Warming Up

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Sunday 29th April 2007

My delight at the early sell-out at the Keswick Theatre by the Lake was somewhat tempered by the discovery that I was playing the studio theatre, which has a capacity of 70. My hubristic hopes that I had finally broken Cumbria were on somewhat shaky ground. And whilst I could argue that had I been in a bigger space I might have sold a lot more tickets, the fact remains that I only sold 70 and that the theatre had not been confident enough about booking me to put me in the bigger room.
It was a long and stressful drive to the North-West corner of the country and I was tired and a little blue all day. But arriving at the venue changed all that. Once I had done my tech, I went for a little walk down to the lake and sat on a bench and watched the sun setting over the hills and the water. It was a rare moment of peace and serenity in my somewhat hectic schedule and it acted as a kind of ocular Prozac. Though it wasn’t just the visual aspect that was calming, the gentle lapping of the water, the soft breeze on my skin, even the faint smell of sheep faeces on the air all contributed. When you’re caught up in your work and the other stresses of life it’s easy to forget that such idylls are almost on your door-step (well a five hour drive away, but you can’t have everything). I was suddenly hankering for walks on the hillside, camping by the water, looking at daffodils and trying to write poems about them whilst eating mint cake. It was inspiring and comforting and I envied the people who lived with this astounding beauty surrounding them. It made you forget you were so near to Carlisle.
I started the gig suitably chilled and started chatting about the Prozac-like effect of Derwent water and Keswick’s world famous Pencil Museum and how I was looking forward to returning for a second time, just to be sure I hadn’t dreamt it the first time. The audience chuckled along. But a man in the front row, barely two feet away from me was putting up his hand. Maybe he had some information about the Museum that would illuminate my dissertation.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I just wanted to say,” said the man with a slight crazed look in his eye, “that you are much smaller in real life than I had imagined.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for that,” I replied, “Do just chip in any time if you have any comments of any kind that you’d like to make, especially if they are mocking my physical appearance in some way. I can feel all the tension returning now. I haven’t even done a joke yet and I am being heckled.”
I was worried that the man might be a disruptive influence on the show, but this little interruption had been amusing and he behaved himself for the rest of the show, even when I aimed a few cracks at him.
In the interval he followed me out of the venue and apologised for chipping in, but he’d just been surprised by how small I was. I don’t know why people imagine I am tall. I look really tiny on my TV – about 6 inches high, and I am almost three times that size in real life.
“They say you should never meet your heroes,” said the man, “Because they will always disappoint you. But I have to say, you’re quite funny.”
So I was left slightly reeling from the idea that I might be anyone’s hero but also that if I was this man’s hero then me being “quite funny” was enough not to disappoint him. He didn’t have very high expectations of me. But then maybe it’s good not to set your heroic limits too highly. It means that you have a chance of achieving them yourself. “That’s right, my hero is that quite short bloke who has enjoyed moderate success in his chosen field and is quite funny. Keep your Alexander the Greats and Ian Bothams and Supermans. Old Richard Herring is the hero for me.”
It is flattering to be someone’s hero though, even if he thinks I am short.

The gig went well and then I headed back to the Keswick Hotel for a nightcap. There were a few middle-aged couples in the bar and I sat on my own, drinking my wine and playing Brickbreaker on my phone. In the corner two couples in their late fifties started discussing TV comedy. They were talking about an old show and trying to remember what it was called, “You know it,” said the more confident and self-assured of the men, “It had that black fella in it. He was very well spoken, that was the thing about him. He was one of the first black men on TV and he had this very posh voice. It was very funny.”
I had immediately identified the show and the fact that the man saying this was almost certainly very slightly racist and resented the way the world had changed since the 70s.
“He was always after Miss Jones! Miss Jones! Miss Jones!” he mimicked inexpertly, amused at himself, “Oh what was he called?”
I knew that they were talking about Leonard Rossiter in the show Rising Damp and considered letting them know the answer as they all struggled to recall. But then I would be in danger of becoming engaged in conversation with them. And in any case it wasn’t necessarily the correct social thing to do to shout the name of an actor across a bar to some people who are sort of enjoying trying to remember.
“It was one of the classics, easily as good as Steptoe,” the man said, “The classics never die!” Though apparently you can forget the names of them and who is in them.
“Didn’t he commit suicide at the end of the series?” asked one of the women. The others looked perplexed.
“I think he did,” she continued, “In the last episode he went down to that beach and took off all his clothes and went into the sea and you thought he’d killed himself. I am sure that was how it ended.”
“Yes, I remember something about that,” said the second man, “Him on a beach.”
Again I wanted to shout out that that was a different show. They had confused the Perrin series with Rising Damp, just because it starred the same man, whose name they didn’t know. But I wasn’t going to say anything and put them out of their ignorant misery. People don’t generally enjoy having their stupidity pointed out by strangers. So much as I wanted to shout, “You are all stupid, racist old fools, I just kept quiet.”
“Rossiter,” said the other woman, “Leonard Rossiter!”
She’d got it. The confident man, annoyed at being beaten to the answer said, “Yes, that’s right, but what was the character’s name. ‘Miss Jones!’ that’s what he said!”
For a second I was stumped, but then I remembered that the answer to this question was “Rigsby” So did a woman sitting opposite me, also listening to the loud and inane conversation who whispered “Rigsby” to her husband.
But the other couples were no nearer finding an answer and had gone on to discuss other classic sit-coms like “Til Death Us do Part” and the one with the man with the black neighbour who he referred to as “The Coon!” The man I suspected of being racist chuckled at this, though it was quite shocking to hear that word spoken out loud. Though as he was quoting something else I suppose it is almost justified. That is my justification for repeating it here. It is such a stupid and unpleasant and childish word. The people of the seventies should be disgusted with themselves. If there are any of you reading this, what were you thinking? I share your shame. No doubt I would have chuckled along when I was 8. Many things have changed for the better.
Then they moved on to discussing some friend of theirs with a dirty house with a mixture of sympathy and judgement. I can’t remember the details. It was genuinely boring and petty and made me wonder what was the point of these people existing, using up the earth’s resources and destroying the place for people who had something interesting to say. But then I realised I was on slightly shaky ground and being just as judgemental as them. These minutes of depressurising after a gig are always dark and unpleasant. Soon enough they went to bed and left alone in the bar by now I decided to turn in too.
This is what it’s like on tour.