Andrew skulked off with his tail between his legs at 6am. I am too much of a gentleman to reveal what happened once we were back at the house, but let's just say that our podcasts might lack a certain tension from now on in. It would be a rude person who accepted Seinfeld tickets and then didn't put out afterwards.
I haven't really had much down time recently and had intended to work today, but I slept in and still felt tired and decided to have a small barbecue with my girlfriend and we sat outside in the sun eating sausages in a bun. It's easy with my job to get overwhelmed with work (and I have been pushing myself again this year) so it's great to enjoy the simple things in life every now and again. And maybe at my age I should be starting to think about doing this kind of thing more often and the working thing a bit less. The snubs of important TV executives and my place in the pecking order of show business are perhaps signs that it hasn't been worth devoting my life to this stupid job and maybe I should switch my priorities.
We lay in my hammock with the sun beating down and the disposable barbecue spewing smoke into the air and it felt like we were on holiday. I hardly ever come out into my tiny back yard and it has become a bit overgrown with weeds. I should probably have stayed in the hammock all afternoon and snoozed but made the pretense of doing some writing - which involved just sitting in my hot lounge with the TV on, failing to write my blog. Then suddenly it was time to go to tonight's gig.
I was playing the Broadway in Barking, a venue I remembered from my
last gig there which had been rather charming and special. Tonight ticket sales were low and I'd be doing my second full length preview, having had no time to do any work on it or learn the stuff I've got. But that's OK at this stage. I am enjoying keeping it loose and just trying to fill the time by telling stories. There's no pressure to be getting laughs every minute. Years ago such raggedy previews embarrassed me, but now they're amongst my favourite gigs. I really have to keep on my toes, but even I don't know what I will say in places. And amazingly I seem to have stuff to talk about for an hour, even if some of it won't be in the final show. I only did three or four old jokes to keep up the laugh rate. Very promising for so early in the process.
It was quite a change from last night, from 14,000 people at the O2 to 27 people in the Broadway Barking (though at least we were in the theatre - there had been talk of transferring the gig to the bar, but it was decided it would be too hot in there with the evening sun shining through the glass). By rights if Seinfeld is charging 14,000 people £100 each, I should have been charging 27 people £51851.85 per ticket. I toyed with the idea of writing a brilliant hour of comedy and then charging that much (I have a feeling Doug Stanhope might have done something similar one Fringe - though tickets not quite that expensive). It would be an hour of comedy that no one would see. But I wouldn't be able to do the jokes anywhere else. If I worked up my best hour of material ever and then priced myself out of the market, what a brilliant artistic statement that would be. Maybe someone would be rich and curious enough to open the box and pay the money. Or maybe they wouldn't.
As it was the punters only paid £12 and got to see me and the wonderful Catie Wilkins and I think we gave them a pretty good night's entertainment. It wasn't going to get remembered in the way that Seinfeld would. It wouldn't be one of my favourite all time gigs (like the last one in this venue will always be). I probably won't remember anything about it in a year. The aftershow party was small and not even Cleo Roccos turned up. But at least no one snubbed me. To be snubbed in a party involving just two people is perhaps the biggest insult. "What are you working on now?" "I am writing a script for the BBC..." "Oh, hello chair, I haven't seen you for a while. What are you up to?" Oh right, so that chair has a better career than me now, right? Brilliant. At least I am at the after show party, I can laud it over all the broken furniture they keep in that room downstairs.
We didn't hang around at the aftershow. I couldn't afford to miss the tube two nights running. And I wouldn't want to get stuck in the strange hinterland that is East London. It's like a different planet over there. West is best, east is least. But when we got to Stratford station and I saw that they had a Westfield shopping centre there too I wondered if East and West London are just reflections of each other. And in that case, which is the evil half and which is the good?
