They say you play the Purcell Room twice in your career, once in the
school band in about 1981 and then again talking about penises in 2012. It's a cliche I know but in this case it turns out to be true.
The room did seem vaguely familiar, though surely must have altered in the last 30 years. I thought I remembered there being some kind of artistic (or maybe soundproofing) white blocks behind the stage, but I may be mistaken. I couldn't believe I was going to be sullying this place of culture with my dirty cock show.
But I got a warm welcome from the excellent and friendly crew (certainly one of the most efficient and best teams I have worked with in any theatre) and we got set up and resolved a problem with my new clicker. I'd sold about 250 tickets which wasn't too bad for a Wednesday (the venue holds 327)and Friday and Saturday seem to be heading for sell-outs so
book now London. I then headed down to Pizza Express for my dinner. The South Bank restaurant is quite a big one and when I arrived there was hardly anyone there. I asked for a table for one and was shown to an empty section near the front and sat on a table alone facing the window. A few minutes later another man on his own was shown into the same section. Although there were several tables and they were all empty the waitress directed him to the table right next to mine and he elected to sit on the chair that faced the restaurant. We were effectively two men dining alone, facing each other with only a few feet between us. It was awkward. It was like we were on a very bad date on a slightly long table. I didn't want to catch his eye. It felt like he'd been put there to observe me eating but they'd forgotten to put him behind one of those two way mirrors. I like to be left alone in my shame when I am dining alone.
This was weird etiquette from him, I thought. If I had been him I would have asked for a table with some space around it and if I had been forced to sit at this particular table would have elected to sit with my back to the odd hairy man who was also eating alone.
So I tried to ignore him and tweeted about him, noticing that a friend of my wife was also in a Pizza Express somewhere as she had just tweeted about the advert on the table which boasted with slightly disturbing flirtation that the pizzas were "Hand-stretched - the way you like it." My wife was meeting up with her friend that night. What a coincidence that they too had gone to a Pizza Express.
Luckily after about 20 minutes the lone man's friend/date arrived. He hadn't been alone like me at all, just been waiting for a late pal/lover. He must have been pitying me as he observed me. But at least now there was a back to me and I could enjoy messily eating my pizza and wallowing in my solitude.
After the meal and a coffee I asked for the bill. Unfortunately the woman I asked, though dressed in black and sidling slowly through the tables in a very waitressy manner was not a waitress. "I don't work here," she commented with a slightly disdainful laugh. She was actually just on her way to the loo, but why had she taken a circuitous route passed several tables and moved so slowly? I felt embarrassed, though I don't know why. It's not that embarrassing a mistake, but confusing a high status customer for a (supposedly) lower status waiter is insulting, I guess. Or it's OK to talk with the staff but not other customers. I don't know. Perhaps as a lone dinner you already feel vulnerable and odd and so a gaffe like this just makes you seem odder.
Once again I felt like I was in a shitty sitcom. I got a real waitress to bring me the bill and quickly paid in cash and left so that I didn't have to face the non-waitress woman on her way back and observe the comments and glances that I would get from her and her friend.
And as I went through the door I bumped into another of my wife's friends. I realised in that instant what I should have at least suspected before. My wife and her friends were not only coincidentally in a Pizza Express, they were coincidentally in THIS Pizza Express. All the time I had been eating alone I could have been on a table with them. Had anyone who knew us seen us eating at separate tables then they would have assumed something very odd was going on. And that perhaps I was secretly dating a man and trying to hide that fact by keeping him at one table's distance. I went and said hi to my wife and then went to get ready for the show. What a shit sitcom this is.
I really enjoyed the show though, glad to be able to take my time a bit more with the new longer show and happy to have found the right place to put the interval. The announcement to turn off mobile phones was made my Sir Ian Mckellern and I joked that he was backstage doing it live. Things clearly not going as well for him as you might have thought. The cultured crowd seemed a little shocked by some of the earlier jokes, but they soon relaxed into it and this was one of my favourite performances of this show yet. I am really looking forward to the next two (and the tour).
Unfortunately because the South Bank Centre is a charity they have a policy that no collections for other charities can happen in their venue. It happens occasionally. Seems a shame as this policy will likely cost SCOPE about £1000 in this 3 night run. So if you came along, liked the programme and would like to donate to a brilliant cause then
please visit my justgiving page. If you didn't come along then of course do feel free to make a donation as well.
