That was a bit of a full day then.
Not having totally recovered from the first AIOTM
, today I had to do a regular Collings and Herrin podcast, DVD extras for Christ on a Bike, record the show for posterity and then do another live Collings and Herrin podcast for a DVD extra. It almost seems like I am trying to see how much work I can do before my brain actually explodes. It is very, very nice to be busy and fantastic that stuff is going so well, but shit, today was tough.
I woke up early and thought I might as well try and get together all my props for the show, as well as search out bits and pieces to give to Chris Evans (not that one) for potential extras. I filled a jiffy bag with CDs, SD cards and a memory stick full of pictures and audio files. And I gathered all the props and put them in my bag. I almost forgot the printed email about all the people who had mocked God, but luckily picked it up at the last moment and added it to the bag.
Collings arrived at 11 and we went upstairs with pretty much no foreplay and got stuck into each other in the attic. We managed to discussed the subjectivity (or not) of what makes someone more attractive than someone else and the lies that are necessary to make love work. I tried to show Andrew Collings my arse, which I believe is objectively the most attractive one on the planet earth, but he wouldn't look at it, because he is too repressed and afraid of what might happen if he sees me nude. I think the Tascam recorder is so good that despite only being audio it will give you an idea of how beautiful my 43 year old buttocks are. Tune in here to find out.
I think we did a pretty good job, especially given that I should have been a bit preoccupied. But we didn't have too much time to think about it as even before the file had been sent to Orange Mark (who was on his death bed with what some doctors are claiming might be scurvy) we were in a cab with Reliable Pete and heading for the Leicester Square theatre, leaving my laptop and yousendit to deliver the file.
Chris Evans (not that one) and his band of merry idiots were waiting at the theatre, but we pretty much immediately headed off for lunch. For some reason we were trusting non Londoner Evans to take us to a good restaurant. He wanted to go to Bistro 1, but didn't know where it was. According to my iPhone it was on Brewer St, but when we got there that turned out to be a delicatessen that was shut down and had a window piled up with broken bits of plaster and other detritus from a renovation. There was another possible Bistro 1 on Beak St, but we were getting tired and further from the venue so we went to Wagamama's where we ate heartily. So much so that I just wanted to go to sleep.
Eventually back at the theatre we recorded a few extras - me and Andrew discussing some of the issues and reading out some of the complaint letters about the show. I also tried to beat my Personal Best at Yahtzee. I realised that in the rush I had left my jiffy bag of other extras at home, though rang my girlfriend to bring it along. I also did some running repairs to the "God is not mocked" email that has become my new set piece. The sheets of paper had become ripped so I sellotaped them back together. Perhaps I should have been surprised that the damage was not as bad as remembered, but I was already flagging and had other things to think about.
It's pretty nerve wracking doing the DVD of any show. This is the performance that sets the show in stone. Any mistakes or oversights will remain forever. I was pretty terrified that I would mess up the memory bits, which I have done perfectly every single date of the tour (I last screwed them up during the London run), so it would be typical if this was the day it all went wrong.
It was incredibly hot on stage and though the show was sold out a problem on the tubes had left a few gaps and quite a few people were late. Some nights I have felt entirely in command of the show, but tonight I had too much to think about and it was incredibly hot and though I don't think anyone else would be able to spot the difference I felt just a tiny beat off the pace of the show. But I was bound to be hypercritical just because of the nature of this show. And of course I wanted it to be as brilliant as possible.
Uncharacteristically I did slightly dry at one point, but it was quite funny and I managed to find my way back and sweatiness aside the first half flew by pretty quickly with few major errors. Because of constrictions of time there wasn't going to be a proper interval which meant I had to keep the energy up. I was going to do one complaint letter as people went to the toilet and had decided to do the longer complaint letter as an encore. It has got pretty long and started unbalancing the show a bit and I wanted to give the genealogy bit a proper chance.
But queues for the toilets were so long that I decided to do it in the interval instead. But I didn't make a great job of it. I forgot a couple of bits and then when I turned to page 3 of the email I discovered it wasn't there. This shouldn't really have been a problem, as I know it all off by heart, but the routine is very much about referring to the written word and it did throw me off. I made some cracks about this being the kind of thing a God with a sense of humour would do to get me back for my cheek. I tried to soldier on but was annoyed that it wasn't quite perfect and as this wasn't actually part of the show I decided to go backstage for the missing part, but it wasn't there. So I tried to push onwards, but I had lost heart a bit and realised that in any case I had missed out a couple of crucial bits. Everyone was back in their seats, so I bailed out of it. It was like God had made an edit to the show, agreeing with me that it was actually better without this lengthy interruption, but I was annoyed that I had fucked one of my favourite bits up. There are plenty of audio recordings of the routine though, so it should make it on to the DVD.
Andrew came out to do the clapperboard for the second half and tripped over the box with contains the secret surprise pyro explosion and then said "What is that? Why is that even there?" Which might have done something to spoil the surprise! He really is a fucking idiot.
And at least I didn't fuck up the memory part. I think it was a good show. But I am not the person to say. It's never going to be as good as I would hope it should be. But it's awesome to know that whatever happens (aside from the world ending on Saturday, which is a possibility) that the show will not continue to live on, even after its death.
Then there was still the matter of the live podcast, but actually once the tension of the proper show was over this was rather good fun. We had a couple of beers as we did it and invited questions from the audience (the venue was over half full despite the lateness of the hour) and given we'd both done so much already that day it was full of fun and good ideas and the audience were very funny too (we made the rookie error of handing around a microphone which meant they were hecklers with their own amplification systems. But luckily they were all pretty funny. But if you want to find out what happened you will have to buy the DVD from gofasterstripe when it comes out, because this will be part of an exclusive bonus disc not available on the version in the shops.
The next couple of months is going to filled with days like these and I have a lot still to do.
But thanks to everyone at gofasterstripe and the Leicester Square theatre and Reliable Pete and even Andrew Collings for getting me through one more of the tough days. Everything went by in a bit of a blur for me. If only someone had taped it.
