If you've seen any of the televised roasts that comedians participate in you'd be familiar with the concept - a group expresses their affection for someone by humorously ribbing on them, often as brutally as possible.
I couldn't attend unfortunately - our birthday celebrations were temporally identical but geographically distinct - so I wrote something and had excellent mutual friend Luke McGrath read it aloud on my behalf.
I reproduce the roast below, in the hope that these burns can endlessly sizzle through the halls of time.
(Incidentally, you should visit lick-nuke.com to keep abreast of Nick and Luke's various artistic endeavours - it's a good place for people who like things that rule.)
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Good evening everybody,
I’m sorry I couldn’t be there tonight; I know you were all looking forward to seeing me. I just felt it was important that, on his thirtieth birthday, Nick enjoy an occasion where he is not overshadowed by the superior twin.
Happy birthday brother; Enjoy this rarity.
I don’t remember the time we shared in the womb, but the evidence speaks for itself. Nick enjoys 20/20 vision while I have been saddled with spectacles since the age of two. Stealing all the eye juice out of the womb was an act of selfishness that predates consciousness itself. Also, thanks for the scoliosis bro. No wonder I got out first.
From that moment it was all downhill. Nick stamped his way through childhood like an impatient octogenarian. Childhood flights of fancy would grind to a halt whenever he arrived. The neighbourhood kids would try to marry two cats and he would sweep in to tell us they were brother and sister and thus unable to wed. The universal solvent we’d invented was just water, he’d announce, before telling hijinks of any type to get off his lawn.
There was one exception, of course: Nick’s famous imaginary stories.
He would spend hours a day in a rock garden at the back of our yard, stepping gingerly from rock to rock, his face set in a grim expression of concentration. If asked what the fuck he was doing, which he was often, he would reply ‘imaginary stories’. X-man action figure in hand, he would rattle off the 12 part epic run he had concocted that would serve as a fitting bookend to the Dark Phoenix Saga. His imagination was unbridled, but came at the expense of developing the skills necessary for social interaction. This main side effect of this hobby, however, was feet as leathery and unwelcoming as a crocodile.
I was happy to see Nick enter the field of personal training. Less welcome were his repeated sermons outlining that, given our genetic similarity, I too was capable of achieving a high level of fitness. These speeches were mostly delivered as he walked around on his hands. Quite the salesman.
Equally unwelcome were Nick’s student days, where he embraced a philosophy of anti-capitalism with the fervour of a Frenchman who’s invitation to the opera has been lost in the mail.
I, with a house full of things and a life full of job, was an easy mark. I accepted Nick’s teaching that he could live off the grid with nothing but a fully equipped recording studio with a pleasant smile.
Visiting his home years later to find the floor obscured by heaving piles of comics and musical instruments, I learned that to be anti-capitalist you just had to stop short of buying any fucking bookshelves.
I could go on and on, but have lost interest.
So I will stop short of mentioning Nick’s childhood fear of being enclosed in a beanbag – to this day he insists this was fakery on his behalf, but that makes it no less funny.
Neither will I mention that, when our father moved in with his third wife, he gave Nick all of his pornography, telling him to ‘share it with his brother’. Our father’s questionable ideas of paternal bonding aside, I never saw any of it. For a boy of about 16, this sin was unforgivable.
A few years ago, I sent Nick a message on our birthday to extend my best wishes. I wrote “Happy birthday!” He wrote back “thanks”.
Regardless of this, a mountain of evidence that could stretch to the stars themselves, I love you Nick. Happy birthday; sorry I couldn’t be there. See you soon.