Lots more driving today, feeling slightly nervous thanks to yesterday's bump, over-worrying that I might slip up again, but aside from having to sit in a few traffic jams it was an uneventful drive. Though even this brief three days on the road has reminded me of the tedium of touring. For the second day in a row I was on the road from about 11am until after 5pm. But it's worth the stress and strain to be able to spend the night time doing my silly and wonderful job.
And tonight was lots of fun, doing another live Collings and Herrin podcast, this time at the Bristol Old Vic. It felt like ages since we last did one, having had a couple of fallow weeks due to work commitments and my brief holiday. Even if we've been doing Collins and Herring on 6Music in the meantime, somehow Collings and Herrin are different entities and I have missed them both.
We were playing in the round (with audience on all sides) in the Old Vic studio - though it had sold out so quickly that it was a shame we hadn't been put in the main room - and it's a slick and professional theatre set up. We've been getting emails for weeks, worrying that our suggested 6pm arrival time would not give us time to tech the show (I assured them, correctly, that we would have to drag our feet somewhat to make the whole thing last 15 minutes) and we were treated to 30 minute and 15 minute calls, which involved the stage manager coming into our dressing room and informing us of how long there was until "beginners" (which I think is 5 minutes before the show begins). This may be necessary for a big company of actors who need to put on costumes and get made up, but we are just two blokes wearing our outside clothes who will just walk on stage and get going whenever we are told to. But it was great to be in this professional environment. I might have to institute these changes when we go back to my attic! Though next week we are live again, in Cardiff - only a couple of dozen tickets left and you can only book them
here so book now if you wanna come.
We did our usual first half of stand up, or as close as Collings gets to that - though I have to say he did very well tonight, not only having come up with some special material about Bristol's two railway stations (he went to the wrong one), but also coping quite well with a member of the audience who pre-empted one of his (what can loosely be called) punchlines. He takes everything in his stride, like someone who actually has no idea of how difficult or frightening what he is doing actually is. It is a shame that he is retiring from the business.
We were taking part in a festival of improvisation, but even so I was surprised to spot a man standing at the back of the auditorium in a full astronaut costume. I had to break off and ask if everyone else saw him too or whether I was just imagining it. It's embarrassing when you have to go out on a night out with your work clothes on. It was slightly surreal, especially given I had already made a joke about the venue being like the court in Planet of the Apes - now here was a possibly lobotomised astronaut ready to be judged by the audience of Bristolian monkeys.
The crowd was very much up for fun and we enjoyed chatting with them, both before the podcast and during. We also decided to cope with the difficulty of audiences on all sides for the seated podcast, by moving position every 15 minutes so everyone got a fair crack at looking at our faces (and our cracks). You can hear the results via iTunes or
at the British Comedy Guide.
Meanwhile I was on TV for the second night in a row (if you count Dave as TV - and I do - I was on Argumental last night in a show recorded back in 2008) in The Apprentice:You're Fired, so could no longer lord it over everyone by knowing who got the boot. SPOILER ALERT - As you may now know, it was Melissa, whose exit prompted the biggest cheer from the audience while they watched the show. She was certainly mouthy and somewhat unpleasant on the actual programme, and I think some of you were expecting me to lay into her a little more - and so was I. But she was disarmingly modest and good humoured in the flesh, even if her exit from the programme proper was the most petulant and childish thing that I have seen on this already pretty childish show. You can see the show
on iPlayer . I don't think I am on TV tomorrow alas, but you can listen to episode 3 of Objective on Radio 4. It's possibly my favourite one of the four.
