My thoughts, such as they are, on TV panel game shows.

I didn't really have any thoughts on TV panel game shows. But then the Evening Standard asked me if I had about 150 words of them. Actually, to my great surprise, it turns out I have approximately 200 of them (197 to be precise). So here, before they get edited down to 150 again, they are.


TV Panel game shows may not be cheap but they are certainly safe. Frankie Boyle is exiled, the speaker in Stephen Fry's ear will never run out of facts or quips and anything controversial or just plain unfunny will be edited out of the hours of recording.

And why so many celebrities on the shows? Unless celebs are having the rise ripped out of them, all they do is show how actual less famous comics, like that little beardy bald dwarf guy, are actually good. It's through questioning celebrities on We Need Answers that the talented Tim Key and Alex Horne have really broken into TV, but I'd rather see them developing their own material in sketch or themed shows than dicking about with Kelvin MacKenzie. That programme's host Mark Watson is often on panel game shows, but has himself commented that the bear-pit atmosphere doesn't let comics with a self-effacing style get a word in.

Come on TV executives, even if they're getting more clever, and generate instant repeat fees on Dave, let's have less ephemeral, celebrity obsessed panel shows – develop more seminal, lasting treats like Paul Merton's 1990s show, 15 Stories High and Cowards.


Richard Tyrone Jones will be hosting Stony Broke Fridays at the Cross Kings on Friday.

Twitter: @rtyronejones

I'll be blogging on my funeral soon but I have to go and take the coffin back tomorrow, so the story is not quite yet over....

Events leading to the death of Richard Tyrone Jones.

Dear friends,

it is my sad duty to inform you of the death of Richard Tyrone Jones, and to invite you to his funeral this Thursday, 7pm at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Http://bit.ly/rtjdead


As some of you may know, the troubled poet, performance artist, Director of 'Utter!', 'ringmaster of spoken word' at the Edinburgh Festival's Free Fringe and absent biological father to > five live birth events had been ill for some time, but we thought you may wish to know a little more about the events leading up to his sad demise.


Recently Richard had returned to stand-up comedy with nights run by the website Sickipedia.org. Unfortunately he got one word wrong in his routine, and this threw him into a terrible perfectionist fug. This can be viewed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVsPUV1nUGE


A recent post on Richard's personal blog, http://wretchedcycloneofbones.blogspot.com appears to point to the fact that Richard had once again been suffering from another bout of his recurring, debilitating, yet romantic depression. Certainly writer's block had set in, with Richard only completing one poem in January 2010, www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=268611091993 ; it is possible that the comment 'Sestinas are shit' may have pushed him over the edge. This depression led to Richard suffering from intense back pain caused by the slouching concomitant with despondency, and an alleged reliance on the painkiller co-codamol and muscle relaxants which even Pilates was unable to halt. Sales of Richard's book Germline http://is.gd/8nedY had also been slow, with only 13 of the over five hundred so far sold being vended on 13thFebruary 2010, when he particpated in a final event discussing Poetry, Science and the Social sciences at LSE litfest with Mario Petrucci, Michael Blackburn and Simon Jenner, the day before his death.


The circumstances surrounding Richard's demise are still unclear. Some friends point to Richard's increasingly reckless behaviour in the months leading up to his death, including many late nights spent in the bordellos of Archway, frittering away his benefits playing high-stakes snap games and chlamydia roulette. Others maintain that Richard had in fact recently been thinking about converting to Catholicism after a recent trip to Rome, and that he overdosed on Graham Greene. Some find the date of his death, St. Valentine's Day, significant and maintain that Richard, inexplicably single, died of a broken or empty heart. However, the truth is, that, whilst looking at coffins for his planned mock funeral on Thursday to celebrate his 30th Birthday, a heavy mahogany casket slipped from a high shelf in an ironic manner, hitting on the back of his head and crushing his lovely ginger skull.


Certainly, whatever the truth of the matter, we can hopefully all join in commemorating the sad loss of a man whose talent, vision, and modesty were far too expansive for the world to contain. A man who turned hubris into an art form. The most ghetto ginger brother we knew.


During the funeral, while he peacefully 'sleeps' in a bamboo coffin surrounded by flowers, the life and work of the man known as 'RTJ' will be commemorated by poetry, hymns and tributes from some of his closest celebrity friends and admirers including uplifting poet Paul Birtill, filmmaker Robert Sears, newspaper columnist Tom Phillips, and those fans who feel they may wish to contribute an appropriate poem or song.


The funeral will be officiated by the Reverend James McKay, and will include the anticipated reading of Tyrone Jones' will, a selection of his work and a message of hope to his children from beyond the grave. It will end with a wake at nearby pub the White Hart funded by contributions to the poet's benevolent fund. It's what he would have wanted.


Mourners are encouraged to send flowers rather than giving money to charity. For more publicity photographs see facebook event: http://bit.ly/rtjdead For interviews/features contact 07912 539 098 / www.utterspokenword.com / whitechapelgallery.org


Whitechapel Art Gallery, 80 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX. 7.00pm prompt – approx 10.00pm, on Thursday 18th February 2010. Nearest tube/overground: Aldgate East / Liverpool Street. This event is part of Whitechapel Art Gallery's free 'lates' series, and the gallery will be open during the event.


NB There is, of course, a small chance that Richard may resurrect after the funeral due to a) being a time lord b) being a Cylon or iii) returning as a God, as many emperors do (indeed Will Self once, perhaps presciently, and certainly unironically, referred to Richard as 'an Adonis').


If this, through your prayers (potentially to RTJ himself), should prove to be the case, then Richard will be hosting Fri 19th February's UK Antifolk Festival, @ the12 Bar Club, Denmark St WC1 - £6/£10 for tonight and the Saturday, from 7.20pm, and featuring 7:40 The Fauntleroy band
8.20 mertle, 9:00 Spinmaster Plantpot, 9:20 Filthy Pedro & the Carthaginians,10:00 Simon Breed
10:40 Thee Intolerable Kidd & Friends, 11:20 One Man Destruction Show, 12:05 Nat the Hammer
12:45 The Wizard, 01:45 Hello Babies
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=269232185761&index=1

and also

Fri 26th Feb - Guest compere at Stony Broke Fridays, Cross Kings N1, with Nick Helm and Rosie Wilby
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=196223755010

and further

Sat 6th March, 11am-1pm: Workshop for 'Utter!' writing group on writing fiction, £4/2/0 if you've not been before...Community Room, Teenage library, 2nd Floor, Wood Green Library, Wood Green High Road London N22,


and not forgetting


Thurs March 18th - 'Utter!' Fiction at Cross Kings, York Way N1 0AZ w. Joe Dunthorne, Stewart Home, and in the PAID GIG CONTEST: Megan Bradbury, Abi Palmer, more tbc. Http://bit.ly/utterfiction though by then he may start to pong a bit and have a hunger for human flesh.


Please accept our thanks and condolences at this difficult man.


The estate of Richard Tyrone Jones

How to cope wth depression

What I do when I'm feeling utter despair is, I look at it and assess how much of it is mere desperation. Sometimes desperation can make you feel like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, and feeling like Michael Douglas in Falling Down is slightly cool if not pleasurable. Then I look at how much of it is ennui. Ennui is quite cool in a Dorothy Parker / Jean-Paul Sartre kind of way. So maybe my depression isn't all bad. Then, when you look at ennui, some of it might be melancholy. Melancholy can be cool, like Acker Bilk. Maybe about 60% of that melancholy could be wistfulness, like a yearning for a beautiful Summer sunset with a girl you once loved, or playing in the fields as a child. Then you have successfully transferred your mental state into nostalgia.

This is a little like a CBT version of the bit in the Muppet show where Statler and Waldorf, the two miserable old hecklers in the balcony say 'Boo! That was rubbish!' 'Awful!' 'Actually, there was a bit of it that wasn't so bad..' 'Yeah, there were some parts of it that were quite good!' 'Yeah, actually I loved it!' 'Bravo!' 'Encore!'

And then I see a man with no limbs in a motorised wheelchair being brave, or a beautiful child about the age that mine would be now, and I burst into floods of fucking uncontrollable tears.