Warming Up

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Another train journey and for the third time in a row the rail network ground to a halt due to someone under a train. In the end I needed to get a cab to Cockfosters and carry my journey on by tube to get to the Leicester Square Theatre to chat to the Prime Minister in a wonderful (or less awful) alternate Universe, Geoff Lloyd (and his mate Ed Miliband). Having listened to a couple of episodes of their excellent podcast Reasons To Be Cheerful, I was looking forward to this very much. And as a lovely bonus I was then going to be talking to my second favourite TV historian (sorry Greg, by Mary Beard is unbeatable) Greg Jenner. And the delays gave me extra time to leaf through his book “A Million Years In A Day.”

It was a tiring slog and the cab driver very nearly drove into the back of someone as he searched for something to use as a receipt. It started to feel like some force was trying to stop me getting into London. But why would a force that powerful attempt to stop me in such random and inefficient ways? Surely a lightning bolt to my head would do the trick. Why was this force throwing people under trains and giving me inattentive taxi drivers if it just wanted to stop me going to London? Almost like I am some kind of idiot who believes the whole world is a movie that revolves around me and can’t see that nearly everything that happens is actually nothing to do with me. I am just a leaf buffeted in the winds of chance. And it only took me about 90 minutes extra to roll up at the theatre.

In Pret a Manger I was buying my dinner, when a distressed and homeless man (I know this to be the case as he mentioned it), came to the counter and screamed, “Can I have a hot chocolate? I’m homeless!” (see I told you). The staff were busy with other stuff and I assume have to deal with this kind of thing a lot and were trying to ignore him. But he was hard to ignore. He was in a terrible way and had a big part of his nose missing and was shouting “Fucking Hell, fucking hell, just give me some change, please.”

Perhaps the non-existent force was just attempting to make me notice how fucked up our country is and how awful it is that people have no recourse but to throw themselves under trains and beg for drinks. I looked at the counter full of my lovely snacks for dinner and felt that it was the least that I could do to buy this man a drink, so I asked the lady to add a hot chocolate to my order. 

Of course then I just felt like a dick because surely I should let this fella have some food as well, but he was becoming more and more disruptive and agitated and the lady behind the counter looked at me like I was a fucking amateur - “Well done mate. Thanks to you, this potentially violent man with nothing to lose now has a valid excuse to wait here.” And he was standing right next to me, so I might be the target of his anger. Perhaps I had thought I would look like some kind of amazing philanthropist, like the rich man who helps out Oliver Twist whilst doing nothing to change the endemic poverty and ultimately is only helping his grandson (spoiler alert), but standing here I knew my gesture was meaninglessly tiny, hadn’t done anything to help this guy and had put everyone else in extra danger. 

Still I think you’ll agree, I am a pretty great guy,

The podcasts were loads of fun and I was somehow awake enough this week to bring some spontaneity and cheekiness to the proceedings. Ed took my rudeness well and gave as good as he got and although I think it was a somewhat partisan crowd, I think most of us left wondering what might have been if he hadn’t been quite so restricted before the election and had let the electorate see that he was more than a man who couldn’t eat a bacon sandwich despite having two kitchens. 

And Greg put up with my stupid questions about history and my fixation on Rasputin and was very funny. It’s certainly interesting doing podcasts with people who aren’t primarily seen as comedians and I hope to do more like this next year. 

If only Miliband had done my podcast instead of Russell Brand’s before the election, then maybe things might have worked out differently for them both.