Back to Broadcasting House this evening to appear on a new panel show called "Wordaholics", which I think will be broadcast in February 2012. It's hosted by the avuncular and mildly eccentric Gyles Brandreth and today's other guests were Natalie Haynes, Jenny Eclair and Alex Horne. I was tired and a bit hungover and not really in the mood for it, but once we got going it was a lot of fun. A supportive atmosphere and a silly chat between friends.
Natalie and I were on the same team and we've done a few radio shows together over the years. She said we'd always been on the same team in the past, but I seemed to remember one occasion when we hadn't been. Thanks to the magic of Warming Up I am able to find out it was
in 2004 on as show called "We've Been Here Before" which I have absolutely no memory of whatsoever. Funnily enough Gyles Brandreth was in that recording too. He controlled his eccentricities much better tonight and was on fine form. It's hard to believe he was once an MP.
Afterwards a few of us went to the Yorkshire Grey pub for a drink. This was the pub where we used to regularly drink in the early 1990s when we worked at the now demolished LE department at 16, Langham St. If you're read my book, it's the pub where I almost got my head kicked in when laughing at a joke about Descartes, which a drunken man mistook for me laughing at him punching his friend. That was the most dramatic event at the pub, but we had lots of fun here too. And as usual it's hard to believe that 20 years have passed. In fact I don't believe it. It hasn't. I am still 24.
I chatted with the two young writers of the show about the old days and the mechanics of writing in a pair, acting like the elder statesman and hoping I wasn't being too boring. I talked about the crazy old days of Weekending non-commissioned meetings and the characters who came in off the street to try and write a topical sketch, the vagueries of how different producers would respond to our material (one producer used on 30 second sketch from me and Stew in her entire 8 week run, and then I think the next week Harry Thompson used an unprecedented 12 minutes of our material in one week). And of course I mentioned the time that I half jokingly/half seriously was so exacerbated at having to write topical material about John Majors that I emptied out the newspapers from two big crates, got inside one, put the other on top of me and refused to come out.
It was fun to take a stroll down memory lane and to pretend for an evening that this was just another of those days. I thought about the writers and producers and PAs that I used to drink with here, displaced, replaced, some deceased. If only I was Gary Sparrow and could step back and see the old gang. Though it gave me some pleasure to see the new gang.
