It's been a while since I have been to Swindon. The Swindon Arts Centre used to be a regular stop on my early tours, but I don't think I have been back there since 2003 when they gave me some really unpleasant egg mayonnaise sandwiches which won the prize
for worst sandwich rating of that tour. Maybe in a fit of pique the Arts Centre decided to never book me again. But I am not sure that being deprived of terrible sandwiches or having to go to Swindon are punishments exactly.
Now, about eight years on I would return to the town, but not to the Arts Centre. Tonight I was at the Wyvern Theatre, which I don't remember playing before (though it seemse vaguely familiar), which doesn't mean I haven't. We might well have come here with Lee and Herring at some point. But with touring each venue blends into one.
The theatre is pretty big - maybe 600 seats, but I had been told we'd presold 220, which I was pleased with as I haven't been to this town for so long. In the end it turned out that that number wasn't quite right and maybe 180 people showed up - not too bad still, but it meant I was playing to a venue that was only a third full. Still, if you've been following this blog for a while you will know that this is a pretty good showing. Hopefully the days of performing to 30 people are behind me (though almost certainly will be in front of me at some point in my career). If I am getting 180 in a town I don't usually play then this is a very positive step.
I had had a couple of letters delivered to the stage door. These are usually from people wanting autographed leaflets, and indeed one of them was, but the other was a card from a concerned Roman Catholic who was upset that I was doing the show, saying that she had a sense of humour, but blasphemy was NOT FUNNY. She had enclosed a little prayer card which said that every time the prayer was recited 1000 souls would be released from purgatory. I found this amusing on many levels. Firstly if you believe that saying a prayer has the ability to make such a direct and helpful result isn't it irresponsible to not spend every waking hour chanting the prayer over and over again? In a way every minute spent not saying the prayer is condemning the half-damned. If you believed in this, how could you live with yourself if you wasted even a second doing anything but repeating it?
But mainly I loved the specificity of it all - 1000 souls per recantation - and the fact that this little magic spell could essentially over rule God. Presumably He had put those souls in purgatory for a reason, but if people just said the prayer then He would be forced to let 1000 of them go. Like he wasn't omnipotent at all. You could see him reluctantly kowtowing or sighing as the gates opened and more souls drifted out. Who gave the maker of that card the authority to make such claims on its behalf? And how many people in 21st Century Britain actually believe in such nonsense?
If Christians keep sending me this brilliant material I am in danger of having to do a Third Coming of this show to incorporate all their madness.
It took a bit more work to get this more timid crowd into the swing of things, unlike in Canterbury last week when they were laughing uproariously from the start, but we just about got there. It's fun being on a big stage and there was a very efficient and friendly team working on the show. My disciple turned out to be a colonel in the army (as it turned out someone who had emailed me from Afghanistan, so it was good to see him safe and sound at home, even if Swindon is in many ways more unpleasant than that particular warzone). Later I would suggest that if he could pull off the learning the first page of the New Testament trick that I do that that would really impress his soliders and I amused myself imagining them gaining respect for such an ability.
Before the show Pete, my tour manager who is yet to do something to give himself an adjective which will stick to him every time I write about him handed me back one of the programmes from the box. It was signed "To Pete" and I think he perhaps thought I had autographed a programme for him to keep, perhaps instead of paying him for the day (a doodle by me is worth £122 it turns out, so a signed programme is not a bad afternoon's pay). I explained that this was a programme that I had signed for someone at the Leicester Square Theatre, but which they had inadvertently (I hope at least) left behind in all the excitement of meeting me. I put it to one side.
After the show when I was signing more programmes (basically just giving £122 to everyone who came past) a man came up to me and asked if I had a spare programme as he hadn't been given one. I said I didn't, unless his name was Pete in which case he could have that one. It turned out that his name was Pete, which must have seemed a little bit of a miraculous to him, like maybe God was moving in a mysterious way to show his powers. It was especially impressive when a few minutes later I realised there was a box of programmes under the table, so he could easily have had a fresh one. But instead he got one that had been preordained to be his.
There was a bit of a mix-up with the SCOPE collection buckets too. So if you were in the audience and wanted to donate, but couldn't, please do so at
my justgiving page. You can also give if you weren't at the gig of course.
So far the tour has been fun and fairly easy. I've been home by midnight for all the gigs and not had to stay away overnight. Once March begins things might get a little more taxing, but three down, all good fun and an average audience of 200 a night... check back with me in a month and see if I am so positive.
