Why I am stopping watching youtube

Hello everyone and welcome back. I have had such a fantastic three weeks. The cruise with my daughter was so wonderful and we will share those memories forever. We also had a great week this week as we went on a staff retreat in Bath. Insert bath joke here. There are lots of them so you can choose your best one.

Bath is a crazy town in England which I will talk about later. The real win was the retreat ended on Thursday which was my eldest daughter's birthday. So instead of my wife and I seeing her at the end of the day we organised some accommodation 4 min walk from us for the kids and their Grandma who happened to be visiting us from Australia. So it's been a lot of parenting wins over the last 3 weeks.

But that is not what I am going to talk about today though what a great segue. I am such a great parent, stop watching youtube, buy my book on amazon, leave a 5 star review to let other people know how great a parent I am. As fun as that would be, instead we are going to talk about the theatre.

I have been really blessed over the last few months to see a lot of live shows. From our surprise trip to Butlins (where we saw a ventriloquist, magician and a traditional British pantomime), to the cruising variety shows, impersonators, tribute performers, soul singers and off off broadway musicals. (Note to my proofreader - off off is not a typo but a term used to describe the theatres that are not good enough to be considered to be not good enough to be considered to be on broadway. Now you may be wondering if you need to keep this whole note in the final blog, and the answer is yes yes. The 2nd yes is a typo)

(Note to readers, I hope you enjoyed the whole note to my proofreader joke because it's the 2nd time I had to write it as they took it out after reading it last time.)

I have also been able to go to a few live comedy shows and that is what I want to talk about today.

A few months back I got together with some friends to see Mark Watson do stand-up comedy. Usually, with a comedy lineup, I look for one person I know and take my chance with the others. The dice rolled lucky 7 for the MC who was brilliant, snake eyes for the first act who was unnecessarily vulgar, double twos for the 2nd act who was much better but still ok, then Mark came on. The guy was just awesome, a real pro. You could tell he was worth much more than the £20 door price. Then the last comics came on and it was watching them that birthed this thought that I am going to share with you. The act was called Jo and Flo, two middle-aged sisters and a keyboard who performed comedy songs. They were great. The songs were clever, the banter was fun and the little interactions between themselves was gold. I had never heard of them before but the couple sitting next to me surely had because when they started the first chord of their last song both of them squealed in excitement - it was obviously their favourite.

Over the next day, I thought of them again so I looked them up. After quickly realising their names were actually Flo and Joan I could see they had a decent number of notches on their comedy career belt, the biggest having a spot at 'Live at the Apollo' which is rite of passage for any successful British comedian. So I watched a few of their videos of their live comedy songs including their big hit, the favourite of the couple sitting next to me, and my one thought was 'meh'. These clips were all taken from proper TV shows, expertly filmed, beautifully lit, crystal clear sound but they were not funny. What went wrong?

It wasn't until a few weeks later when I saw a magician at Butlins that I found my answer. This magician was great, he and his wife (a very impressive contortionist) have been performing together for 30 years. Sure he did a magic routine using CD's and his magic was really great, but the whole time in the back of my mind I was thinking 'yeah but I have seen better'. His wife shot a bow and arrow into a target over her head using her feet and part of me was 'meh'. Then it hit me - youtube has ruined my experience.

I have watched so many amazing things on youtube that when I see someone amazing live, it's not that great. But when I do see something awesome live, the recording of it is mediocre at best. I am not saying that there is no funny live comedy on youtube, Netflix etc but I do suggest that those recordings do not hold a candle to the experience of being in the room.

So my only logical response is to stop watching youtube for any clips or performances that I might one day see live. There are plenty of youtube videos made for youtube audiences that are highly entertaining, educational and fun that won't ruin your live experiences. So go watch Dude Perfect sink a basketball thrown from three towns away while Mr Beast buys all the houses in said towns to give to the homeless and then put the phone away and go support the performing arts.