PLEB Talks on Tour, No.1 – Leeds Laughter Lines Festival

Despite knowing no Kerouac, PLEB Talks is on the road, with the task force of roving comedians helmed by Ben Target, Nish Kumar and Dan Berg.

Their mission, to invade the best UK festivals, tackling titanic themes with their series of lectures, full to the brim of academic bile.

First stop: Leeds Laughter Lines.
Theme: Money!

1. Meet the team:
PLEB Chancellor - Ben Target
Academic Host - Nish Kumar
Svengali - Dan Berg
Keynote Speaker - Eric Lampaert
Powerpoint Guru - Gareth Morinan
Sartorial Commentator - Paul Sweeney
Quick Thinker - Jeff Lantern
Intern - Matthew Highton

2. Schedule highlights:
11h00 The team assemble at Eric Lampaert’s flat in London. Matthew Highton is an hour late, having lost his keys in a pond. Paul Sweeney feeds Lampaert’s cat Cheese, cheese. Cats are lactose intolerant it turns out.

13h00 The team is lost - somewhere in Shropshire. Lampaert has been reading the Sat Nav upside down.

14h00 A game of Song Wars* ensues. Ben Target takes gold, Sweeney silver and Highton the unsavoury bronze for an appalling rendition of sing-a-long Lord of the Rings.

14h30 “I used to live in Leeds. I know it really well. Take the next right” Highton dictates. The team are now incarcerated in Leeds’ infamous one-way system for 85 minutes.

15h55 Ever the professionals; the team finally arrive, with a minute to spare before Target and Lampaert must perform their children’s show to knee high nippers and their exhausted parents. Only disappointment follows.

17h00 The team descend on the reduced section of a local supermarket for a game of Reduced Roulette**. Several kilograms of Quorn infused Scotch Eggs are consumed for tea. The rest are stored in Lampaert’s car.

18h00 PLEB’s Svengali and technical mastermind Dan Berg sets to work turning a cafe into a lecture theatre. Target argues with the concerned bar staff over the health and safety issues of crowd surfing in a confined space with glass chandeliers.

19h59 Nish Kumar, the Academic Host and gentleman responsible for holding the seams of PLEB together is informed that the audience consists of a 40 strong stag party.

20h00 The audience arrive.

20h35 PLEB Talks – Money, begins.

20h36 The 40 strong stag party arrive. Kumar’s seams split.

20h40 The 40 strong stag party are seated and medically sedated by Jeff Lantern.

20h46 Sweeney begins writing his lecture.

20h47 Sweeney gets on stage. He is still writing his lecture by the time he exits.

21h10 Matthew Highton is taking a breather. The man is having trouble standing up. He has been force fed 5 pints of bitter, a substitute to the courage required to stand behind the PLEB lecturn.

21h30 Gareth Morinan delivers a riveting and utterly useless talk on the political shamfest that is the UK economy.

21h57 Jeff Lantern sets up his market stall in an attempt to seduce the audience into buying his face ridden t-shirts and g-strings. Kumar is 110% perplexed, 90% unsure and a further 200% certain that proceedings have gone awry.

21h58 Target begins a Beach Ball game with the stag party. They are 100% testosterone fuelled, 85% alcohol soaked and 15% able to think for themselves. Utter mayhem ensues.

21h59 Lampaert burns Monopoly money on stage, demands the downfall of Community Chest and ends up in a bidding war with the stag party over the last Jeff Lantern soiled g-string.

22h00 Kumar’s sanity snaps. He crowd surfs through the audience, topples over the bar and into a stack of pint glasses. An ambulance is summoned. PLEB Talks – Money, is over.

08h00 Next day, 3kg of festering Vegan Scotch Eggs are discovered in Lampaert’s car. The PLEB Team head back to London - consumed with regret and gagging on the fetid stench of decomposing, nutritionally valueless products.

3. PLEB Tour Statistics, No.1:
Success: 24%
Failure: 76%
Audience Numbers: 120
Blood Alcohol Level: 0.29
Knowledge Gained: -32%
Quality Rating: 4/10

4. *Song Wars
Song Wars is a simple game invented by the smug intellect, Ben Target.

Ingredients:
• 1 x long car journey.
• Some x bored comedians.
• 1 x MP3 player linked to car stereo.
• 2kg x snack food.

Method:
1 The car driver is the judge.

2 The passengers are the competitors.

3 The driver chooses a theme for each round; Love, Death, Loss, Misery, Bleakness etc.

4 The competitors each select a song from the MP3 player that fits that theme. (Each selection is kept secret until played. The same MP3 player must be used by all competitors entering into a round).

5 For the first round, the driver selects the order in which the songs are played. When the round is complete the driver rates the competitors choices: 1st place = 3 points, 2nd place = 2 points, 3rd place = 1 point. Points are awarded for songs that best represent the theme in the driver’s opinion. A post round summary must be provided by the driver to sniff out nepotism and elude corruption.

6 Steps 3-5 are repeated as many times as the driver’s patience can endure. The competitor who places 1st in a round must go first in the next, the competitor who places 2nd in a round must go second and the 3rd placed must go last. “The loser of a previous round will have a higher chance of winning a new round if they play their song last. The game therefore remains at least mildly interesting” – Target’s Law.

5. **Reduced Roulette
Reduced Roulette is a survival game invented by smug comedians worldwide.

Ingredients:
• Any number of hungry stomachs.
• A small number of overstretched wallets.
• The reduced section of a supermarket.

Method:
1 Take the hungry stomachs attached to the overstretched wallets to the reduced section of a supermarket.
2 Select vastly different, reduced, edible products. (The less likely to integrate taste wise, the better the roulette).
3 Buy the rag tag selection of items.
4 Mix n’ match.
5 Eat.
6 Wait.
7 Buy diarrhoea preventative.
8 Ingest.
9 Wait.

Report written by Ben Target