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To Broadcasting House this evening, which always feels like stepping through a passage to the past, like I am Garry Sparrow going back to the early 90s. Just cos I spent so much time here back then. It’s changed a lot and so have I, but I still expect to see our producer Sarah Smith walking past with ink all over her face. I am glad that my association with this place goes back over 26 years and delighted to still get the occasional job that means I get to come back. The passing of time was further rubbed in by the fact that the producer who I was working with used to come with her mum to see Lee and Herring tour shows when she was 13. And like quite a few of those early fans she’s gone on to make a career in comedy. Which I think is possibly the nicest tribute to that double act. We didn’t make much impact beyond comedy fans, but at least partly inspired those comedy fans to take it up as a job. And just a quarter of a century later it pays off with a job for me! Playing the long game my friends.
I was doing the links for the Comedy Club on BBC Radio 4 Extra, which spoiler alert, are not done live. It’s a show I listen to on the way home from gigs quite a lot (mine will be going out from the 19th to the 22nd and it was a fun and relatively easy couple of hours work. I chatted to Deborah Frances-White for ages (I don’t think you’ll get to hear it all) and then did my stupid links. We had a good time. Hope I am still coming to Broadcasting House in 26 years time. Even if it is a smouldering radioactive ruin by then.
I am not feeling very optimistic about the future. But it’s grimly entertaining to watch things unravel. Fascinating to watch a superpower press the self-destruct button. I mean I'd prefer to watch from a safe distance via a history book. I feel a bit like I am in an episode of the Twilight Zone where I have glasses that show me what's really going on and no one else can see. Do we have the wherewithal to grab the handle and stop the machine before all the milk bottles come cascading off and smash on the floor? I mean we should be able to do that. It seems so obvious that we’re heading for self-imposed disaster, but I don’t think we’re going to.
This feeling of hopelessness was not assuaged by going to see Bridget Christie’s latest show at the Leicester Square Theatre tonight (I just can’t keep away from the venue on a Monday, though suspect the management were glad to be shot of me as they sold out two shows tonight from Christie and her husband). It wasn’t my favourite of her shows , but it’s still really funny and she gets more confident and assured every year. There’s an element where we’re watching someone who like us, is howling with disbelief at the stupidity of the world (looks like she’s also got the Twilight Zone glasses) and our impotence in the face of stupidity. But she has some pertinent stuff to say about the patronising attitude towards the working classes and even if she is talking to an audience that probably all agree with her, the show serves a valuable function. In just letting us all laugh in the face of terror and realise that we’re not alone. I am not sure comedy can really change anything, but maybe it can help us cope (and possibly regroup). Loads to laugh at and loads to think about. She’s definitely the best stand-up in her family.
But when the world is as mad as it is becoming it is, as she and many other comedians are realising, hard to satirise it.
