I wrote a good new bit for the act today which I tried out at the Fortnight Club. It worked well. But for once I am not going to write about it here, so that there will be something to surprise the Warming Up fan in Edinburgh this year. Ha ha. I am an evil genius.
My favourite thing at the moment is the Marks and Spencers' mango, kiwi fruit, blueberry and pomegranate fruit salad. It is the best thing in the whole of Marks and Spencers. Yes, even better than
my secret girlfriend, though to be honest I don't really know what I saw in her. Being in love with her was just a childish phase. How ridiculous to think you are in love with someone you have never met and will never meet (apart from
Jenny Agutter in 1976 obviously - that is real love). My new secret girlfriend is US comedian and actress (I have recently seen her in both Larry Sanders and Voyager and she rocks)
Sarah Silverman. As she works in the same profession as me there is every chance that our paths may cross and so it isn't ridiculous for me to be in love with her, even though she is massively more successful and attractive than me and lives in a different country. Some people have accused me of being fickle in my choice of secret (and real) girlfriends. But this is definitely it now. Sarah Silverman is the one, with Jenny Agutter from 1976 as my mistress as and when I invent a time machine (and in 1976 Sarah Silverman is only 6 so it would be sick and wrong of me to go out with her in that time zone in any case). Also Sophie Ellis-Bextor's as yet unborn daughter is my girlfriend of the 2030s, but Sarah can't complain about that. I loved that non-existent beauty before I had fallen for Sarah so she can't complain and anyway she'll be all old and fat (unlike me) by then and so can't blame me for taking a younger lover.
Anyhoo, back to fruit. I love this salad of exotic fruit and try to eat one every day, because I am healthy and am going to need to remain fit to cope with the demands of a 20 year old when I am in my sixties. The pomegranate part of the salad brought back a memory today though that I hadn't thought about for a while. I remembered the first time I ever saw a pomegranate. I was maybe seven or eight and with my grandad in Middlesbrough and he showed me this weird and wonderful fruit. Back then in the olden days, such an exotic fruit was indeed quite a rarity. It's quite incredible how much choice we have in the 21st century, because in the 1970s you could only get about three fruits and the only commercially available juice was orange (and occasionally if you were being fancy grapefruit). I recalled my grandad cutting open the pomegranate and showing me how to pick out the little tiny bulbs of fruit with a pin. I am not sure I enjoyed eating the fruit much - I was a fussy child and find it unlikely that I would have liked the unusual tasting sweetmeat all that much - but I enjoyed the laborious process of extracting the little red morsels. It's strange what you choose to remember from your life and maybe it's not a coincidence that many of my memories involve food, but it made me feel warm and happy to remember this moment of closeness and sharing with a sadly now deceased relative.
I also remember that it was my grandad who first bought me a Wispa. They market tested them in the Middlesbrough area and they weren't out in Somerset at that time, so that was another weird and wonderful treat and one that was easier to eat and that I was keener to try again on another occasion. If only chocolate was as difficult to eat as a pomegranate then maybe my life would have worked out differently. Now of course, thanks to Marks and Spencers pomegranates are easily eaten in pre-prepared and expensive fruit salad form, so finally I can enjoy them again without being in danger of pricking my tongue.
Anyway, a bit of pointless nostalgia, which is in no way as funny as the bit I wrote today, that you are going to have to pay to see. Ha ha ha.
Oh also I am trying to choose three of four of the funniest or most interesting Warming Ups from the last year to put in the Edinburgh programme. If you have any faves that you think you should be included then do let me know. I think the Christmas day one about the cat in the bath is probably a cert, but apart from that I am not sure. So email me some nominations or stick them in the guestbook.
I notice I already have 76 myspace friends and the page hasn't even been up for much more than a day. In your face Collings, you pretend-friendless idiot.
