When you are a comedian it is very easy to go for weeks on end without a day off. Unlike a regular job your hours are not firmly dictated and the weekend becomes your busiest time and thus you can forget to have time to yourself when you're not working.
I seem to have had loads going on for the last three or four months: travelling the country gigging, going to meetings about new projects (mostly looking very positive), script-editing a couple of projects and trying to write proposals and scripts. I can't really remember the last time that I had a day entirely to myself. So when I woke up this morning feeling ill (self-inflicted from booze and late night poker playing) I decided that I would make Wednesday my Saturday and just lounge around doing nothing.
I did this extremely effectively and the only moment of excitement was when I was thinking of watching the West Wing on my portable DVD in the bath, but knew the battery was low and so contemplated risking plugging it in and perching it on the edge of my bath. I was though too well aware of the danger of the DVD player somehow toppling into the bath and causing my demise, even though the chances of that actually happening were miniscule (it has never leapt up and fallen in when it hasn't been plugged in).
But there was the time that Martin Amis book managed to leap to its death in my bath (unable to live with what it was, it had decided to spare the world), so I couldn't really take the risk.
I am finding series 5 of the West Wing a little mawkish (not on a TV's Emma Kennedy scale, but still annoying), and not as enjoyable as previous efforts. The bloke who has taken over from Rob Lowe is really annoying and even on the cover photos looks uncomfortably out of place. It's still worth watching though, but has lost some of the magic that made the first couple of series exceptional television.
Some friends came round to play poker, but I have played a bit too much poker and hadn't stepped outside of the house all day and had a bit of cabin fever. And I had rubbish cards.
It was a wasted day. When historians of the twenty-fifth century look back on my life (oh, and they will - because I do something of astonishing historical importance in about twenty years time, which makes the whole of my life fascinating to future generations), they will be a bit disappointed by the torpor of the 25th May 2005. But sometimes it pays to be torpid.
Do you think there might be a market for "I'm With Torpid" T-shirts. Or maybe, "I'm Not With Torpid - he stayed at home" ones instead.
Apologies to anyone hoping to see me in Newcastle in July. Due to circumstances beyond my control those gigs have been postponed, but there's a chance they might be rearranged for December. Hopefully will get up to that part of the country at some point anyway. I know there are a few fans there and I hate to think of you all having to travel to Carlisle to see me again!
