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After feeling quite rested and energetic in midweek (I even managed a trip to the gym), a couple of disturbed nights and early wake-ups have left me frayed at the edges. I hadn’t got to sleep very easily last night and Phoebe decided to play up after the feed I gave her in the early hours and apparently the unwritten rule we’ve established is whoever is doing the feed deals with the aftermath. I felt OK for most of the morning and it didn’t seem to affect the show too much. But when I got home I opened the passenger door of the car, leaned in to pick something up and then somehow managed to hit my face against the frame of the door. And then when I was back in the house I walked into the dishwasher door (the dishwasher seems to have a vendetta against me - if I am murdered, check out its alibi), cracking my knee. How do any parents survive this period without crippling or killing themselves? I’ve lost the ability to lean into a car and walk past a dishwasher.
Over 200 tonight in Worthing, which is great news for a town that I haven’t played very often (was the last time really a Lee and Herring tour?) We got into town early again and got a warm welcome at the theatre from very accommodating venue staff. “Do you want the details of the dentists and doctors now?” asked the theatre manager. I was a bit confused. “Your rider said you needed details of local emergency doctors and dentists and masseurs,” she told me, “We thought it was odd, but sometimes comedians want local info for their act, so we’ve made a list."
I had no idea that my rider said this, though to be honest I think my rather over-fastidious original tour manager had put a lot of stuff on there that I don’t need or indeed want. I can only assume whoever put that on there was thinking about health and safety and trying to prepare for the unlikely event that I might be suddenly taken ill, or the unlikelier event that I might suddenly get tooth ache or the even unlikelier event that I might require an emergency massage. None of these things have happened in 20 years of touring and I would imagine if they did that it would take one phone call or visit to google to find what I required. So I was a bit embarrassed that the staff had unnecessarily collated a list for me. I didn’t know if I should take it and attempt to incorporate it into the show. Or whether I should eat some raw seafood, punch myself in the mouth and then bend my own back out of shape so I could use them. Or had someone had a premonition that I would be especially clumsy today and got all this stuff ready? Was the theatre manager actually Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap and Ziggy had told her that there was an 80% chance of a head and knee injury at some point today?
Because if this request has been on my rider the whole tour then Worthing theatre was the first place that had bothered to find out the information for me. As glad as I am that no one else wasted their time, what the fuck guys? It was on the fucking rider. Where’s my list of masseuses in Farnham and emergency dentists in Chorley you lazy fuckers?
I am sure this incident made me look like an eccentric and insane diva. It’s worse than colour requests for M&Ms. But the manager laughed it off. If she was annoyed by me seemingly treating her time as if it was like pig excrement to me, she didn’t show it.
I got a flavour of Worthing from my dressing room, as several times I heard loud and strange conversations from people outside, like radio plays put on for an audience of one. The first was a furious man, shouting at someone on his phone. He sounded like he wanted to punch the next person he saw, for an undisclosed, though guessable reason. “I am coming up there on the train right now,” he threatened, “And it he’s still there I will fucking kill him.” What excitement. Later there was a sitcom about car parking as a couple asked a stranger if they could park in the carpark for free after 6 and thought they’d been told they could, and only just in time found out they couldn’t. It wasn’t exactly my sense of humour. I preferred the scary play. I wonder if any murders happened in Worthing tonight (or anywhere within train commute). Lots of fun Worthing facts today including that it’s home to the UK’s largest manufacturers of professional oboes. I suggested it might also be the only one and made up to three oboes a year. The audience seemed reticent to start with, but some technical mishaps (perhaps revenge for my over fussy rider) meant that I couldn’t be heard doing the introduction. And I think I won them round (if they weren’t won round at the start). A beautiful theatre and John Barron who played CJ in Reggie Perrin used to be the assistant manager there. I wonder how much attention he paid to the riders. I didn’t get where I am today by finding out the details of emergency masseuses.
Retro video RHLSTP with Mark Thomas is now up for free in these various places -
