It was a long way to Norwich, but we made it in time, despite a fifteen minutes wait for a man to vacate the one toilet in the garage in Slough that we had stopped off in when I was absolutely desperate for a wee. Having tried the door three times and finally asked if everything was OK (to which I got a "yes, fine thanks") the man finally emerged with no apology and no shame for his protracted toilet visit (well we all have times like that I guess).
We were staying with friends who have an 11 month year old girl who burst into tears the minute she saw me at the door and then every time I chanced into her vision for the next thirty minutes. I tried out all my A stuff on her, but still this strange, chubby, long-haired, moustachioed freak was only upsetting and not funny. Perhaps I had lost my touch.
"I am one of the country's funniest entertainers," I told her, "You're lucky to have me here giving this away for free. You shouldn't be wasting a second."
But she only cried more. Perhaps she was more of a Michael Mcintyre fan.
Slowly and steadily I wore her down though, and as with most women her initial disgust with me, turned to pity and then reluctant acceptance. I made her laugh by waving in a silly fashion and then shaking my head and making my hair go in my face. I made a note to try both these gags if the show was falling flat that night.
By the time I had this audience of one back on my side it was time to go and perform to an audience of 300 in the Norwich Playhouse.
I have great affection for Norwich (and it seems most slightly eccentric and non-conformist rural towns) as Stew and me used to come here (to the Arts Centre) at the start of all our tours to try out our new material. But as has been the way with most venues on this tour, more people were coming to see me tonight than on any previous occasion. Perhaps my long standing affection is being returned at last.
The gig was a good one, even though I should have been dead on my feet after the eventful last few days. There were points in the show where I wished that we could be filming the DVD tonight and also even now, 123 or so performances in, I am finding new bits to play with and explore, things that now will never fully be on the DVD version. I am very much enjoying prolonging the bit where I chastise the Die Hard fans for muscling in on Michael Jackson's vigil. It's mainly down to the faces I pull and the way I deport myself (see entertaining these little kids does pay off in the end) and I did it pretty well in the 2nd performance in Cardiff last night, but it continues to evolve in a way that will only be seen by the audiences in these last few gigs now.
In the dressing room tonight the end of the tour really felt in sight. Though in fact I am not done with the show until May 12th, once I have been up to Leeds on Monday and Tuesday there are only five more shows to go and they're spread out over the next five weeks and it feels like my life will be my own again. I will be able to stay in my own bed most of the time and start to work on other stuff and sort out my life and spend some time with my patient girlfriend. It does feel like I have given away three months of my life to this show, like I have been in a prison or a vortex spinning in space. And now finally I am going to be released and be allowed to be myself again.
Not that I haven't enjoyed the tour because I really have and not that I won't give the last shows my all - quite the opposite I am going to savour them, as I am really going to miss this extraordinary and complex show which is actually a joy to do because there is so much to think about and so many possibilities of doing things differently and finding new hidden joys within it.
But I feel excited to be almost free from it, even if I am going to be pretty busy on other stuff once I am done.
At the moment the whole word feels a little bit like a crying baby that has taken some time to get used to me, but is now reconsidering its position and deciding it's going to laugh at me after all, despite its initial skepticism. But nothing is certain and no doubt it will continue to occasionally petulantly and needlessly hand me back my ticket to register its disapproval of some unmentioned slight. And there's every chance that like the little boy in the hotel in Cornwall, this time next year the world might be looking through me again as if I never existed.
But I think part of the reason I am excited to be going home is that on this tour I have acknowledged to myself that most of the roadblocks in my career have been put there by myself. I have been presented with opportunities and shied away from them or messed them up, partly because I feared the failure or rejection more than I wanted the success. Now I think I am ready to hanker down a bit and get on with doing some writing and not feel so personally affronted if executives or publishers or audiences turn them down. I have not had the best of luck in some ways, though in other senses I have been blessed beyond belief and from now on I am going to try and make my own luck and just get on with my job.
A show like Hitler Moustache does not come along every year and I think it is my personal favourite thing that I have ever done (even above Christ on a Bike which I have always held in the highest esteem before). But I want to write more TV stuff and I want to write more books and I want to write more shows and it feels like, after the reviews and audience reaction and ticket sales of this year that I may have found myself in a position to do so.
I am determined this ridiculous persistence is going to pay off. And if it doesn't pay off, I am going to fucking well just keep on trying. And at the very least after I am gone, perhaps the phrase, "the persistence of a herring" will enter the English language. Please feel free to use it - without explanation would be best.
We went home and watched an extraordinary show called "Man V Food" in which a man took on ludicrous eating challenges. It should have been obscene to see people trying to eat a pizza big enough to feed 60 people and then throwing up (and indeed it was) but it was also fascinating and darkly amusing and hypnotically entertaining. I wondered how anyone in the Third World would react if they were shown this and saw such gluttony - in fact I would assume Al Qaeda use this as a recruiting film to show the decadence of the Western world. But the host was so disarming and weirdly charming and hopeful (and you also fear that he might actually kill himself) that there was something mesmerising about it. I tweeted Charlie Brooker to tell him this would make a great subject for his "You Have Been Watching", but of course Charlie Brooker was way ahead of me
and had already dissected the sucked-clean bones of the show better than I ever could. Do give it a look if you can. It's all of humanity's beauty and ugliness in one place. And could be used in a galactic court both as evidence why the human race should be destroyed and why they should be spared.
I felt sick.
And I wanted to have a go at eating the pizza.
