BATTLE DESCRIPTION.
I can’t believe I haven’t done a blog for this battle yet. It was definitely one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had in my life and there’s no way Marlo and I could have predicted how fun it would be!
This battle was set up in August of 2021 and we had a couple of months to write for it, which was good because a lot of the time battles have SO much prep time that you overthink every single thing and end up making something that isn’t as good as it could have been.
So, this was better.
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This was relatively new grounds for me as it was a rematch against Raptor, in a sense, as Marlo had done with Cracker in our 2on2 about 10 years prior (Jesus Christ, kill me). But a LOT had happened in the time between mine and Raptor’s last battle, so there was quite a bit of new ground to tread.
Me and Theo got to work on writing straight away. Both of us meeting up as frequently as possible (which was about once or twice every 2 weeks, if I remember, despite living about 14 minutes walk from each other), coming up with ideas and trying to make hugely long, stupid schemes. Theo was also working on his own film, Everyone Forgot, at the time, which has since gone on to pick up a bunch of impressive awards here and abroad, so fair play to that creative fuck.
The Writing Process
Anywhom, the writing process, though a little choppy, was really fun when we got together. I can remember so many instances of cracking up together at some of the stuff we said. Here are a couple.
1 – What do you think they’ll say about us seriously?
Posh, fat, ugly… but they’ll wait till round 3.
Posh, fat and ugly? And what d’you think they’ll say about me?
I remember coming up with this with Theo in a pub in Reading on a lunch break and both of us laughing till our sides were served (garlic bread). It was one of those moments where the joke just came to us and we knew it was really good and we just had to work on the framing of it, but it’s such a fun memory.
2 – Of course the dinosaurs are afraid, we had a meteoric rise!
This whole scheme is SO long and SO complicated, both to write and to be able to deliver, back and forth. It took us ages, but I remember being in Theo’s mum’s kitchen, adding to the scheme syllable by syllable and both getting so excited about how long the scheme was and how much imagery we could build up in it. Theo stood up, pacing around, me sat on my fat ass watching him. Absolutely brilliant moment.
3 – Chicken satay and corn.
Writing this whole segment of round 3 where we act as Scapegoats’ therapist has got to be one of the fondest memories I hold in my head, because I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever laughed more. I don’t know what it was, maybe we were a bit tired or had been working for too long, but when we were writing the scheme and we had to think of a meal that someone could have made to come after “a dinner you’ve made for 4”, we went through about 20 ideas and when we landed on ‘chicken satay and corn’ it just absolutely broke us as humans. We laughed for, honestly, about 10 minutes non-stop. Don’t know how we kept oxygenated. One of the dearest moments ever. The idea of chicken satay and corn being an actual, viable meal that somebody would serve is just so stupid that we lost control. We absolutely lost control.
Anyway, we prepped like little bastards and eventually got to a point that we were happy with and rehearsed it all the way to Manchester together in the car about 40 times, but nothing could have prepared us for the actual day…
It was so, so, SO much fun. I think we put on one of our best performances ever and we were against one of our toughest opponents ever, too, so it really needed to be tip top. The guys from the Have a Word podcast were watching it live, which made it so much cooler.
We just had a real bloody blast on stage and those guys were so funny and electric on the day. The crowd was 100% behind us and it was our first 2on2 battle for the first time since Soul and Quill about 2 years before, so the feedback from the audience was so positive. It just felt, entirely, like old times. Definitely one of my favourite battles I’ve ever been involved in.
Some of my personal highlights was Raptor’s American accent and that scenario, their whole “jokes” and “bad bars” bit, the GCSEs line and their incredible approach to the battle generally, the interactions were so on-point, we were blown away.
From our side, I loved the 9-5 Dolly Parton bar, the GOATs have been eating out the palm of our hand, my and Marlo’s argument bit, Yeahhhhh, but still, the cats anus, all that stuff. There’s not much I’m not happy with when I look back at it.
Marlo made us jerseys that had the date of our birth (just the day, 29(th October) and 15(th Feb)) and it was his idea to have little logos that summed up our best moments from the Bad Bars and Compliment Battle day in 2013.
He had the cheese grater from the ‘grater flip’ and I had a sperm cell from when I told Big J I wanted to ‘feel [his] mother fucking sperm on my face’. Theo originally wanted us to be dressed up as tennis players, complete with rackets, but I was convinced we would lose said rackets during the battle.
Theo printed out both pictures of the cat’s anus and also provided the clip boards. Basically, Theo’s the props and costume department as well as co-creator. I take care of the being devilishly handsome part.
Rewatch the battle! Especially now that it’s recently hit 100,000 views! Very exciting. Hopefully we’ll do another 2on2 this year………
In fact, we are, I’m just not telling you who, when or, indeed, why. Cheers.
Watch This Battle with Legends
Legends of the game Avacado and Illmaculate watch the Shufflo vs Scapegoats battle.