A bit of a blast from the past day today, mainly because I was doing the show in my home town, Cheddar, realising, as I did it that some of the people mentioned in it, or more frighteningly their children, might be in the audience. How would Sally Waites or her offspring react to finding out that a fairly insignificant event from her childhood was now a story being told to thousands of strangers? I did mention how weird that was in the show, but there was no massive reaction so suspect she will remain oblivious. But it's an odd thing to think about.
Similarly with Tom, the real life young man who I wrote my pompous and judgemental poem about in 1986. He is out there somewhere, unaware of his mild fame - but even if he saw the show he would probably not recognise that he was being discussed. I think Tom might have been Austrian, but I have no evidence of that except for a vague feeling that that was the case (I could probably find out from my diary actually). How would he feel if he knew he was being discussed 25 years on? Are his ears burning every night? Like surely his cock must have been burning back in the 1980s after all the sex that I was imagining that he was having - though he probably wasn't.
Of course when I come home there are a few familiar and vaguely familiar faces in the crowd and afterwards I have to wrack my brain to try and put a name to the face that I haven't seen since 1984. And which isn't quite the same as it was back then for some reason. Time quake alert.
Coincidentally as I was sitting in the dressing room, Andy Reilly (author of the Bunny Suicides amongst many other things) tweeted a
picture of the Oxford Revue Workshop from 1989. This was the fortnightly comedy club that was put on when I was at University, where Lee and Herring (with others including Emma Kennedy and Mike "Devon" Cosgrave) first performed comedy together. Many other future comedy stars would grace that tiny stage at the time, including Armando Iannucci, Dave Schneider, Al Murray and Ben Moor. Andy clearly took this picture from the stage during one of the gigs and it is disconcerting to be whisked back in time in this way, to a place that looks a certain way in your imagination, but rather different in the photo. It is a long time ago, but the people and the fashions look like they come from another century. And they do. But they look like they come from another century other than the 20th one. It's hard to pick out individual faces, though I recognise Andy "Game On" Ferraris on the left (some people on Twitter remarked that he looked like Richard Madeley) - he just said "Game On" a lot, he wasn't involved in the TV show of the same name. Weirdly I thought I also recognised Phil Fry and Fiona Pope, but they were at school with me, not at University, so it's not actually them, just others with similar long-forgotten haircuts. And sitting on the floor, that looks a bit like Rob Sedgebeer, but he'd have been about 10 at the time, I guess, so unless he travelled back in time I don't think it's him. In the second row on the right is Tom Baker (not that one) who I can only look at with shame, because around that time, when I was drunk I smashed up a copy of a tape he'd made of his self-penned angsty songs and threw it in the river. It seemed like a funny thing to do at the time, as we had judged the songs as not very good, but it was actually a horrible act of arrogance and thoughtlessness. It's hardly the Bullingdon Club, but it speaks of the same youthful certainty in self.
And who is that behind the bar, either deep in thought or picking his nose? It's a 21 year old arrogant Richard Herring. Looking into his future, wondering what will become of him, as I look back at him now, knowing things that he can't know, yet unable to reach back and tell him. The first thing I would tell him is to stop watching the comedy and start talking to the pretty girl, sitting beneath the bar, only feet away from him. But he was too stupid or shy to notice her. The second thing would be not to smash up Tom Baker's cassette tape, unless he had done that already. The third thing would be not to worry too much about my imminent Finals as they would have little impact on my future life. The fourth thing would be that he should kill Stewart Lee now, whilst he was still weak, for the good of future society.
But that is by the by - it was strange to see how tiny that room was and how old all those people will be now. Because University comedy was so unfashionable and hated at the time I am not really sure that anyone has noted how many influential comedy figures emerged from that three year period at Oxford. Someone tweeted me to say the comedy cellar was still going now - I hope that's the case. Kudos to Tony Brennan - the ambassador who this time last week was really spoiling us with Ferrero Rocher chocolates - who created this venue. Who knows how different the future would have been for that young idiot at the bar without it?
The show in Cheddar meanwhile went really well - sometimes in the past I think my shows have maybe been a bit close to the knuckle for my home town, but tonight there was only the odd gasp of disbelief. My dad was there, as was my wife of a week and my mum dashed in during the second half (she'd been performing in a choir herself tonight) and it added an extra frisson to have the people I was talking about all in the room together, as well as being fun watching the rest of the audience straining to see their reaction when they were mentioned. My voice went a bit funny during the passage about my grandma, but I didn't break down as I usually do when there are family in, so that's something.
The theatre had bought us a bottle of champagne to celebrate our first week of marriage and my wife was called up on stage to receive it. My townsfolk seemed to approve, which was fortunate as had they not liked her she would have been thrown in the local duck pond and drowned. And if anyone is going to throw her in a pond...
It was a very sweet gesture though. Cheddar is the best place in the world.
