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I looked after Phoebe all night ahead of my weekend trip to Ireland. She is an unbelievable treasure and I genuinely don’t mind being woken every 3 hours to change and feed her, but it’s discombobulating to the point of insanity. You’re doing stuff when you’re half asleep and it gets confusing. I had fed her when I got home and then woken up a few hours later to feed her again and then, it seemed, she was mewling and complaining just half an hour later. But my watch said it was 6.30. So had I just fed her at 6 or had I fed her at about 3 and then fallen asleep without realising. I’d been half asleep when I fed her in the middle of the night, but I could work out that I must have done as there were two empty bottles. I surmised that two or three hours must have passed, but I was only guessing from the evidence available. Meanwhile she just smiled up at me like being awake now was the most normal thing in the world.
Sharing stuff out certainly helps. When Phoebe wouldn’t get back to sleep I took her up to Catie who took the next shift, meaning I could sleep until 10. It’s great that we can share all this, but being a relatively hands-on dad I am bonding more with my daughter every day. It’s slightly frightening to me how much I care about this tiny bag of effluents. How has she done this to me? It’s not a good thing. I am finding it hard to be away from her and when I am with her constantly fret that something terrible is going to happen.
And I felt a bit more together today for my gig at New Greenham Arts (I don’t think I had realised before that this venue is actually on what used to be the famous Greenham Common Airbase - no wonder my performances have always been so radioactive - is that a good thing?) I think I might just have scraped in at over 100 in. This bit of the tour is definitely feeling a bit quieter and so is slightly harder work for me. The dressing room in this venue is behind the stage and has a door on the other side that leads into the public toilet, which gives the whole place a strange Mr Benn vibe. Will you leave the toilet by the normal door, or go through the other door? The door that leads to the dressing room. And a man sitting playing Addams Family Pinball. But it always means I try to time my loo visits so that the audience don’t see me, sneaking in and out of my secret (though entirely visible) door when I am guessing the toilet is empty or whoever is in there has their back turned at the urinal. This is the kind of thing that the superstar comedians miss out on.
I used the hour before the show (and ten minutes of the interval) putting together my Metro column - technically a bit late for my deadline, but I just haven’t had a spare minute. I also tweeted about
Madonna’s Lembit Opik style attempt to become a stand-up on the Jimmy Fallon show. It’s a pretty disastrous attempt for a multi-millionaire Picasso owner who has sex with men 30 years her junior to try and do observational comedy about those things. Which could work if handled correctly - Billy Connolly always managed to successfully tell stories about the unlikelihood of him being friends with royalty and film stars and still seem like he was your lucky mate. But Billy Connolly also worked for decades at his craft. What makes people think that they might just be able to step straight into stand up and be awesome at it straight away? It’s not like it looks like an easy job. And surely the risks of looking like a prick and having no one laugh at you are just too great. But confidence and money and a team of yes-people behind you probably make you think you can do anything. I am going to have a crack at doing some Madonna like songs. And I am not going to do any try-out gigs with them or even rehearse. I am going to book my self a slot on the One Show and premiere them all then. They will be about my life as a self-playing snookerist. Everyone will be able to relate.
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