I was back in Oxford tonight, performing in a packed cellar off Cornmarket, just metres away from the cellar where Stewart Lee and I first performed comedy together. The new show is still some way from coming together and I think it will change enormously in the next few weeks, but I've got a good starting point of some nice lines and the pomme de terre bit which is starting to really take form.
The dressing room was a little alcove behind one of the bars which is clearly used as a cloakroom. Showbusiness is all about glamour. It was also the place where the venue chooses to store its crisps. There were three boxes of crisps all within easy reach of me and they were stupid enough to leave me alone in there. Oh temptation thy name is Walkers.
Five years ago they would have come back to find the floor littered with empty packets and crisp fragments and me lying legs up in the air, with distended belly, unable to move due to potato overdose. But now I am more mature and careful about my diet and I am really trying not to eat fried food anymore. So I resisted the urge to steal. For about three minutes. And then it got too much for me. I'll just have one pack, I thought. Just to give me energy to get through the show. I hid the packet under my script as I was eating them, just in case one of the men came in and saw what I was doing. They had all said that they would get me anything I needed and I knew they wouldn't mind, but there was no fun in eating the forbidden crisps if I didn't do it surreptitiously. I was like Eve, but mine was an apple of the ground, cut up and fried in sunflower oil, which the crisp box told me was "one of the healthiest oils". Yes, that's true. It's one of the healthier varieties of something that is not very healthy.
I had wanted salt and vinegar, but they didn't have any of those, so I went for Ready Salted. Salt has no calories, unlike other flavourings, making this one of the healithiest crisps I could eat.
A bit later I was trying to relearn my
Hand Job Centre routine which I think will fit quite nicely into my new show and which I only attempted a couple of times last year when I found myself looking at the lamb and mint flavoured crisps. I wondered how they might taste. It would be a shame to go to my grave not knowing, especially when I could get them free and enjoy the frisson of stealing them, with the added security of knowing the bar would probably not whisk me off to prison or there would be a hundred or so disappointed people in their venue with nothing to look at but a couple of empty crisp packets. I ate the second pack. They tasted like synthetic lamb and mint.
But I was pleased with myself, because two packs satiated my crisp lust and I left it there. That is some kind of progress. But now I confess to my crime to absolve myself of the sin. I took part in a devilish communion and those crisps were the devil's body that was given unto me. Sorry Jesus. I will steal some of your crisps next time I am in a church, but to be honest they are nowhere near as delicious. Maybe you should add some flavours to them. Then your religion could become the most popular in the world.
Thanks to those of you who have already donated to the programme fund. As always I am blown away by your generosity and we're already a quarter of the way to the target. If you have a spare tenner then please do join these good people. I will be giving away random prizes such as signed scripts and will do my best to become more famous so that in the future the special signed programme will be worth at least ten pounds. Even if this means having to commit some kind of atrocity. If that's the only way I can become famous and reward your generosity and raise money for charity. Click on the link below. You have to do it before mid-June if you want to get your name in print.
