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Back to King’s Place tonight to appear on someone else’s podcast for once - David Reed’s Inside The Comedian, a quite tricky gig where you have to talk about a somewhat fictitious version of your own career and ethos of comedy. It’s basically a parody of all the podcasts where comedians talk to other comedians, a format that I couldn’t hate more. But though I felt perturbed about the difficulty of what I was going to be doing, a totally improvised 50 minutes of chat (and yes, that’s odd because it’s not too different than what I do every week), I felt weirdly calm. I watched Lucy Porter smashing it, thinking I had no idea how I would have answered the questions she was getting, but calmly accepted that I was about to have to do the same and didn’t even feel like running away. I trusted that I would somehow be able to do it once I had to. There was a time when I was so nervous before doing even a scripted performance that I would need to spend most of the half hour before a show on the toilet but now, here I am, able to chuck myself into unfamiliar territory without even sweating.
I mean I was shit in the podcast, but that’s not the point.
It was a lot of fun to attempt and it will be out either next Sunday or the one after.
I had driven into town again and got to use the amazing King’s Place car lift. Last time someone had turned up within a couple of minutes to lead me out of the bowels of the building (and believe me, it literally smells of shit down there), but today I waited five minutes and no one turned up, then a bit longer and a man appeared in the corridor, saw me, but went on his way - I tried to find my own way out but the lift I found didn’t work and my phone had no signal to ring the numbers that a sign suggested I ring. In the end I found an intercom and told them I was still waiting and finally a very suspicious security guard came down and treated me as if I’d been reported as a trespasser, before somewhat reluctantly taking me up into the theatre.
Hanging around in that garage cum sewer (it was probably a cum sewer too) I had worried that I might be murdered or just choke to death on the fumes. There was a weird bloody stain on the floor of the corridor. What if a serial killer was on the prowl in the building?
Worse still, what if I missed the show because no one ever came to rescue me?
Oh, I’ ve written all of this in the wrong order, having revealed that not only that I did the show, but a man turned up to save me. One day I will learn about structure.
After a drink with David and his producer Ed, I tried to get back to the car. I’d been told that if I went to the security desk they would send someone to take me down, but the man at the desk again treated me very suspiciously, like I might be someone who got off on hanging out in an underground car park that smelled of fetid faeces. He told me that the crew of the show should have taken me down and I told him that they had said that he would help me. He went to talk to someone and then very reluctantly informed me that I’d have to go round the outside of the building and come down in the car lift. Which seemed crazy, but I wanted to go home so I went along with it. And I got out un-murdered. Which is great for me, but not so good for an exciting end to the blog.
Damn I’d blown the jeopardy again by writing a blog, which I couldn’t have done if I was dead. Writing is hard.
