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I never dreamed that I would sing a duet of Pie Jesu with Charlotte Church or that everyone would say I was the best singer out of the two of us. But at least one of those things happened tonight and hopefully it will kickstart my career as a child prodigy who sings for the Pope and two Presidents. Fingers crossed.
Another great night of RHLSTP with Charlotte talking about her hopes for the future and Benjamin Partridge talking a lot about fox piss and dead foxes. So a beautifully balanced night. I didn't think I'd been to the Sherman Theatre before (having been moved here from St David's Hall which is made of the wrong kind of concrete), but apparently we were here in the 90s with Lee and Herring. Tonight was a much more memorable gig - another sell out - and a terrific crowd. Cardiff has always been a very important place for me - it seemed to be the crucible where the first obsessive Lee and Herring fans emerged and of course was the home of gofasterstripe and Chris Evans (not that one) which gave my career a new lease of life and led to the podcasting behemoth that is Sky Potato. Plus they filmed some of Doctor Who here, so what more do you want?
I don't know how I do it, because I am a horrible cunt, but I have the loveliest of audiences and always fun meeting them afterwards. They're mostly middle-aged men who work in IT, but because of things like Taskmaster there are occasional younger and non-male people in too - a teenager was so in awe of meeting a Taskmaster Champion of Champions that she could barely speak. It was very sweet, but obviously pretty weird too.
I had not met either guest before (though had done a remote podcast with Benjamin in lockdown), but both were delightful. Charlotte has been a part of the national consciousness for so long that it seems impossible to believe that she's still in her 30s. She's packed a lot into her life and is self-confident, idealistic and very smart and it's great to see someone who has made plenty of money but wants to spend it on improving the world and other people's lives. You may say she's a dreamer, but she's not the only one. The way she's been treated by the press is pretty disgusting - it's hard and yet easy to believe that in the 90s a tabloid would do a countdown to a 15 year old's "legality", but they were also determined to make out she'd gone off the rails, when she was just determined to live a normal teenage life, get drunk with her mates and care more about what her Cardiff pals were up to than hanging out with David Bowie. I can't wait to see what she achieves next.
And Benjamin Partridge was effortlessly witty and I really admire what he's doing with the possibilities of the podcast when so many people are just doing pointless interview shows. He's a thoroughly nice guy too, so check out the Beef and Diary Network Podcast and the Chortle Award winning Three Bean Salad.
The Sherman theatre dressing rooms had motion activated lights, which assume that if there is no movement in three minutes that no one is in the room and you are plunged into darkness. I quite enjoy the madness of it, that you have to wildly flail your arms around to get them back on again. Life is ridiculous.
I did my online parent-teacher meetings with the kids' teachers from the dressing room half an hour before the performance. Which is a good example of the wonders of technology even though i had to look like a lunatic every three minutes by waving my arms in the air. Usually my mind is on the show and there was a disconnect between real life and my fantasy life, a bit too close to show time, but I successfully switched myself back by waving my arms in the darkness.
We got lost on the way back to the hotel and the usually efficient Bec couldn't find the right car park and then once parked up elsewhere we headed towards the Premier Inn in the distance to find that it was the wrong one. So we got some good walking in as we tried to find the right one. I felt unusually perky and awake and enjoyed the walk. Cardiff seems to have changed a lot in the last few years and all the time we were here I couldn't really get my head around where we were exactly.But eventually we got back to the right Premier Inn. What an anecdote.
