Warming Up

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Phoebe moved up a class in her football club last week and it’s strange to see her now interacting with bigger kids. All her other classmates are boys and they’re all slightly older than her, but she’s holding her own. One boy was homing in on her a lot and barging into her a bit and being annoying, but clearly cos he liked her. That was basically my chat up technique until I was 35. Last week they’d had a mini fight, but I think that was all in the same spirit. The boy told me “I am called Spiderman”. 

“Shush,” I replied, “You’ve got to keep your true identity secret.”

I doubted that he actually was Spiderman. But then again Spiderman had to be three at some point. Maybe that’s the next film. 

But I suspect that little boy was a liar and he wasn’t Spiderman at all. But just in case I didn’t make any trouble. A three year old Spiderman has great power, but no sense of responsibility so you don’t want to get on his bad side. If he was Spiderman he wasn’t that good at football. But then a spider has never played for England (not even in goal where they could surely stop any attack with their eight legs and a system of webs). Anyway whether he’s Spiderman or not, I will not be allowing him to date my daughter. If he’s a liar then she must keep away and if he’s not, without wanting to sound speciest, I do not want a load of quarter spider kids for grandchildren. I suppose that makes me politically incorrect in these times where we are supposed to treat spiders as equals.

On the way to my gig at Angel Comedy I bumped into Alexei Sayle. He’d just been at the Bill Murray pub looking round and checking it out as a potential venue. A member of staff had asked him if he was a performer. He’d whipped off his hat and glasses to reveal who he was and said, “Yeah, I’m a performer.”  I felt confident enough to lightly take the mickey and say, “Yeah, but the danger with that is that they might still not know who you were”. He admitted this had happened at another venue where the member of staff was German and had been non-plussed. I don’t know if Sayle spends his life going round small comedy venues in disguise, only to surprise comedy nerds when they find out who he is. But I hope he does. 

It was only after I had gone on my way (managing to get lost on the way to the venue for the second time in a week) that I considered what a big deal it was for me to be casually chatting with one of my childhood heroes (and he was with another person who had played a huge part in the creation of my favourite TV show, “The Young Ones”). Funny how things turn out. 

The gig this week was not quite as packed as last time, but it was still a fun hour, and gave me some good ideas on what to cut and what to expand upon and where I needed more laughs. I am super relaxed about this show and it’s quite chatty at the moment - and I’d like to keep it that way. I managed to put in some quite clever call backs that I have now entirely forgotten, but hopefully they will pop back into my head when I need them. 

I am fairly confident that I will have a solid hour with a proper through line by August. Book ahead. And remember there’s a cheque for £14 x 2 waiting for you if you didn’t enjoy it.