Collings and I made the long trip from West London to Brighton (it always takes about an hour and half longer than I think it will) for the first
live podcast that we stand to actually make some money from!
Once we were finally checked into our hotel - separate rooms, though conveniently next door to each other, if either of us woke in the middle of the night and needed a "cup of sugar".
We headed off to the pier to sit in the sun and eat chips and drink pear cider, like gullible fools influenced by advertising (though weirdly it was
Collings less than glowing review of some free bottles -which he was supposed to share with me rather than Mark Watson's ads (though indirectly that's why the nation is suddenly drinking something it would never have considered putting in its mouth a month ago). It makes my heart sink a little every time I see a comedian I like doing an advert, but Mark is a great comic and one of the nicest people you will meet on this circuit, so I can't begrudge him taking the money and running. I don't know why the advert is so insistent that the pear cider he is drinking is made from 100% pears, as if there was a common assumption that all those other thousands of pear ciders that we were drinking before only had 58% real pears in them. And presumably there are some other ingredients in amongst the pears. But I was glad to know that there was 100% pears in my pear drink and no sewage or sperm or rat carcasses (which were all important ingredients of the apple scrumpy that I was brought up on).
Then I realised that I was actually drinking Bulmer's pear cider and not the Magner's one that Mark Watson likes, so there was no guarantee about the pears. Though if you want to know more about the complicated similarity between the two cider firms then you can find out about it on Collings' blog.
Collings claims that the pear cider has no alcoholic effect, though I noticed that according to the bottle, by consuming two of them we had exceeded our daily recommended intake of alcohol. And I felt a little giddy. And I am much better at handling my booze than Collings who mainly only drinks oat milk.
After stopping off to have our photo taken in an hilarious seaside diarama we walked up to the Duke of Yorks to strut our stuff.
It's a terrific venue and the staff were efficient and friendly and had laid on lots of little treats for us (including some chocolate oat milk and two bottles of wine) and I got stuck in.
We started the show with stand up sets. Collings did a very funny bit where he indulged in a spot of secret dancing (the thing he does on the tube where you have to move to the music on your iPod without anyone else noticing). He got the whole audience to join in and praised them for the fact that he was unable to see them moving. Collings is the new Andy Kaufman.
Then he talked about the Mitford sisters for about three hours just to bring everyone down.
I tried out some newish stuff (including a joke I had come up with today) and it went all right. There was a lovely atmosphere, but everyone was really waiting for the podcast.
I drank wine steadily through the 1 hr 6 minutes and 35 seconds and on top of the cider, was quite drunk by the end of the recording. It was strange doing our usual nonsense in front of a crowd - interesting to see what got laughs and what didn't - but the podcast is so insular and very much a conversation between the two of us and it was easy to forget there was anyone else there. They certainly weren't included in the way they would be in stand up. But they seemed to like it and we came up with some quite funny stuff, all off the top of our heads. If you asked me to do that long with no material on my own I would be terrified and would dry up, but somehow this format allows us to chat and be funny and find unexpected comedy avenues - I did not, for example, know until the words came out of my mouth that we would end up discussing the state of Susan Boyle's lady garden. Which if her eyebrows are any indication is going to be rather impressive.
After the podcast we did an extended Q&A session, in which some people left (presumably for trains or babysitters as I doubt they would have sat through the first two hours if they were easily offended). I was pretty wasted by now and it was fun to lay into people in the audience if they dared to show any sarcasm towards Andrew, whilst simultaneously taking the piss out of him myself at every opportunity.
This session was recorded by the technician, so there's a chance it may turn up as an extra on something or other at some point, but it was good to give the paying audience some extra value that you lazy home listeners will not get to hear.
We revealed much. But not too much.
We went back to the hotel for one more drink and I realised too late that I was stupidly blasted. Given that I am going to attempt to finish my book this weekend and have the long drive home to contend with, it might not have been the best idea.
But it was fun drinking cider in the sun with the one I love.
Did I not mention that my girlfriend was there too?
