I have, I think it's fair to say, limited appeal to the Great British public. I don't need Pointless to tell me that. I am fine with this, largely because I have managed to achieve the giddy heights of limited appeal from a position where I was more or less repelling everyone. If you've been reading this from the start (or have bought Bye Bye Balham in book or ebook form) then you will remember some of those gigs from a decade ago. I haven't forgotten how you treated me Carlisle and when I am the fascist dictator of this country you ambivalent fuckers are going down. Unless you can produce a ticket stub proving you came to that show.
Anyway, I have tried to cultivate an audience by hook or by crook. They've proved ineffective tools for the purpose. You'd think people who'd been hooked in a hook or a crook would respect you. They don't. If anything the hook/crook combo only demeans them. They resent being crooked into a venue and sometimes the hook pierces skin. Little Bo Peep and Captain Hook managed to become successful despite these handicaps, but they didn't work for me.
So then I tried doing shows I thought were good so people would tell their friends, which worked better, and then podcasts which brought me even more of an audience. And in ten short years I can usually expect over a hundred people to see me in every town I go to. The graph is straight, but I need to go exponential as I don't have too many tours left in me.
I am no Michael McIntyre, but I am making a living and I am quite proud that I've improved my fortunes via hard work, if you ignore that whole hook/crook period, which I think we should gloss over after all this time and all I'll say about the law suits is that they are flimsy at best. The people who got hooked in the face just weren't watching where they were going. Of course, now some of them never will be able to watch where they're going again. And even though I have offered to personally guide them for 5 hours a day using my crook, their responses and demands for money have been offensive to me.
I think what I am trying to say is that I still need help to ensure I get an audience, especially in towns like Bournemouth and Monmouth (not just the mouths, but maybe there is a pattern - a mouth's a mouth) where I will be for the next two nights. Yesterday someone told me that if you tried to book tickets on-line for Bournemouth a message came up that the page was not recognised. Most of my fans are too socially awkward to talk on a telephone and would rather be crooked in the genitals than buy tickets face to face, so the internet error was a cause for concern.
Today the mistake seemed to have been rectified, but when you clicked on "Buy Tickets" the site took you to the page for weird Irish crooner, Daniel O' Donnell (Stew and me had once had the same dressing room at a theatre the day after he'd been there and the bin was full of his fan mail - maybe he'd read it all and replied or maybe he'd just petulantly thrown it away, not caring a jot for the desperate fans who have made him what he is today - a weird Irish crooner). This was not good. What if my fans went to see Daniel O'Donnell instead of me, by mistake. Actually that would be quite funny. But what if his fans were coming to see me. At least I might sell out. But be murdered shortly after arriving on stage by furious hormonal women, upset by my mission to destroy love.
Luckily some sterling work from the theatre, my management and a nice Bournemouth based man on Twitter the mistake was rectified before it could rip the fabric of the Universe apart.
We will have to wait to see how ticket sales are affected. I think it might be a quiet couple of days for me, but there are some big sell outs on the horizon, confirming once and for all my reputation as the nearly man. Not quite good enough to be Pointless.
I had loads of errands and a trip to Staples to buy a board for DVD prices nearly got me trapped like a budgie tapping at itself in the mirror. I love stationery and bought more pens than I could use in a lifetime (luckily I will lose most of them, making my purchase valid). I had to go out to a film screening in the early evening, but was keen not to break my chain of exercising. I discovered it's quite good to go for a run when you don't quite have enough time to do it. It means you absolutely can't slow down or stop and walk. I did a good 35 minute run, kept up my chain and was only 15 minutes late meeting my girlfriend. This is how to get fit, fatsos! (I am still fat though - not fair).
