A brief history and comedy failure

Alistair H Cronoly was born 4th January 1964 in the small midlands town of Kenilworth, an unremarkable place then as now. His father Benjamin R Cronoly worked in a local factory making toys and his mother Betty Buswell was interested in rubber wear and worked part-time as a dominatrix serving many a shamefaced police chief and politician.

His schooling had been uneventful and as he described it "A pointless exercise in a pointless place" needless to say he acquired no qualifications and left the local posh school without prospects in 1980.

His parents were keen on allowing Alistair the freedom to express himself and so they bought him a guitar and he proceeded to spend long lonely hours in his bedroom trying to master "House of the Rising Sun" After two years of practice he decided the guitar was not for him and the neighbours decided that singing was also definitely not for him either. Alistair remarks of this period in his life as "An exercise in pointlessness"
It was now time for Alistair to enter the workplace and so began the hunt for the perfect job....

Alistair, clearly influenced by his parents careers, began work, in 1983, in a rubber toy factory called Rubber Toys N Stuff where he stayed for two years. It was whilst on one of the factory's regular social outings to the seaside (Western Super Mare) that Alistair discovered that people would often laugh at him and this caused him to contemplate the idea of becoming a comedian.

There exists an old audio cassette tape (BASF C60) of his one and only comedy performance where it was clear his career did not lie in this direction. He had managed to convince the landlord of a local pub that he was an experienced stand up comedian and (un)luckily this show was recorded by Alistair himself who was convinced that one day he would be as big a comedian as Lenny Henry. This tape still exists and is owned by the author of this blog. It is badly damaged and it's not easy to hear much of the show at all - an extract of that show is transcribed below and it is clear that the genius of Alistair H Cronoly was yet to rear it's ugly head.....



EXTRACT TRANSCRIBED BY N COLEMAN

AHC: And welcome on stage Alistair H Cronoly

Audience: small applause

AHC: Good evening ladies and gentleman.

Right, before I start I would just like to warn you that I use the f word quite a lot and if anyone is easily offended then fuck off now

Ok, I'm here to have a laugh so lets …. Er …no you're here to have a laugh so let's hope I'm funny. Tell you what lets go to the end of the show and see if there's any laughs for you.

And so the Irishman’s fat mother in law punched Jim Davidson in the face

Thank you and goodnight

See ya, you've all been great

AUDIENCE: one or two claps and a light ripple of laughter

AHC: Nah not funny, you might as well all fuck off and demand your money back.

For those of you that are going to stay here's a joke for you

Knock knock

AUDIENCE: one or two people say, "who's there?"

AHC: C'mon Knock knock

AUDIENCE: more people shout, "who's there?"


AHC: Fucked if I know, anyway there was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Welshman in a pub. The Englishman turned to the other two and said "Fancy a drink?" The Irishman said "yes please" and the Welshman said "yes please" so the Englishman bought them both a drink and one for himself and one for the barman.

Did you hear the one about the fat girl who couldn't stop eating? Well she died.
Did you hear the one about the fat man who couldn't stop eating? He died as well
Did you hear about the man who shot himself with a gun? He also died.
And the girl who hung herself? Guess what? She fucking died as well.
It's a fine balance between life and death. A fucking fine balance.

AUDIENCE: one or two laughs and some nervous applause

AHC: Don't worry if you don't like the jokes, it's probably 'cos I haven't told any yet. I'll get to them as soon as I can remember them. Ah….why do people over the age of 60 have a fall rather than fall over? What's that all about? 60 is some sort of magic age that once you reach it you turn into some old person who smells of piss and has a fall every twenty minutes. Might as well move into some shabby fucking retirement home where you can sit watching telly and dribble down your chin while nubile nurses bring you your food. Sounds like a life plan to me.

AUDIENCE: virtual silence

AHC: Hmmmmm…don't seem to be going down to well. Here's another thought (tape is in audible for a few seconds) ..and I don't even have a dog

AUDIENCE: laughter - not a lot but the most so far

AHC: Now then here's a thought, what is the point? Huh? C’mon then, anyone who can tell me what the point is can have £100 right now.

AUDIENCE: one male voice shouts out "To make us laugh", another shouts "Live life to the full"

AHC: Ah fuck off, the point is the end of something. A knife comes to an end at the point. A pencil has a point at the end. The point is the end. That's the fucking point. The end.

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As we can see a comedian he was not and Alistair remarks on this period of his life as "A pointless effort at amusing pointless people"

In the next post I shall introduce you to the passion of Alistair's life - Poetry - and I will take extracts from his only published volume of Poetry.....copies of this book are very hard to come by as there were only 7 copies made. I have, however, in my possession many un-published pieces some of which I will share as we gather momentum on this fantastic journey into the mind of a genius