SO IT GOES is not a ‘knocking blog’.

If I write about and chat to stand-up comedians or any other creatives then, by-and-large, the various blogs I post here are intended to publicise them or their work.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, I have found that pure writers – as opposed to performers or writer-performers – can be slightly more difficult to Interview because they are slightly more reticent.

They are more aware of what their spoken words will look like to a stranger in cold (cyber) print online.

If I think someone has said anything which is clear when spoken but which could be misunderstood when read on a screen or on a page, I warn them and check that they really do want – are happy – to be Quoted saying that.

I can think of one interview (and one only) where the person I was talking to strongly criticised an organisation they worked with and were beholden to… alright, OK, they slagged-off the organisation providing them with a venue at the Edinburgh Fringe…

I asked them three times – because they kept doing it – if they really, really wanted to be quoted saying that. Yes. Yes. Yes. I even quoted my warning to them (once) in the published blog.

Ultimately, they kept their venue, but the organisation they criticised (who heard about it after a print publication picked up on my blog) were not well pleased.

I was not asked to remove the blog because the mini-maelstrom had already and inevitably happened. And because the person with the loose tongue was a pro.

Which brings me to this…

In January and June 2018, I posted a couple of interview-based blogs publicising a newish UK stand-up comic. That was over five years ago.

In August and September this year, I got two emails from the onetime comic asking that both blogs be removed. 

He said he was now “pursuing a career in counselling” and wanted the two blogs removed because he was “trying to limit what potential future clients can find out about me”.

Call me innocent, but I thought one main thing counsellors/therapists did was to encourage clients to come to terms with – not try to Hide – events from their past.

There is no real point taking 5-year-old (or any) blog down any more than trying to delete a past printed newspaper interview as the online blogs will be archived all over the place. Who even knows where?

You can’t really fully hide online blog posts or online anything by erasing them. Plus each of my blogs would have been emailed in their entirety to over 700 of my host site’s followers and there could well be re-posts of which I know nowt.

If people find a counsellor/psychotherapist is actually trying to hide his own past while telling them to come to terms with their own back story, I would think it’s staggeringly counterproductive. Far better to be open and honest. Just saying.

These two blogs were, I think, interesting but not especially revealing although, in one, Christianity was mentioned. Hardly shocking.

According to the UK’s National Health Service website, “Counsellors work with people experiencing a wide range of emotional and psychological problems to help them bring about effective change and/or enhance their wellbeing.”

For the avoidance of doubt if, in the next five years or more, anyone else wants their willingly-expressed opinions in any of my happily-published blogs hidden, they are in for a very loud “No”. 

Anyone who tries to hide their past should find a counsellor or a therapist. 

I cannot think of any one I would recommend.

Bah!

Physician heal thyself! (Luke 4:23)