Forty-two previews down and one to go. Tonight's show made slightly trickier by the fact that a very drunk stag party were in. They weren't as badly behaved as they might have been, but nor were they in any state to listen to stories and their chatting was disruptive. I was a bit tired and not feeling all that well and gave it to them with both barrels, which is really what they wanted. But if you're organising a stag night then a comedy night is a terrible idea - you want to be somewhere that you can drink and talk and where doing this is not going to ruin other people's nights. Even in a more stand up based club the comedians hate to have to deal with you and the rest of the audience just hate you, but in an hour long show with a narrative you're doubly out of place. These guys came close to spoiling the night for 100 other people and didn't have much fun themselves. They did finally leave after my repeated requests that they fuck off, although apparently one of their number fell asleep and they left him behind.
If you are organising a stag night or hen party you might think a comedy show is a good bet. It really isn't. Do something else, you drunk pricks.
I need to work on the beginning and end of my show and just get everything tightened up. It's not quite there yet, but hopefully by next Wednesday I will have ironed out the kinks. And hopefully no stag nights will be in. I am having trouble enough keeping the show down to 60 minutes and every second I have to deal with some idiots is a second I have to cut from the show. If you want to get the cheap tickets available over the first few days
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Back to the hotel and my legs were heavy with tiredness and though we stopped in the bar for a quick drink I almost fell asleep with my pint. I went to bed. I put the TV on and flicked through the channels. In the olden days this used to be one of the exciting things about staying in a hotel - you'd get extra channels that you didn't have at home. I would usually spend the first 30 minutes of any stay, flicking through the channels, marvelling at the rubbish. Nowadays most of us have ten times as many channels at home and that novelty has worn off and in any case I am more interested in finding out if there is free wifi. Things change.
But I chanced across a programme on ITV2 called something like "A Tribute to Amy Winehouse" which had obviously been cobbled together with alarming haste, by people with little to no respect for the person they were supposedly paying tribute to. Unbelievably I came in at the point where some minor celebs like Mutya from the Sugababes were doing talking heads reminiscing about how they heard the news of Amy's death. What the fuck? It didn't even happen a week ago. And I am presuming they didn't film these interviews today. So they were being asked to remember something that happened a matter of hours before. Mutya even said "I remember..." as she reminisced. Unless she comes from a long line of goldfish I don't think that's that impressive. But the haste was indecent (not quite as indecent as Uri Gellar talking about his friend Michael Jackson within three hours of his death, but still astonishing). The show must have been commissioned on Monday and then some people rang around to see who would be prepared to speak so soon - you'd imagine anyone who had anything to say would be too upset to talk about it this quickly and also angry to be asked, but the people on this show, presumably hooked in by their £200 fee were happy to air their grief and their memories straight away. It was astonishingly cynical and unpleasant.
There's nothing impressive about bringing out a tribute quickly and in fact the haste taken meant that not only were the people they talked to so minor and odd that they were of no use, but also they only had a very limited number of clips that they showed over and over again, like they were rolling news and if anything the whole thing gave the impression that Amy Winehouse hadn't done all that much. A more measured documentary which wasn't rushed out might have been a better tribute, but this was ghoulish and made me feel ghoulish for watching more than five minutes. Once again, I suppose, the consumer gets what they deserve. But shame on the people who made this programme and who agreed to appear on it. Some people on Twitter suggested that it might have been made in advance, and of course there were some old clips and interviews, but it would be even more sick if these people had agreed to do the tributes and the remembering where they were when she died if they had done it before the event.
It makes me wonder though what the world record is for the shortest period of time taken for one of these talking head shows to reminisce about something. Has there ever been a show where people have been asked to talk fondly about things that happened at the beginning of the programme? Do you remember a second ago? I was just starting that last sentence. I said "Do". I remember thinking "I am going to say "you remember a second ago" next.
Fucking Hell.
