I am foolishly attempting the Royal Parks Half Marathon again in October, though I think this might be the last long run of my impressive career. It's good to have something to aim for to give me more incentive to get fit, but I need to take care of my old joints as I need them in my day to day life. I entered the ballot for a place to let fate decide if I would run. I failed on the first ballot, but picked up a place in the second. Yes, my initial reaction was "Shit". Fate, as you know, let's to dick around with me, like I am some kind of fourth division Job (you know, from off of the Bible). It saves the really unpleasant stuff for Job, but keeps its fickle finger in by mildly inconveniencing me.
Today I ran round Cheddar reservoir and found it pleasant and reasonably easy. I managed about four miles without any problem so that's encouraging. And I love this run. I've been doing it for about 30 years now (and I'm still not tired). Apparently they're planning to build a second reservoir here, so I don't know how that will affect my route. As I am sure I've said before I used to go round twice in about 30 minutes, but it took me that long to get round once now. If I really trained hard I wonder if I could beat my record? I don't think I am going to train that hard, but it'd be interesting to know whether it would be physically possible for me to beat the 18 year old me. If only I had recorded audio of me running around the reservoir in 1985 I could have the makings of a brilliant Me Old vs Me Young running podcast.
I was at the Bath Komedia tonight, a venue I like a lot and not just because they provide an excellent hot meal (a chicken breast with salsa sauce tonight - it's very easy for a venue to buy an act's good will). We arrived early as usual and I spent quite some time in the small (and very cold) dressing room. The loo had one of those odd little mechanised boxes which is supposed to automatically shoot out air freshener every now and again. But this one was broken and instead of expelling a slightly weird smell, it kept beeping. Every three seconds. Non-stop. It quickly became annoying and was soon infuriating and I was very tempted to smash the fucking thing to pieces with my shoe. I did punch it with my hand at one point, but that proved ineffectual. I thought I might get into trouble if I actually smashed it and the people at the Komedia are so nice that I would have been embarrassed to vandalise their facilities. But I have a vague memory of it doing the same thing last year too. It's incredible, if that's the case, that no act has flipped out and destroyed the thing in the mean time. Everyone was so busy getting the show ready that it seemed churlish to complain or ask them to make it stop.
In the end I decided to blot out the noise by putting on my headphones and watching series 5 of House. I only watch this show on tour and I am not massively engaged with it and often only half watch it whilst doing something else. But I've got the episodes on my iPad and I am damned if I am not eventually going to play it all. It did at least blot out the beeping sound. I doubt they will put that quote on their DVD boxset.
I have always had quite a mixed audience, in terms of age at least, as the various avenues I have taken in my career appeal to different demographics. I get teenagers who've discovered me via my podcasts or seeing Hitler Moustache or Christ on a Bike on Netflix but there are also quite a lot of older people too, perhaps drawn in from my work on Radio 4. And then there's the Die Hard fans who I can't shake off who keep asking me to do bits from the film. I can't understand why they keep coming. I've hardly even done anything about Die Hard (apart from this Die Hard fans jokes) in my act, but they live in hope. There are the Fist of Fun fans who have stayed loyal or rediscovered me recently who are usually a bit younger than me. I am pleased that my stuff works for such a broad range of people. Even though I am pretty old myself I still live under the illusion that older people don't enjoy rude or childish humour. But of course they're just as rude and childish as the rest of us (probably more so) and unlikely to be shocked by anything. The young fans are, of course, more value to me, as they will not die before I do and so can guarantee me a life-long career as long as they keep coming. The young idiots. I've already been going long enough that the people who saw my first comedy shows (at school) have been able to bring their grown up children to see me. Hopefully I might get to the point where that chain stretches to 3 generations (and given how early everyone -apart from me- has sex in Somerset I reckon there's a chance that that might happen in the next year or two).
It went well. Even if I think I might have been programmed in the dressing room to assassinate the Prime Minister at some point. Giles returned to London after the gig as he's working on Mark Watson's 25 hour show, so I have a couple of days of solo touring again. Bridgend and Shrewsbury to go before I get to go home - the former has plenty of tickets left and the latter is almost sold out. Spread the word about the tour. It's suitable for all ages.
