The first preview for Talking Cock: The Second Coming tonight in Islington. One down, a hundred or so to go. I was mainly just reading the 2002 script to ascertain which bits still work and which feel dated, but most of it worked pretty well. I had only skim read it before the actual show so some of it came as a bit of a surprise to me. It's certainly not perfect and there are plenty of things I will change or attempt to improve and as with Christ on a Bike I want to add at least a couple of brand new routines, but the only part that felt like it needed to be entirely jettisoned was where I argued that men were from Britain and women were from Europe. Not only does "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" feel like a bit of an archaic reference, but recent events in Europe make it harder to make the point that they (and women) have a unity that the British (men) lack. After saying, "Wouldn't it be better if we had a common currency?" I had to add, "No, clearly not, the Euro is really fucked up."
But even though there is work to be done it feels good to have a show under my belt and to know that the script I have is entertaining already (at least to these 60 people in Islington). I gave out programmes from the 2002/3 tour, which I've been keeping for almost a decade. I have a few boxes left and though I hadn't really intended to bring the show back I hadn't been able to throw them away. I did point out that the contact info in them wouldn't be right anymore, saying "Don't try to contact me via that compuserve email address", which got a nice nostalgic laugh. Though in fact the archaic email address is actually rich@judy1.demon.co.uk - I had totally forgotten about demon.
I just emailed myself to that address, hoping I might have discovered a conduit to the past. I wrote, "You'll be doing this show again in ten years time, don't throw away the programmes."
I wondered if I should say more than that - after all, it's a bit of a waste as if I know me (and I think I do) I would not have thrown away the programmes anyway. Maybe I should have warned myself not to do a certain job or go out with a certain girl or buy shares in Facebook instead of buying a house. Or maybe I could just send back all the scripts for my next eight Edinburgh shows so that I don't have to do any work on them and can devote my time to helping the poor. I stopped and thought about what I'd want to say to that 34 year old me, from a time before I even started blogging, but I decided that there was nothing more I wanted to tell him. He'd have to make all those mistakes and find his own way or I wouldn't end up in the place where I am now. Which I guess means I like the place where I am now, even if I wasn't so keen on some of the places I had to be to get here.
The email bounced back anyway. So the space time continuum is safe and there's no danger of me turning into a billionaire living in a town named after me and having sex with Marty McFly's mum. Damn. Though with that sporting almanac, once Biff had changed history by betting on those first races and making lots of money, wouldn't that have changed the future itself and meant that the other sports results would be wrong? Any tiny change in the world will have a massive impact on all other events.
So whilst I was wishing that I had gone to see York beat Luton last weekend, I wonder whether my presence at the ground would have created enough variables to affect the outcome of the game. Everything has a knock on effect on everything else. And I have made the Back to the Future franchise look like a ridiculous fantasy with my biting critique of its internal logic.
But anyway the first step towards my new version of this old show has been taken and so far so good. I am not planning on repeating any other shows in this way. I don't think Richard Herring is Fat or Richard Herring is All Man would work any more and all of the more recent ones are on DVD. Maybe when I have 25 solo shows I might do a Fringe where I perform a different one every day, but I doubt it.
But looking forward to revisiting this one and spending a year immersed in cocks.
