These trips always seem much more daunting than they actually are at the start. But when you take it a day at a time then they whoosh by. I have already done two of the five gigs in this last major road trip of the tour and it all seems a lot more manageable. We also took a big dent out of the trip to Inverness by hitting the road after the Selby gig and getting two and a half hours up the road before stopping at a Travelodge near Carlisle. There's still four and a half hours of driving to do tomorrow, but that is preferable to the seven hours it would have taken us from Selby. And I am considering getting the train back from Dundee on Wednesday. The plan was to drive from Dundee to Carlisle and stop off in the same hotel we are in tonight and then do the rest of the journey on Wednesday - and obviously Pete will still have to do that. But I am conscious of the work I have to do and the fact that I am recording Have I Got News For You on Thursday, so am thinking that a good night's sleep and a train journey might be less hassle (and, fingers crossed, I might get more work done too). So all of this lifted some of the burden that I was feeling yesterday, even if I still didn't make too much progress on the script today (and needed to lie down on my dressing room floor for an hour because I felt so tired).
It's actually quite incredible that I have breezed through so much of this tour without getting tired and depressed and I have to thank Pete for that who has eased my load considerably (though apparently I have to pay him for this, which takes the shine off his helpfulness a bit). Life on the road is a relentless parade of driving, service stations, dressing rooms and cheap hotels. You lose sight of what day of the week it was. Today really felt like a Tuesday to me, but apparently it was Saturday for the rest of you.
Service stations are a world of their own, where everything costs loads more than on planet earth, though I was amused by the offer being heralded with banner adverts in Costa in the one we stopped in today. If you bought a coffee, it proudly proclaimed you would be able to buy a small bottle of water for just 99p. Wow, what a bargain that was! Never mind that in any other retail outlet you might feel you were being ripped off if they charged you a pound for a bottle of something that you could get free out of a tap, here were Costa trying to make you feel grateful for the fact that if you spent £3 on a coffee they would let you have some water for less of a rip off price than they'd usually charge. In service station terms though this is like when a petrol station accidentally charges 14.9p a litre or a loyalty card scheme gives you more points for something than it actually costs. They'd be falling over themselves for this Holy Grail of a tiny amount of water for slightly less than a pound.
I can only assume this is the case, because if I had been Costa I would have been ashamed by this offer and tried not to mention it for fear that people would laugh in my face, or worse, become furious about the insult that was being offered them and smash up the cafe. But Costa had put up big banners, maybe hoping that if they told us we should be grateful and excited then we would be. I love it when big business treats us like stupid scum. But I am not stupid and I didn't take up the offer. I just bought a cup of milky coffee for £2.99. Yeah no one can take me for a chump.
Selby Town Hall is an intimate venue with only about 150 seats, but I had at least sold out (and I will have to hang on to that triumph for the next few days as I perform in echoing, achingly empty venues in Scotland). At first glance it seemed like an older audience than I would usually get and I feared that the room was full of people who just came to see everything the Arts Centre puts on and that my humour might be a bit much for them. But they were a very giving crowd and there was a great atmosphere from the start. I particularly enjoyed trying to make a woman in the front row say the word "semen" as she collapsed in giggles at the very thought and every time she thought I was moving on I would try again only for her to dissolve into laughter. And today's computer programmer disciple took me a little literally when I said "Come with me, I will make you a programmer of men," and actually stepped up on to the stage. I think he was anticipating some kind of audience participation, but it just confused me (this has never happened before) and made me wonder if this was my Mark Chapman moment. It was all a little weird, but also funny and I had to direct him back to his seat, and luckily he complied so the whole thing didn't turn into a new awkward double act.
I really liked the venue, the staff and the audience. Everyone seemed happy that I had come to Selby to perform and even though there is a part of me that occasionally resents the fact that I have to travel miles to perform in tiny venues, the truth is that these are often the best gigs and certainly the most appreciated. Yes, Peter Kay and Michael Mcintyre might have millions of pounds and play in big arenas, but I have something more valuable - the possibility of slightly odd men being able to easily step on to the stage and do whatever they like.... oh hold on that's much less valuable. I want the millions of pounds.
If possible I would like both. So maybe I could just carry on doing thses 150 seater gigs, but charge people £100,000 each to come.
Seriously though, a gig like this one in Selby is what it is all about. Live comedy without this connection to the audience becomes a different commodity all together. I actually pity the comics who will never get to experience it.
But let's see how I feel tomorrow after performing to under 50 people in Inverness.
The hotel we stayed in in Carlisle was a Travelodge, a chain I had vowed never to patronise again after I had endured a bogey on the shower curtain in the last one I had visited in Cambridge. But it was cheap and fine for our needs. The shower curtain was stained with something green, funnily enough, but it was just the stains from shower gel (I think). We were only here to sleep anyway, so it didn't really matter and I fell asleep with ease.
Scotland here I come. Would be nice if you came as well, but I will perform alone if necessary.
