My phone popped back to life once I had been on the tube, but then later getting a cab home, as we were driving along the Westway it suddenly stopped working again. Has it got above itself? Is my phone too snooty to work in Shepherd's Bush. I hope not. I can't see me escaping this Hellhole for some years yet.
I was properly exhausted after the show, tired down to my bones. It is a stressful thing to produce and tonight the theatre was hot - and pretty full - and the audience a bit sluggish and unresponsive in places. Or we were sluggish perhaps. I think it went better than it felt from the stage, but a sketch I had been very pleased with about me attempting to bluff my way through an imagined conversation in a motorcycle clothing shop went down to bemusement and nervous laughter. It would allow me to pretend that that was a deliberate move on my part in order to make the ending of the show work and I would love to deliberately write something rubbish for the sake of the theatricality of the piece. But it wasn't the case. I think future generations will see the motorcycling clothing sketch as the greatest comedy of all time, but it was lost on the feckless, hot idiots who came to see it live.
Still there was plenty of stuff that did work, including slightly annoyingly quite a lot of the stuff that I did in the warm up that I hadn't been quite able to make work in the script, but which I succeeded in ad-libbing quite effectively. Maybe these stand up sessions will become available to buy on CD. Who knows? The podcast is available from the usual places. Two more to go at a new location - the Bloomsbury. The later ones usually sell out so book your tickets now. And thanks to all at the Leicester Square Theatre for hosting this stupid show for the last six weeks.
I was very sad to hear of the death of Frank Sidebottom (and though he's fictional, it does feel like it is he who has died). I had known he was ill, but this was still very sudden. There was though a very affectionate outpouring of sadness on Twitter and I was a little surprised but very pleased to see how much this man meant to so many people. I wonder if he realised the level of affection for him. I hope he had an inkling. There are plans afoot to make one of his records number 1, so join in with that if you can and help celebrate a true British eccentric. They are becoming increasingly rare. Good on you Frank. RIP.
