Monday, October 24, 2005

An Equation For Comedy?

Quote of the moment:
"You seem like a nice, polite crowd, so I think I'll talk about rape." - Lloyd Lambeth.

Went to the BBC New Comedy Awards semifinals tonight. It was supposedly a Civil Engineering Society social, but basically involved the secretary getting an allocation of the free but guest-listed tickets and us meeting outside to get in.

Some went down better than others, there was a mix of storytellers, punchliners and audience interaction. My personal favourite was Lloyd Lambeth, who, according to the CV Google just gave me is the "regular compere for Warwick University's Comedy society". Yes Rob m8, you probably told us so a year ago.

The first semi was, however, won by Sarah Millican, who did a routine based on getting divorced. It had more of a continuous mutter of laughter than loud outbursts, but was funny in a painful "The Office"-like manner.

Test this morning wasn't great. Estimate around half marks. Couldn't get the intergration by parts to reach an end point, couldn't get started on another question. Both worth 10 marks out of 50. Sigh. Also one earlier question was far too easy. 4 marks for one step. I checked it against my copy of "A Calculus Refresher" though, so maybe it was a deliberate gift. Without that booklet and my resit notes I'd be bummed on pure maths, because the "lectures" are a crook of... poop.

We get notes with all the formulae and working removed, plus both rotating lecturers talk faster than Sheribum. One of them has a thick accent too, but it doesn't make much difference because as a non-multitasking male (like 90% of the audience) I spend my whole time frantically copying and don't have time to listen to the explanation. Without the explanation the notes are pretty useless anyway, since they explain things the same crap way as the incomprehensible A level text books.

On the plus side, my Dynamics lecturer is Anthony Huang's father, or at least relative of some sort. He has the posture, the walk, the talk, the glasses, the hair, the timidity and the suit which hangs off him in bags. In my last lecture with him I gleaned absolutely nothing from what he was saying, but his notes are good so I don't really care. I just have to concentrate on not remembering Vince's birthday, following Anthony as he drunkenly searched for Soho and "some girls".

4 comments:

Rob said...

Was he Welsh? If he was then I know the guy you mean, and yeah, he is piss funny. The only reason he comperes here though is cos he used to be a student here, which makes seeing him do stuff here even funnier seeing as he can make in-jokes about the uni :)

Will said...

Yupski... I kind of guessed that 8-)

Anonymous said...

yo

do they not have a web system (webCT, BlaCkboard etc) where they put the notes on?

thats what they do hear

will t

Will said...

Yes. Blackboard it is, hmmm? The completed version will apparently get put up before the exams, but like I said, the notes are inherently incomprehensible. The completed version will apparently get put up before the exams.

Vicky's going to give me maths tuition at the weekend. It'll be fun :D