Warming Up

RHLSTP has a new temporary home in London at the swanky King’s Place in King’s Cross for the next couple of (I mean four) weeks. And we were made very welcome by a really excellent backstage team. I was able to park in the basement of the venue which was accessed by a car lift (how exciting is that?) and the room we were in has cameras set up, operated from a control desk at the back. I am being filmed by robots. And if the run goes well then who knows where it will all lead? Hopefully to me having sex with all the robots is what I am saying.

Russell Howard was the first guest and I was amazed to find out that it’s almost 7 years since he was last on the show. How fast that time has gone. I have seen Russell a few times over the years since then. But it’s amazing how life goes on whilst you’re distracted  with other things. He was on great form though. He’s a sweet and funny man and I remember our time gigging together in the mid noughties and appearing on Banter together with great affection. Who would have believed it would be him and not me who would go on to become a multi-millionaire sex symbol? No one, that is who.

My second guest was Sara Barron, a fabulous stand up who has burst on to the UK scene, being nominated for best newcomer at last year’s Fringe. She’s also married to previous guest, Geoff Lloyd who kindly texted me in the daytime with an idea for what his wife was best known for and some lines of enquiry that I might like to take regarding toilet based stories. It’s the most romantic thing possible when a husband does this for his wife. Sara and I seemed to have a slightly darker sense of humour than our refined King’s Cross audience (though this room has a high ceiling and I remember it being more difficult to tell how things are going as a result - laughter sounds more muted from the stage), but we definitely made each other laugh with tales of the effect new love has on exes and me seeing my first dead body. Inevitably with this podcast I do need up telling stories more than once, but I often discover new details in them and the truth is that only a very dedicated core listen to every single episode. And it’s remarkable that after all this time I occasionally come up with a story that I haven’t told before.

Even though my kids had slept through (pretty much) for two nights, I was pretty tired by the end of this. The weather was appalling and I’d had to cope with driving through horizontal rain on the way in and with dark and reflective roads on the way back. It was hard to interpret the lights of other vehicles in the liquid blackness and I was weary, but I drove super carefully and was home before midnight. And I’d been in a car lift twice. What could be better than that?

And massive thanks to the King's Place crew who really went out of their way to be as helpful as humanly possible. Next week's show looks like it is heading for a sell out, so if you want to see Michael Sheen and Ed Gamble then BOOK NOW

It's such a good line up that I am coming from holiday in Devon especially to do it.