I guess there is some rest for the wicked.
But whilst God puts his feet up on a Sunday, I kick back on a Tuesday (this week at least). And I looked at what I have done and I saw that it was childish.
I made the sensible decision not to do any work today (though there is still much to do) and stayed in bed until 1pm. I was still tired even then, but thought I should get up in order to avoid becoming nocturnal.
But I woke up to find that the AIOTM
pixies had done their work and the show was up and being downloaded already. It was back up to number 7 in the iTunes podcast charts and the feedback was good ( Here's a review from super-nerd/stalker fan Andy McH). If you enjoy this free podcast and can't get down to London on a Monday night or can't afford to buy the Secret stand up disc, then it would be terrific if you would spread word of this podcast to any of your friends who you think might like it. There is no budget for PR and so we do depend on word of mouth. Incredibly the Edinburgh podcast we did was downloaded by over 50,000 people and it would be terrific if we could build on that. I like the show being a little bit of a secret, something that belongs to a relatively small amount of nerds, but let's let a few more nerds into the secret. I am doubtful that it will ever break into the mainstream. Though fingers crossed that the new Pippa Middleton based character might be the one to get me on Saturday night ITV.
Another thing doing the rounds on Twitter today was a link to a site called Letters of Note, which had printed up a missive I penned back in 1994. Right from the beginning, even before the internet was king, Stew and me were very keen to be interactive with our fans. We had both been fans of stuff as kids and though I don't think I had ever written to anyone, Stew had once written to the Fall and got a postcard back and it had been a treasured possession. So somewhat crazily we made an attempt to reply to everyone who wrote to us by hand. Which became something of a Herculean task, certainly once we were on television. I remember spending about a month working through the letters that came after the second series of Fist of Fun and hardly doing anything but that.
It was a crazy thing to do in many ways, but also rather sweet of us. I do still try to respond to all my emails (at least the first time people write to me and if they aren't threatening me with death), but to do it all by hand was quite a commitment. It's easier to respond these days and in a way I prefer the lack of immediacy that snail mail had. It certainly meant the more obsessive writers were pegged back a little bit. Nowadays I can reply to a tweet or an email immediately and end up in a long conversation with a troll or a more nutty correspondent. It was possibly easier to spot the more erratic and unbalanced people via their handwriting, but I am pretty good at recognising the writing style of people who are worth being wary of nowadays.
Some of the people who wrote to us back then have gone on to be colleagues or friends. One future comedian wrote to us about four times a week as I sometimes like to remind them to their mild embarrassment.
In this particular letter Stewart has gone to some length to answer lots of specific questions that the young man asked us and I have amusingly added "I have no interest in you or your life, Love Richard Herring", which I think was taken in the spirit in which it was intended. It made me laugh to see it again. And for it to be spread around to so many people in such an immediate way.
Tomorrow is another very full day with a regular Collings and Herrin podcast in the morning, then down to the Leicester Square Theatre to shoot DVD extras all afternoon, then the DVD of COAB in the evening, followed by a live Collings and Herrin podcast which won't go out online, but will be filmed exclusively as a DVD extra. The Christ on a Bike part of the evening is sold out. But if you are allowed out late on a schoolnight you can still get tickets to Collings and Herrin here.
There's only a couple of weeks to get your name or an advert in the What Is Love Anyway programme. I am amazed as always by how generous people have been already, but obviously the more money we can make the better. So do donate here if you can afford to. As long as you donate at least £12.50 and send me your address you will get a limited edition programme mailed to you when they're ready. Which one day might be worth thousands of pounds (programme value can go down as well as up) So everyone is a winner.
