August 2025
An essay about comedy and a strong month on YouTube
Influences over this month’s work range from TS Eliot to John Steinbeck to Monty Python.
Output
This was probably my favourite ever month on The Kev’s YouTube channel. I uploaded the video of spoof Disney song ‘I’ve Fallen in Love with a Mermaid’, which has proved popular at open mics:
I also uploaded an updated version of ‘The FVSDA’, which is objectively one of the most accomplished pieces of comedy I have ever written (though it’s certainly not for everyone):
And I made a new version of ‘Hope It Might Be So’, my earnest song about belief in an afterlife, which contains a homage to TS Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’:
Activities
On Radio North Manchester I talked about ‘The Woman in White’ by Wilkie Collins. It had been on the list of classics I have never read. I also discussed ‘The Pearl’ by John Steinbeck and ‘Lantern of Lost Memories’ by Sanaka Hiiragi. My contribution can be found at 1:27:30 here.
And I wrote a Substack essay about comedy that I hope people engage with.
I also recorded a cover of ‘Strange Glue’ by Catatonia, which was played at the first ever gig I went to.
Wider World
Here in the United Kingdom, coinciding with celebrations of progressivism including Pride Weekend and the Notting Hill Carnival, there has been a nationwide campaign to raise the national flag.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, widely tipped to be the next opposition leader, uploaded a photo of himself posing next to a raised flag, writing: “Raise the Colours! While Britain-hating councils take down our flags, we raise them up. We must be one country, under the Union flag.”
In the other countries I have lived and worked in, eg China and the United States, these displays of patriotism would be considered normal and healthy. But some are saying the campaign is provocatively racist, and there is evidence to support this.
The issue of immigration remains a powder keg and sensible concerns about loss of local identity and its damage to the native population have been raised by both left and right. Trade union activist Paul Embery tweeted: ‘It says a lot about the path Britain has taken in recent years that the displaying of the national flag by ordinary citizens is seen as an act of resistance.’
Reform UK, which is prepared to carry out mass deportations, is surging in the polls. The absence of a more moderate approach to immigration or a healthy patriotism is causing problems. But nobody can ever seem to use flags in moderation.