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Another rail trip, another person under a train. As if I needed any reminder of what a depressed civilisation we live in, as I carried on reading Johann Hari’s book about how the way we live is breaking us. But luckily I wasn’t in a rush today, though had saved up lots of London chores saved up before the podcast recording. If you do a good circuit of London after taking the train in, then £13 return with a 6 zone Travelcard thrown in seems pretty reasonable. My daughter played merrily in the waiting room, whilst grumpy people raised their eyebrows and didn’t crack a smile. I know how annoying other people’s kids can be, but mine is brilliant and you’re al idiots for not smiling at her antics.
I was back in Shepherd’s Bush again, which is still familiar but starting to feel foreign. Maybe I am just getting more UKIPpy the more I live in the country. No, I didn’t mean it like that. But Nigel Farage does talk a lot of sense. I had lunch in the Westfield and then headed over to my evil management to sort out details for the 2018 tour. It’s coming together well. We’ve still got to decide what we’re going to do in London and there might be a couple of gigs added to make long journeys a bit less brutal (plus the usual stop offs in Cheddar and Sutton Coldfield), b
ut here’s a fair idea of where I’ll be. They’re not all on sale yet, so be patient (and I don’t know when they will be - that’s up to the venue, but probably all quite soon) and there’s no point in asking me why I am not coming to your local theatre - instead ask your local theatre to book me next time. I am in Manchester and Bristol in November. The former is sold out and the latter only has a few tickets left.
But do remember to ask your stupid relatives who’ve never heard of me to buy you tickets for Christmas (you can, if you wish, also ask your stupid relatives who have heard of me and relatives who are not stupid and friends and strangers of all kinds). In turn, why not buy your stupid relatives who’ve never heard of me a copy of the
Emergency Questions book (and if you hang on a couple of weeks you should be able to buy them a copy of Christmas Emergency Questions too).
I had finally managed to track down the RHLSTP clapperboard and brought it into town with me, but I left it hanging on the pram when I said goodbye to my family, so clapperboard fans will have to wait til next week’s show.
I felt more tired than I have at a RHLSTP for a while, which is really saying something, but luckily my guests were funny or interesting enough to keep me awake. It was great to chat with Jan Ravens, my old boat race rival, who (I hadn’t realised) had directed the Perrier award winning Cambridge Footlights show that launched the careers of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. She took my assertion that impressionists and ventriloquists are the weirdest people in show business well, mainly because I think we both know that she doesn’t fit that pattern herself, but I did manage to quiz her on the preparation required to play a sexy can of fizzy drink.
Johann Hari was the other guest and luckily he was in an eloquent and loquacious mood as I was finding it tricky to string a sentence together. It was probably the least funny RHLSTP there has yet been, but that’s not a bad thing as Johann talked in depth about the causes of depression and what we might need to do to combat this growing phenomenon.
I worried for the first time that I might not get a train home. Later services looked like they had been cancelled and so I needed to get to Kings Cross by 11.05, but the Piccadilly line had a 14 minute waiting time and when I dashed back to street level I could find no cabs. I dashed back down to the tube platform again and got the tube and arrived with 5 minutes to spare.
But one day I am surely going to have to find out how much a cab home will cost me. Why did I leave London. Everyone is so happy here.
