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Due to the way that tour bookings work and the fact that I am not so successful as to dictate to venues what day I come on, we found ourselves driving for three hours from Stafford (well Cannock) to Newcastle-upon-Tyne today, even though tomorrow we’re in Hanley, a 15 minute drive from last night’s venue. It’s tempting to think that the people who booked us in thought that they had put us in a venue in Newcastle-under-Lyme, which would have made our day a lot less stressful. But no, the bookers do their best to group gigs together (though I suspect that without doing the miles themselves that in their heads Stafford and Newcastle-upon-Tyne are both vaguely in the North and so must be close together) and though there have been a few bits of annoying criss-crossing the country this year, it’s actually been pretty good on the whole. Whether we should have done two gigs so close together in three days in places I don’t usually visit is another question. Hanley might turn out to be the only sub-100 strong audience I perform to this year (though Croydon was close).
But hey, we’d only have been sitting around doing nothing all day (or you know trying to write six half hour scripts for AIOTM). And I had a feeling it was going to be an OK day. I had slept til after 8am, which is a triumph and then spent the first 20 minutes of the day playing Yahtzee against my iPhone. I won all 12 games I played, which is extraordinary and then out of nowhere on game 11, I hit Yahtzees with my last two rolls and my score was 715. I had to check, but yes, I’d beaten my old record of 706. That has stood for at least 2010 when I mentioned it in Christ on a Bike: The Second Coming. And I’ve played a Hell of a lot of Yahtzee since then. Some might say this is an indication of a wasted life, but those people are idiots. This was obviously a major victory that proved my worth, though it was oddly anticlimactic as the high score crept up on me somewhat and I had to double-check it was definitely higher.
Of course this doesn’t mean I can stop. I must carry on and try to beat that score again. It might take another six years. It might take longer than that. Or it might happen on the very next turn. That is the beauty of maths. So predictable as a mass of events, but so random on a day to day basis.
And anyone doubting there was some magic in the air (or continuing to argue that I have wasted my life) on the drive to Newcastle I played a bit of Addams Family pinball and managed to tour the mansion successfully all the way through for just the third time (it’s relatively easy to tour the mansion, but quite a rarity to get through every room again).
AIOTM might just be videos of me playing computer games. But I am sure no one will mind.
The Newcastle Stand was sold out tonight, meaning that 20 of the 40 gigs so far have reached capacity, something without precedence in any tour that I’ve ever been involved with (including Lee and Herring - we got some of the worst numbers ever, made worse by the fact that we were usually in huge venues). The food at this venue is amazing and great value, but I made the mistake of having fish and chips and I can no longer cope that that amount of oil in my food and felt that I might actually vomit during the second half of the show. But it was fantastic to do this show in a packed comedy club and I don’t remember the first routine going as well as this ever before. It’s scary to think that I am doing the DVD recording in a couple of days because the second half keeps on changing and adapting (I got distracted into a monologue about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mum tonight, which was fun). Although Hanley will bring me down to earth tomorrow, it looks like there will be over 500 people in for the DVD record in Cardiff and the stalls will be full, which is all I could have hoped for (I mean in my dreams there’s a late rush and I sell 1500 tickets - but let’s not get ahead of ourselves - based on my upward sales trajectory that should be happening in about 2145).
And further good news on a day of blistering video game success, the short film we did last year “While You Were Away†won the Audience Award at the ÉCU Film Festival in Paris tonight. And in even more amazing news it’s now online for you to see. You can finally find out the dumbass thing that my character has done. I am really proud to be in this and unusually quite pleased with my own performance. I am hopefully going to work with this team on some of As It Occurs To Me, which might give you some indication of the partial change in tone that I am envisaging. But don’t worry it’s going to leap between that and the usual dumbass stuff in a way that will make you feel giddy and seasick. It’s going to be quite a ride.
Appearing in an award winning film? Selling out gigs? Raising £100,000 on kickstarter? Excelling myself at time-wasting video games? Am I in danger of damaging my brand of apparent failure?
Oh don’t worry. I will find some way to fuck all this up. Plus look, one of those successes is about playing video games. It’s all going to be fine.
