Off to Shrewsbury and after a few mentions of the Pie Pie on Twitter I decided to seek out the Fist of Fun sketch which I had been referencing.
It is of course on Youtube which is pretty much the only place you will see any of my TV work from the 90s. I was pretty impressed with how funny the sketch still is, but moreso with the budget we had for that series. I recall the original version of that sketch being over 15 minutes long (as were most of the skits we did back then). What luxury we had back then. Brilliant performances from Bill Cashmore (who I think had the idea of pronouncing the s's as f's as if he was reading from an ancient parchment and didn't understand the writing) and Rebecca Front whose character is named after the Asterix artist and who really made me laugh with the line about there being particles fo pie that are over 500 years old. I enjoyed the way that the sketch both mocked dangerous English traditions and the blase attitude of traditionalists "if I want to eat glass, I'll eat glass", but also, in the end, the seemingly reasonable European government turn out to be Nazi inspired. And I play an old man in it (with a funny line that I recently discovered I had inadvertently stolen from Not The Nine o Clock News) and now 16 years on I look exactly like the character that the young me was portraying. Oh the irony.
How the Pie Pie sketch does not regularly top the list of the greatest sketches of all time I do not know, but like all of the Lee and Herring canon it goes unrecognised by the idiots who put that stuff together. And the BBC won't release the DVD and are even dragging their feet about letting us do it ourselves, arguing that they invested money in the show and haven't seen any return on that investment. Which might be because they have never released it. Only the BBC could think of asking for compensation for lack of revenue after they had made no attempt to make any money from a project.
The trip to Shrewsbury was not plain sailing. With 15 boxes of programmes and suitcases and an exercise bike and a projector and a screen and boxes of DVDs and books I had known we would need a big car to go on the two week jaunts we have on this tour. So we had hired a people carrier, but when Pete turned up in the car (thankfully I had told him to come early so we would have time to load and get to our hotel before the gig) I could immediately tell that it was nowhere near big enough. It was a car with very little boot space and so even with the back row of seats down it was only a little bit bigger than my car. I had wanted a people carrier so I could work or relax in comfort, but it was clear that there wasn't room even to get the bike in. I was a little bit annoyed as I had made quite a big deal about getting a big enough vehicle - this was another additional expense to the tour and I didn't want to end up as uncomfortable and squashed up as I would have been in my own car, which wouldn't have cost me anything extra. Reliable Pete's adjective takes another dink.
We had no option than to get a bigger car, so scrambled to find out if one was available from the company we were hiring from. There was one in Waterloo, so Pete had to speed off there and back before we could leave. Luckily there were no holds ups and our stuff just about fitted into the bigger vehicle - though it was still a squash and there were no hold ups on the way, so we cruised into Shrewsbury at about 6pm. The theatre Severn was new and had its own excellent projector set up and an efficient and friendly team so things were less fraught than they might have been. I was despatched to get us some dinner in a town that looked like it had shut up at 4pm, but managed to find some Chinese takeaway.
After much discussion about the pronunciation of Shrewsbury on Twitter I decided not to open with that, correctly ascertaining that every comic would do that, so instead opened with "And how lovely to be in Wales on St David's Day" which got a predictable groan of dissent from the English audience. It's hardly "Hello Moosefuckers" but it's good to rub up a crowd the wrong way at the start of a gig. I was not here to make friends. Or be anyone's performing clown. Oh hold on. I was. Shit. Sorry for being rude.
As it turned out they were a very friendly crowd and it was another practical sell out (though I was in the smaller room of the theatre) and there was plenty of messing around.
But then once I had done my meet and greet it was off to find our hotel and by 10.30 I was sitting in a small hotel room with two single beds (luckily Pete had his own room - for now anyway. By the end of the tour I am sure we will be willingly sharing a bed) and I remembered once again how strange and solitary touring is. I decided to paint the town red and drink the Highlights hot chocolate in the room. It was 40 calories. I know how to party. Like all rock stars I was ingesting powder in my hotel room. Unlike them I had added hot water to it rather than snorting it off the breasts of 18 year old twins. But I would say my way was better. And I still felt guilty because I am not really supposed to be eating chocolate.
This is what it's like on tour.
Oh and if you missed it the bitter-sweet news is that Adam and Joe are returning to 6Music from 2nd April, which means that the Collins and Herring run has come to an end (Andrew will be hosting with Michael Legge for the next few weeks). As a fan of Adam and Joe I am delighted about their return, but it's a shame that that regular fixture for us is coming to an end. Still we'll be carrying on with our (unpaid) podcast for the foreseeable and we can say what the fuck we like on their, so suck on that BBC motherfuckers.
