I have been weirdly relaxed about AIOTM (AIOTM) for the last two weeks, despite leaving it later than ever. In the past the pressure has really stressed me out, but I have remained calm in the face of the terror of failure this month. I had a little but written to start me off, but dumped one of the nearly completed sketches (the Alan Sugar one) because I thought it crossed over too much with the one about Johnny Vaughan. Progress was steady, but as late as 2pm (the script needs to be printed up at 3.30) I was still a sketch and an ending down. But I had a brainwave and reordered things and within the hour I had something resembling a completed script. This seat of the pants writing is very exciting and without the agitation and nausea of nerves it is almost enjoyable. Having got through last week anything was going to seem easy by comparison, even if at 2 o clock I had been pretty certain that I was going to come up short, with an abrupt ending. When we got to the reading it seemed the stuff I had written last were the funniest bits. That, it seems, is typical.
I wasn't sure about much of the script after the read through, but have done this enough now to know that that means nothing. I had an interview to do so only limited time to do revisions, but still I kept cool and collected about the whole thing. I have accepted, I think, that this show can only be whatever it is and I don't have to beat myself up if it's not fantastic. Weirdly, this permission to fail seems to make the shows much stronger.
I had a lot of fun in the non-broadcast stand up section, letting the audience take me in different directions and coming up with stories about the places they lived. Fortuitously I spoke to a German man just after I had done a routine about Pope Benedict's Nazi past. It's great when it all falls into your lap. Annoyingly my riff about Lord Sugar's fish and chips joke went extremely well. I wished allowed that I had put it in the script, but funnily enough I think it was the improvised nature of the routine that made it really work. I am delighted to be working so well on the hoof and not to be getting phased by the fear of having little definite to say in these stand up bits. I am becoming the kind of stand up I always wanted to be.
Despite my pre match worries the podcast itself rocked along, thanks in part to great improvisations from the cast, who I am lucky to get at the price I am getting them for. The room was pretty much full and our audience really seem to be on board with the project now. Maybe we will go out on a high after episode 22 in a fortnight, or maybe we will do more after the tour. Not sure yet. There were some TV and radio people in tonight, so who knows where things might go?
I had to head home pretty quickly as me and my real girlfriend are going to Prague for a few nights tomorrow. I think I have probably earned a 4 day break. My schedule is a lot less busy until December now, which is good news for my mental health, but now it's all nearly over I feel like it was all worth the pain.
You can listen to the poocast ( as it mainly turns out to be) in the usual places.
