QP: Hello Gabriel. How are you today?
GF: I’m great thanks! I’ve stepped in some sick and I don’t know where anyone is, so it looks like I’m going to have to clean my own foot for the first time ever! #vomitisonmyfoot! Haha! (Gabriel stares anxiously at his foot, which is dripping with unsightly vomit. He knows that his foot must be cleaned, society demands it, but he doesn’t know what the best thing for cleaning a foot is. What if he picks the wrong thing and his foot reacts badly to it? Would anyone design a soap that makes feet explode or turn to stone? Maybe bleach is the way forward. Or amputation? Amputation would definitely make it easier to get the foot in the sink, but is that really necessary when there’s also a convenient bath? It’s a dilemma as old as time.)
QP: Why did you start referring to yourself in the third-person?
GF: What do you mean?
QP: Just then, you said “Gabriel stares anxiously at his foot” and then you continued to speak in the third-person. Why did you do that?
GF: I didn’t say that.
QP: You did, I heard you.
GF: I didn’t say that, it was in brackets. If it’s in brackets that means it’s a description of what’s going on, not something that I’m actually saying. I would’ve thought that was obvious.
QP: But you did actually say “Gabriel stares anxiously at his foot.” I’ve got it on film.
GF: You’re being absurd. Why would I refer to myself in the third-person?
QP: I don’t know, but you did. Are you really considering amputating your own foot? That seems like a bad idea.
GF: Look, can we talk about something else please? I’m not enjoying this line of questioning. It’s making me feel weak and sexually undesirable, like an aphid made of sewage. (Gabriel stares anxiously at his foot. There is still vomit all over the entire foot. Gabriel begins to cry. He has never stepped in vomit before. He is very concerned about the vomit.)
QP: Back in March, you gave a lecture to some people in a Dennistoun living room. What was your lecture about?
GF: It was about 55 minutes long! Haha! (The audience explodes like a giant landmine of demented admiration; laughing, hooting, cheering, clapping, yelling, howling, whistling, wetting themselves, speaking in tongues, etc. Several attractive women, dangerously enflamed by the erotic timbre of Featherstone’s voice, have begun to kiss, tickle and bite each other in a steaming-hot frenzy of manic animal lust. One of them eats her own bra, which is conveniently made of fennel. Gabriel goes crowd-surfing for three hours, gracefully floating on the undiluted love of a thousand clamouring fanatics. Everyone is being very loud and reverential. Everyone has forgotten about the sick. Everyone is in love with Gabriel Featherstone, the undisputed master of fantastic jokes.) Wow! I wasn’t expecting that reaction! I think I might’ve just become The Beatles of stand-up comedy! I love this fu*cking audience! Yee-haw, cowfuckers! #urbansuperman.
QP: There isn’t an audience. There’s no one else here.
GF: You’re just saying that ‘cause you’re a flaccid, crybaby fascist and your farts smell like another man’s poo! (The attractive women in the audience, all of whom are now naked, savagely overwhelm the security guards and flood the stage with their amazing bodies. Most of them have drawn Gabriel’s face all over the best parts of themselves, with lipstick and magic markers. Everyone is happy, everyone is crazy and no one minds about the vomit.)
QP: There is no stage, we have no audience. We are in a car and there’s no one else here.
GF: Takes one to know one, phallusface! Ha-roo! #iwantanewcar #thisonesmellsofshame.
QP: Do you use art as a vessel for meaning, or meaning as a vessel for your art?
GF: Meaning is a tractor. My art is a farmer who knows how to drive and maintain the tractor. The audience is a sheep that my art has run over by mistake. The sheep is in love with me and my farmer gives him purpose. All critics are moth-ridden scarecrows, stuffed with pomposity instead of straw. Also, there’s a pig. The pig is actually just a pig, it doesn’t represent anything. The other comedians are all cows. Cows are better than I am. I am a rat and nobody cares. #literalpigismyonlyfriend.
QP: I would like this interview to end now.
GF: Yes, so would I.
Gabriel Featherstone is a stand-up comedian and professional scareactor from Glasgow, Scotland. He is a member of CHUNKS, an alternative comedy collective that won a Scottish Comedy Award in 2016. Tickets for his upcoming Glasgow Comedy Festival show, “Whelk Ham Tomb Eye Toybox”, can be purchased online at www.glasgowcomedyfestival.com/shows/1920.