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Another pleasant and boring day doing chores, going to the gym, hanging out with the kids. It’s been cracking to be around for so many bedtimes, especially now Phoebe is enjoying stories so much and Ernie is old enough to be playing with her. So much of the early part of last year was taking up with gigs, but it is feeling increasingly like the right decision to step away from that for a while and enjoy these special times with the family. Inadvertently I have chanced across a part time job that allows me to work one or two days a week and usually not too far from home. There will certainly be other jobs that take up more of my time, but this week it’s just podcasts on Monday and it’s entirely feasible for me to make a living this way now (especially if the tour shows continue to sell well) and that’s a lovely reward for the decade or so I’ve put into building this into a thing. I am the luckiest.
I took my daughter to the library this afternoon, but had foolishly promised that she could buy a cake or biscuit from the supermarket and so she was more focused on that than on selecting or reading any books. She just picked up the first ones she saw and then wanted to get to the sugar. But I read her one story and looked for some books for myself. Phoebe saw a book about the art of Peter Rabbit. For some reason she is convinced that Peter Rabbit is my favourite TV show and calls me into the room whenever it is on. In truth I think it’s a bit stupid, but I do like playing “Farmer Gregor” as Phoebe calls it, mainly cos I get to do my brilliant Scotch accent.
As I looked for books one of the librarians came up to me and said, “I think we’ve worked together.” She did look familiar but I couldn’t place her. She said we’d rehearsed together with Sally Phillips and struggled to think of the name of the show, but it turned out it was Ra Ra Rasputin and she was Judy, who had helped us choreograph that insane show (we did a full musical, with singing and dancing with five people on a stage about the size of a kingsize bed). We’re going back over a quarter of a century to that one and we’d only worked together for a few days, so it was perhaps not surprising that I hadn’t instantaneously recognised her, but it was good to see her again and nice to be reminded of those care free days when I was young and arrogant enough to put on such an ambitious show and yet still write most of it in the month before the Fringe.
It was a show that was in the running for nomination for the Perrier - or at least critic William Cook was obsessed with it and the rest of the panel then all turned up on a Monday afternoon, when they were the only people in the audience and sat there stone-faced throughout. It was the only day that the very silly show didn’t sizzle, but perhaps annoyed with Cook’s enthusiasm or possibly because they thought comedy was a more serious business (even though this was one of the world’s first jukebox musicals, a satire of the royal family and amongst the French fancies and campness had quite a lot to say about how history becomes fictionalised) and turned their noses up at it from the start.
It’s still a show that people come up to tell me that they saw that Fringe. I think more people have told me that than actually came to see it. It was a gloriously fun time though. I believe we also did the first This Morning With Richard Not Judy that Fringe too. It felt like the world could be ours.
So bitter sweet to be reminded of all that - only bitter in terms of all the time that has passed and to know how things turned out. It’s a proper time quake to be reintroduced to someone you last saw more than 25 years ago. Not unpleasant. Just discombobulating. That crazy tear-filled, love-filled, laughter-filled summer feels like yesterday in some ways.
Wasn’t expecting that on a trip to Hitchin library.
The audio of the Bristol Slapstick Special with Tim Vine is now up on
BCG
and iTunes. Some of the clips don’t make sense in audio, but you can watch the interview on my youtube channel.
