Though some residual grumpiness made it through with me today, in the afternoon I managed to make some progress on the script (I am still only about a quarter of the way through, but hopefully the rest will come a lot easier now I've got the start almost sorted) and felt a lot happier. Either the ups and downs of writing to a deadline mimic the effects of manic depression or make you a manic depressive, I don't know which it is yet. Was Spike Milligan driven mad by the pressure of coming up with a Goon Show on a weekly basis, or was it his madness that drove him to be able to achieve that? Is it possible to thrive off something that is also killing you? It makes for a fascinating job and I enjoy playing chicken with mental illness, but hope that one of these days I don't linger in front of that juggernaut for a second too long.
Or maybe I have already. I probably wouldn't know.
You don't have to be mad to be a comedian, but everyone is so far.
When writing comes more easily I can't help beat myself up for all the time wasted. Why couldn't I just sit down and write something every day on the tour. Even if I just managed a sentence a day I would probably have had the thing finished in time. But that's not how it works, as much as I wish it was. It has always been this way (as you'll know if you've read this blog for a while) and I doubt that it will change. The deadline creates the inspiration. As you'll see from the end of
this interview with Graham Linehan, I am not alone in this.
So the fact that I am going to try and press on with the writing of the script tomorrow and start work on AIOTM 3:5 (and video myself covered in flour apologising to Diana Dors) is probably a good thing. I have a little tingle of excitement running through my veins now about the TV script. It feels like it could be really good. Yet I've had this feeling before and then had to deal with the knock back from the commissioners. It's hard putting your heart and your sanity on the line, but today I felt like doing that rather than punching Andrew Collings in the face and then running away to live on a croft (I still felt like punching Collings to be honest, but not the running away bit, so that's progress).
Weirdly enough whilst working on my script, today someone accidentally emailed me their script (if only it had been about cave guides I could have taken it as a gift from Heaven and submitted it myself). I don't quite know how they had sent it in error as the person who sent it was not someone I knew, but they had clearly cced it to everyone in their address book, rather than the cast and crew. I had to think quite hard to make sure it wasn't something I had expressed an interest in before, but I emailed the person back and they admitted it was an error. No big deal in itself. But then an email arrived from Francoise Pascal. This name rang a big bell and before I opened it I was thinking, "Hold on, isn't that the incredibly sexy French woman from the incredibly racist 1970s sitcom "Mind Your Language"? Why is she emailing me?"
I had loved Mind Your Language as a child, in those unreconstructed days when it was OK to laugh at foreigners because they were different. But even pre-puberty I was smitten by the unbelievably gorgeous Pascal and if you are not aware of her work then
here's a couple of hundred reasons why any red blooded heterosexual male would be enamoured with her.
Was this really from her? If I could explain the internet to the 11 year old me, then he would be amazed to think that this sultry temptress would ever actually attempt to contact me. Why was she contacting me anyway? Has she spent the last 35 years working, one by one through the list of all the people who fancied her, sending them messages, first by post and now using the internet to thank them for their interest in her as a sexual fantasy? How did she know who to contact? Or did she just correctly assume that any heterosexual man or lesbian woman (and most straight women and gay men) would be enamoured with her? Whatever the case I appreciated her efforts and looked forward to seeing what she had to say to me. Even though she must now be in her 60s, if she was offering a date I would have to accept.
As it turned out though, she had also received the email with the script (correctly in her case as she's obviously down to play one of the parts) and had merely replied all to express her excitement about reading it over the weekend. But still, fuck it. I have an email from Francoise Pascal and you don't. So who is the winner. It is me.
And I also have her email address too. I could send her a message or pictures of myself whenever I liked.
Which is probably as good an advertisement for being careful with ccing or in fact using the bcc facility at all times.
Tonight as I had a rare night off from gigging we headed out for some food and a movie. We have Vietnamese food and it was only when I was halfway through eating that I realised the dish contained loads of bean sprouts. But I kept eating anyway, viewing this as a half-hearted suicide attempt, which would at least get me out of my writing commitments (though I have subsequently learned that the bean sprouts take about 8 days to kill you, so it just means that the last week of my life will be spent writing - so I double lose).
This bean sprout ecoli thing does suggest to me that if there is a God He has a great sense of humour. Because we weak and ludicrous human beings spend our whole lives worrying about dying in a plane crash or in a terrorist atrocity, fretting about these unlikely occurrences and wasting valuable time in fear and misery... and then you end up dying because you ate some bean sprouts. You just wouldn't see that coming would you? You'd never even have considered it. It's so unexpected and surprising that it's perfect comedy. You couldn't have anticipated it. God must be pissing Himself when you get up there. "You were worried about smoking cigarettes or going paragliding or getting in a plane, but I got you with the bean sprouts. You never saw it coming. Come on, it's funny. They're not even enjoyable to eat. They add next to nothing to a dish. Your food would have been pretty much the same without them. But now you're dead. I kill Myself!"
