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By the end of today I had done 8 podcasts in 8 days, including six RHLSTPs and travelled into London six times (and Bath once). Lost a job, maybe gained a job. The main job I have this year is reagraldess going very well. Ooo eee Rick, what a week and a day it’s been.
Today I had to come into town early because I had all the show cameras after Bath and needed to get them to the crew but I was also recording an episode of a new podcast - This One Time at Summer Camp hosted by Steve Bujela - in which I discussed the many disasters, near death and near sacking I experience at Camp Mendocino in 1986. It was an incredibly eventful few months with kids falling off cliffs, being slapped in the face by me and thrown against huts by others, a huge fire and an American woman being confused by my Marks and Spencer’s (essentially boy’s) underwear when she was trying to get at my even more confusing and virginal penis. So I think it’s probably quite a good episode. I am amazed that beyond a couple of blogs I have never really written about this experience. I was a hopeless child. Maybe I still am.
I then had two interviews to give myself and though I was feeling a bit weary, thankfully managed to keep up the very high standard that we’ve achieved with series 15. James Acaster was very funny and a little vulnerable, but open as always and ready to have a proper go at answering everything thrown at him. He’s one of the best stand ups we have and it’s great that he is getting the recognition for that and has exactly the correct amount of disrespect for me to make him a perfect guest.
I suspect most of the audience had come to see him and weren’t too sure who London Hughes was, but boy did they find out! I don’t think a newer act (and she’d been going for a decade as a comedian, but that is classified as new in today’s very difficult to break into market) has ever done a better job of representing themselves on this podcast. She grabbed the interview by the dick and the audience instantly got her. Not only did she have a lot of funny stories, she had some sobering views on the racism and sexism casually inherent in this business, but has the passion and the determination to push through it all. If you crossed a slightly less mad Brian Blessed with a slightly less mad Lou Sanders you might get some idea of what London is like. But I was impressed by her focus and ambition, even if that means, for now, that her personal life might be suffering.
Comedians give up a lot in their attempt to make it and there was a little sadness behind the laughs for both tonight’s guests. My personal life is good, but professionally I have less chance of mega success than these two. I suppose it’s been the other way round for me too. This way round is better. But probably being in your early 50s is mostly better than being in your early 30s.
All the interviews I’ve done in 2019 so far have felt very good from where I’ve been sitting. Usually there are a couple that I am not so thrilled about (though as often as not the listeners still like them), but I think I’ve had a mild shift in attitude to the podcasts and am taking them a little bit more seriously (but am also determined to enjoy them too).
I have a bit of a quieter week coming up and in many ways am happy that I don’t have to struggle to sort out that script. It’s weird that the side project that I took on partly to publicise my main job has now turned into my main job. Imagine where I’d be if I’d taken it seriously from the start!
