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I was having my personal training session in the studio at the gym, just me and my trainer Ally were there, which was lucky for me as I was sweatily slipping off of one of those big exercise balls (which I like to imagine are unemployed actors from the original Prisoner series- there’s a niche reference). We were joined by another personal trainer and his client, who seemed a little bit familiar. He was Prince Harry from off of the Royal family. I was now exercising only metres away from the future King of England (if Charles, William and George are all taken from us in some kind of terrible accident - fingers crossed. Not because I want a baby to die, just cos Harry would be an awesome king). He didn’t have any bodyguards or anything. I could have rushed him and done him absolutely minimal damage before he and his trainer overpowered me and pummelled me to death. The way that they underestimated my assassin powers was both offensive and correct. Harry is a soldier for Christ’s sake and I am an ageing comedian with just five weeks of personal training. I doubt Prince Harry has ever been in a safer environment in his life. Though if I had known beforehand I could have injected some deadly pathogen into my bloodstream and then flicked some sweat on him. But luckily for Prince Harry I quite like him and don’t want to kill him. So I was mainly just embarrassed that he might look over at me and see my woeful attempts to complete relatively simple exercises. I didn’t get a chance to chat to him, which is a shame as we might have bonded over our shared love of exercise and dressing up as Nazis. Then i remembered that I’d been quite rude about his dad (Prince Charles) in the Metro a couple of weeks ago and I bet Harry reads that on the tube to the gym, so I decided to leave him be.
If he did look across and see me struggling to lift a dumbbell over my head he did not feel the desire to come over and ask me to be his bodyguard, but even at reduced volume I might be an excellent dead weight for him to hide behind if someone started shooting.
Tonight I was at the Cambridge Junction to preview Lord of the Dance Settee. It’s a venue I’ve played on every tour for as long as I can remember and I occasionally slip a preview in here as well. I was on a double bill with Mark Watson so it was a sell-out too. Before the show I put the new programmes out on the seats, as I have done many times before. I wondered how many more years I would be coming here and what the name of future shows would be on the programmes. The passing years marked out in different show programmes draped over the back of seating. Going through the same little routines for different shows. Back in February when I was last here I might have had the show name, but little idea about what I’d be saying. And yet less than five months later I have the makings of the next tour.
It was powerfully hot tonight and I sweated on stage almost as much as I had only metres from Prince Harry. But the crowd stayed with me and it was worth the trip. Another show has magically appeared. I wonder how many more are left inside me. If you cut me open would you find them stored in my brain ready to go? I doubt it. Please don’t try.
Today’s Metro column is here. There's a little treat in there for fans of the Motorcycling Clothing Shop Sketch.
