Tuesday 31/03/09

I went to Oxford last week to see Richard Herring’s new show, which is about his teenage years and whether they’ve had an effect on his adult life. He kept meticulous records of the events of his youth and is able to draw odd conclusions from his teenage diaries, which express all of his darkest thoughts at the time, as flawed as they were. He says in the show that he always thought he would be a comedian and, while sacrificing much of his education, eventually he would achieve success as one.

I don’t have any teenage diaries from which I could draw unfulfilled premonitions (I didn’t write in my homework diary, let alone a voluntary daily thought journal) but I’m pretty sure that if you’d offered the 16-year-old me a life, at the age of 21, where I sat at a computer all day and played Football Manager and watched old sitcoms in the evening I probably would’ve taken it, because that’s what I was doing then. Unlike Herring, though, I’m in a position where the Football Manager computer game does not translate into any career path. Even real life managers do not have to play it in order to take charge of a Premier League club (which is a bit narrow minded of the club owners if you ask me).

5 years from now if I’m spending my days at a computer and all evenings playing FM (which probably wont even be in English the rate the Premier League is going) I may be a little jaded but it would hardly be a surprise since I’m hardly making an effort to do anything else. I’m not entirely sure, and I’ve not been convinced that doing anything else would be any more fun or rewarding. There’s little that compares to the joy winning the Premier League at home to Man United on the last day of the season, even if it is animated by 2 dimensional computer generated blobs.

Herring’s show works by ridiculing almost everything his teenage self believes in and does. I know I don’t have the benefit of 20 years of hindsight but I can see that the 16-year-old me was lazy and unproductive. The fact I’ve not changed is merely a worry at the moment, but come back to me when I’m 26 and it may be a more pressing concern.