Mid-afternoon I escaped the strain of the script that I had been working on since 8am (and which would still be unfinished when I finally gave up trying at 11pm) by having a bath. I was an hour away from the loose deadline imposed by the producer and I knew I was going to hear it whooshing past my ears, so I effectively hid away, but got clean at the same time. Writing comedy needs an odd mixture of mental resilience and total mental flexibility and imagination bending. It's no wonder it drives a few of us crazy. But though I felt like I was going a bit crazy I was pretty sure I wasn't, because if I was I surely wouldn't think I was going crazy. Unless this was a new virulent kind of self-aware craziness.
But I allowed myself to act a little bit crazy, partly by ducking my responsibilities for an hour and also by shouting stuff out and singing loudly to myself. Which funnily enough seemed to do the trick and clean and slightly destressed I edged my way closer to getting through my work.
Despite the discomfort and the fear associated with the tasks at hand I felt well aware that this is still nothing on having a proper job or at least a job that I hated. And I have plenty of time where I lounge around doing fuck all and most of what I do is pleasurable and ultra rewarding. But that didn't make me feel any better. It just made me feel like a dick. And if I went through this pain more regularly then imagine what wonders I could have written. I could write a hundred Catford jokes a day.
Later on whilst trying to keep my eyes open and once again avoiding the work that still needed to be done I somehow chanced across
a very early recording of "The Seven Raymonds" which was the University sketch group that I was in with amongst others Stewart and Emma "Williams" Kennedy.
Much more rare and unexpected stuff at www.fistoffun.net.
I had no idea that any of that stuff had been recorded and I think this might actually be the second gig we did together in early 1987. You will hear at that point I only have the stage craft of a Ben Elton 30 years into his career. Though I remember many of the sketches these are the hesitant first attempts at them, performed at the Oxford Revue Workshop in a cellar beneath the Oxford Union. It's odd that this was taped at all and even stranger that it still exists. We are much more rubbish than I remember us being, especially me with my sub-Terry Jones whimsy, but it's an interesting document and another skeletal hand pulling me back into the long distant past. The better sketches were visual and make little sense and we certainly got a lot better at performing them, but yes, mainly rubbish. I like the little asides and Stew's clear (and correct) embarrassment at some of the things I had written or said. Strange to think that all this time on I am still working with Emma. Stranger to think that I haven't spoken to Jo, the other girl for over 20 years. She was my first girlfriend at University, very briefly, but I couldn't remember her voice. She didn't sound like I thought she would. But then nor did I. But of a mind fuck to take this unexpected leap back in time. Like listening to ghosts. The laughter (and lack of laughter) in a tiny room nearly quarter of a century ago. Is there any sign there that three of us would be making a living at comedy two decades on? Perhaps the odd spark. Mainly from Emma and Stew though it has to be said. Still finding our way - we got better quite quickly - but that's probably the first occasion that Stew and I were on stage (briefly) as a double act.
I didn't listen to it all. I would advise you to show the same restraint. But those were the days that changed my life, the first tentative, yet also amazingly over confident steps into doing this as a job and forging friendships and working relationships that are still resonating now and may be doing so still in another 23 years. After a first term where I hadn't fitted in and had had to do exams and worried that I would be sent home pretty soon, this was where I began to find my place at University. How remarkable that the echoes of that time exist on tape and now on the internet.
