After recording a somewhat leisurely and low key
Collings and Herring podcast, Andrew and me headed to the O2 arena to see Seinfeld. I had been offered some tickets by PIAS who distributed the Hitler Moustache DVD and thought if I took Andrew to this event (which cost at least £100 a ticket) then Andrew would have to come home with me afterwards and all my dreams would come true and finally get some payback for the 100s of hours I have sat talking to him in my attic.
The talking point of the gig was the ticket price and I don't think I would have paid to see this show. I love the TV series Seinfeld and think the man is the master of observational comedy, but that's not my favourite type of stand up and £100 is an awful lot of money for a night out, especially if there's really only one person up on the stage and little in the way of set or pizazz. But I was still excited to be there and interested to see if he could still cut it after all this time. Unbelievably he is now 57 years old. Time has flown by and he remains frozen in our minds as the single, young-ish man that he portrayed in his TV series.
I have been to the O2 arena to see comedy a couple of times before, though have sat quite far back (though still on the floor area) and slightly wondered about the point of coming out to see something that you have to watch on screens. If you're at the back of the room in the top circle then you really have no option but to watch the screens. I doubt you can really even make out much that's happening on the stage from there. Tonight though, somehow, we found ourselves in the 5th row from the front. If I had had a rock with me I could have thrown it and hit Jerry Seinfeld in the head. I didn't have a rock though. For us, at least, this was going to be like seeing the man in an intimate space. The other people around us seemed to be mainly businessy types, presumably people connected with the show, though we did spot the writer David Renwick and Omid Djalili was sitting next to us.
The show itself flew by and it was a masterful performance from the master of his domain. Even though much of it revolved around fairly well-trodden areas for comedy - the difference between men and women, mobile phones, adverts etc- Seinfeld usually managed to inject some extra level of funny to this stuff by well chosen language of imagery. I noticed he checked his set list, which was on top of his monitors, a couple of times, though he did speak for 90 minutes without interval or much of a pause and as the show was mainly a list of observations it must have been tricky to learn. I admired the craft and technique, though perhaps didn't laugh as much as I could have, though when he got me, it was with hearty belly laughs.
In a sense I have a lot of admiration for the better observational comedians, the ones who managed to notice something universal, that no one has commented on before, or to find a new take on well trodden ground. Because so many people have done this kind of stuff that if you find something new that is actually really impressive. It's all very well being the kind of cynical comedian who thinks it's smart to pull apart the conventions of comedy and take the piss out of rubbish jokes (which to be honest, is about as overdone as observational comedy and only the really great comedians can do it well) but that's easier than finding a new way of looking at stuff. I have always felt that most comedy is about observation, it just doesn't always require someone to say "Have you ever noticed....?" before the observation. The observation is hidden seamlessly in a routine.
But Seinfeld, whilst occasionally straying into more obvious territory, stayed smart and entertaining and noticed stuff that was properly original too. I liked him talking about the bit of wire that comes down from a weatherman's ear. You're not meant to notice it, he observed, but this just makes him notice it more. And then he asked why the wire was coiled, like it was made to stretch, when the distance between the weatherman's ear and neck was unlikely to change. It was a neat bit of noticing, something we would all have observed, but not thought about. It led to him envisaging a situation where the weatherman's head sprung up like a jack in the box. It was a perfect and impressive little nugget of observational comedy.
Just because there are comics who might do the shit "buses coming in threes" and "who remembers Spangles?" kind of observations (and the thing is that there really aren't those kind of comics anymore - they only crop up in people taking the piss out of observational comedy, but the reference is probably 20 years out of date and ironically becomes a shit piece of observational comedy itself), that doesn't mean any comedian who trades on observation is bad or unimaginative. Like I say, in some ways they need to be more imaginative to be good.
When I started in stand up in the early 90s I think there were a lot of shit comics doing hack jokes and whilst there are some of those still around (as there always will be) the comedy scene seems varied and fecund and full of interesting stuff. Yes there are people trying to make masses of cash out of it and this stadium phenomenon is odd and jars with my understanding of what comedy should be about, but for those who want to dig a little there is loads of terrific stuff and if Stewart Lee has his own TV show then things can't be as bad as people like Stewart Lee like to pretend it is!
Seinfeld did not look or act like a man approaching his 60s and held the attention of the 14,000 or so people in the room (it wasn't full, but the decision to charge so much had paid off anyway as obviously plenty had been prepared to pay that) for the full set. Though if I had paid that much money I would make damn sure I enjoyed myself whatever was on stage or I would feel like a prick.
The fun continued for me though, because our tickets also gave us access to the aftershow drinks. There are two rooms in the Sky Bar where this happens and for some reason we were allowed into the inner sanctum where Jerry himself would be drinking. I am unused to such stuff. In fact at Tim Minchin's gig, I skulked in the outer bar, not sure if I was allowed into the inner one and not wanting to make a prick of myself by being turned away.
Though to begin with it looked like the outer bar might be better than the inner one as there was hardly anyone in there. Eventually some people turned up and it became apparent that the proper celebs which rather incongruously included Ricky Gervais, Lee Mack and Cleo Roccos had had their own special box for the gig. Though surely it was better to be at the front of the crowd, rather than in a hospitality suite some distance away, whilst others swanned around chatting and not really listening. But once you get to that level of celebrity it's how things look rather than how things are that become more important.
The pecking order fascinated me though and I am not putting myself above it all as I thought it was pretty cool to be involved, even though I didn't feel I belonged. Even when I was on TV we weren't part of this world and there is an endearing insecurity and oddness to it all that makes me quite pleased about that. My position in the firmament was established though when I met one of the few TV executives I actually recognise and know the name of (I forget the ones that I have met with alarming and career damaging haste - I really should get better at playing the game), told her how glad I was to see how well she was doing and listened attentively to her talking about it. Then she asked me what I was up to and as I began to tell her Richard Bacon walked past and she turned away from me and shouted to him and started talking to him, without so much as an excuse me. I thought she might turn back in a few seconds. But she didn't.
That's how important I am. Usurped by Bacon. If it had been Gervais or Merchant it might have been easier to take. But in showbusiness there is no call for politeness or pretence. I had been shunned. Not quite as ostentatiously as the time that Steve Coogan had introduced me to then BBC2 controller Jane Root at a party at the Edinburgh Fringe and she has just turned her back on me (this is when I realised we probably weren't going to get another series of TMWRNJ), not even "Hello" then a back turn. It was "Do you know Richard Herring?" Back turn.
One day I hope to get successful enough to repay these snubs with supersnubs, but alas I think it's getting a bit too late. By my age, Seinfeld had already recorded all of his sitcom. Will I be playing the O2 in 14 years time? Doubtful. Though interestingly he didn't get married and start a family until he was 45. So maybe I can do that bit. Some would say that was more important than a successful career. But they are wrong.
So as usual hanging around with all the successful people made me realise my position at the bottom of the dustbin, but for once I did manage to converse with others without too much self-consciousness. I didn't dare go up to Jerry Seinfeld, but I talked to Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais who used me as an excuse to escape a persistent drunk man and commented "Who'd have thought I'd be so desperate that I'd be happy to talk to Richard Herring?" It was one of his jokes, though he also meant it I think, but it made me feel better for all the jokes I have made about him on stage and he was very charming after that.
I also met Lise Mayer who co-wrote the Young Ones and managed to be normal and polite and not even turn into a teenage fanboy and start quoting stuff at her. So maybe at 43 I am nearly mature enough to come to these kinds of events. I am not sure that is a positive development. I preferred the old me who would get drunk, feel he didn't belong and make embarrassing comments to my heroes.
Eventually me and Collings made our excuses and snuck out to get the tube, but because we stopped to talk to Harry Hill we missed the last train. Andrew had an early start in the morning and we couldn't be doing with night buses so we got a cab, and I said it would be OK for Andrew to stay at mine to save us paying for two expensive journeys. My plans were all coming to fruition.
The cab to mine cost £60 and the driver barely said a word, let alone making either of us laugh, which I think puts Jerry Seinfeld's ticket price into some kind of perspective.
