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Last night on hearing the sad news about Howard Marks’s death I tweeted "Is Tom Johnston still doing cartoons for The Sun? got a good 1. Howard Marks getting into Heaven, smoking spliff, flying without angel wings”. Clearly I was taking the piss out of the lazy comedy stylings of the 1990s tabloid cartoonist - combining what I remember were his two favourite tropes: people on drugs fly several feet off the ground plus a recently deceased celeb arriving at the Pearly Gates. This would certainly be clear to anyone familiar with my work, but even if you aren’t, I think it’s clearly not a joke that I am claiming as my own. Or that I think is good.
But a journalist at the Times wasn’t bothered about that, choosing to end a news item about the death by quoting the last bit of that tweet, but not the first. Making it look like I think that would be a genuine tribute. I don’t know why they would want to quote me at all when there were plenty of more serious tributes from people who knew the man well. But ironic that a joke about lazy comedy should be picked up and used by a lazy journalist.
In Newcastle this morning we had a super late check out and I managed to do some exercise and pop into the city to pay in my Scope money. I sat in Pret a Manger and had a coffee and was thinking about my family and how much I missed them and I started to get a bit teary. It’s horrible being away from them, but it strikes me most in quieter moments. How embarrassing to be sitting in Pret with tears in my eyes, just because I was in love with a piece of my own sexcrement. Touring was much easier when I had no one and when my tears would come in private in my lonely hotel room as I wondered why I was so alone and why no one wanted to see my shows. That was an honest kind of unhappiness.
But now, crying because of love. What a terrible state of affairs. I wish I had no one and was alone again and I could just cry out of self pity and not because my heart was being tugged by a tiny hand 300 miles away.
I got over it and I will see my wife and baby (though she’s hardly a baby now - she seems to have aged about two years in four days in the photos I’ve been sent) again very soon. It’s just my wife has a lot to feel responsible for, bringing all this love into a life where I was quite happy being miserably unhappy already.
More good news is that the DVD record in Cardiff on Tuesday is going to be my biggest ever solo show audience and only about 100 ticket sales away from being the biggest show I’ve ever done - We got around about 800 in Brighton once with Lee and Herring, though our sales were usually much, much lower than that. I have played to more at charity events for 10 minutes, but this will be the most people who have seen me do a full show in one room. It includes a few people who’ve won free tickets in a competition and there was an offer on for staff in the venue, but it’s still another great piece of news in a month that has had some very positive occurrences already. It means the theatre should be at least half full, but there’s still room for lots more, so come along if you can. If you can’t afford the ticket then I have a limited number of comps, so get in touch by email or Twitter. Please only contact me if you can definitely come and if you really can’t afford it, as otherwise you may be taking the seat from someone more deserving.
But I knew I could count on the people of Cardiff. I am so excited about this and fearful that I might be overwhelmed by emotion.
As always, my feet are kept on the ground though by the variable nature of touring. Tonight I was in Stoke and thought I might have the smallest crowd of the tour (in the end it was 103 meaning that it just pipped Croydon, but only because I was moved to 100 seater venue in that town and they thus had to turn people away). I hadn’t really been looking forward to it and every time I looked at the map on my phone and saw the ludicrous journey we’d taken over the last couple of days I felt angry. But the 103 people were fucking excellent. The cheer I got as I came on was so loud I thought that maybe we’d sold another 200 tickets on the door and even though the room was a bit echoey and the audience a bit too far away, they were so into it that they lifted me and I improvised loads of new lines and I almost wished we’d done the DVD tonight.
It’s easy to let success go to your head and be arrogant and maybe natural to think, “Why do I have to play to a hundred people when there are 700 tomorrow?” or “Why have I had to drive for eight hours to play a gig that was 10 minutes from the one before last?” But tonight was a reminder that sometimes the small gigs are the ones that mean the most. I met a lot of (if not all) of the audience after the gig and many were properly thrilled to have seen me. And only later did I understand why when Giles the Cannibal told me that this was only the second comedy gig in this venue this year (the Newcastle Stand where I was last night, by contrast, has comedy on seven nights a week). Not many comedians come here -Stoke is near to Birmingham and Manchester, but also to loads of other gigs like Wolves and Stafford of course - so this wasn’t entirely about me (though there were some big fans in the room, as evidenced by the reaction to some of the more obscure references).
This is why a performer needs to play every room as if it’s full and give the best show they can. Because sometimes the best gigs and the ones that matter most are the little ones. Thanks to Stoke for the reminder of this important message and to keep my perspective scope centred.
