After all these years I still haven't broken Cumbria. Carlisle always used to be the least well attended gig of the tour and tonight I was in Barrow-in-Furness and wasn't sure if even 50 people would be in the audience. I was philosophical about this and not at all upset. After all I have had a great run of packed gigs on this leg of the tour, which has been flying by as a result. And I am pretty sure I had never played Barrow before either. In the end there was 65 or so people in, which made this the worst attended tour gig (though maybe one of two of those early January London gigs were even emptier) and the room was set up in a way that didn't make it look too tragic.
The front row was made up of a group who all looked the same age, which might have been 14 or might have been 20 (I now find it impossible to tell the difference - and that your honour is the case for the defence). They all seemed to know each other and loved it when I mocked or addressed anyone of their number. I thought that maybe they were students who liked the podcasts or something. But when I was discussing the turgidity of the phallus on the slide show and what was coming out of it with one of the young women on the front row I thought I had better just check her age. It turned out she was 18, which meant there was nothing in the world wrong with a 43 year old man repeatedly saying the word "semen" to her over and over again. As I am fond of saying in such circumstances, "If a 43 year old man can't say the word semen over and over again to an 18 year old girl, then Al Qaeda has won, my friend."
It was very helpful having a group like this at the front of the gig. They were enjoying it, but also gave the show some focus and importantly they were well behaved and didn't get carried away. Maybe the much older woman from the Manchester gig might want to take note of their politeness. It turned out they were a group of sixth formers who were taking religious studies and I mocked them for wasting their time. After all the answer is surely "God is made up" and then you get your A. I noticed their teacher squirming a little at the end of the row and was able to get a laugh from her students by implying she might wash my feet with her hair, but also chastised her for bringing them to such a controversial show. Though in reality I think that it was brilliant that she did. What a cool teacher and without blowing my own cherub I think this show has some interesting educational jump off points. It all helped turn a potentially eggy gig into a really fun one. And if they hadn't shown up then I might have had an audience of under 50, so I have to thank God for sending them down.
Afterwards the other audience members seemed pleased that I had come to their town, if a little embarrassed by the attendance, but they didn't have to be. Now these small gigs are the exception rather than the rule I do quite enjoy them. It is much harder to make a few people laugh and so it's a real test for me and I was pleased that I had the professionalism to give my all. And it's always fun to be inappropriate.
I had stayed in my hotel room all afternoon working so saw little of Barrow itself, but when I got back an alarm went off in the street outside and I looked out of the window to check our car was OK. It turned out it was a shop alarm that had probably just malfunctioned. The streets were still quite busy and there were a fair amount of drunken groups shouting at each other, which was impressive for approaching midnight on a Thursday. There was though one man on his own eating chips. He was standing in the road, oblivious to any danger that traffic might bring and was stumbling around. He was so drunk that he dropped half his chips on to the wet, dirty tar mac. But he was not upset by this unfortunate happenstance. He just crouched on the floor, the crack of his arse visible above his jeans and scooped the dirty chips back into the packet and then stood up and continued eating them.
I think that even after that fun gig, in the future all I will remember of Barrow is that man. In my mind he is the Mayor of the town and an ambassador for its people. They are the kind of folk who will eat chips off of a road. You can only be impressed by them and also not too wounded that they didn't fancy coming to my show when they have such sophisticated tastes.
