The morning started well. I left my tea in the kitchen at breakfast time, but my wife kindly went back to get it for me. Finally marriage pays off. Whatever happens from now on I can always remember the time she got my tea for me and I will be up.
Admittedly the kitchen in this flat is only about five feet away from the sofa where we were eating our porridge, but that's not the point. The point is that for a glorious 30 seconds I had my own butler (and unlike most butlers I can also have sex with this one). I have won.
Unless she only did it because she was expecting something in return. Damn.
I spent the day researching the extraordinary career of Charlie Higson, my guest on tonight's podcast. I had met him before when I interviewed him on Absolute radio when I was sitting in for Dave Gorman and am a big fan of the ground-breaking "The Fast Show", but there's a whole lot more to him than that: he's an ex pop star and has written novels and teenage fiction as well as taking on the task of writing the Junior James Bond books. Most impressively of all, of course, he is a Chortle Internet Award nominee for his Foster's sponsored Fast Show revival. I can't remember who won that award, but they must surely have a much more glittering and successful career. Logic dictates that.
I felt a bit more alert and awake than last week, which was lucky as Charlie informed me that Jonathan Ross had fallen asleep whilst interviewing him once. To send one interviewer to sleep is unfortunate, to do it to two would be bound to make you question how interesting you actually are.
It was another smallish audience tonight (three of the remaining four podcast gigs are either sold out or nearly there - there are tickets to see Nick Frost and David Baddiel on 11th June and maybe a few to see Armando Iannucci and Graham Linehan on 25th June), contrasting somewhat with the 1000s I performed to last night, but it meant I was able to chat with most of them in the warm up and the podcast and they were a good crowd.
I don't know Charlie well and wondered if he might be a bit of a shy and reticent guest, but he was a delight to talk to: charming, self-effacing, easy to shock, funny and interesting. What I like about doing these podcasts is that the feel and tone of them change with the guests and it was fascinating talking about comedy and his career and the podcast went on for a good 100 minutes. By the end I was a little tired and babbling a bit and couldn't remember people's names, but I like the fact that that all stays in the final thing as well and as Charlie pointed out later that we can do an interview where you can expound on a subject and not have to deal in sound bites.
Hopefully we can do more of these in the autumn, but I need your support to make them viable. If you can get down to watch then that's great, but if not please spread the word about them to anyone you think might enjoy them. There's no PR team behind this and no budget to advertise and I can keep on doing them and putting them out for free as long as people get interested in paying for my other stuff. I have a good feeling about this format and if it can get established then who knows what guests we might get on. I am already a bit gobsmacked about the people who are doing this series. But this time next year I want to be interviewing Hollywood stars and asking them if they've ever sucked their own cock - especially the women.
This week's show is quite laid back, but I think we did a good job tonight. Have a listen - it's up at
The British Comedy Guide and on
iTunes.
