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Monday 19th March 2018

5592/18612

On we go.
My day started at 4.30am with a smiling baby. I managed to get him back to sleep eventually, but just as I drifted off the other little cock woke up. I call her a cock because the minute she sees light outside she’s crowing that it’s morning. And there’s no convincing her to go back to sleep. But still I wasn’t tired. Or I have just got used to being tired.
Still this was going to be a fun day, watching  Maria Bamford shows all day and then getting to meet and talk to this remarkable human and comedian. And then the equally fascinating Sophie Willan.
I hadn’t really got into Lady Dynamite the first time I started watching it (and I think episode one is not quite representative of what is to come) but it’s pretty much always true that I haven’t liked the comedy shows that are now my favourites the first time I saw them. A new comedy should be confusing and discombobulating and even rub you up the wrong way. And my first impression (that it was funny but a bit too kooky) was incorrect. It wasn’t funny and wasn’t kooky enough. No, it was very funny and the more you watch, the more it makes sense. Or at least the more you understand the world that Maria lives in. It’s highly recommended if you haven’t seen it. As is her Netflix Special Old Baby, which remarkably is filmed in front of a variety of audiences, starting with an audience of one (Maria’s husband). The finale song is one of the best things I’ve ever seen.
Thankfully the beyond kooky and loveable Maria that you see on TV is pretty much what you get off stage too. She is the most unaffected comedian I think I’ve ever met. She had missed her plane yesterday and I thought she’d have to cancel, but she still turned up today, even though her family were all off to the theatre. Just her and her backpack. We fell into easy conversation and she was charming to everyone, even when incompetent sound man George blurted out his admiration for her and foisted a comic he’s been working on on her. 
In spite of her having just got in on the plane and me being baby-lagged the podcast zinged along and there was some enjoyable riffing and some serious chat about psychosis.
Sophie Willan also risked killing me by getting me up and dancing at the start of the podcast, but although there was much laughter we also had a serious chat about growing up in and out of care and whether comedy can be therapeutic. 
And between the shows the news came in that I have won the Chortle Internet award for this show. I had thought of sending along another comedian to pick up the award, if I won, but Michael Legge suggested I ask long-term supporter and occasionally podcast contributor Andy McH. I wrote him a small speech, but he never got to deliver it. It was "Richard can’t be here tonight because he is performing his award-winning podcast. I am Andy and I am a terminally ill fan who won a competition to collect tHIS award. I didn’t know I was terminally ill until I read this. But they thought this would be the best way to break it to me. Rich says thanks to everyone who voted and to Chris Evans (not that one) and Ben Walker. RHLSTP”
I was praying I wouldn’t win the book award, as my stupid tossed off pamphlet was clearly the fourth best of the bunch and luckily it went to a deserving winner, Robert Webb. Here’s what I would have had Andy say if we had won and if he had had an opportunity to speak "Having read the other three books which are all brilliant, this is definitely a horrible error. One of my questions is “how do you spell diahorreah?” I mean come on. Just objectively wrong! But thanks to everyone who voted for me, everyone who funded the podcasts by buying it and to Chris Evans (not that one) for doing all the hard work and Stefhan Caddick who designed it."


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