Pitch Imperfect (2/2) By Philip Wincolmlee Barnes

(1/2), (2/2).

I suppose, in a way, being a Struggling Writer is a way of generating material in itself; that is, if the Struggling Writer himself can ever be bothered to actually commit to paper all the frequently alcohol-induced public humiliations. All those tawdry tales of self-debasement, that spring from the backlog of rejection letters which haunts him daily. As seminal fuck-up Sid Viscous once put it, in his slurred version of 'My Way': So what, I killed a cat. Well, I never killed a cat. I did play tennis with a friend's hamster once - it went mad and died - but I was young and impressionable. Still, what a fucking rotter, to quote another Sex Pistol.

(I did try to set fire to an ex-girlfriend's bed, whilst throwing rotten fruit at her at the same time. I've mistaken my bath for a toilet once, too, with predictable results- I had to re-do the plumbing myself; in the harsh light of a hangover I couldn't face phoning a professional to unclog it. It wouldn't really be fair, would it?)

By now, as you can probably gather, I take being a Struggling Writer very seriously. I really work hard at it- especially the self-depreciating, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot aspect of it. I'm no good at pitching myself, you see- whether it's my songs, plays, film scenarios, sketches, proposed novels. My archive is a museum of dank folders containing musty, yellowing scripts, half-empty notebooks, drunken journals full of resentment, splattered with red wine, blood-stained from bungled suicide attempts. I can't even do them properly, which is really depressing.

(Oh, and also threw a bottle of wine at a girlfriend once, an ironic ritual celebrating my release, and subsequent relapse from, Detox. She ducked. The bottle smashed my bedroom window instead. It was a cold winter that year.)

Added to the reams of under-appreciated manuscripts are hours of grainy film footage and studio recordings, made in the days before bouts of madness and disability conspired against me; in those days before I would sometimes be rudely-awoken in Police Stations, muttering gibberish about the Devil himself living in my basement. (I once pissed on a truck driver in bed, who I'd picked up in my ill-fated 'rough trade' period. Fortunately, unlike some of the others I had encountered, he didn't steal anything on the way out of the flat. Which was nice.) From a popular recording, 1935:

Connected with County, and landed estates We never cross cutlery over our plates; We crawl to the City, perhaps Mincing Lane And potter to luncheon, and crawl home again. We're really too rugger and soccer, Too painfully quick off the tee, We pile all our togs in a locker, Our sweaters have quite a low V. We know the announcers and Greenwich pip-pips, We simply adore the gale warnings to ships, We never pour vinegar over our chips- We're frightfully BBC. Well, I'm bloody well not, by all accounts:

'The Harris Tweeds. A light-hearted romp about a group of Edwardian misfits who are confounded by contemporary life- mobile phones, iPods, 'MySpace', gang masters, Polish plumbers, the decline in absinthe consumption, etc.' Too elitist, they said. 'Ok, then: Bored, a sit-com set in a single room, occupied by an alcoholic and his manic-depressive friend. The first show would involve them protesting about television violence, by systematically smashing up their property for the full duration of the 30-minute show.' Too low-brow, I was told; besides, it could be seen to make fun of mental illness and glamorise substance abuse.

I've missed the boat, obviously. Even Dylan Thomas got a job at the Beeb, and that piss-artist used to do impressions of a fucking dog in pubs. I'll just have to adjust my pitch accordingly: "Will undertake light domestic work (and, in the drinks cabinet department, light-fingered work) for undiscriminating wealthy dowagers." Watch this space: failure is imminent, but I might get some more anecdotes out of it for the Struggling Writer.

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