I was feeling a lot better today, after a good sleep and no booze (or Rachab). It should have been a much harder day for me as we not only had to travel to York but also do an afternoon and an evening show, but I pretty much breezed through it (though my voice did start to crack a little by the end of the second performance). Once again the expense of having a tour manager was justified - I didn't have to do the driving and I had someone to help me transport my stuff from the car park to the venue (a distance of about half a mile - the road that the venue is on is closed to traffic on Sunday afternoons).
Both shows went well, although the afternoon audience were understandably a bit more subdued and polite. Once again I had to adjust the performance as I was playing a tiny hundred seater room under the cinema, but I had shaken off yesterday's self-doubt (and plenty of people from the Wolverhampton gig had been in touch to tell me that they had enjoyed the show). But probably the difference was down to not having a depressant swirling around in my body. Tomorrow I head to Harrogate for another gig in a large theatre - the variety of different venues I am playing makes things a bit more interesting and enjoyable for me I think. That's seven of the fourteen gigs in this run done now. Home still feels like a long way away.
A slight compensation is that we made the decision to get a hotel in Leeds for the next five nights, which gives us a base and means we don't have to keep packing and lugging our stuff around. We arrived late but the young man on the front desk was polite, efficient and helpful when we arrived, which really helped make us feel welcome and I was delighted to get up to the room and unpack all of my stuff. There is a Virgin gym about ten minutes from the hotel, so I am looking forward to having a healthy few days.
The Sky At Night was on TV and I was very pleased to see Sir Patrick Moore was still alive - if not exactly kicking. It was the 700th edition of this show and he was on a panel with my dad's boyfriend Brian Cox, amateur astronomer Brian May, another scientist I didn't recognise and for some reason John Culshaw. Sir Patrick is now 88 years old, but is still sharp and humorous and jovial. He looked a little unearthly himself tonight, like an anamatronic creature from Dr Who or maybe something from a Lewis Carroll book, but Jesus, the man is nearly 90 and still whipping up enthusiasm for his subject. It was moving to see that each of the other nerds on the panel had a story to tell about how they owed their initial interest in the subject ot Sir Patrick. What a remarkable man and what a testament to his long and important and entertaining life. He can even play the xylophone, though I suspect he may have retired from that now.
I have never met him, though have interacted with him back in the mid-90s when Stew and I somewhat improbably appeared on Gamesmaster (google it - it's on YouTube) and he judged a film I had made using a primitive video game to be better than one Stew had made. So I have to love him. Stewart amusingly challenged the qualification of the Gamesmaster to make an artistic judgement, I recall. But Sir Patrick would not be swayed. I got a Gamesmaster Golden Joystick for my efforts - it was my only award back then - but I foolishly threw it away a couple of years later when we moved offices. Yes, of course I regret it.
I wonder if Sir Patrick is immortal. I remember that I wrote a sketch involving him for the much ignored sketch show "That Was Then This Is Now" and there was some time between recording and broadcast and I was somewhat terrified that he might pass away in the interim and wreck the show. But he outlived TWTTIN and looks like he might outlive me as well. Though my ultimate goal is to try and outlive all my contemporaries and finally gain the affection of the nation just through my bloody minded persistence. I am playing the long game. Let's see if I am on the telly in the 2055. Let's see if there are still tellies then.
But let's hear it for Sir Patrick Moore, the Gamesmaster and perhaps the immortal Timelord. I hope he's there for the next 700 Sky at Nights. I have an eerie feeling that he somehow will be. It would have been much better if the Face of Boe had turned out to be him.
