I am now halfway through the series of Richard Herring's Objective, which makes the whole thing seem a bit more manageable. Also I have been given a few more days to work on the last one as a BBC strike on the 5th October now means show 4 will be recorded on the 10th (if you have tickets for the 5th then I am sure you will get an email about this from the BBC soon and the opportunity to come on the Sunday if you can). This was a relief to me initially as my work load has been a bit tough and it's hard to put these shows together, but then I realised that not only am I filling in for Dave Gorman at Absolute that morning, but the next day is going to be the first AIOTM of my short autumn run. I am going to have to be prepared in advance if I am going to avoid a horrendous car crash of a weekend. Thank God I didn't agree to have my appearance on Celebrity Mastermind moved from November to the 8th October or I would be screwed.
Today was fun though. I went out on the streets in the morning wearing a pair of pink mittens attached to each other by a long piece of wool, in order to discover if people were suspicious of anyone with a usually uncovered part of their body covered. Unsurprisingly they weren't intimidated by me, but it was fun to ask strangers how they felt about a 43 year old man choosing to wear mittens. Once back at Western House I bumped into Ed who had handled the publicity for my book, who was accompanied by respected actress and food writer Madhur Jaffrey, who he introduced me to. I had pink mittens on a string protruding from my jacket sleeves and I felt a bit self-conscious. So all I said to Madhur Jaffrey was "I am wearing these mittens for a radio show." She looked non-plussed. And I can't blame her. It was an odd thing to say as an opening gambit. And if I was on the radio why would it matter what I was wearing? Alas we were not recording at the time.
The script was in pretty good shape, so I mooched around for most of the day, writing my blog and surfing the internet and somehow getting caught up in the whole Twitter worm thing, even though I didn't click on anything as far as I could tell. I had had another early start and managed to add a few more bits to the script, so was feeling a little bit weary, but everything felt like it was in hand and I was looking forward to the recording.
And that all went well. It didn't pass in quite as much of a lightening flash as the first one and I think we probably recorded at least 45 minutes of material, but the audience seemed to like it and there were some good laughs and Emma Kennedy was reliable and amusing as ever (if a little underused in this episode). I also ended up (as did one lucky audience member) with a Radio 4 hoodie of my own, which I might just wear everywhere from now on. It's very warm and snuggly, plus if I want to go shoplifting I can disguise my face. Perfick!
The series starts in mid-October and I am sure I will give you plenty more reminders before it airs. And as always, at this point, once the recording has done, I am delighted to be doing the show, but in a couple of days I am going to be cursing the fact that I have two more of these things to shit out of my brain.
