Today was the deadline for my book. At least I think it was. No one has mentioned it and last week when I told my editor that I might have the final draft by today he seemed surprised.
I haven't quite finished. It's close. There's just a couple of messy chapters at the end to tidy up and then I want to do one final sweep of the whole thing and I think it might be done. Given I have to do my DVD record in Bristol tomorrow (Six extra tickets have just been released so if you're quick you might be able to get them) and also try to work up some new material for the previews which start this week (got next to nuffin folks!) I think I might be able to get the whole thing finished by Friday. Which is only four days late. And no one's been asking for anything, so I reckon if I just keep my big mouth shut then I should get away with it.
I think it's good, but it's hard to tell. It's certainly way better than the first draft. But I am a bit close to it to tell. It's a pretty relentless job at the moment and as you can tell from this entry very little else happened to me today.
Still it could be worse. I could be Susan Boyle, who not surprisingly has been driven loco by the pressure of her meteoric rise to fame, if she wasn't loco already. I wonder what it will take to stop shows like that one exploiting vulnerable people for entertainment. At least Susan Boyle is going to make millions of pounds out of this if she can just pull herself together and stop flashing her legs. But what of all the strange and disturbed people who come down for the early stages of the auditions, thinking they are amazing, only to be laughed at by a crowd of people and told that they are crap? Susan Boyle's real achievement was that she looked like she was going to be another one of those, but turned out to be able to sing a bit. That was the surprise. We'd all got so used to laughing at the crazy deluded fools that it was astonishing that someone who we assumed would be another turned out not to be shit. If you watch the ITV2 coverage the host of that -Stephen someone or other - actually comforts and chats to the unfortunate idiots, whilst then pulling a face at the camera as they answer his questions as if to say "Who does this lunatic think he is?" We're all complicit in this exploitation and if the fall out of it doesn't come now, then it will come at some point. Perhaps when one of the slighted and mocked contestants kills themselves or possibly returns to the theatre with a machine gun and kills everyone who laughed at them. Which as long as they get Piers Morgan won't be too much of a disaster.
Talking of deluded and mentally ill performers with self delusions - Andrew Collings has put his stand up bit about the Mitfords up as
an extra podcast. So if you want to hear him talk for 10 minutes about the Mitfords without me interrupting him and being funny, then to be honest, it is your funeral. Alas his genius bit where he did his secret dancing does not work as an audio, so you only get Mitfords times 5. If you are brave enough to listen to that, then please go ahead. If not, never fear, a proper swearing filled podcast will be available on Friday.
