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Seven Questions With… Gus The Fox

February 15, 2015 by Becca Moody Leave a Comment

WARNING: SENSITIVE CONTENT AND VERY STRONG LANGUAGE.

You may have come across this foul-mouthed fox on Twitter, or heard of him through recommendations from Noel Fielding, or even seen him going through your bins. When he’s not harassing members of the public, he enjoys upsetting animals, visiting his friend, Cwis Packham, and a little arts and crafts. Gus is the most flawed little creature, but you have to love him a bit.

I offered Gus some therapy in the form of these seven questions…

1) Meanest thing anyone has ever said to you?

Considering people say all sorts of fucked up shit to me every five minutes, that’s a pretty tough one. It’s weird that these days everyone seems to be knocking about with foxes knitted onto their jumpers and campaigning against us getting fucking murdered by Boris Johnson and such, but whenever I seem to meet anyone when I’m out and about, it’s absolute fucking carnage. I suspect I get treated like horse shit because I look like the result of what would happen if you covered Dean Gaffney in bacon and rolled him down a hill in a barrel full of tampons. People are always kicking me and calling me a revolting little bollocks and I guess when you’re a fox that’s just par for the course. The other day an old lady was watching me wandering about her back garden and I sneezed and all this grey sort of juice came out of my eyes and she threw a tin of pilchards at me and called me a rotten cunt before she was sick on her cat, which was actually pretty funny.

I suppose the meanest thing anyone ever said to me was the absolute tirade of of insults my own dished out on me after they found out that I fucked and killed my own gran. That was an awkward Christmas.

2) Who is your favourite person?

I don’t really like most people. I’m not exactly what you’d call a ‘people person’. I quite like Cwis Packham because he invites me over to his bungalow to watch porn and eat Jaffa Cakes. The other day I was over there and Cwis thought it would be funny to nail me to a cross in his back garden and then he invited Adrian Chiles and Frankie from The Saturdays over to spray paint me gold and then they FedEx’ed me to Nicholas Serota and tried to submit me as an early entry to the Turner Prize, so he’s a hardly a fucking saint. Despite the fact that it was the single most painful experience that I’ve ever had to endure it was also a complete waste of fucking time because I ended up looking like a shit Jeff Koons rip-off.

I also like Victoria Coren Mitchell because she’s got two human penises and she showed me them and trusted me not to tell anyone. That’s a huge amount of trust and the sign of a true friend. I’m probably one of the only people to ever see her naked and it’s such a baffling and confusing sight that it makes you feel a little bit giddy.

3) Do you believe there is an afterlife?

Religion’s a funny one. It sort of feels like the whole thing would be redundant by now and everyone would just grow up and stop talking shit but even in this age of enlightenment it feels like there’s still a wave of resurgence and it never goes away. As a fox I was brought up to follow The Mighty Slug but I’m starting to have serious reservations that a slug that was born in 1992 can possibly be the creator of all things. For one thing there’s loads of evidence to suggest that there was life prior to 1992. You only need to have a vague knowledge of Slade and the invention of washing machines to realise that the universe must be more than 23 years old.

I don’t know. Faith is powerful tool. It seems that everyone has their own agenda. I’m always a bit wary of agnosticism. It strikes me that that if you sort of possibly believe that there might be a place that you go to for the rest of eternity after you die it might be a good idea to fucking knuckle down and do some research instead of wasting your life going to Lazer Quest and taking photographs about your dinner on Instagram. Seems like quite an important thing not to be giving your wholehearted attention to.

I hope there is an afterlife because I’ve been watching my cousin, Ian Bannister, slowly decomposing on the side of the North circular ring road for the past few weeks and if that’s how this stupid little life ends for us all then it’s not ideal. He’s got a family of centipedes living in his lifeless, truncated rectum at the moment which isn’t that much of a laugh.

In short, I doubt there’s an afterlife unfortunately. Not least because the term ‘afterlife’ is, in itself an oxymoron and a paradigm. Just because you want something to exist doesn’t make it so. I’m pretending I’m eating a roast dinner at the moment but it’s actually just some soil. Pretending you want something that’s better than what you’ve got might make things slightly easier but it doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

4) Something that makes you sad?

Lenny Henry.

5) Are you wise?

Last night I drank loads of WD40 and got so messed up that ate my own testicles in an attempt to make a duck laugh, so I probably wouldn’t say that I’m ‘wise’ exactly. Having said that, I’m probably not as fucking stupid as some of my dickhead mates though. The other day my mate Liam Flint (a frog I know with alopecia) accidentally sold himself into some sort of horrible sex trafficking operation. I don’t know how you even do that to yourself by accident. What a div.

My mate Sexy Chris is a right plum as well. A few years ago he read some stupid Chinese proverb that he found in a fortune cookie or some shit and it said something about ‘building a nest inside your own mind’ which he took literally like some sort of enormous feathery cock. Anyway he spent the next few days shoving all these sticks and bits of fluff into his own head. Just cramming it all into his ears and up his nose until his head was the size of basketball ball and started looking like Alan Sugar with Bell’s Palsy. Anyway he had a seizure and now there’s something wring with his brain because he says that every time he blinks it feels like he’s trapped inside a small box for about 3 weeks. He spends about 90% of the time crying these days which is pretty funny.

6) Do you ever feel lonely?

I sometimes do in the winter but during the Spring and Summer months there’s usually loads of wasps and bees knocking about so I’m usually pretty happy with that. If I ever get lonely I’ll usually get married to a moth. I’ve been married to 789 moths to date and I’ve eaten every single one. There’s not many people who can say that… even Martin Clunes has only been married to 4 or 5.

7) What would you eat for your last ever meal?

I was given a ‘last meal’ once before when I got abducted by Tim Henman and he bundled me into his van. He took me into his garage and chained me to his Police Acadamy 7 (Mission to Moscow) pinball machine and held a gun to my head and made me watch him perform a play he’d written about Bombay mix. He made me choose my last meal and I went for the Bombay mix because, in all fairness, it was a captivating performance and quite a good play.

Before he could execute me Henman tripped over and blew his own head off. I was well surprised that that never got in any of the papers.

Follow Gus The Fox on Twitter and visit his website for more information about his book.

SEVEN QUESTIONS WITH…

November: Comedian Of The Month #10, Rob Delaney

December 2, 2014 by Becca Moody 2 Comments

Each Comedian of the Month on MoodyComedy is a comic who has never previously featured on the website. Reasons for selection can include various current projects the comedian is involved with, or perhaps recent appearances on television programmes or podcasts. There is no strict criteria however, as Comedian of the Month simply stands as a collection of recommendations, highlighting interesting and original aspects of certain comedians and their work.

Rob Delaney is an American stand up comedian and writer, arguably most well-known for his brilliant Twitter presence. His comedy style is confident and self-assured yet openly, and charmingly, flawed. Rob has the stage presence of an every-man’s man; someone who speaks what the majority of us want to say, but don’t have the platform to do so. Quite often we see comedians that seem distant from their audience, superior even, but with Delaney it feels as though everyone is on the same level, in a similar way to the style of Tony Law, for example.

The story of the Titanic speaks to me because I once tripped over a bag of ice at a party & then killed over 1,500 people.

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) April 14, 2012

Rob is very open about negative past experiences in his life, including an event that he claims clearly separates his life into two parts: a horrendous car crash that occurred around thirteen years ago where he ended up breaking both of his arms and having “knees that were ripped open to the bone”.

Now I am merely a sixteen year old girl, and I admit I know a minuscule amount about the world, especially about the world of drugs and alcohol addiction Delaney talks about here, but even I can see that here we have someone that was able to turn his life around and create something from his struggles. And just to add another layer of pretentious analysis: surely that’s what art is.

Guns don’t kill people. People who say “Guns don’t kill people” kill people. With guns.

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) July 20, 2012

With his often intentionally ambiguous material, it isn’t always clear as to what direction a joke or concept is heading, and this enables Delaney to shock and even unsettle his audiences. A brilliant example of this would be his short piece about homophobia, where he talks as if he is “one of them” but has been “cured”, which would obviously put your regular audience member on edge immediately. And he is well aware of this.

As soon as it becomes apparent that the comic is satirising a concept rather than condoning it, it suddenly feels as though everything is right with the world again. It seems to be that an audience can trust this man to lead them to safety, whilst still teetering on the edge of danger throughout.

I recommend you follow Rob on Twitter and for further information, visit his website.

OCTOBER COMEDIAN OF THE MONTH

Gus The Fox Scrap Book

August 7, 2014 by Becca Moody Leave a Comment

A few months ago, Rachel Van Zyl and Alecia Steele from Noel’s Fieldmice sent me a copy of the Gus The Fox Scrap Book, the debut book from the Twitter sensation (you guessed it) Gus The Fox.

The foul-mouthed pest gained a lot of his following from his beautiful Twitter-relationship with Noel Fielding who regularly retweets his material. This is how I found the hilarious character. To show his appreciation of Gus’ work, Noel wrote the foreword to the book which is as insane as could be expected from the comedian. A couple of Gus’ tweets are posted below, and I intentionally picked ones with no swearing, though I actually find these funnier anyway. I’d encourage you to follow him if you want to have your feed broken up by a little bit of madness every now and then.

Gus’ book is refreshingly horrible, with frequent celebrity references and surreal anecdotes. The layout is original, well thought out and varied which makes it easy reading and a piece of art in itself, despite the horrific subject matter. In fact, in places, the content actually made me feel quite sad: amongst the laughs, this book is actually very depressing; Gus The Fox doesn’t have the best life.

This book clearly took a great deal of work from writer Matt Haydock and artist Nick Reyniers, and I fully recommend you purchase the book for yourselves. Again, thanks to the girls at Noel’s Fieldmice for sending me my own copy!