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Off early doors for Cheltenham. Nice to be back on the road. I listened to Band on the Run by Wings and thought about how many bangers there are on that album. And also which tracks I needed to remember in case that ever comes up on Pointless - Mrs Vanderbilt and Mamunia, but probably anything from the second half of the album will do you. Mamunia is the only slightly disappointing track for my money.
The Cheltenham Literature Festival is a very nice gig. I even had a parking space reserved for me, but when I stopped for literally three seconds to move the cone out of the way so I could get into it, an old lady passing by pointed out that there was no waiting allowed. It was nice of her to help traffic enforcement. I sarcastically told her that I was glad of her input but I couldn’t move the cone without waiting.
There’s a VIP Writers’ tent, with free food and drinks and where you can spot big literary stars like Ian Rankin, Mary Beard and Jess Phillips. I was interviewing Richard Osman in the afternoon, so got to hang out with him which is always fun. Waiting to go up on stage with him and seeing our reflection in the glass of the door I felt like we were a photo from the Guinness Book of Records of the tallest and smallest human beings (or maybe just Richards). It’s hard to believe we are the same species! This big room was completely sold out with an audience that rightly love the Big Dick and it was an absolute blast to chat with him for an hour. He got his usual digs in, but luckily we didn’t get on to Wordle so didn’t come to blows. We’re hopefully releasing the audio as a RHLSTP Book Club in a few weeks.
I gave Richard a copy of my book and one of my coveted stress ball Right Bollocks. I have a doll of him in my house, so maybe that's not too weird.
I headed back to the hotel for a couple of hours and was very tempted to go to sleep, but didn’t want to miss my own event. I then had a little look round the festival and for the first time saw my new book for sale in a book shop. It was actually piled up in large numbers on various tables, something I am unlikely to see in any non-festival book shop, but it was nice to get that special treatment there. There were even, somehow a couple of copies of Talking Cock for sale. I look very young in the pictures on the first few pages. I was about 34 so that makes sense.
I had misunderstood where my own event was and wasted some time walking round the Town Hall looking for the Garden Theatre that my Googlemaps told me was in the gardens there. But it was actually in the same place as the main festival. My smaller room was not sold out, but there were around about 300 people in, which I was very happy with. And the talk went well, with Matthew Stadlen doing a good job at the helm, but me totally being unable to remember any of my own jokes when asked at the end. I wondered if anyone would be in the bookshop tent to get a copy signed, but there was a decent queue. We sold some copies. I was pleased.
When I got back to the writers tent at 10pm it was more or less empty. I talked to a journalist as I drank a non-alcoholic beer and then headed back to the hotel, where I was torn between the desire to get a lovely night’s sleep or be sociable and have a drink with some of the other writers. But I didn’t see anyone I knew in the bar, so that decision was made for me. Annoyingly I found it quite hard to get to sleep.
I still struggle with shyness in these situations and get overwhelmed with being in places like this when I am on my own, but I enjoyed the events and am excited about the book, which people seem to like.
