Hello dears! Welcome to the new home of The John Robins Vibemail! As you can imagine, the news that my previous provider was shutting down and deleting all its data, the subsequent hunt for a replacement, and transitioning to our new friends at Substack has been the perfect opportunity to put in to practise my new CHILLED OUT VIBE.
Fingers crossed this has arrived safely in your ‘inbox’ (a place similar to a cottage, albeit a digital cottage, that only email can rent out. For the sake of this analogy you, or your employer, are the management company, and ultimately your service provider such as Hotmail (for the under 18’s) or BT Openworld (over 50’s) is the landlord / owner.)
Substack is also a kind of online cultural vibe symposium, and I look forward to engaging with other #Creatives to further debate and propagate commentary about key areas of interest amongst the intellectual elite such as When To Go Own Brand? and Potholes: A Holistic Approach.
This Vibemail does contain some important info about new tour dates for Howl, so for those of you immune to / critical of / bored by my vaunting prose, do feel free to scroll down for links to tickets for Norwich and Dublin, as well as tantalising if ultimately irrelevant updates about Bristol and Brighton. For those in it for the long haul, let us begin.
Members Present
Field Marshall The Right Honourable Sir Johnny JR First Lord Of The Admiralty KG OM CH
Present!
Substack
To all intents and purposes there is very little I need to trouble you with about our new mailing list overlords. Elis was rather scathing about my even mentioning a change to my content’s back end (not a euphemism). However can we really expect someone who spends the average persons yearly wage on a washing machine to have any understanding of the anxieties of REAL PEOPLE? I think not.
You may have heard tell of Substack providing a service whereby the great and the good of the blog (Broadband Logarithm) world charge their followers for #Bespoke #Content such as this. And, indeed, Substack plays a very important role in allowing artists, thinkers and no doubt the odd crypto douchebag to offer paid subscriptions in order that they may fund their creativity / monetise their expertise / try to ameliorate their catastrophic losses.
But let me be very clear, as an artefact of enormous cultural significance The John Robins Vibemail will remain free at the point of use so that future generations may benefit from its wisdom regardless of their ability to pay. Were I ever to launch any kind of subscription-only content it would be something entirely different, eg a Daily Riff Matrix, a strategy forum for business leaders, or, depending on how the gym work goes, and extraordinarily explicit Onlyfans page. Time will tell.
Annoyingly Vague Update
Some of the more observant Robins Apologists amongst you may have noticed, that, aside from promoting my two true passions of digital tax software and plant-based alternatives to cheese, there has been a slight slowing of the inexorable content machine that is #BrandRobins over the last couple of months. This is due to a number of factors including, and limited to, natural breaks between podcast series, a post-Edinburgh sabbatical from thinking about stand-up, finding twitter an increasingly baffling and joyless place to exist in and f**king golf courses closing due to bad weather every Go**amn time we try to film on them. Also, not to venture too far into the irritating world of Instagram-inflected wellness speak, but major changes have been undertaken for the beta testing of Johnny JR Mk 18, or, if you’re a Mac user John Robins: Algarve.
I am feeling brighter, healthier, wiser (“Impossible!”), sexier (“Now we know you’re joshing!”) and even more relevant. This is due to a number of changes which will no doubt be more explicitly discussed on terrestrial radio, stage, these very pages, or most likely, all three. For now, the takeaway is that Johnny JR is #HotToTrotFor2023 and ready to put pedal to the metal in the endeavour-Sportage of creativity! Where’s it headed? CONTENT! That’s where.
Howl Tour Update
The final few dates for the Howl tour haven’t come online in quite as neat a fashion as I would have liked. However, Johnny JR Mk 18 is all about progress not perfection. And progress has been made! Tickets will be on sale today, Friday 26th Jan at 10am for
Norwich 13th and 14th Sept 2023 https://norwichtheatre.org/whats-on/john-robins-howl/
Dublin 4th December 2023 https://www.whelanslive.com/event/john-robins/
If the pages at the links above are not forthcoming please wait until 10am or a few minutes after for things to update.
All fifty-odd other dates are listed on my website with links to buy here https://www.johnrobins.com/shows/
A Brighton date will be going on sale very soon. At the minute all I have is the date, which will be 10th December, so block out some time in your diaries for your mind to recover accordingly.
The Bristol date will also be on sale soon. It’s likely to be the 15th December but confirmation is dependent on a venue being signed off. Now, far be it from me to suggest THEY BUILT A WHOLE THEATRE JUST FOR JOHNNY JR, that’s for others to say. But I hope you can understand that rushing architects, master craftsmen and craftswomen, town planners and mayors is beyond even my ability. So stay tuned.
Made Up Games Live
I’m 99% sure that another run of Made Up Games at The Bloomsbury Theatre is going on sale today. The dates are 17th, 18th and 19th April. Again, I don’t think the specific page is up yet but you can either navigate from here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/bloomsbury-theatre-studio or feel free to #GoogleIt. These sold out pretty sharpish last time so stand by your beds!
Beef’s Golf Club Season 2
We begin recording the second series of BGC imminently. Delightfully, due to Beef’s professional comeback, our recording schedule now has to fit around his schedule on the European Tour. So it’s very much a case of “Go Beef!” and watching him at ungodly hours on my NOW TV subscription (a portion of which has been made tax deductible by his comeback - Go Beef!). Let’s hope he doesn’t lose any Beef’s Golf Club Golf balls in the waters of Dubai.
Robins Recs
I was lucky enough to get to do a few Christmas shows with Mike Wozniak, dream Sportage companion, upstanding provincial dad and 33.3% of The Three Bean Salad Podcast. Firstly, Three Bean Salad is the funniest podcast I’ve ever heard, so if you’re not already subscribed then for the sake of all highly evolved crabs do click on this link https://podfollow.com/1564066507/view. And secondly, Mike’s tour show is a unique and wonderful comedic experience that only he could have devised, you can find dates here https://littlewander.co.uk/show/mike-wozniak-zusa/.
On the topic of touring shows, friend, comrade and hero Josie Long is on tour with her show Re-Enchantment. I’m always completely blown away by Josie’s stand-up. How someone who so wholeheartedly engages with all that is unfair, unjust and brutal about the modern world, can create such empowering, uplifting and ass-bouncingly funny comedy is something I will never comprehend. Her tickets are here https://josielong.seetickets.com/tour/josie-long
Finally, very few people get to spend a huge amount of time with their guardian angels, let alone with their kittens and flatmate Luke. Even fewer get to play dodgeball with them or taste the hot avocado they have cooked for you in complete disregard of all culinary traditions, tastes and basic human logic. So imagine how lucky I feel not only to experience all of the above, but also to be on their live podcast ‘Cuddle Club’ at The Soho Theatre for A VALENTINE’S SPECIAL WHERE WE WILL DEFINITELY FIND OUR RESPECTIVE WIVES AND HUSBANDS. Alas, tickets have sold out, after all, say what you like about cutie pies like us, but we don’t half get bums on seats. However it would brighten the day of the brightest person I know if you subscribed to Lou Sanders’ Cuddle Club Podcast. Also it’s brownie points / more hot avocado for me as I asked her to sign up to this newsletter to check it was working. Come to think of it, not a bad test to see if she’s read to the end.
Any Other Business
I think we’ve done pretty darn well don’t you? You can still book me for even more bespoke content on Cameo. Oh! And the live show with Elis at the Just for Laughs festival in London has moved venue! But don’t panic, it’s moved from a room inside the O2 to a spiegeltent near the entrance (or so I’m lead to believe). Apologies if this was communicated to you in a slightly confusing way by your ticket provider. And tickets are available
here: https://london.hahaha.com/events/elis-james-and-john-robins-live/
Right then, this took an astonishing three hours to write, but I loved every second, and remember #GratitudeIsAnAttitude. I’m going to cook some prawns, then radio tomorrow, followed by craniosacral (thanks Lou!).
love you bye!
p.s Due to the superb functionality of Substack, I am able to record me reading this Vibemail out loud! So if you struggle with your sight, reading, screens or just want to hear my dulcet tones giggling at my own jokes, hit play!
p.p.s I am unable to edit the recording so forgive the stumbles