I was rather tired today and missing home. Touring is a lonely business, but at least when you are single and have nothing in your life apart from alcohol and self-pity, it doesn't matter where you are. I've been away for 11 days now and there's still another this afternoon the four gigs left before I would be going home seemed like an awful lot. It was a cold and blustery day in Leeds. A strong wind was blowing through the town and after yesterday's little flurry of work I was uninspired and lethargic and the day passed me by.
But a fun gig at the Bradford Alhambra cheered me up a bit. The audience were a bit more effusive than Leeds last night, but it was also nice to be back in a theatrical space, which suits this show a little bit better. Given that I haven't played Bradford since 2005 (and even then I think I was on a bill of other comics) I was pleased to get about 160 into the small studio space. If the newer (to me) venues are doing this well it is a very positive move forwards. Playing to 30 people in Carlisle seems like a distant memory, though back then it wasn't an exceptionally small attendance.
There was a brief flurry of excitement with about two minutes of the first half to go. A man came bounding purposefully down the steps from the audience towards the stage (which was on the ground level with raked seating. He was heading straight for me, with none of the tip-toeing apology of someone going to the toilet. Was he about to punch me in the face? It would have seemed odd. It was a while since I had said anything too contentious, but you never know what might offend a man from Bradford. As it happened he was just going to the loo, but presumably felt it was better to do that quickly and loudly rather than creep down. If he'd known how close the interval was then maybe he would have waited. Or maybe he was just the kind of man who does whatever he wants whenever he wants and has no thought for how it might affect others. I was just glad he hadn't lamped me.
Then as I reached for the microphone stand, a clear sign that I was on my closing remarks, another man got up and made the same journey - perhaps emboldened by his fearless precursor. This time I broke off to tell him how stupid he was being. I was holding the microphone stand. I was putting the mic back into it. It didn't take a genius to realise that proceedings were coming to a close. Indeed I told him that if he hadn't got up to leave the half would already be at an end.
The first toiletee then returned and started ascending the stairs, which made me laugh as if I hadn't stopped to comment on this too the show would be halted before he had even sat down. Still, it added a little variety and no one got hurt, so I didn't mind too much.
I am part of twitrelief, a Comic Relief endeavour to get people to bid to have a well known person follow them on Twitter for a while (and RT one of their tweets). Some people on Twitter have taken a violent dislike to this for some reason. It's good to have some cynicism about the motives of certain celebrities for doing things, but if this just becomes blanket cynicism about everything then you're a bit of a prick. This seems to me to be a load of quite nice actors and writers who are hoping to raise some money for good causes. You might not want to pay to have a "celebrity" follow you on Twitter (I wouldn't), but some people would like that and most people are offering rather nice extras that any fan of theirs would like. If that helps people in the third world get clean water then I don't see the problem, even if the "celebrity" involved thought this was a good opportunity for self-promotion (I don't see that it is though). I am offering signed copies of all my DVDs and my book as extras (because I couldn't think of anything else when I was asked) but as the auction has already hit unexpected heights then I will also chuck in one of my valuable signed works of art - in this case a big picture of a spunking cock - and I will have a look around my attic for some old AIOTM or Time Gents scripts to chuck in too.
My page is here. Please ensure that I defeat Andrew Collings who is offering a felt tip picture of the winner (not even of their cock) and
some fucking idiot thinks that is worth 175 pounds. Do NOT bid for this. I don't care about the clean water that the money will make. Some things are more important than that. It is more important that I am best than Andrew Collings and I will be furious if people deliberately bid for him just to piss me off or because they feel sorry for him or want him to have one victory over me before he dies. I have given you the link only so you can ignore it. Please do not click upon it. This is, as people on Twitter suspected, just a popularity contest and all that matters to me is that I am more popular than Collings. Fuck the third world and the poor. Pander to my ego.
As expected I have had some emails disputing yesterday's figures on how long it would take to consume a whole Jesus at Catholic Holy Communion. James Forman wrote to say,
"Hi Richard,
Some controversy here in the Hong Kong religious/statistical community
here over your calculations.
First off, the communion wafers are from unleavened bread, which will
be denser than the average loaf. That means the average per person
should be more than 2 ounces, but then I don't think it makes sense to
divide the loaf weight by the number of communicants. What's more
likely is that there's a standardised amount per person, and the
priest scoffs all the left overs. So to eat Jesus quicker, you just
need to put on an episcopal frock and nip to the vestry.
I guess I'm trying to say your previous correspondent has unfairly
assumed inverse linearity between number of attendees and size of
portion. We should take some scales to a service and weigh the wafer.
Secondly, coming from a CofE background, where it's hard for the
people holding the wine to wrest it from your grasp, I'd try to guzzle
the wine and take as long as possible on it, increasing my average
wine consumption. Of course, if you do this too often in one church
they'll get wise to it, but by rotating services though different
churches, your average weekly wine volume should be a lot higher."
Alice Greening also got in touch with this response
"We (my boyfriend and I) came to see you at Glee Club in Birmingham, but before that had been considering how long it would take to eat a whole Jesus (having read the script from your 2001 show). I have been prompted to email you with our suggestions due to today's Warming Up, my boyfriend has been pestering me for a few weeks now to let you know but I thought it might be a bit strange to have worked it out so wanted to keep it a secret. Our data is based on the approximate weight of a communion wafer and the assumption that one consumes a teaspoon of wine at each communion. I will list our working below.
Richard Neave, formerly of University of Manchester, and some researchers have decided that based on Jesus resembling a typical peasant from 1st century C.E, he would be around 5'1 and weigh around 110lbs.
We have estimated that you can get about 125 communion wafers per ounce (you can buy 1000 on amazon weighing 8.8oz but that's in a box)
There is approximately 8 pints of blood in a human, which in turn is approximately 8lbs.
There are 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon and 32 tablespoons in a pint, so approximately 768 teaspoons of blood in a Jesus. Based on one teaspoon, once a week that will take you 14.8 years.
Now we're left with the remaining 102lbs of Jesus. 1632 ounces. If that is made up completely of communion wafers, then that's 204,000 wafers. It would take 3923 years, going once a week to polish a Jesus off.
However, it is permissable to go to Holy communion twice daily (no more than that though, that would be greedy). If that was the case then you could eat a whole Jesus is around 280 years. But you could drink the blood of a whole Jesus in just over a year.
This is assuming that communion wafers represent the hydrated flesh (and bones and organs, just not blood) of Christ. If however we take into consideration the amount of water in a human body (communion wafers are notoriously dry), and use Guyton's estimate from his Textbook of Medical Physiology of 57% however of this percentage approximately 62.5% is intracellular fluid (which we will include) the remaining being extracellular (which includes the water contained in the blood).
So, of a whole 110lb Jesus, there is 62.7lbs water. Of this 62.7lbs of water, 23.5lbs are extracellular. Extracellular fluid is around 20% plasma, so 4.7lbs of plasma in a Jesus which is included in the blood calculations. So the amount of water left to consider is 58lbs. Removing all this water and blood from a Jesus leaves us with 44lbs, or 704oz. Using our previous estimates for communion wafers then one would need to eat 88,000 hosts which would take 1692 years going on a weekly basis, or 120.5 years going twice daily as is allowed by the Roman Catholic Church.
So this last estimate would suggest that going twice daily for 121 years would be sufficient to ensure you had eaten a whole Jesus, and 13 months to have drunk the blood of one and I have ignored the lost water weight completely, because a dehydrated Jesus would be a lot easier to keep from rotting than a hydrated one, and the water content of communion wafers is minimal.
Now, if only I could have used the time I wasted working that out on my maths degree I'd be laughing. Now I've admitted to doing a maths degree I bet half of my working is incorrect.
My dad is also trying to find an artist willing to create a Jesus sculpture made from communion wafers (as you can buy them on Amazon) and wine, now I've worked out approximately how many we will need."
