Walking down to the station on my way to Leicester Square I passed a flattened, plastic, St George's flag bowler hat in the gutter. Which seemed to sum up the mood of the nation after last night's cruel defeat. It looked quite small, like it might have belonged to a child, full of hope in possibly the first international tournament that he had been conscious of, but then his dreams shattered by cruel reality. I could visualise him throwing down his hat with tears streaming down his face and jumping up and down on the patriotic headgear that had once sat so proudly on his tiny head. Crushed, smashed and broken like a popped dead crow.
Talking of which as I did my run again today and was approaching the resting place of my friend the dead crow, a living and huge crow flew up from the verge into my path. It looked identical to the crow that I have become so fond of, except it was three dimensional, had all its gizzards inside it and was alive. Or was it? Was it the crow, raised again as an avine zombie. If it swooped into my face and started pecking at me I would know it was the ghost of the crow coming for me as a result of my unwillingness to bury its feathery cadaver and afford it some dignity.
But it didn't attack me and just flew away. And the rotten bird was still in its same position. So as unlikely as it seems that must just have been a different crow. But one that just happened to look exactly like the first one. Yeah, right, Jimmy Hill.
I had a fabulous time down at the Leicester Square Theatre with my final two guests Armando Iannucci and Graham Linehan. They are two giants of British comedy (and one of them is also literally a giant), but also two of the nicest and most thoughtful men you could hope to meet. The chat flowed easily both on and off stage and though I took the cavalier step of interviewing both guests at the same time, it really paid off. We sparked off each other nicely and again there was a good mixture of funnies, filth and interesting comedy based chat. Between us we had created some of the most enduring comedy characters of the last 20 years: Malcolm Tucker, Ted and Ralph, Father Ted, Alan Partidge. Admittedly I could have not been on stage and that would still have been true (much as I tried to pretend otherwise), but it was still amazing and slightly depressing to be in the company of such influential and successful men.
Still I managed to give them some advice on how they could do better, mainly to put a Shrek in it. You'll be able to download from the usual places on Tuesday.
I am going to be doing more of these in the autumn and hope I can continue to attract this high calibre of guests. Thanks to everyone who appeared this time round, my producer Ben Walker and everyone at the Leicester Square Theatre who made us more than welcome.
