If I wasn't regretting watching National Lampoon's European Vacation at the time (and I was), I was definitely regretting it at 6.30am when my alarm went off. I was at my desk an hour later and worked pretty solidly for the next eight hours to produce what might be called a script. My idiocy is unsurpassed on this earth. Annoyingly it all came to me pretty easily. I have said this before but if I just did two hours solid work like this every day then the rest of my life would be my own. But it doesn't work like that, as we all should know by now.
But I couldn't help thinking that I have been a bit crazy to take on so much at the moment. I have some proper paid work that is meant to be finished this time next week (I think that's pretty unlikely to happen) and a new stand up show to write, so why I am expending all this time on this stupid show? At 7.30am it was hard to work out why. And although my girlfriend reminded me that I said exactly the same thing this time last year, I think this might have to be the last series of AIOTM
. If actual paid work is going on the back-burner in order for me to get this out on time then that's a bit ridiculous. Tonight's gig wasn't even half sold out which didn't help lift my spirits. I do pretty well with the scripts for As It Occurs To Me given the time constraints, but the danger is that people judge me by this scatological and sexcrement obsessed silliness and don't take the other stuff seriously. Or, as seems to be happening, I favour doing this show over work that will actually help me make a living. I am very proud of the show and excited to be at the forefront of a new medium for comedy, but on a stressful and painful day like today I had to wonder about the wisdom of what I was doing.
I am sure that when the pressure is a little less intense I will have time to reconsider and in the end my tiredness lifted and we had a lot of fun both in the non-broadcast first half and in the podcast itself, but I jokingly commented on Twitter that this show would be the death of me and there may be some truth in that.
I had written a script about Ryan Giggs in which I interviewed him about his week, but just talked about football, as if there was nothing else to say. This would have been funny and maybe even slightly edgy if the news didn't over take the story in the afternoon, when he was named in parliament as the footballer involved in one of the secret injunctions. It says something that even when a show it written this close to the wire that it can still become outdated. We didn't have much choice but to do the sketch anyway.
I think we pulled off another reasonably good show, though I am fortunate to have the improvisational skills and ludicrous stories of Emma Kennedy and the return of the Tet, Dan Tetsell and the musical genius of Christian Reilly whose line about the flag of Japan might well be the funniest moment in the show. There's a lot of love from the die hard fans who make it down - though it would be better to have some AIOTM fans in.
If there were twice as many of them it would be even better.
