Usually I have a bit of down time after the surprisingly (though maybe not that surprising given the length of this week's) exhausting Leicester Square Theatre Podcasts. But no chance of that today as I needed to drive to Manchester to do Talking Cock at the Frog and Bucket.
I have been coming to this club since
2005 and bringing my Edinburgh show up here every October since then. I did Someone Likes Yoghurt back in October 2005, making Talking Cock my eighth show in eight Octobers. I can't believe I have been doing stand up this long. Or that it's that long since I saw the sandwich shop Baguette-me-Knot. The Frog is a smallish club and Manchester is a long way to drive for a one-off gig, but the people at the venues have always treated me very well and the audiences have nearly always been superb. It's possibly the club that I have had the most fun at: as
this clip of me being made to perform whilst drinking shots and already very drunk demonstrates.
These days it's a more sober and professional affair and though I had a quick drink (of water) with Lee (who first booked me) and Colin (who has been working on the tech desk ever since I've been coming here), we didn't go out on the town like we used to. In fact we all looked a bit tired and like we wanted to get to our beds as soon as possible. I'd say my rock n roll years were behind me, except that I had LUNCH WITH ALICE COOPER yesterday! Perhaps the fact that it was lunch takes the edge off that a little bit.
It had been a great gig though, apart from my new clicker getting stuck a couple of times and reeling through all the slides. It was worth the exhausting drive, but I was very glad that I was staying in a hotel tonight and not attempting the journey home as I had after both Liverpool and Sheffield. I had also been worrying about negotiating the tight back gate at the Frog, where two years ago I had
pranged my car, but I got in OK and then when no one was around (I have driving performance anxiety and hate to be watched), I turned the car round in the tight space so I didn't have to reverse out. I was glad that I only have two more gigs to do on this tour without a tour manager. It will be good not to have to worry about these earthly concerns and just concentrate on the show.
After talking to David Mitchell yesterday I am starting to worry that I might be seeing things. I told him about how I had seen Justin Lee Collins in the street the day after his court case and that I'd also seen some tiny Shreks on Westminster Bridge trying to get their photos taken with people (they were small humans or children in masks I assume, unless David Mitchell was correct about them having worked on sophisticated human hand make up) and he'd said I might be imagining these things. Just before that show I had been walking through a packed Leicester Square and bumped into one of the techs from the Purcell Room gig. London is a big place but that's not an impossible coincidence, except that I had noticed the day before that he had kindly donated some money to SCOPE on my website and been thinking that I'd probably not get a chance to thank him for his generosity. And then he popped up like a Justin Lee Collins or a Shrek or a Tim from the Office. I had greeted him warmly and thanked him effusively and he'd introduced me to his friend. But what if my teeming brain had created this whole encounter? What if I was standing in Leicester Square thanking no one? It's a frightening thought, but sometimes my life feels a bit too much like the Truman Show or a terrible sitcom and my wife and I had discussed the possibility that one (or both) of us was in a coma and just making all this up. Of course if that's the case my wife is probably part of the dream too. And that would make sense as well. Only in my imagination could I persuade such a beautiful and funny woman to be with me. God dammit. It's obviously a dream. What's annoying about that is that I have such paucity of ambition in my fantasies. I could be meeting Amy Pond or being Alice Cooper and I have chosen to fantasise about being a journeyman comic, doing OK, but not spectacularly well, having to work my socks off instead of achieving instant fame and then sitting back as my team of writers creates all my stuff. What a comatose idiot I am.
If I meet Jimmy Savile tomorrow then I'll know for sure.
