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I’ve been sitting on some news for a good while, but during Edinburgh I met up with some of the people from Kickstarter who told me that they were adding a subscription wing to their services and wanted 100 of their more successful users worldwide to try it out before it became available to everyone.
Obviously we already have our own subscription service in the
form of monthly badgers (and that is still very much up and running), but as we have a relationship with Kickstarter and they have a bit more reach in terms of bringing people in, we thought it was worth a go.
So we’ve come up with a package which allows you to help us make more podcasts, but also get some extras in return. Like the badgers you will get entered into our monthly draw and get access to all the backstage interviews we’ve ever done (and the new ones as they come in), plus the long episodes of As It Occurs To Me and a few other bits and pieces. But you’ll also get to watch/download all my stand up shows (we’ll be releasing one every couple of months) and to take part in an online question and answer session with me every now and again. And if you sign up in the first month you will become a founder member and also get pdfs of lots of my books and entry into a draw for the Lannister notebook I used for many series of RHLSTP - it sold on eBay for over £700 but the winning bidder didn’t end up paying for it, so we still have it. It’s signed by nearly every guest from that period and has my emergency questions in the back.
I am also thinking of making some bonus audio podcasts only available to Drippers and Badgers.
If you fancy those extras and are already a badger then feel free to stop your badger money and change over to
Drip, but we are keeping both going.
It's mildly complex to cancel your badger sub, but this is what you do
Login to your paypal account
Click ‘Activity’
Click on the most recent ‘Go Faster Stripe’ payment
Click on ‘Manage Go Faster Stripe payments’
Clicked ‘Cancel’
If it worked, you'll get an email confirming
Both systems end up losing about the same amount of money to either paypal or kickstarter, though obviously if you’re paying under three pounds a month, then Drip is better for us! (and it’s £3 plus whatever local taxes are applicable, so in the UK you will have to pay VAT on top).
I have no idea if Drip will work for us, although we quickly became the most successful of the 100 people who are on it so far. If you haven’t been paying and think that the podcasts are worth the cost of a cup of fancy coffee a month (or under one pound per podcast) and want to see all the extra stuff,
then please join us
The Frog and Bucket had put me up at the usual hotel. It’s a nice one, but not a super luxury one. Which is fine by me. That is just some info for the upcoming observation.
At breakfast the staff seemed to be struggling a bit to cope with demand. This happens at certain times at most hotels, but the queue was building and there seemed to be plenty of empty tables and I suspected that they were just short-staffed. I would have been happy to sit at a table that hadn’t been fully cleared, as I just wanted to grab some coffee and a snack before I got my train. Everyone was pretty patient.
I got a table after five minutes and was next to a portly businessman who seemed a bit annoyed. He called over one of the waiting staff, who was already a bit fraught with all the delays. The man hadn’t yet received his scrambled eggs. The staff member apologised profusely, but the man was dispassionate and annoyed.
Minutes later she returned with his eggs, but he still rolled his eyes as if he’d been subjected to the greatest of humiliations. There were more apologies, but they were not accepted and the slightly frazzled woman did mention that scrambled eggs were now available on the buffet (without shouting in his face, "So you could have got them yourself you entitled cunt,” which showed admirable restraint). But the man wasn’t done and asked for a pepper grinder. Even though there was pepper available on the tables he wanted to grind fresh pepper on to his eggs. Surely he was taking the piss. It would have been a bit embarrassing to do this at dinner in this middle-range hotel, but no one does this at breakfast apart from the Queen. If he’d wanted a pepper grinder he should have stayed at Buckingham Palace.
Although they were still trying to seat hungry people the lady had to go on a search for a pepper grinder and when she couldn’t find one bother her manager, who said that there was one somewhere but he’d have to go and look for it. The businessman didn’t say, “Oh sorry, I don’t want to be a bother. Just this once I will have some pepper that has been previously ground, “ but allowed them to go on a pepper mill search. If I ran the hotel I would definitely have said, “Listen mate, you’re being a prick. Here’s your money back for the room, now fuck off. No you can’t go back up to get your stuff. We’re going to have it thrown into the street. You have misjudged both your own importance and the calibre of this hotel and you must be punished.”
This is probably why I don’t run a hotel.
