Warming Up

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More sad news today. Someone tweeted me (for this is the way we discover we’ve lost someone now) to let me know that Bill Cashmore has died. You may remember him as “The Man” and the Pie Master in Fist of Fun, but he also cropped up in Brass Eye, Knightmare and loads of other stuff, as well as being a prolific writer. He was a very funny and genuinely lovely person, who had recently stood as a Green Party candidate. I would bump into him in the local park in Shepherd’s Bush every now and again and it was always a pleasure to catch up. He was only 56 and as far as I can ascertain his death was sudden and unexpected. I will eat some Pie Pie Pie in memory of him. RIP Bill. 

I got into the Leicester Square Theatre early today. One leg of my last three rail journeys have been delayed by people under the trains, but today, it seemed, this horror had been averted. In my dressing room I recorded the part of a robot doctor training system for a short film - robots and perverts and perverts who fuck robots are my speciality. And then recorded two really great podcasts with Simon Brodkin (who went into brilliant detail about his pranks, especially the Theresa May one) and Reginald D Hunter, who was one of the stand ups who most inspired me when I returned to the form in the mid 2000s. He was as eloquent and poetical and open as I had hoped he would be.

I wrapped up at 10.15 so that I could catch the 11.05 train home, but of course fate had a little sucker punch to add to my day and once again I arrived at a station to find that all trains were delayed and for the fourth time out of four, there was someone under a train up ahead.

Suddenly living in the countryside seems like a stupid thing to have done. I waited an hour before a train arrived and then it sat at the station as there was now a signalling problem. I saw my already limited sleep time dwindling away and wondered if I would ever get home. In the end I decided to stump up the not inconsiderable (but given how far I was going, not unreasonable) taxi fare. The driver seemed pleased to be getting this bigger job, even though he’d just driven someone else to Luton and we had a fun chat about babies and builders failing to complete on the day they’d promised to.I was glad to have met him.

I am not saying it was worth being so delayed for this, but the time passed quickly and I was soon back at my car (with another 15 minute drive to get home). With a tiny baby at home ready to wake me up every 2 hours and an early start and a busy day tomorrow this was not what I needed. But a man I’d been sitting next to on the train tweeted to say that his delay had gone up to three hours, so I had made the right call.

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