Neil Scott

One of my favourite pastimes is to imagine modern urban behaviour in a pre-historic community. The classic example is to take the ancient equivalent of the pub — a gathering around a fire with drug-taking rituals — and then try to imagine a teetotaller politely declining having hallucinogens blown up their nose. It is impossible. By doing so they would automatically default on their membership of the tribe.

To carry the analogy further, later on one of the tribal elders gets up to tell a story. You are admiring his imagery when it occurs to write a critical review. Alas! Writing hasn’t been invented yet, so instead you tell everyone in the village you thought the story was a bit toothless. A few days later. Word has got back to the tribal elder and he isn’t happy:
“Why would you say those negative things?! Don’t you understand that by doing so you are undermining your own place in the society?”

This was the situation that I found myself in at Discombobulate last night after having previously written an ambivalent review. I was reminded yet again that, despite the inevitable death of the universe and everything in it, actions still have consequences.

My trouble is that despite being a terrible writer, I am a half-decent web designer to the point of understanding how to get a respectable Google ranking. What this means is that anyone I write about becomes associated with this drivel and in such a small pond as the Glasgow literary-comedy scene — in which I seem to be the only person in the city who writes any reviews — I have become a kind of Kenneth Tynan figure. And, to paraphrase Paul Johnson on Tynan: “Neil Scott became a power in the Glasgow literary comedy scene, which regarded him with awe, fear and hatred. He seemed to know all world literature and studded his articles with such words as esurient, cateran, and eretheism.”

It’s true that I am esurient for truth and don’t much care for the comfortable literary cateran with their critical erethism, but I also don’t like upsetting people. So even though I don’t/can’t write to commission, Rob Wringham insists that if I enjoyed it this time (which I did) then I really ought to write about it in order to placate the discombobulatistas.

First up, Ian MacPherson, who organizes the night and reads Flann O’Brien-esque stories in a musical Irish brogue. Though I have little time for Flann O’Brien, I find MacPherson’s train of thought compelling and addictive. For at least an hour afterwards, you find yourself thinking about the world in a MacPherson-esque way, with word play and bizarre intent at every turn.

The tall, cheekboney poet whose name I can’t remember had a nice verse about the awfulness of the Metro and Graham Fulton’s spare lines about office life included some excellent observations about going to a communal toilet, but I am slightly allergic to modern poetry, so was happy when, in the second half of three, Alan Bissett sat down to read.

To return, briefly, to my early human settlement analogy, Bissett reads like the village shaman, warning the younglings away from danger with his tales. He is a consummate storyteller, with his words bleeding with Celtic authenticity and his deft character studies (the factory worker questioning Alan’s university choice of English was particularly well-drawn). The story was an autobiographical sketch, concerning his Father’s near-fatal accident at a chemical plant in Falkirk was both tender and shocking. The talent shown through incidental details, like the observation about how the grey Grangemouth skies are transformed into sci-fi landscapes at night, was palpable.

By comparison, Anneliese Mackintosh’s story of Hamish Dust — a conceptual artist who will creatively kill your children to charm you into bed — was glib, shallow and very very silly, yet all the more enjoyable for it. It was litcom punk, with memorable lines about removing the entrails of a daughter with an Argos blender and spiritual emptiness in a New York apartment. The bankrupt morals of Damien Hirst-style artists were exposed with her sharp satirical teeth. Even the done-to-death M&S seductive advert parodies worked.

Whether all this will be enough to get the tribal elders back on side, I don’t know and don’t particularly care (well, only enough to write 750 words on the subject). However, it is a very pleasurable evening: much more fun than sitting around the fire with your tribe. Now, where did I put those hallucinogens?