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It's a shame that the world hasn't yet realised my genius and that self-playing snooker, stone-clearing and Twitch of Fun remain projects that only interest a handful of people and provide me with no revenue, because I'd quite like to spend the rest of my life just doing these podcasts. I am finding it very hard to sit down and do any actual work or writing nowadays and so the improvised nature of all these works of art is perfect. And I've realised that I don't have to do them in the evening (which is difficult these days as the kids' bedtimes get later and my office is now not in the same building as their bedrooms) and so I actually do them during "working hours". Incredibly as many people tune in at 11am as they do at 8pm, which just confirms the unemployed, unemployable nature of my fans. At least if I can keep them busy for a couple of hours a day it keeps them off the streets and everyone else out of danger.
Today felt like a little step back into those wonderful days of lockdown as I did both a snooker and a Twitch of Fun show and nothing much else. But in the daytime when I should be working. And when I say working I mean failing to work. Why did I not do daytime streams during lockdown?
Of course I have to be grateful to the world for not taking my favourite projects to heart. I think if I was talking to Ally and Me1 and Me2 on a daily basis that my fragile mental state might finally shatter, but I do like talking to them. Especially when it reaches the point that I don't know what they are going to say next.
The scary thing is (yes we haven't got to the scary bit yet) is that I could just do RHLSTP from home too and that does provide me with a revenue. It's getting trickier to persuade guests to come into a theatre and ticket sales are much more unpredictable than they were, but I could probably get a bigger variety of guests online if I just needed an hour at a time that was convenient to them. The audience is a big part of what makes the podcast work so well, as they make the guest show off or open up and they also encourage me to be naughtier (which might fail more often without a crowd laughing along) BUT I could spend all day just messing around on my computer and never have to leave my house.
I like writing books and scripts, but it's harder work than talking to a 133 year old ventriloquist dummy. I was thinking of putting my last major script "Everything Happens For No Reason" up as my next unproduced script of Substack (every month I put up a draft of a never made sitcom for paid subscribers - why not sub so you can read them?) It was, I think, the best thing I ever wrote and came the closest to being made - we actually made a ten minute taster tape with Noel Fielding, Jessica Knappett and Ben Bailey Smith and today I got my management company to send the video over to me.
It was an alternate Universe script I wrote in 2016 and
we filmed at the start of 2017 (pretty much exactly eight years ago) and I couldn't remember much about the filming. I had forgotten how much effort had gone into it - it was made on a tiny budget, but it looks amazing and the cast are very funny and seeing it again just made me feel a bit sad. I will write about the history of the project next month (and maybe put the video up for paid subs too), but it was a project that everyone involved with was unusually enthusiastic about, but the only person who seemed not to like or understand it was the executive making the decision about whether we'd go ahead. Noel Fielding berated her for turning it down and we actually had a second meeting to try and make it work, but that did not go well. And subsequently there have been so many alternate Universe scripts that I don't think we can ever go back and make it happen now.
I can only content myself with the fact that there are infinity Universes out there where the series was made so some version of me got the pay off he deserved. I actually like living in the Universe where I get to talk to my best friend and former abuser Ally Sloper. If you need any more proof of the random nature of the Universe then none of this stuff would have happened if EHFNR had been successful, or indeed, had there not been a pandemic. And Twitch of Fun is the zenith of my career, even if no one but me realises it. As with all these more esoteric projects, it'll take a couple of decades to permeate through and after a couple of decades it will be impossible to catch up with the previous episodes or work out what the Hell is going on.
RHLSTP Book Club with Yvonne Innes talking about her fine biography of her husband Neil Innes
is up here. 
