I love you. Have I ever told you that?
The
Christ on a Bike programme fund has only been active for a little over a day and it's already at over £800 and have had loads of interest in advertising space too. I think we're going to go for a humongous 40,000 programmes this time, so rates for ads might have to go up a bit to cover this profligacy. But are still stupidly reasonable. Space is limited though so get your offers in quick. 3 whole pages have already gone and I think I can only have another 4 or 5 at most (and only then if I make the programme bigger than usual). But the generosity of the individual contributors has already knocked my socks off. You have a couple of months before the deadline, so start saving up and fundraising. Who knows what the most generous donor will receive? But I will also provide some spot prizes which will be awarded randomly so don't think you have to give loads. I know that SCOPE really appreciate every penny.
I paid in the Brighton bucket into the first ever properly functioning Natwest coin sorting machine which told me the previous night's audience had given me £200.12 plus 1 American cent plus 10 Czech kc (I couldn't pay those last two in though) and on the way to the bank a man called Ed stopped me in the street to tell me he accidentally acquired
some flying Hitler wall ornaments (like flying duck ones, but of Hitler) and donated a pound.
Which means that unless the Cambridge audience are very stingy the tour collection will top £10,000 tomorrow. So I should thank you all for that too. This money really makes a difference for some brilliant kids.
I headed down to Colchester to the Arts Centre,
which I correctly remembered having last played on the night of the failed 20th July 2007 bomb attack on London. It's an imposing venue - a Gothic church built on a hill above the old city wall (and partly built out of the old city wall by the looks of it). I had some time to kill and walked round the town and came the closest I have been to being challenged about my moustache when a young man said "What the fuck?" to his girlfriend the second I had passed them and then loudly said to her, "That bloke had a Hitler moustache." But he still didn't say "What the fuck?" directly to me. So my record of being pretty much entirely unchallenged continues.
It was another solid gig, and the place had sold out (even though a few empty chairs meant people had bought tickets and not showed up) and was remarkable only for the fact that I was a bit spitty for some reason and kept spraying a young lady in the front row with flecks of mouth juice. But I suspect she loved it, though was maybe glad she'd kept her rain coat on for the performance.
The dressing room was also the staff kitchen but the building is still a church and a sad looking statue of a World War I Tommy holding a rifle with sombre respect was not overlooking the fridge. Which seemed an odd juxtaposition.
I was heading home as I was supposed to get up early for a funeral, but unbelievably when I turned on to the M25 I entered grid-locked traffic after midnight and was stuck getting increasingly tired and hungry for a good hour and a half. I got home after 2 and was not wound down enough to go to bed until after 3 and realised that getting up early on a weekend where I have a lot of driving back and forth would be dangerous (I had nearly fallen asleep in the traffic jam) and made the unpleasant decision to sleep in and miss the funeral, in order to avoid people having to attend my funeral next week.
You really don't expect to become stuck on the roads that late at night, but roadworks and I presume an accident had meant the one lane of traffic was unable to move at all. Twitter kept me entertained and someone else in the jam and I bantered through our phones (our cars were not moving at all) about whether Wookey Hole was better than Cheddar Caves. Which obviously it isn't. Even though it obviously is.
So I will have to pay my own little tribute here to the wonderful, warm and always relentlessly cheerful and upbeat Gareth Carrivick, who directed This Morning With Richard Not Judy and who will be much missed by all who knew him. All the best mate.
