I met Jeremy "Paxo" Paxman, old Packalackadackdack for the second time tonight (the third time if you include the time I was in a lift with him and touched his briefcase with one of my hands) and I was crushed to realise he didn't recognise me. "Hello, nice to meet you," he said as he arrived on set. I could have shouted at him, "But Pacman, Pachyderm, Pachthadams, you have met me before. You interviewed me on Newsnight only a matter of months ago. How can you not remember? How?"
But instead I just smiled weakly and said, "And you."
To make matters worse he recognised both Rebecca Front and Steve Punt who were my fellow comedic guests. I can only imagine that the bookers were trying to insult me. "We've got Punt, we've got Front, who can we have to complete the triumverate?"
"Gareth Hunt?", no doubt said with an hilarious quick shake of the hand as if full of coffee beans.
"He's dead. But I know another Berkshire Hunt we could get...."
It had been a full day in the media spotlight. I had started early on with an appearance on Frank Skinner's show on Absolute Radio. The luxury of commercial radio was clearly demonstrated by the fact that whilst there for half an hour I was offered doughnuts, croissants and pain au chocolat. When I would get hungry later at 6Music all the producer had to offer me was a tiny pack of sugar. The BBC should really spend a lot more money on luxuries for their presenters. I can't imagine why they don't.
Once I'd spoken to Frank, I had to make a quick dash up the road to the BBC for that very 6Music show. Collings and me had already met up at a Caffe Nero near Absolute radio to discuss what subjects we might be covering in our regular features (as with the podcasts though we do very little actually preparation - we just need to know what we're going to ask the Nerd Army to do and what subject we will have for the phone in). I had popped to the loo in the coffee shop to find it had no lights on at all and I had to do my best to locate and use the toilet in the dark. On air we would wonder if this would make a good new TV game show. I thought it should be called "Shot in the Dark" whilst Collings displaying a rare wit went for "Total Wipearound." He is occasionally funny, but only in the way that monkeys with typewriters would also be funny accidentally every now and again. When they took a break from typewriting and threw their shit at each other.
Without the pressure of the tour I am a lot fresher on these Saturday morning shows (though this was my third early start in a row and I had been gigging last night) and I think the last two have been the best we've done. There was lots of fun to be had with people's stories of resentment of their parents, which somehow led to me imagining someone making a gigantic kazoo which they would play at their elderly parent's death bed.
I also had fun shouting out "Cox" over and over again near the start. For some reason
this didn't make the podcast (it's only a man's name). But you should be able to hear it all unedited
on iPlayer.
Then in the evening it was Newsnight where I had a few brief seconds to say what I had enjoyed about the election campaign. The politicians had spoken for longer than anticipated and our "comedy" section was very much cut down to the bare minimum and I didn't get much of a chance to shine. Though I wish I had said that I had enjoyed the contest between Paxman and Dimbleby on the election coverage. If only so I might have called Paxman "Packalackadackdack" to his face. Next time maybe.
At least I slagged off Nick Griffin. But I didn't even call him DickIbegyourpardonNick Griffin. So many missed opportunities.
