Back to the Leicester Square Theatre tonight to appear in a show called
"The Humble Quest for Universal Genius", a knockabout game show which pits two comedians against each other to find the true Renaissance Man (or woman). I was up against the diminutive and effeminate Scrabble cheat Thom Tuck, so was confident of victory.
He was hungry for a win because he still held a grudge towards me for outing him as a Scrabble cheat via the unlikely medium of the Radio 4 consumer show "You and Yours" five years ago. I had pretty much forgotten about this incident, but I used to play him online at Scrabble and he kept coming up with suspiciously good words, which would mean he was either a genius or a dirty scoundrel. I had strong suspicions that it was the latter and voiced them on the radio (I guess I was being interviewed about Scrabble, but maybe I just thought I'd bring it up anyway).
There could be no cheating tonight - we were in front of an audience. Having said that I did cheat in one round and no one noticed. But that makes me even more skilful (and I had won the round anyway, I just altered one of my answers on the whiteboard whilst everyone was watching a film, assuming they would notice my answer had changed, but no one did). Proper cheat Tuck deliberately stole extra ammo in a target shooting element of the show, but evenso he could still not beat me. It makes me sad to think how rubbish he is. Sometimes we take our own good fortune for granted and it's only when we see someone who isn't so blessed with luck that we appreciate our lot in life.
It was a fun game and a promising format and it deserved a bigger crowd. I am glad to see more people are deciding to just get on and produce their own shows, rather than waiting for radio and TV to commission them. It also means that there is a chance to test and improve a format before it gets to the stage where it might be picked up elsewhere. But mainly it's just a fun thing and good to see it out there.
The scoring was rather arbitrary and most rounds were decided by a short, hairy man in a leotard who seemed to be giving out medals at random - in fact when I questioned his credential to decide whose Eurovision Song Contest commentary had been the best, he took umbrage and awarded Thom Tuck an extra medal (whoever got the most medals won). But in a round where we had to render the word "Gup" in plasticine (a reference to an earlier round in which we had to define English phrases from a Bulgarian phrase book) I was awarded the medal when Thom's piece was clearly superior in every way (his definition of gup was someone being sick with an upwards trajectory, mine was the noise made by a commuter juggling snot between his nose and the back of his throat), so it all came out in the wash. Suffice to say that I won every round which was not decided by this strange and arbitrary man and came out the ultimate victor, proving once and for all that Tuck is a dunce and a Scrabble cheat and a loser. But I didn't crow about it and will only mention it on a Radio 4 consumer programme if it is strictly relevant to the discussion.
More great names added to the Leicester Square Theatre Podcasts - joining Jonathan Ross on Monday 14th May will be the brilliant Francesca Martinez (who you may have heard wiping the floor with me on RHEFP and Objective) and joining Graham Linehan on 25th June will be Armando Iannucci - you might want to book ahead
here.
Tickets are now available for the Edinburgh run of Talking Cock: The Second Coming. Buy them from the Underbelly site
here. It'll be worth booking ahead, especially if you want to come to one of the preview or weekend dates.
And I will be returning with the Edinburgh Fringe podcasts - won't know guests until nearer the time, but again might be worth booking ahead for the weekend gigs
here.
