a silly cunt. I'm, I am a silly cunt and I don't have a problem being a silly cunt. And I can be dead serious about art while also being a silly cunt. But the very solemn world of fine art has great difficulty with, silly cunts can't exist within fine art. Because once you have that, then that exposes the absurdity. So, you can't have solemnity alongside

• 23:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  someone being silly. What you can do is explain away my silliness by calling me outsider art. Crazy, kooky, autistic fella. Doesn't fully understand what he's doing, but he does it well. So, that's my fear. That's my fear, not, not being allowed to be just a writer, just a writer who happens to be autistic. That's, that's what I am. I understand the craft. I know what I'm doing, the same as any other writer. It's just I, I sense the world differently. So, my writing will be a bit different. Anyway, I'm talking for longer than I'm supposed to be talking because I do have to leg it for Dublin very soon. That's turned into an unintentional phone call there. I do have something prepared for

• 24:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  you, um, which I'm gonna play after the Ocarina pause. I have a short story, a short story that I've never read out on the podcast, that I've, I've been saving. I've been saving as the emergency for when I'm put into a situation like this where I do not have the time to put a podcast out to, to record it properly. My Abbey Theatre play is called Animals. It's gonna be running for the next six weeks, I think. Um, go to it if you want. I mean, the reason I'm not plugging the fuck out of it, like I am with my, my tour over in England, Scotland and Wales, is it's, it's the National Theatre. It's publicly funded. It's not, this isn't like a for-profit play. So, I don't have promoters breeding

• 25:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  down my arse saying, promote the fuck out of this play. We need bums on seats. That's not really what this is about. This is about funding art for the sake of art. And if people show up, they show up, which is how art should be funded. You have to fund art that might not be popular, that might not get bums on seats. You have to fund plays where there could be six people in the audience, but the actors and the lighting crew and everybody still gets fucking paid for the work that they do because it's not a commercial for-profit venture. And that, that's what the Abbey Theatre is, the National Theatre. But do go and see Animals because I'm unbelievably proud of it and I'm honoured to be involved

• 25:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  in it. And the best feeling of all, it's, it's a piece of work where it's like, you can't fuck with this. Can't fuck with it. You don't like it. Okay, fair enough. Doesn't matter. This is a rock. This is solid. And also, in the age of, the other thing I fucking adore about this, it's a piece of live theatre. You can't record it on video. You can't upload it. You can't put it online. You can't print it. You must be physically present. It's about being in the room with other people. It's about the feeling of the audience and the piece of work. It's participatory. It will die. It will end. It will be over. And

• 26:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  all you'll have left are memories of it that are held in people's mouths. And I can't say that about a lot of things today. Films, music, visual art, these things can be copied and printed and re-experienced. Not a fucking play. You're either there or you're not. And when you've left and it's not there anymore and you're gone, you have to try and remember it. And the piece of art that I have, which is like that for me, that I've consumed, was a play I saw in the Peacock stage of the Abbey Theatre in 2015 called You're Not Alone by Kim Noble, which I can't explain it to you. It was one of the maddest experiences

• 27:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  of my life. I experienced multiple internal transformations. The big one, which is the lovely one you want to feel as a creative person, the internal transformation of, that was so good, it makes me want to make something of my own, which is like that. And that, that play that I saw, You're Not Alone, Kim Noble, 2015, Dan, the director of Animals, before I knew him, he was in the audience too. And he saw that same play. And it was a conversational reference between the two of us when we were trying to envision what, what, what this fucking play up in the Abbey now could be. But that's why I urge you to get up to Dublin

• 27:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  and see the play Animals, if you get a chance over the next six weeks, because you're gonna be left with something you can't show another person, you can only describe to them. The last vestiges of fucking monoculture and cultural scarcity. I'm gonna plug the Patreon, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. This podcast is my full-time job and this is how I earn a living. This podcast is how I have the time and space to show up each week and record a podcast. Even though this week I'm not really doing that, this week, I did not have the time and space to show up. And I'm talking into a microphone, but this is just a long WhatsApp message. This, this is a fucking phone call. This isn't

• 28:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  proper use of my time. Like, what are we, 26 minutes? I've been here for 26 minutes. On my other monologue podcast episodes, 26 minutes could be three days. But because this is listener-funded, that's how I have the time and space to do that and to show up, to do this as my full-time job, how I earn a living, how I pay my bills, rent out my office, purchase equipment, repair equipment and replace it when it breaks. Listener-funded, independent. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. Listen for free, because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. And if

• 29:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  you're paying, you're paying for another listener who can't afford it to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast, the exact same experience. You get the same thing whether you pay or not, four episodes a month, and I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. Gigs. I'm just plugging England, Scotland and Wales, right? Because you know about Australia, off in April 2027, Australia, New Zealand. It's more or less sold out anyway, but we can get to that next week. This week, I want to promote the, the last of the gigs

• 29:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  that are available this October, beginning on the 18th of October, where I start off in Brighton. Then I'm in the New Theatre in Cardiff, Wales on the 20th of October. I'd say I'll take my, I have a day off there on the 19th. I'd say I'll take that one in Cardiff. No disrespect to Brighton, but it is a seaside town and I know from the lyrics of Marcy. Not, I don't wanna be doing a seaside town in October. So, I think I'll, I think I'll head on off there to Cardiff and have my day off in Cardiff. Then, after Cardiff, onto Coventry, the Warwick Arts Centre. Coventry is down to the last, it's

• 30:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  down to the last few tickets. Then the 22nd, Bristol at Beacon Hall. That one's close to sold out too. Guildford G Live on the 24th of October. And then we have London, Barbican Hall, that's sold out. And then up to Glasgow on the 28th for a sold-out gig in the Pavilion. The 29th, Gateshead.

• 31:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  Last week, I referred to Gateshead as Teeside. I'm sorry, I found out that it was Tyneside. I don't think I've ever encountered a place where, very politely, that people are doing this in a very nice and polite way, but the people of Gateshead, I think they feel overlooked, overlooked or overshadowed or ignored by their proximity to Newcastle. And they're very, very quick to assert their independence and identity as being Gateshead and Gateshead being a specific thing of its own. And I'm actually quite fascinated by that. So if there's any, recommend some good Gateshead guests

• 31:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  who can speak to me about that specifically. I'm gonna finish the live podcast tour then in Nottingham, in Nottingham on the Theatre Royal. Okay, let's have an Ocarina pause. You'll hear an advert for some bullshit.

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• 36:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  The Ocarina pause is so you don't get suddenly startled by an advert. That's why I put it in. So I actually recorded 30 minutes of a, I recorded 30 minutes that I was not supposed to do at all, and now I'm kind of late. I'm gonna play now the thing that I had fucking prepared, which is, it's a short story from my last book, which I haven't put out on this podcast. It's a short story called "Covert Japes." I like the short story, but it's, it's the one story that feels slightly out of place in my last collection, Topografia Hibernica. The thing with it, this isn't a particularly literary short story.

• 36:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  There aren't much emotions or themes bubbling up underneath the surface. This story doesn't have a deep unconscious. It's not a story that you could pore over or analyze. But what it is, it's a piece of entertainment. What I found with this story is, anytime I put this one on, I always play it to the end. Even though I fucking wrote it, it lends itself very well to be, to be read out to the audio medium. And I think you're gonna really like this. There's nothing, this isn't challenging. There's nothing difficult emotionally.

• 37:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't have to give any content warnings. What this will do for you, this is gonna give you a nice peaceful half an hour where you can disappear into another person's imagination. And regarding the themes I was bringing up at the start of this podcast, this story, I don't think this story brings about personal change in the, in the reader. This is just pure entertainment using the craft of writing. It's what it is. So look, I'll catch you next week. I have to leg it, I have to leg it to go up to see opening night. Next week, I'll be back. I have the hot take. I knew what the hot take was going to be for this week's podcast. That's one of the reasons I chose not to even attempt it.

• 38:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  One of the things that I really try to avoid doing with this podcast is that if I do have a hot take, if I have an idea, I want to give that idea enough time to, to research it thoroughly so that when I deliver it, it's complete, and I'm not listening back afterwards going, "Fuck, I wish I put that bit in." Look, I'll be back next week, dog bless. This story is called "Covert Japes." It's from my last collection, Topografia Hibernica.

• 38:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  1964 Hoffner violin bass for sale. Original, very few in circulation. Full hollow-body bass guitar with warm resonant sound, of the kind Paul McCartney played throughout the 60s. Solid maple neck, 22 fret rosewood with dot inlays, sunburst finish. This vintage gem is equipped with two original Hoffner 511B staple pickups, offering that unmistakable 60s bass sound. Starting offers at 500 euro. I'm not looking to make a fortune, just hoping it goes to someone who'll appreciate it as much as I have. 089 654 3421.

• 39:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  This was the advert that had me in a shopping center car park at 7:30 AM in the rain, trying my best to get the heater to defog the windows. I was looking out at a browser of a morning, where the sun is up, but the streetlights are still on. You could drink the air. All the parking spaces were layered with moss, and a dog in the distance had a cough from barking. Not many cars over the road. A white RTE nose van drove past. The estate behind the shopping center has its problems. There must have been another shooting last night. I rang the number in the advert a few times yesterday, but never got an answer. I received a text back with this address. I was told to go to a pub called the Imperial Bar.

• 40:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  The Imperial Bar? The Imperial Bar is a pub you only hear about. You wouldn't go in there. It's not dangerous as such, it's just that, it's a pub stuck into the backside of the Southside Shopping Centre, which isn't much of a shopping centre. Well, it had been in the 90s, but the recession tore the whole of it. All shuttered up except for a discount store and a place that sells mobility scooters to the elderly.

• 40:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  I wondered if this was a trap. When I shut the car door, I heard the rattle of rust between the panels. My five hundred euro would be better spent than an old jalopy. I walked towards the entrance of the pub. The facade was cladded in this Celtic tiger cream veneer. Fake carved wood, all blistered. A Guinness poster in the window, with the top half bleached by sun. Who drinks here? Why? Secret alcoholics? Accountants having affairs? I stuck my car key out between my fingers, just in case. This would be a great way to rob me, or murder me, in fairness.

• 41:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  Who in the name of Jesus is selling a nineteen sixty-four Hoffner bass for five hundred euro? Those things could go to auction for six grand, easy. This has to be a trap. There'll be a lot of bowsies with baseball bats inside the pub, and I'll deserve whatever happens to me. I'm a right idiot for agreeing to this. I felt an instinct to turn back, but the curiosity had the bait in me. There was a relief when I saw the security camera pointing down at the door. It had the flashing little red light. At least if something terrible does happen to me, I know that I'm being recorded entering the bar. I fixed my hair when I imagined the footage playing on TV on one of those missing Parsons

• 42:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  shows. And I considered turning back once more, but fuck it. I went to knock on the door, but it had been unlatched. It was dark inside, except for the frosty glow of a fridge behind the bar top. The pub wasn't open yet. Harp, Guinness, and Bulmers, the Holy Trinity. We show Sky Sports on the wall beside the old TV. Okay, not too bad. Upturned chairs resting on wooden tables, and the sourness of spilled booze, and the cheesy bleach bang of a bad mop. There was the reassuring bite of pine and lemon from a fresh urinal cake, too. Place can't be too bad if they're topping up the urinal cakes.

• 42:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  Hello, I said into the blackness. A much older man, who looked to be in his late fifties, emerged from the men's toilets, and said pure sprightly, "Put across that latch behind you. I'll be with you now in a minute. Pick a table for yourself, you'll have a coffee, you will?" "I will," I said. "That'd be lovely." He was no punter. He had the movements of a person who worked here, and was opening early to meet me. He came around from the bar, with a cup of milky instant coffee in his right hand, and placed it down on my table. "There you are now." He walked back up to make his own cup. I sipped the bitter Nescafe and took in his appearance.

• 43:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  There was a bit of length to the back of his haircut, the type of deliberate length that lets you know it used to be longer in his youth. Doc Marten shoes under light blue denim jeans, matching denim shirt, red wine silk waistcoat and a dainty little silver earring. This was the uniform of a man who'd been playing in bands. A long time, probably does the odd wedding or corporate gig, and moonlights in this pub to supplement his income. Flexible hours, never too busy, makes sense. This was definitely a fucker with a bass to sell. I was certain of it. I relaxed. No one was getting their head kicked in this morning.

• 44:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  The man sat down opposite me and raised his coffee up to his lips. He told me his name was Jerry, and asked if I'd like to see the bass. "I'd love that, Jerry. Have you got a close by?" I said. He reached behind with one hand and carefully placed a guitar case across the table. A battered-looking, all leather thing, pocked with stickers from bands and festivals and destinations. Fender, Arnie Bell, Chris Rea, Van Morrison, Ronnie Scott's Glastonbury, I Love New York. There was no fake in that. That guitar case had earned those stickers. This was legit gear. And my heart began to race with the excitement. "Can I see it?" I asked. "Hold on to your horses, no lad."

• 45:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  "I'll only open this case for the right person," he responded. And he said it like a da, with his right palm down on the case, guarding it like a bag of fish supper. And he continued, "As I said in the advert, I'm not looking to make a fortune. I know well how much this can sell for online. But some things are worth more than money. What's important to me here is making sure it goes to the right person." And I hid my jocks down at that pint. I got foolish. I started trying to impress him. I lost the run of myself, telling Jerry that I play in wedding bands, that my hope is to move to London, get some session work. I own a Fender Mexican Jazz bass, but a real Hoffner is what will take me to the next

• 45:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  level and get me the good jobs. I told him that my style is rooted in the Motown warmth of James Jamerson, blended with the complexity of Victor Wooton, but I also had a deep respect for the simplicity of Paul McCartney's more melodic playing. "And I wouldn't dream of replacing the pickups or anything like that. I'd keep her as she is," I said. I taught myself up beyond my ability, and I'd be fucked if he asked me to demonstrate anything on the instrument. But Jerry wasn't impressed or phased. He had the way of a man who'd heard this chat too many times. He snapped at me a bit and said, "Anyone can learn to play the bass, son. What I'm looking for is the person who is spiritually mature enough to own it."

• 46:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this is when shit started getting weird, and I wondered if there was a fucking bass inside that case at all. "Let me tell you a story about the man who owns this bass," Jerry said. "The man who owns this bass nearly had a record deal with EMI in nineteen eighty-three. His band were called Furious Moonlight, and they toured two dates with Cadigogo in Denmark. And there was a six-month period in Limerick City, when you couldn't enter a men's toilet without hearing someone say, 'Furious Moonlight will be the Irish flock of seagulls.'

• 47:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  John Peel almost aired their demo tape on BBC Radio One, but the IRA bombed Woolwich that weekend and that fucked it all. And the record labels went cold, the crowds got smaller. It's a cruel old bollocks of a game, lad." Furious Moonlight fell apart, but the reputation carried enough weight, that he got gigs as a stand-in bass player for other bands, a session head, a job he wouldn't wish on a convicted pervert. Touring as a bass player is like a party with no beginning and no end, which might sound glamorous to a young lad like yourself, but you have to go home to your own bed at some point.

• 47:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  Hotel rooms and corridors blurred into a purgatory of roadies and sound engineers. The rush of being up on stage in front of an audience that you haven't earned is as dangerous as any line of Chang. It's an artificial buzz that you end up chasing through other means. And before long, he was shelving wads of coke up his own winker on tour buses. "Let me tell you about the man who owns this bass. The man who owns this bass once lit a cigarette for Kate Bush. She held eye contact, too, and he would have been in there if he only had the gumption to make the move. He still thinks about it in the red heat of night time. The man who owns this bass."

• 48:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  He watched Sting fall headfirst into a band maree of hot stroganoff in the catering tent. He helped Axl Rose find his last sunglasses backstage at Glastonbury. He toured with the Howsemartens, Aztec Camera, Gary Newman, fucking Prefab Sprout. He saw it all. But the lights were too bright. He grew fond of the drink and the dandruff. His rhythm went arseways. He fucked up a couple of gigs for Martin Kemp and was demoted to be in the guitar tech. He tuned the bass, kept the strings fresh for another man to live in the spotlight. I was the runner-up. Never stood on stage again, but he still chased the rush of it. Touring with the crew, and not the band, and he toured until he lost the feeling of

• 49:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  having a home. Train stations and airports became his home. He could tell you the colour of the carpet in Luton Airport on nineteenth of March, nineteen ninety-three. It was purple with yellow squiggles and triangles. And he can tell you that because that's where he had his last drop of the demon drink. He'd been on a seventy-hour Paddy's Day Bender while working Jason Donovan's Between the Lines Tour. Newcastle Brown Ale it was. He can still taste it now. His sweat was like the condensation on the back of a fridge and it smelled like a bin. Earlier on, he'd wept into a woman's own in W H Smith. Dangling off the Devil's Bell End he was. The drink and the sleeplessness and the hangover had all mired into one river of misery.

• 50:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  He lost himself in the carpet of the Luton Airport bar, and decided how he was going to die. He would get on his flight, wait until the plane got a bit of altitude and opened the emergency exit. He'd jump out somewhere between Derby and Manchester and bollocks to anyone else who got sucked out with him. Rockstar's death. He figured to get one last rush from the descent before his corpse penetrated the attic of someone's house. And when the tannoy called out his flight number, he finished the pint and accepted his destiny. But something glinted at him from beyond the sadness.

• 50:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  He saw a sign beside the airport toilets that said, "Multi-Faith Prayer Room." People of all persuasions walked in and out with a look of peace and contentment on them. "Multi-Faith Prayer Room," he said to himself. "I wonder what goes on in there." Now, the man who owns this base wasn't religious in any shape or form, but he was definitely pining for the peace and contentment that he saw on those faces. He sensed a force drawing him towards the multi-faith prayer room. It took him away from the airport bar and he walked inside. Oh, heavy on the feet, mind, after all the drink and the coke. He might have done a shirt earlier too.

• 51:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the multi-faith prayer room was sparse, a beige carpet and a smell of car fresheners. There was no crucifixes or nothing like that, but there was a stained glass window with a light bulb behind it. That was it. A neutral space for having a chat with whatever god you wanted. Take your pick. Pure silence. You'd nearly forget that it was an airport. Three other people were in the room, each locked into different forms of prayer. There was a Christian on her knees with her hands out, a Muslim fellow bent over a bit of carpet, and a Buddhist meditating with his legs crossed.

• 52:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  The man who owns this base had forgotten how to pray. He didn't even know which god he should be talking to. In his body swayed with the drink and his movement distracted the other people from their prayers, they could probably smell him too. The Christian woman opened her eyes and stared at him in judgment. He considered turning and leaving. He began to panic with the old rotten memory of stage fright, but a peace suddenly washed over him though, a sensation of falling back into a powerful set of thrusting arms. He received a vision, a vision of a bass string wobbling on the fretboard. The wobble of the string reminded him of the movements of a maggot.

• 53:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  He replicated this movement with his torso, rotating his hips and allowing a pulse to travel from his feet to his hands. He crawled around the carpet of the multi-faith prayer room in a sequence of rhythmic wiggling thrusts. He moved, moved like he was plucking out a song with his limbs. The timing was odd. It had the two four of a bossa nova, but with the quarter note of a begwin, you know what I mean, lad. And it lasted for several minutes. He was experiencing divine ecstasy. All the truth of the universe sang in his head. The Muslim, the Christian and the Buddhist stopped their prayers and observed him on

• 53:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  the floor in pure reverence and awe. And when he'd finished, the Buddhist kneeled down, asked him which religion he belonged to, what prayer or ritual he'd just partaken in. And the man who owns this base, the man who owns this base didn't know where these words came from, but his mouth started moving regardless. And he told the Buddhists that he worshipped the maggot. The three stood looking with their jaws open, waiting for him to tell them more. He began to ask all three to describe heaven. They each told an account of a beautiful, open place filled with sunlight, trees, bards sung. "Sounds gorgeous," he said.

• 54:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  So he asked them to describe hell. They all spoke of punishment, death and decay. "I don't like the sound of that place," he replied. "They did those superior religious chuckles that you hear at an AA meeting." He got up from the floor, paced back and forth, feeling the confidence that a lead singer would have. And then he asked them, "What would heaven look like to a maggot?" They had no answer to this, so he repeated it. "Somebody here, somebody here, tell me what heaven would look like to a maggot." No response again. He reported back to them gently that they had all described a vision of heaven that was perfectly tuned to the needs of human life.

• 55:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  Sunlight, bards, open spaces, but to a maggot, that eternity would be a vision of hell because maggots experience their vitality in the darkness and rot of corpses. If you could ask a maggot what its idea of eternal bliss is, it would describe a land littered with cadavers and decay. A maggot's heaven is a human's vision of hell. "So somebody has it wrong," he said, "and I reckon it's us humans. We've created a selfish bastard vision of heaven and that's why maggots show up when we die. They're not eating us. The maggots are informing our corpses that we got it all wrong. But by this time, we're silent enough to listen, it's too late.

• 55:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  So that's, that's why I worship the maggot." Now, the three onlookers, they asked him how long he had worshipped the maggot. He was honest. He informed them that he had just witnessed the one true religion being revealed to him by God. The Muslim, the Christian, the Buddhist immediately dropped to their knees. They begged to become his disciples and he accepted them as his disciples. And they all wriggled like maggots on the floor of the multi-faith prayer room and out over the tiles of Luton Airport past the gift shop. He missed his flight to Glasgow. Jason Donovan could get fucked at this point. His disciples asked him why the maggot was worthy of their worship and he told them

• 56:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's because no life on earth can escape the maggot. "You could be Axl Rose," he said, "Kate Bush, Martin Kemp, and the maggot would still visit your body when you die. Maggots don't care about record deals or whether John Peel played your demo tape. Jason Donovan is equal to a dead rat in the eyes of the maggot. But if you can submit to the inevitability of the maggot's mouth, you will know true humility in life." And he wasn't even sure what that meant, but it made sense to him and his disciples agreed. He added that maggots move in the shape of a sine wave. He used his finger to draw a wriggly sine wave in the air because the sine wave is the shape that a perfect bass note makes when it moves through the room.

• 57:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  Musical mathematics is the language of God because it transcends the limits of words and is understood universally by our bodies. Music is the maggots of the air. The ex-Muslim agreed with this. They got up off the floor and sat at the airport cafe and drank those gigantic 1990s cappuccinos that were all foam and no coffee. He explained to his disciples that there were three stages to a maggot's life cycle, the egg, the pupa and the fly. What they had all witnessed in the multi-faith prayer room was him wriggling out of his pupa stage and transcending into the fly stage. The ex-Buddhist was pleased with that explanation. The ex-Christian was sceptical. She asked what their sacrament would be.

• 58:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a guitar plectrum, held it with both hands and swatted it. "There's your sacrament," he said. The ex-Christian fell to her knees and worshipped his Doc Martens, renouncing Christ in that very moment. His disciples asked how they could all transcend their pupa stage and become flies. He told them that they would need to save humanity by teaching as many people as possible about this new religion. "We should buy four tickets on the next flight out of Luton Airport," he instructed. It was a flight to Mykonos. The ex-Christian paid for it, she was a minted yank. And so he and his disciples boarded the plane. The plan was to hijack the plane by taking control of the intercom because this was

• 58:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  the gig that would make or break them. They would use the intercom to explain the urgency of the maggot to the other passengers. Then he would open the emergency exit and all four of them would sacrifice themselves to the wind. But they wouldn't fall to their deaths. Instead, divine intervention would cause translucent wings to grow from their backs. They would then buzz around the airplane and wave at all the passengers inside and every passenger on the plane will have witnessed a miracle. The plane will land safely. By the next morning, the miracle will be reported by every newspaper in the world. It was a solid fucking plan, lad, and his disciples were sold on it. The plan went tits up, of course.

• 59:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  About eight minutes into the flight, the man who owns this base rushed for the emergency exit and pressed down on the red lever that manually opens the door. It swung out violently. The wind was something shocking, but the cabin hadn't been pressurized yet, so no one got sucked out. It was just awful loud and windy. He tried his best to tell the passengers about his religious beliefs, but nobody could hear a word and they were all screaming too. He got stage fright. It wasn't working out the way he'd planned in his head, so he jumped and regretted it immediately. His left hand grabbed the plane door. He was dangling outside the fucking airplane, holding on until his fingers went white. He didn't dare look down. His disciples chickened out.

• 1:00:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Within seconds, the ex-Buddhist and an air hostess crunched the door shut on his left hand. This actually saved him from falling to his death, but he stayed, hanging from the outside like Hitler's bollock. It wasn't painful. Pain isn't too much of a concern when you're in a situation like that. Then the wind picked up, stuck into the fuselage like a fly on a swatter, in and out of consciousness. The plane turned around and made an emergency landing at Luton Airport within six minutes. Fair play to the pilot. A fire crew and an ambulance were waiting on the runway. The paramedics could not believe that he had survived the ordeal. A miracle, they called it. It made the papers all right, but not one of the dirty rags reported on his message or his spiritual revelation.

• 1:01:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  The other passengers only heard the accent and the IRA got all the credit again, of course. He spent the next year in hospital with broken ribs and one side of him in bits. His left hand was mangled by the plane door and it had to be amputated at the wrist.

• 1:01:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  My eyes darted around the Imperial Bar, searching for a hidden camera. Gerry recounted the entire story with a straight face in one take. He definitely told it a few times before, but if he was an actor, he was a fucking good one. My instinct now was that this was a prank. Maybe one of the lads had set me up and planted that advert in the newspaper, knowing well I couldn't resist a 500 euro Hafner bass. Before I could even open my mouth with a response, Gerry brought his left hand up and slammed it down on the guitar case. The hand was peach in colour and made crudely out of rubber.

• 1:02:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was solid and heavy like a hand you'd buy in a joke shop, his middle finger bent at an angle around his wedding band. "Now lad, you can see why I'm setting this bass," he said. "There's two things I haven't done for the past thirty years. I haven't had a drop of the demon drink, and I haven't played the bass." "Do you mind if I use the jacks, Gerry?" I said. "Over beyond to the right of the bar," he said. I targeted my stream of piss at the urinal cake. I pushed with force and budged it from left to right. It gave me a feeling of control over my thoughts. My piss was yellow, and I watched it swirl green down the drain when it hit the blue cake. The fresh smell of tiled pine rose up at me.

• 1:02:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  I wasn't thinking about the bass, I was thinking about the maggot, because the maggot religion made a lot of sense to me. I wondered if I had been chosen by a higher power. I considered getting down on the tiles of the jacks and wriggling out towards Gerry in pure devotion. I snapped out of that delusion fairly quickly because who in the fuck goes to the Imperial Bar at eight in the morning and comes out joining a new religion? Not me. I walked back out to Gerry and sat down. "We need to start chatting about the bass now, Gerry, because the traffic will get wicked in about twenty minutes. But I do have one question that's killing me. What happened to your disciples?"

• 1:03:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  I did a stint of rehab after hospital, spent a year in a wheelchair. I questioned everything that happened in that multi-faith prayer room. You can't trust an episode like that after a decent bender. I was interrogated relentlessly by English police, of course, MI5 too, asking about my politics. They lost interest when I kept bringing up the maggot though. As for the disciples, they visited me, one by one, over the years that followed. They hadn't stayed in contact with each other. I got a sense that they were embarrassed by it all, embarrassed to have allowed themselves to be overcome by the ecstasy of it. The Christian told me that it had felt like a one-night stand that she regretted.

• 1:04:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  They had all returned to their respective religions too, but what brought them back to visit me was a respect for my faith. The fact that I'd actually gone ahead with the plan. Each of them tried to convert me over to their religions, but I refused. "I'm sticking with the maggot," I told them.

• 1:04:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  There was a sincerity in how quickly Gerry answered my question. It threw me off. His eyes had a truth in them. "So you've no disciples anymore, Gerry?" I asked him. "Well, that's what brings us here, son. I'm a one-man religion, solo, like Martin Kemp. The man who will own this bass must carry the message of the maggot forward to the people. The man who's going to own this bass must prove his spiritual maturity to me, and you're the first person to make it this far in the test." Gerry then used his good hand and clacked the latches of the guitar case. He pushed open the cover. There she was, smiling up at me.

• 1:05:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  A 1964 Hafner violin bass, shining like it was hanging from Paul McCartney's shoulder. Sunburst finish, solid maple neck, twenty-two fret rosewood with dotted inlays, and original Hafner 511B staple pickups. This was the real deal. My mouth went dry with desire. But as Gerry lifted the neck with his right hand, he stroked the body with his left hand. His rubber fingers made a squeaking sound against the varnish and they bent at the tips. The big ridiculous peach hand poked out of his denim shirt. It just didn't look like an actual medical prosthetic, it was a joke shop hand.

• 1:05:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  It did not convince me somebody was having me on here, but I was hungry for that bass. Gerry took a big swig of his Nescafe and said, "Forget the money, lad. I'll give you this Hafner for free if you become the next disciple of the maggot." He made the shape of a sine wave in the air with his rubber finger and told me that real bass playing happens in the soul and not in the hands. I felt a hint of fear gripping me and I asked him, "And how exactly do I become a disciple of the maggot, Gerry?" A bit of a mad look arrived in his eyes and he goes, "Abstinence and sacrifice, son. The man who inherits this bass can own it, but he can never play it. I have a butcher's block behind the bar and a sterilised cleaver.

• 1:06:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'll do it in one swipe, just below the wrist. We'll ring an ambulance in advance and they'll have painkillers and all that. With a clean wound, you'll be right in two weeks. Then we'll bury the hand under an oak tree and let the maggots purify the flesh."

• 1:06:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  I didn't fully take in the severity of what he'd just asked of me, and I responded instantly. "But Gerry, if I've only one hand and I can't play the bass, even if it's mine to play..." "And now you understand the pure truth of existence. You're definitely the right man for this," he said. "Give me a moment to think about this, please, Gerry," I replied. "Take your time. I've some bits to do behind the bar. I'll come back in a few minutes. There's no pressure here, this is a big decision, lad. You're free to walk if you like." I leaned back in the chair and start doing some serious detective work in the silence of my own head. Columbo shit. I put a few pieces together and began to figure out exactly what was happening here.

• 1:07:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Last night, when I inquired about the advert for the bass guitar, that TV programme "Covert Japes" was playing in the background of my apartment. It's that hidden camera show that's on RTE too. The fellow with the quiff presents it. It's not for me, but it's a good laugh if you're a fucking idiot. But they travel all around Ireland and get actors to prank members of the public by placing them in ridiculous situations. They dress up as traffic wardens or pretend that there's an alien invasion happening, that type of shit. But then at the end, just when the mark is about to lose their rag, the TV crew jump out and reveal that it's all a big joke. Smile for the camera, you've just been covertly japed, they say.

• 1:08:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  The lights turn on, hugs and laughs, lots of clapping. The member of the public always wins a prize too. Then the credits roll down the screen, ha, ha, ha. Here's my evidence. Firstly, Gerry is clearly an actor wearing a costume. His story about his band and the prayer room is too far-fetched to be true. Hanging off the side of a moving airplane, didn't happen. He delivered it to me in one straight take, like a script that he had rehearsed. Then, the way he revealed his fake hand at the end, felt perfectly timed for laughs. There was probably a camera zoomed in on my face from a reaction to that.

• 1:09:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Secondly, who drinks in the Imperial Bar? Fucking nobody drinks in the Imperial Bar. It's always empty because it's a pub at the side of a dead shopping centre. Last summer, I did a temp job as a runner for a TV company. After the pandemic shut down all the live music, I hated it, but I did learn a thing or two about making TV. The Imperial Bar is exactly the type of place that is quiet enough and cheap enough for an RTE crew to hire out and fill them in for the day. Also, TV shoots start very early, so that's why we're here at eight in the morning. And, that's why I saw the white RTE van drive past on the road earlier.

• 1:09:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're obviously down from Dublin for this. Thirdly, his fucking hand. It's a joke shop, rubber hand. If he actually lost his hand, then he'd have a convincing medical prosthetic, not that peach yolk that sounds like a dildo when he slaps it on the table. That's the silly prop, the hero prop, they call it in TV language. Its purpose is to make me look like an idiot on telly if I believe that it's real. This whole pub is obviously rigged with TV cameras, but they've done an amazing job at hiding them, and that is what is happening here. It's all coming into place now.

• 1:10:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I play along, the crew will jump out, hugs and smiles, and then they'll present me with that vintage 64 Hafner as the prize. Boom, not a bad result for a Tuesday morning. So I got into character and said to Gerry, "I'm ready to become a disciple, Gerry. The revelation that you had in the Luton Airport prayer room has convinced me to worship the maggot. I'm not afraid." And the actor who played Gerry couldn't believe his luck, he was beaming. "Are you sure about this? There's no going back, son." "I've never been more certain about anything before in my life, Gerry," I responded. He walked me up towards the bar and said, "Could you give me some help lifting the butcher's block? It's a two-hand job."

• 1:11:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, that line was clearly written into the script as a sex pun. "Take it easy, Gerry, I'm here to buy a bass, not to get a wank." They'd probably beeped that out, but I couldn't resist. I lifted the butcher's block up and laid it across the bar top. It was heavy. Gerry reached for the old landline on the wall and dialed 999 with his rubber finger and said, "I need an ambulance at the Imperial Bar, the Southside Shopping Centre. There's been a very serious workplace accident. Please, come quickly, he's bleeding heavily." The phone probably wasn't even connected. I made a face like I was terrified. I'm a natural performer, so I chattered my teeth too. And I could hear the canned laughter in my head when the camera cuts to my face.

• 1:11:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  And if I, if I do a good enough job of this, who knows? I could get booked to play a few more weddings. RTE is decent exposure, like. Jerry started laying down tea towels on the floor underneath the bar. No point in making a mess, he said. I opened my mouth really wide in shock and bulged my eyes out, playing up my reactions for the camera. He took out the cleaver and grabbed it in his right hand. And from where I was standing, it, it looked like an actual butcher's cleaver rather than a fake prop. But this meant that the crew would all jump out for the big reveal just before he pretended to bring it down on my hand. When you're ready, roll up the sleeve of your left arm and place it down there on the block.

• 1:12:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Grab a hold of the bar top to steady yourself with your other hand too. I'd have time to move behind you if you faint. A head injury isn't part of the bargain. I did as he asked, and I practised a look of surprise in my head.

• 1:12:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  There was one detail that niggled at me though.

• 1:12:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Covert Japes wasn't the type of TV show that had a six grand Hoffner violin bass in the budget. It didn't seem like a prize they'd give away. The prizes were usually gift vouchers or a weekend at a spa in Wicklow.

• 1:13:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  Jerry raised the cleaver high above his right shoulder and I held out my wrist.

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