May is going to put me under so much pressure that I suspect my brain might turn into a diamond. Which would be good in some ways because I would be super rich (though I believe that it takes a lot of material to make even a small diamond and my useless brain is already pea-sized) and I would have a gimmick (the comedian with the diamond brain), but bad because having a diamond for a brain would mean I would be unable to carry out the most basic mental and physical challenges and I would probably drool quite a lot (more than I do now anyway) and now I am beginning to wonder if diamonds are even formed that way anyway. I might be thinking of coal. And being the comedian with the coal brain would not be anywhere near as cool.
Anyhoo, I am filled with dread about my inability to get on with my very important TV script, the rapidly approaching new series of AIOTM
and mostly about a tricky 5 leg tour of the date which will take us from the plains of Salisbury, up to Yorkshire and then on to North Scotland. We haven't had too many killer drives this tour, but there are some humdingers coming up and they are taking us to towns where there is very little interest in seeing the show. Psychologically this is pretty tough. But then I was dreading the East Anglian leg of the tour and that ended up being one of the best bits. I just hope that on the long drives my brain stops turning to carbon and instead manages to think of what should happen in my script (and also in my next stand up show, which I am blithely ignoring as well). It didn't happen today.
"Reliable" Pete had slightly miscalculated the distance to Salisbury, I think, as we had not only got a hotel booked, but we also set off very early. It turned out that it only took us 90 minutes to get there - we would usually travel home if the gig was that close to save money and given we are in Yorkshire tomorrow it made little sense to stay near Stonehenge. It did mean I had a couple of hours to sit down and try and write, but even though I have some ideas I am finding it impossible to get them down on paper or on screen. The enormity of creating a brand new hour long script is overwhelming and I managed to convince myself that everything I came up with was not good enough. I should probably just have gone to sleep as that was what my brain was telling me to do, but instead I ate too much chocolate and worried that all the good work I had done on losing weight recently was also going to be undone.
Luckily it only takes a day of inspiration to really turn a script around, but today the negative voice in my head that was telling me there was no reality in the situations I was thinking of won over the positive one that thinks that this has the potential to be a funny and populist hit. The first voice was telling me that I had finally over stretched myself and that this was the time I would fail completely to get everything done: the script, AIOTM and my new stand up show would all be shit and I'd be washed up and my career would be over. Given that this voice is generated by my brain it seems strangely self-defeating for it to take such delight in my (and surely thus its) downfall, or maybe it knows that this sense of dread and fear is the only way to motivate me and thus actually save the voice from the fate that it predicts. But then if I am clever enough to realise its motivations then its plan won't work and I will just sit in my pants eating discounted Easter eggs and crying. I hate that voice so much that I am tempted to deliberately fail and die in a ditch so that it gets taken down with me. That will teach the pessimistic fucker.
Tonight's gig was in another deconsecrated church. I don't think I have played the Salisbury Arts Centre before and it has unusually steep raked seating which meant I had to perform with my head at a 45 degree angle. It's a lovely modern venue though and once you're inside you wouldn't know it was a church, apart from a glimpse of a stained glass window in the corridor by the (oddly smelling) dressing room. A few protestors had gathered outside and were handing out leaflets offering a Christian response to the show that they hadn't seen. It's good to get your response in before you've heard what you're responding too. It puts the person who hasn't yet said anything on the back foot when they get criticised for the thing they haven't said. Apparently they kindly told everyone who went into the theatre that they were going to Hell. Some might think it would be presumptuous to make such a judgement rather than leave that decision to God, but it seems the people who protest against my sure have such certainty that they don't worry that they might be wrong or that it might be them that God sees fit to send to Hell for daring to hijack his authority. But I suppose, "You might go to Hell if you see this show, dependent on whether there is a God and if there is what he considers to be a crime worthy of damning you" isn't as effective a threat.
Despite being a little tired and mentally battered (in both senses of the word) I didn't let any of that affect the show and it tends to come out pretty crisply however down I am feeling. Even this far into it all I am still enjoying the show and getting a lot out of it. Even when it gets sticky and tiring this job is an amazing one. I am not complaining about it, just trying to give an insight into how it works for me. I wouldn't want to do anything else.
At times tonight I found myself a little incredulous that I have managed to build up an audience (at most places) and that 150 people in Salisbury wanted to see me. You could compare me to more successful comics and laugh at my puny audiences or you could gasp in awe at how incredible it is that so many people would pay to hear me speaking. I genuinely can't believe my luck. And I have also been fortunate to have experienced leaner times so that I can appreciate my relative success. I saw Ronnie Corbett saying the same thing on TV when I got back to the hotel.
But I regretted the fact that we were needlessly staying over in a hotel when we could have had another night at home. The combination of being so far away and so poorly attended will make the longing to be home all the greater. But believe me Inverness, I am going to give the 50 people there a show that justifies the 20 miles I will be travelling for each of them. So don't spread the news and get more people to come or the carbon footprint that is being created in your name will decrease and it will make the night much less special. I am coming for you Scotland. Keep the secret or you'll ruin everything.
