I was delighted to leave the Comfort Inn this morning. It's almost worth staying at one to experience the euphoria that comes from not having to be there any more. And it automatically makes any other hotel you stay in (provided it's not a Comfort Inn) appear like 5 star luxury. We were staying at the Holiday Inn in Salford, which is usually quite nice, but today it seemed as good as a hotel where the lifts flirt with you in French. Although amusingly Reliable Pete's reliability took another knock as for the second time in three days he managed to take us to the wrong Holiday Inn. You would think he would learn from experience, but every day is like Memento for him and unless he leaves himself notes telling himself to remember stuff he doesn't have a clue. We might have to call him "Wrong Holiday Inn" Pete instead. Though it is confusing that they have so many branches of this hotel so close to each other. But not all that confusing. Not this confusing. Luckily we had a whole day to kill and I found his mild embarrassment amusing. And when we were finally at the right hotel I was in a big room with a big bed and no holes gashed in the wall and controllable air conditioning and some biscuits and free internet. And I think this room cost £2 more than the one I was in last night. You'd think Manchester would be a lot more expensive than Chester as well, so it just shows that it is worth shopping around. Or just remembering not to stay in Comfort Inns.
I will probably get a call now saying that Comfort Inn has just offered me a Lenny Henry style advertising campaign worth tens of thousands of pounds and I will have blown it all because of my comments.
I don't want your money Ian Comfort. It's a sad day when Holiday Ian, who is always on holiday, is better at running hotels than you.
No hotel chain can buy my silence. I will keep letting you know how the budget hotels in Britain measure up. Unless I can get a bit more successful, in which case you will be getting some largely useless information about the luxury boutique hotels that you are too poor and unfashionable to stay in. You are scum and you make me sick. Sorry, just practising for future blogs.
It was my first visit to the Lowry Theatre (though I am back again next week). It's indicative of the fact that I am in an odd transition period as I am doing two gigs in the studio venue rather than one (or maybe even two) in the larger venue. Both my dates sold out ages ago so if the theatre had taken a chance we would have shifted more tickets, but I can understand their reticence. Maybe next year.
The streets were thronging with people and I couldn't get into Pizza Express before, so great was the demand for tickets to my sold out show. I had no idea I was this popular in Manchester. But there is clearly a massive contingent of humanists in the area as they were all bedecked in scarves saying "Man United". It made a change from religious loons to have this kind of support. It was a shame they only wanted men to be united though, because true humanists shouldn't be sexist. So I could only be half pleased with them. Until I realised that maybe they weren't sexist, but were perhaps gay humanists. Looking at them they did all look gay. I thought about shouting out support for them. Stuff like, "Well done on being gay. You're all gay."
The staff were efficient and friendly and super-helpful so I am looking forward to returning and although the audience were a bit more reserved than the ones I've had lately I kept up the momentum and think I won most of them around.
Afterwards I headed back to the hotel. I was a little bit hungry, but I'd already eaten my complimentary biscuits and didn't have any food in. I only needed a snack and there were no shops nearby even if I had had the energy to go back out again. Anyway I didn't have any clothes on by now. So I improvised and tried to eat some Shredded Wheat that I had in my bag. I used one of the coffee cups as a bowl and the four UHT milk cartons. That wasn't enough liquid though, so I added some water and mushed the Shredded Wheat down into the cup. Mmmmm, delicious.
Well, no. It was a bit horrible actually. I couldn't really eat much of it. If all food tasted like this then I would be incredibly thin (though I have to say I have shifted a lot of weight on this tour - my jeans are hanging around my arse like I am a cool teenager from 2005). I only had half. But if I say my cup is half full of a mixture of wheat, uht milk and water, does that make me an optimist or a pessimist? It transformed itself into a paste and I wondered if I might have accidentally discovered a new adhesive or wound dressing, like like the man who chanced across superglue.
I wanted to sleep but was also keen to finish reading Victoria Coren's book about poker (and much more)
"For Richer, For Poorer". It's a great read, covering similar ground, from a different and less perverted perspective than "How Not To Grow Up" (when Victoria has a champagne bottle she only drinks champagne out of it). But it's about a woman avoiding the traditional path of growing up and hanging out with other people who are also escaping something. She treats love and death with a delicate touch and it's moving and interesting and you are left to try and work out to what extent she lived the life she did because of what was missing.
It was doubly interesting for me because I dabbled a little bit in the same world and at one point had thought of making the same switch from enthusiastic amateur poker player to having a go at being a professional one. I was also meant to write a book about that journey at one point. And I might also have ended up getting sponsored by a poker company or got into commentary or big tournaments. But I backed away from it all and didn't have the patience or commitment to learn how to play properly. And I guess instead I decided to hang around with the oddballs on the comedy circuit rather than the oddballs on the poker one. Victoria made the opposite decision. I am glad I made the choice I did, it was certainly right for me, but I could identify with the emptiness and sadness and loneliness that fuels gambling, as well as the escape it provides. I think Victoria treds the line between romanticising gamblers and showing their grubbiness and tragedy. But Victoria manages to triumph both in becoming the kind of successful player I don't think I could have been, as well as commentator on the subject (I had my own poker interview show, but this book made me realise what a chancer I was with that as I knew very little about the game or my guests at the time - Victoria had socialised with them and knew their back stories and would have been a much better host of that show, though she did have one of her own at the same time).
Worth a read anyway and it was worth staying up later than I should have done to finish it. I did better with the book than I did with the Shredded Wheat, which means that Victoria can now correctly claim that her book is more appetising than a cup of crushed Shredded Wheat with UHT milk and water on it. Definitely. I don't think you'll find a person who will disagree with that.
