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I had to do the driving to the Manchester podcast festival myself. I have been lucky enough to have a producer/driver with me for most of this tour and done most of my research on the journey. But today I had to rely on cramming on my lunch break.
I tried to kill two birds with one stone and travelled via Bedford so that I could pick up the snooker table I’d bought on ebay for the live contest on 4th December (I can’t work out if will be better if it’s packed or very poorly attended - both those would be great, but I fear there will too many in to make it funny and too few to make it seem like something that anyone actually likes).
The man selling me this snooker board lived in a very posh Manor House, so I was a bit surprised he was using ebay, but I am glad he did as a new snooker board is about £300 and this one only cost £36. It had looked like it would be super portable from the pictures as it is on folding legs, but it turned out to be super heavy presumably because it’s built on slate. That’s not a massive problem and suggests that I have got myself a bit of a bargain, though to be fair I didn’t really look at the board too much or even check that it would stay up. But if it collapses on the night and crushes one of the Mes to death then at least the fans will be happy. In many ways self-playing snooker is the a modern day version of the Gladiators (the TV show, not the blokes with the lions in the Colosseum).
Anyway I successfully got the board in the car with all my other equipment for today’s podcast and got to Manchester only a little bit late, though struggled to find the venue and went round the ring road a couple of times and considered ending it all just to get out of this Hell.
But I worked it out and soon I was in the Stoller Hall and doing a bit more research and gag writing. And I also signed and numbered the 100 golden packs of Trump cards that are going to the high-end kickstarter investors (still waiting on a few of the other items, so won’t be posted out for a little while).
I had considered setting up the snooker table on stage but we had to carry everything up two flights of stairs and it was definitely too heavy.
Two more interviews in the bag - the one with Janice Connolly (aka Barbara Nice) comes with a pretty big surprise at the end (though you may need to watch the video to grasp the full impact) and Bethany Black was funny and very open about her life and bad luck and good luck, as well as discussing changing attitudes (both good and bad) to the Trans community.
It was only Chris Evans (not that one) and me staying over tonight and he’d booked us into a very posh hotel which would have been close to the venue (had we not switched venues). I wondered if he was finally going to make a move - oh no, I’ve accidentally booked just one room with a double bed - but if that was his plan, he messed it up by accidentally booking two rooms. We had a drink with the promotor and Chris’ son as a wedding party spilled out into the bar. I was wearing my Me1 Snooker T shirt. I did not quite fit in with the glamour of the place.
