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24 YEARS STILL ISN'T LONG ENOUGH - by Mr Biffo

1/9/2016

32 Comments

 
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My partner disagrees that I'm not a natural showman.

She's used to me twatting about like an arse, or - as happened yesterday - encouraging the kids to shout "Losers" to a long queue of people outside the school shop as we drove past, because we had the foresight to get their uniforms at the start of the school holidays.

I insist that I'm not a showman, or a performer of any kind, and she never believes me. Thing is, it's one thing to behave in a certain way with those who love you, and another to do it before strangers.

I don't actually mind talking to an audience - I've done a fair bit of it over the years. For some reason, I have the kind of job that people seem to find interesting, and want to hear about. So long as I'm expected to be me - and not "perform" - then I've no stage fright whatsoever. I mean, I'll be up and talking to 140-odd of you on October 1st, and I'm fine with that. No fear.

Plus I've no issue whatsoever with those who are life's extroverts and performers. If anything, I look at them with envious eyes, that they can be so un-self-conscious. I suppose what I fear is "performing" for an audience, and making them think I think it's all about me, rather than being there for them.

​That has always held me back, and caused me to tie myself in knots. It's like trying to balance on the middle of a see-saw, while simultaneously trying to not be noticed.
BOARD STIFF
When I hosted the doomed Board of Biffo, and we had meet-ups, I might've been perceived as rude, because I didn't want to stride up to people going "I'm Mr Biffo! Adore me! Moc-Moc-a-Moc, yeah?" 

I just wanted to be on the same level as everyone else. Chat to people one-on-one, respecting them as the equals we all are. With hindsight, I realise that just by having some sort of Z-list public profile sets me apart in a situation like that, and there's little I can do about it.

It feels bizarre - because inside I'm still the same person I am when I'm at the shops, or watching telly, or playing games. At least now I understand and accept the unavoidable nature of the relationship there.

In the BoB days, I simply went to great pains to try to blend into the background, and not be a show-off, or act like I was waving my arms around trying to draw attention. I guess it might've come across as stand-offish, when really I just wanted people to talk to me on their terms. That's not to say I don't appreciate hearing that people like my work. I mean, it's a great motivator, and makes it all worthwhile. 

It's like the Digifest. I don't want that to be some sort of dreadful act of self-aggrandisement. Something that Digitiser2000 has given me is a realisation of how important Digitiser has been to me. It means a lot, and has been hugely significant in my life.

​Clearly, many of you feel the same way. I want the event to be something that informs and entertains, and is a celebration of Digitiser - not The Great Man Biffo. Which is why it's so important to me that other people who were involved in Digi are there, and why it's important that there's going to be time after the panels to chat. We're all in this together.


Then again, you might all walk out during the introductory video, which is potentially the single most bizarre thing I've ever done, and I can't quite believe I'll be showing it publicly...
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CONFIDENCE IS A PREFERENCE
My life has been a slow slog towards feeling confident enough to be who I am.

​For a long time, I thought acceptance was about meeting  expectations for normality. Then I thought it was not drawing attention to myself, hiding away. It was easier, less painful at least.

Back at the Play Expo in Manchester last year, somebody asked me what the meaning of life was. I dare say he'd wanted some sort of funny answer about, I dunno, putting a crab in a shoe, but on the spot I could only think of a truthful answer: surround yourself with people who let you be you. People who accept you as you, warts and all.

​That's what we should all be: ourselves. We deserve to have that celebrated. Each and every one of us. A life spent behind a mask, or fitting yourself into a shape that society, and other people, demand, is no way to live. It's like a form of constant, low-level, trauma, which constantly reminds you that you're in some way defective.

Meeting somebody, as a 16 year-old boy, who I thought wanted to be with me, followed by the unexpected gift of Digitiser's popularity, were my first steps on the road to that self-acceptance. Unfortunately, both those things later went quite damagingly awry - giving the real me a firm and profound punt in the self-acceptance globes - before life got better again.

I'm blessed in that these days I have people who just want me to be me. And I have an outlet, in the form of Digitiser2000, which lets me do what I want to do. Frankly, I've earned it, but I appreciate it - and those of you who read or support it - more than I can ever express in words. 

GAMESMASTER, CAN YOU HELP ME BE GORO?
I've written on here before about the time I appeared on Channel 4's legendary GamesMaster.

It was a pretty wretched experience; I overthought the whole thing, had to make up on the fly a bunch of reviews for games I hadn't even played, which left my brain grinding for suitable words. I sat staring into the camera like a chicken that had spent its life in a wire cage, and just succumbed to an abrupt flash of consciousness that its entire existence was leading to it being throttled, plucked, stuffed, roasted, and eaten. 

Plus, I was aware that I had done something exceedingly weird to my hair. 
It speaks volumes that these days I mostly just let my hair do its own thing, for better or worse.

The GamesMaster clips have dogged me intermittently over the years. It resurfaced again last night on Twitter - someone posted up a screen cap of the pudgey, fresh-faced, 22 year-old I was back then (you can go looking for it, but he's removed it now - which was very kind of him, and completely unnecessary).

I remember when the clip first went online years ago, and someone pointed me in the direction of it: "Jesus - look at the state of him" one of the commenters remarked. "What a freak". 

"Shocking" said another, before I stopped reading.

"Never remembered you looking like that - it's amazing how bad photos can be" said a mate, supportively, on Facebook this morning...

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WINCEY
It was 24 years ago, but I still wince whenever I see that clip, or images of that clip.

There's a part of me that wants to scream "But I'm better than that! I don't look like that!".

Which is sheer vanity... but at the root of that vanity is simply base insecurity. I can even track where that insecurity came from. All of it.

And it comes back to my answer to the question about the meaning of life. Being bullied, or being encouraged by my dad to be something that pulled against my natural inclination towards creative pursuits, or being told I had the wrong sort of hair, or stupid facial hair, or the wrong clothes, or was too tall, or I had troublesome emotions, or a strange sense of humour, or deserved a daily punch in the face... all were attempts to tell me that who I am - who I can't help but be - wasn't accepted.

​And all of that simply made me more desperate - and receptive - to efforts to drag me out of my natural shape, so that I could make it stop.

I mean, the hair on the GamesMaster clip... I know it looks like that because I spent an hour that morning trying to style it like a boy at school called Lee Hayes, who always had lots of girlfriends.

Not that I was expecting the GamesMaster appearance to turn me into a stud, but on some instinctive emotional level I thought that if I had better hair - rather than the wavy, thick, mess it usually is - the audience at home might accept me the way the un-bullied, apparently attractive, Lee Hayes was seemingly accepted.

And maybe that's really what's at the heart of the sadness I get when I'm reminded about that clip: I feel sorry for that 22 year old kid, who was trying so hard to be accepted that he was trying to make himself into something else. Something he thought was a baseline for what society deems as normal. And by doing that he wouldn't be a target, that he would be accepted. He looks scared, exposed, like an elephant trying to squeeze into a wasp costume. I don't recognise him: physically or otherwise. 

I feel a profound sense of relief that I've ended up where I'm at, but it doesn't stop me feeling a sense of loss that it's a gift I never received sooner. 

Even so, you can stick it up your arse if you think I'm linking to that clip.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
GAMES OF MY YEARS: DIGITISER - PART SIX BY MR BIFFO
​
GAMESMASTER, CAN YOU HELP ME?
​
10 THINGS EVERY NINETIES GAMER REMEMBERS
32 Comments
Paulvw
1/9/2016 11:18:08 am

Yeah we all end up looking like Patrick Moore in the end.

Thoughtful stuff. Thank you.

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Alastair
1/9/2016 12:45:56 pm

Yeah, especially around the eyebrows.

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Quick but silly point
1/9/2016 11:40:06 am

...but on the off chance that that arsehole who punched you ever gets caught, you might want to not have even a jokey reference to shouting out of your car at strangers in case it's used as a suggestion that you might have in some way provoked the guy

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Mr Biffo
1/9/2016 11:45:46 am

It WAS a joke. We don't really go around doing that...

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Spiney O'Sullivan
1/9/2016 12:43:05 pm

If it helps, everybody looked a bit ridiculous in the 90s. I imagine it was due to all the alcopops and rave drugs everybody was doing in Ibiza whole hyped up on Girl Power.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
1/9/2016 12:44:19 pm

*while

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Baby Spice
1/9/2016 12:53:32 pm

If it helps, I think that at the time Digi was THE dictionary definition of Girl Power.

Alastair
1/9/2016 12:48:07 pm

Was the episode of Gamesmaster one of those ones where people could send messages to Teletext to display on screen?

If the episode had been taped you could extract those messages for double the entertainment/embarrassment.

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GallonOfAlan
1/9/2016 12:48:15 pm

Looking at that 2015 video you're sort of like a video games Dylan Moran there.

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Darcy
1/9/2016 12:57:11 pm

Now picturing a drunken Biffo running a video games store.

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Mr Biffo
1/9/2016 08:25:42 pm

Slightly lardier than him this year, alas.

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Darren link
1/9/2016 01:03:52 pm

But we all looked like that...

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Steve link
1/9/2016 03:06:46 pm

October will be my first time speaking more than a few words in front of an audience, and after reading your article I’ve just had my first cold sweat, which I am sure will soon to be followed by a month of night terrors. The closet experience I have had to this is when I had to introduce a film festival I organised to a few hundred people, I have no memory of what I said, it seems the whole experience has been blanked out, when I think about the day I just have a feeling of terror hanging around in my Psyche. It’s the same feeling I get when I remember back to that that time I shot Emu on stage in that show you wrote at school 29 years ago.
The only thing that could make those memories worse would be if there were photos or film hanging around of what I looked like, especially in the 80’s & 90’s and the 70’s and 00’s as well, so I can understand where you are coming from. I’m sure it wouldn’t be so awful if I looked even a bit like Lee Hayes (the only person I had a fight with in Middle school by the way) rather than having that look of a bloated corpse that has washed ashore.
Saying that, I’m rather looking forward to the experience, see you on the 1st.

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Lee Hayes' many girlfriends
1/9/2016 08:39:06 pm

You'd better not have harmed his hair.

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Mr Biffo
1/9/2016 10:06:38 pm

So very silky. But get this - I looked him up on Facebook a few years ago, and he's bald now. Irony, much?

Dan link
4/9/2016 10:24:02 am

Oh, you'll be OK after 5mins! At least, that's what I'm telling myself... ;)

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Ninj
1/9/2016 03:09:35 pm

Wan't until I left the UK that I realised how stiflingly self conscious I had lived my life to that point (20's), and how much fitting in/avoiding bullying or ridicule had just been a part of my life.

West coast USA now, and it's all people riding 10ft tall penny farthings to work, people just doing stuff that they like, seeing what works, with no fear.

Maybe if I'd had a few years to mature in the UK I'd have found my own headspace there,

As it is, I'll nod to the guy who always dresses steampunk for his office job downtown as he gets on the bus, as I sit in my socks and sandals, uncaring but happy.

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
1/9/2016 04:49:04 pm

Caught my first glimpse of actual you when you contributed to PC Zone. The picture wasn't the best, I think it was someone on A.D who said you looked swarthier than they'd imagined.

You comment about the meet ups and people expecting you to be crazy is interesting. I imagine it's not unlike when Bart Simpson went to the MAD Magazine offices and was disappointed by the receptionist telling him it wasn't going to be a bunch of crazy things happening.

Gutted can't make it to the Digimeetmedo. Oh well.

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Mr Biffo
1/9/2016 08:24:48 pm

Well. Thanks for that big confidence-boost, Meatballs!

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Gary Marshall
1/9/2016 05:19:51 pm

As much as I love your funny stuff, these are the articles I really enjoy. So much resonates.

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Mr Biffo
2/9/2016 08:07:54 am

Cheers, Gary. I always fret that I'm flirting with being victim-y, but I try to write as honestly as possible. I guess as I've gotten older I get frustrated that we tend to hide our vulnerabilities, and it helps nobody if we're all pretending we don't have "stuff". So it's nice to know it's appreciated.

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Damon link
1/9/2016 05:44:48 pm

I hate people who come off as self-important but I've struggled with the self-importance vs standoffish thing a lot dealing with the convention I staff. I just decided that I can't really control what people think of me. And if I'm important enough to gossip about then apparently there's people with lives more dull than me.

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Kara Van Park
1/9/2016 07:40:12 pm

As you get older, you begin to realise most people's opinions aren't worth acknowledging. What looks daft/cool seems to be an arbritrary game I'm not playing. I recall being mocked for wearing a wooly hat while walking in sub-zero temperatures, but now it's ok to wear one indoors in July like you're Benny from Crossroads and no one says owt.

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timmy pooed
1/9/2016 10:00:31 pm

mock-mock-a-mocked mucker.

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Adam
1/9/2016 08:39:38 pm

Seeing that photo of Dexter Fletcher reminded me that you once referred to him on Digi as Dexie Felcher. That still makes me laugh today that you got that on air!

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Not Now, Nikki link
1/9/2016 08:40:46 pm

I always felt the humour on Digi, and really, anything else you've done, has always been very inclusive.

I don't mean that in the "incredibly PC don't offend anyone" sort of way, I mean that it never felt like we were reading an inside joke we couldn't be part of. You have a way of writing that lets us join in the silliness without having to be invited, and as someone who was isolated from the world at large during her childhood, that spoke to me in a way I still cherish.

Oh, I remember seeing that GamesMaster episode too. In fact, it popped up on a retro gaming livestream yesterday!

If it matters to you at all, these were my thoughts:

"Dexter Fletcher needs to shut up."

"Dexter Fletcher was a bad choice for this."

"You know what's loud and annoying? Dexter Fletcher. On GamesMaster."

"Paul Rose? It's Mr Biffo! Yay!"

"Dexter Fletcher is talking now. Can someone please make it so he isn't?"

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Timmy pooped
1/9/2016 10:05:57 pm

Dominik Diamond was well better, but lacked commitment, balls to press gang too.

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Mr Biffo
1/9/2016 10:07:10 pm

So much GM Dexter Fletcher gossip and hearsay from those days....

Euphemia
1/9/2016 11:05:42 pm

I'm sure Dexter Fletcher isn't hoping to have Gamesmaster prominently featured in his eulogy as a crowning achievement, either. Pehaps just under the no praise for his terrible accent in Band Of Brothers.

Gutted to be missing the big meat. Hey ho.

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Mr Biffo
2/9/2016 07:58:15 am

We'll definitely do another one if this goes well, so fret not.

Gordon Palsy
2/9/2016 08:17:43 am

I'm coming to the big meat, solo, and I'm a bit scared as I'm not particularly 'good' socially, and suffer from trying so hard to fit in I don't even know I'm doing it half the time. I'm the sort of person who will say I've seen something when I haven't just to keep a conversation rolling. I don't remember the finer points of things very well like others seem to be able to do. Many of the things I've seen or experienced don't seem worthy of comment. Your comment about this being constant low level trauma resonates oh-so-strongly. Wish me luck, I know everybody will be lovely and it'll be great once I have a couple of pints.

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Zombelina link
2/9/2016 02:10:11 pm

Well, well done you! You sound just like me, but I was too scared to even think about getting a ticket, and now I really regret it. As you know everyone is really wonderful on this site, and they will make you very welcome and give you hugs :)

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