I have had a fairly unrelentling fortnight of gigging in the latter half of this month meaning lots of driving round the country and late nights and tired days. It's much harder work than it might appear, especially if you are meant to be getting up and doing stuff in the daytime. I have consequently made no further progress with the script, though I am not too worried. There is still time to perfect it.
I was down in Greenwich tonight at the wonderful
"Up The Creek". I love the Sunday nights here: they have some great acts, a lucky dip of newer acts and it only costs a fiver to get in.
Mark Watson was compering (as I think he usually does) and was inspired and hilarious. I have seen him at regular intervals over the last couple of years (I think he may have MCed
the first gig I did on my return to stand up) and he just gets better and better. The atmosphere in the club was brilliant, in no small part due to his efforts, but there was also a crowd of people who clearly liked comedy and were prepared to give things a chance and were not afraid of having to listen to ideas that were longer than a sentence.
Comedy Terrorist Aaron Barshack was on in the lucky dip section in a dazzling display of (probably genuine) insanity involving various costume and hat changes. Apparently he has been booed off after a minute at his previous appearances here, but tonight's crowd largely went with it. It felt like a very "Up The Creek" act, though the harsher audiences of the old days might not have been so patient. I like it when the circuit throws up these mavericks and crackpots though.
I had some fun too and realised how at home I am now feeling on the stand up stage. This is a brilliant job.
I drove home along the South Circular as I have done a few times this month. It wasn't a mammoth journey, but I was hungry and tired and wishing I had a teleporter (when will that technology become commercially available?). At this time of the night the boy racers tend to come out as it's one of the rare occasions when London traffic can actually move and you can have a race.
At Clapham Common at an unlit traffic lights a woman had pressed the button so she could cross the road. I pulled up as the law dictates, but a guy in a black car that looked a bit like the one off of Knight Rider (though I think it was actually a Honda) chose to ignore the light and ploughed on through. The woman had been in shadow and maybe he hadn't seen her, but luckily she hadn't started to cross as she was entitled to or she would have been splatted by this impatient idiot.
His haste turned out to be pointless as well because even though he snuck through the next traffic light just as it was changing, I was back level with him
by the time we got to Battersea. You can speed all you like in London, but unless you're going to ignore all traffic lights and rules of the road you will soon get held up again. Was it worth almost killing a woman to get to Battersea about three seconds sooner than you would have, but then have to wait for the lights there anyway, thus wiping out your advantage? I would say a human life was worth more than that. I know it may be an unpopular view.
He carried on speeding off from stand stills and weaving in and out of the other cars, but his efforts were for nothing. I progressed slowly and steadily like the tortoise from Fingerbobs and yet every time we got to some lights I would find myself pulling up next to this crazy hare in the black sports car.
In fact we got all the way to the giant Tescos near Earl's Court and he still had not pressed home his murderous advantage. He then turned left and I carried straight on, so we'll never know if this little experiment would have proven that there is little point in transgressing the rules of the road in London. And I bet like me he was just heading home to an empty house, a peanut butter sandwich and a viewing of the lezzing up on Torchwood on BBC3 (I doubt he was doing exactly those things, that would be too weird, but my point is that I am sure he had very little worth hurrying home for- though my peanut butter sandwich was pretty good).
WIN a PSP question 26
Nearly there now
In the Radio show "Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World" what did the character Lionel Nimrod claim to have invented and which character did he say he played in the show "Star Ark"?
