A tense and amazing day.
I was making my way into London again, to rehearse the Spam sketch and then perform that and stand up at the Hammersmith Apollo, but first there was the matter of the Blue Square Premier Play-Off final. I didn't have the time to go to Wembley this week and I was also too nervous to be there, so I listened to it on the radio as I drove into town. If York could beat Luton today we'd be back in the Football League. And also more importantly, we'd have beaten Luton, which is always a good feeling. But the thought of losing and spending another year in the Conference was a heart-breaking and (as a York fan) likely possibility. Especially after Luton scored in the first minute.
As sick as that made me feel I was weirdly strangely confident that York could come back. And as I was stuck in traffic on the North Circular the equaliser came and I punched the air like a maniac. I doubted many of the drivers around me were listening to this match so they could have had little idea what was exciting me so much.
I had to drop off some stuff and pick up some other stuff at the house, so was out of radio contact for the beginning of the second half, but got a text from my friend Toby saying that we'd gone 2-1 up. Suddenly a return to the football league became to feel like an actual possibility, but I was ready for the disappointment.
I drove down to Hammersmith listening to the last fifteen minutes of the game. It was tense and terrifying and time was moving ridiculously slowly, but just as I parked up in Hammersmith the final whistle was blown and York City had done an incredible Wembley double - only five non-international teams have played Wembley twice in consecutive weeks and I am not sure if any of them have won both games. I think we should make Wembley our home ground.
I was surprised about how emotional it made me. I have always only been a dabbler when it came to sport, but increasingly York City have become important to me and for them to escape this division (in the right direction) after 8 years of exile was incredible. I knew how unhappy I'd have been if things had gone the other way, so I didn't even feel like taunting the Luton fans who'd been cockily contacting me on Twitter.
Underneath it all though, as much as I was delighted, there was a part of me that didn't know how to feel and was maybe a bit narked about it all. I support York because they're shit and they always let me down so now they're successful they've properly let me down. So I can like them again.
I didn't have any time to swim in the clear blue sea of victory though as I had to get to the theatre to rehearse. Sally Phillips was already there with her young baby (who wasn't going to be in the sketch) and the actor Kevin Eldon soon arrived. I realised later that this was a reunion for the cast of the 1993 Edinburgh show "Richard Herring is Fat". Hopefully the old magic would still be there. None of us were entirely confident that a sketch would work in the middle of a night of stand up and it was rather odd to be reviving
this old skit. Was it funnier now that I was 44 rather than 27? Last night I'd watched a BBC4 show about TV Centre and it made me feel sad both that this place was now closing, but also that we'd spent those years there without ever really realising how lucky we were. I think I assumed that that would all go on forever at the time.
We went to the stage of this massive room to rehearse and tech. I felt nervous about it. On the plus side the sketch was short so if it didn't work we'd be off soon enough!
Slowly the other acts started to arrive. I'd been worried that Ben Elton might have heard the many offensive things I've said about him, but he was pleasant enough and charmingly jittery about doing stand up and returning to a venue that he hadn't played for 20 years.
I hadn't had much time to think about my stand up set and I was going to be the first act, following Ben Elton who was the MC. I hadn't had the time to feel any nerves about this part of the show, though it perhaps hit me a little bit as I stepped out in front of about 3000 people. My voice cracked on the fifth or sixth word and I worried that the audience might pick up on my fear and destroy me, but I pushed onwards, got a big laugh for my first gag and then gradually started to relax and enjoy it. I've only ever done short spots on this stage and I think I've nearly always gone on first, which can be a hard spot to do, before the audience has warmed up, but in the end I had a bit of a cracker. Ben Elton was very complimentary if not a little surprised. And whatever I think now, the teenage Richard Herring would have wet his pants if he'd known that anything like that would ever happen to him. The adult Richard Herring was still very excited to have performed again in this amazing venue. Hopefully one day I can come here in my own right.
There wasn't time to enjoy this early triumph though as we had to do another rehearsal of the sketch. And soon enough we were on stage and doing it. The response was a bit muted from the crowd, certainly not hostile, but nothing like what I had experienced in the first half. As expected the change of pace was slightly confusing and though there were laughs there weren't many big ones. We got away with it though and an additional crack about schoolkids and edgy comedians like Frankie Boyle and Ricky Gervais learning from my mistake got a good enough laugh. But it was lots of fun working with Kev and Sal again and being part of an amazing line-up and we'd raised money for SCOPE. If you want to donate £5 to the charity text COMEDY to 70800 or you can
donate £15 or more to my programme fund if you feel like it.
More important than any of that of course if that York City will be playing league football next year, for at least one season. Unbelievable!
