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Up to Ulverston today to perform at Another Fine Fest, a festival dedicated to Stan Laurel who was born in the town. Cumbria has always been an audience blackspot for me, with the lake people never being over keen to see my shows, but I had sold a couple of hundred tickets today, so maybe the tide is turning. More likely a lot of people who didn’t know who I was had turned out to support the Festival. It might be a long night.
The gig itself was in the cinema above the Laurel and Hardy museum and my dressing room was a curtained off section of exhibits. I found out that the man who did the voice over for the conveyor belt on the Generation Game had married Stan Laurel’s daughter. Also that Stan had gone out joking. In hospital as a nurse prepared to inject him with some fearsome looking needles he said he would not mind going skiing right now. The nurse said she didn’t know that he was a skier and Stan said. "I'm not, I'd rather be doing that than this!” A few minutes later he died.
Some of the collected figurines were not of the highest quality. A couple of them looked like Bruce Forsyth had teamed up with a fat Adolf Hitler. Though I liked the idea of someone opening up a museum dedicated to this unlikely pairing. Even though they were not in any way connected. Are you a fan of Bruce Forsyth and Adolf Hitler, then come to Kendal to the world’s only Bruce Forsyth and Adolf Hitler museum. Hitler probably influenced Forsyth’s life a bit, but I suspect that the Fuhrer was little troubled by Bruce. The museum could also mention the fact that the announcer from the conveyor belt had married Stan Laurel’s daughter. They could just photocopy the Laurel and Hardy exhibit.
I love Laurel and Hardy, or as they used to be known in Germany “Dick und Doof” (also the name they used for Lee and Herring when our shows were on out there). Partly because they were always on on kids TV in the 70s and partly, I realise now, because they remind me of my grandparents. My dad’s dad was tall and thin and resembled Stan and my mum’s dad, shorter and rounder, with a toothbrush moustache like Olly. Both my grandfathers shaped my comedy, with the Hardyesque one making me laugh with funny faces and daft jokes and the Laurelly one encouraging my writing. And the real Stan and Olly were pretty influential too. I even found a random bloke whose name began with L so our double act could have the same initials.
The show went well - definitely my best ever Cumbrian gig, though it didn’t have much competition. The crowd mainly stayed with me throughout, though occasionally a few of them were not great at picking up on irony - my favourite bit was when I seemingly dismissed the countryside for being all about fresh air and birdsong and all that shit and someone took (probably mock) umbrage and I had to explain that in reality I thought fresh air was a good thing.
I had some fun mocking Barrow in Furness, largely thanks to two steaming Barrow lads who’d been behind me on the train. They had been swearing and mildly threatening, but then unexpectedly friendly with a stranger who sat near them. Then they started singing the praises (literally) of spliff. After they had sun about spliffs one of them discussed his Utopian vision of a world where everyone had access to top grade “buds” and would thus all be billionaires from the sales they would make. His slightly more intelligent friend pointed out that no one would be a billionaire in that world as if everyone had access to grass then no one would need to buy it. But the first man was in too much of a reverie at his beautiful future and couldn’t understand what his friend meant. It was delightful to hear two (presumably) stoned men, discussing whether everyone having loads of top quality grass would make them all billionaires.The first guy said that they people with the really top quality buds would be billionaires as everyone would want their product and when the second one tired to point out that this would mean that not everyone was billionaires, the first guy wasn’t having it. The someone on the carriage did a really disgusting fart. I don’t want to seem prejudiced but I definitely think it was the stupider of the two Barrow men.
The sunny streets of Ulverston had been packed with drinkers at 4.30 when I arrived and I worried that I would have a drunk crowd (they were quite drunk, but well behaved). I passed a florists called “Floral and Hardy” and hoped that somewhere there was a shop called “Laurel and Hardware”. A man recognised me and said “There’s Lee Herring,” and then somewhat sarcastically (unnecessarily so given his mistake), “He’s the star attraction tonight”. He didn’t think I had heard, but his crapulousness had turned his whisper into a stage whisper. I didn’t mind. I would have been surprised if anyone in Ulverston knew my name. And even the bloke who recognised me hadn’t got that right.
Ulverston has the shortest, widest and deepest canal in the world (no one cares about those dimensions when it comes to a canal) which unsurprisingly is no longer in use), was the epicentre of an earthquake that reached 3.7 on the Richter Scale and caused no damage and is home to more festivals than any other town I've been to. Including a breast feeding festival. Hope I get booked for that one too.
