Always lovely to be based in Cheddar for a few days during the tour: I get to spend time with my folks, free room and food (though I have paid for it over the years by being a brilliant son, bringing pleasure to my parents - I didn't ask to be born), short drives to gigs and daytimes in the countryside. We had run round the reservoir yesterday, though didn't feel up to it today (I have a bit of a sore throat and cough after straining my voice, which has held up remarkably well over the tour), so instead went for a walk up the gorge.
Although Gorgeous isn't 100% dead as a project, it's looking unlikely and it made me a bit sad to think that had it been green lit then it might have helped bring tourists to this beautiful place. And I know it's a Monday and the schools have gone back but the place looked like it could do with some more business. I hope that one day I can write something that will be filmed in my home town- I have quite a few ideas, so you never know. Decisions made by individuals in rooms miles away can have a huge impact on thousands of lives. I am only sorry that Cheddar has not got a more worthy chronicler. But I have managed to locate a copy of the insane book written by nineteenth century eccentric Rowland Pavey on the internet - he believed he could fly and tried to find his own cave using dynamite, eventually managing to blast a big enough hole to open up to tourists anyway. He's my hero. His book is going to cost me £55, but I am very excited to get my own copy.
The Gorge did look somewhat dilapidated, mainly because the big pub/hotel at its centre is now boarded up - in my day it used to be called the Cliff and there was a disco there, which I occasionally reluctantly attended, fearful of being beaten up by the big boys. It was also the place that I first played Space Invaders, Phil Fry leading me down there after school one day to show me this amazing, futuristic machine, which he had already mastered. I think they are going to build a cable car or something here, in a spooky echo of something I wrote as a joke in my script.
I was reminiscing about all the summer days that I squandered down here in my youth, eating Big Feast lollies and playing video games and basically doing nothing, hoping to meet girls, but never doing so. We walked past the caves up towards the more beautiful part of the gorge, which many visitors miss out on entirely. It's breathtaking in its scale and just such a great location for filming, but I'll stop banging on about it now. Goats and their kids were standing perilously on the cliff edge. We clambered up some step banks to investigate little cracks and fissures ourselves. When I was younger I was hopeful that I might somehow discover a cave that no one else had noticed, though I also suffered from vertigo and often found myself unwilling to descend the steep path that I had climbed. We didn't go too high today, but we found a tiny secret cave, which was quite romantic. And I had a wee in it. Which was less so.
A couple of hundred turned up in Taunton to see me on a Monday, which isn't too shabby. Last night in Bristol the venue had been packed and the crowd were lively and up for it, tonight they were a little more reserved and I was struggling a little bit with my voice, but it was a decent effort and a nice end to this West Country leg of the journey. Even nicer that home was only 30 minutes away and my dad had a bottle of wine open and my mum made me a bacon sandwich.
This is the life.
I can't believe there are only six more performances of this show now. This tour has flown by and been relatively painless. I am in Norwich on Wednesday and Thursday (Weds gig more or less sold out) and Reading on Saturday (sold out), then at the Machynlleth comedy festival on 6th May and returning to the Bloomsbury on 15th and 16th May.
All details are here.
Names are being added to the upcoming Richard Herring Leicester Square Theatre podcasts in May and June - along with Tim Minchin on 7th May and Stewart Lee on 18th June, we now have Charlie Higson on 21st May and Charlie Brooker on 28th May. Book now as those first two gigs sold out within hours. It's a very reasonable £12.50 a ticket too -
Book here. I am aiming for more big names for the remaining three shows. Really looking forward to these, they should be awesome. They will be available to listen to for free on iTunes and the British Comedy Guide.
