Once again writing was going slowly on As It Occurs To Me, but at least this time I was well and the clumps of floating ice that drift together to make the iceberg of show were slowly moving towards each other in the dark. Just like last week it wasn't until I went out to do a gig that my brain started ticking over and I had several thoughts about how I could link the show together. It's hard to know where these inspirational explosions of creativity come from. It's something I was planning to discuss in the show.
I was gigging in Charing Cross and when I arrived at the theatre two of the other acts were waiting outside, old grey-haired Robin Ince who was feeling unwell and was worried he'd had a minor stroke on stage (he hadn't) and young handsome Jack Whitehall, vital and fit and just on his way home where his mum had cooked him a pie. They might have been actors playing the same comic at different ages, in a cautionary tale about the effects this stupid job can have. But I like it too, that it's a profession where a 40 year old man and a 20 year old man can be friends and equals. I'd rather be Jack Whitehall though. The pie sounded delicious. I wish I lived with my mum still.
As we chatted a homeless man came up to us holding one copy of the Big Issue in a cellophane wrapper. But he only had the one copy. I suspected pretty quickly that he wasn't an official Big Issue seller and this was later confirmed when I gave him two pounds and did not get a Big Issue in return. The magazine had a picture of Bill Hicks on the front (another branch in the story of the comedian and one who had died at almost the mid-point between Jack and Robin), so I had thought I would buy it anyway, but then the homeless guy who looked a bit shaky and fucked up said "I know you. You were on telly!" I don't know quite how, but my work is very popular amongst homeless people who often seem to recognise me. Maybe they have an illegal video of Fist of Fun at the hostel they all use, or maybe if you were a fan of Lee and Herring in the mid-90s, you were the kind of person who was going to get addicted to drugs or have you life fall apart and would be a tramp by 2009. The fact he'd recognised me meant I pretty much had to give him money, so that I didn't look like a cock (again, maybe they have a class at the hostel where they learn the faces of minor celebrities for exactly this reason). I asked him how he was doing and he said that he wasn't very good. He'd been in hospital two days before and had been very unwell and then showed us an impressively gruesome and massive scab on his forearm, which was perhaps too much information, but again could do nothing but evoke sympathy. It might well have been a stick on Halloween scar, but I don't think it was, but that would probably be another good trick if you want to make some money from people who were on TV ten years ago. The guy was claiming he needed eight pounds for a hostel, but I suspect that wasn't where the money was going, but I gave him a quarter of what he claimed he needed. It was no skin off my arm after all.
As he walked away he said to me "Get back on TV, you should be back on TV."
"I agree," I said, but alas it's only the dispossessed who seem to think this and there are very few homeless TV executives. "Tell them if they don't put you back on TV they will have to deal with me."
It made me laugh.
