Next door's party still seemed to be going on at 7.15 when I woke up, though now only the occasional shout was heard, rather than the cacophony of the night before, a bit like the aftermath of a zombie attack where all the humans had been eaten and now the zombies themselves were grinding to a halt. I managed to get the script into shape and it wasn't until I was sitting in the green room at Broadcasting House that a wave of tiredness hit me. But I wasn't going to be able to allow it to overwhelm me as there was too much to do.
We did a read through and then came back to the green room to meet Alexei. They say you should never meet your heroes and I had been nervous about meeting this comedy legend, mainly in case the 14 year old me jumped to the surface and I started quoting his bits from the Young Ones at him. But why wouldn't he love to hear a perfect rendition of the revolutionary biscuits of Italy? He'd love it. Luckily I remained cool. Well maybe not cool, but I didn't shout "It's a big piece of paper with "Fuck All" written on it" at him. And Alexei was charming, friendly and smiley so all was well.
It was a little bit odd doing an afternoon show and this wasn't the strongest script of the series, but all went through OK and I think it will edit down OK. I had been looking forward to Alexei's response to my supposed contention that posh people should not be stereotyped and mocked and he rose to the bait wonderfully. He was perhaps a little nervous to begin with and slightly put out when his opening salvo was taken seriously, when he had been jokingly attacking me, but we relaxed into it and had an entertaining and interesting 20 minute chat. It's a shame that we'll have to cut it down and I told him that because of his anti-establishment views the whole interview would have to be cut.
I couldn't quite believe that I had managed to complete this series. It's been a tough ask given the limitations of time and my seeming insistence on leaving as much as possible to the last minute. But I think it's going to be an entertaining listen. It starts on 8th November at 6.30pm on Radio 4.
After the show I went for a quick drink with Alexei and Tilusha the producer (TV's Emma Kennedy had had to dash off, no doubt to some celebrity bash - she's been amazing on this series: calm, reliable and cheerful, with no complaints when she hasn't had too much to do), but couldn't hang around too long as I needed to head across town for the Lyric Hammersmith gig. I had already worked with one comedy legend today and now I was going to be working with Stewart Lee from off of the telly. My life is a cavalcade of excitement. Though I am surprised that neither Alexei or Stewart seemed excited to meet me, or biting their lips trying to avoid quoting my jokes back at me. Ah well.
I was tired and had decided to drink beer to help me through that - that is science at work right there - and these two things combined meant my mouth pretty much ran on its own, though I managed not to say anything too inappropriate - aside from slagging off Edward Bond, who wrote the play that is in the theatre at the moment. Ooops. But Edward Bond is pretty scathing about society, so surely he can take a little bit of nastiness back, right? I didn't stone a baby to death (although I did want to bring on each of the acts in the pram from the show and then stone them to death once they were finished - I wasn't allowed to by the theatre though. Hypocrites!) Apparently the baby they use in the play has the body of a chicken under its babygrow (it's a doll obviously) so that the punching and stone throwing seems realstic. I asked if it was a living chicken. Now that's a show I'd like to see. The baby chicken could fight back.
It was a top show though, with Sarah Kendal and Josie Long doing brilliant work in the first half and Stewart Lee being adequate I suppose in the second. Come and see
next month's gig if you can. Line up not complete yet, but we already have Joe Lycett and Jarred Christmas who are both ace. I am hoping I can get Alexei down to do a gig here soon too - he's looking at getting back into stand up and is curating some shows at the Soho Theatre in January.
It was an intense day of comedy, but even when working this hard I mainly had fun today. And there's not too many jobs where no one complains if you drink a few beers while you're working. And glad to know that the comedy fan boy who got me into all this in the first place is still in there somewhere.
