Humble Dave Taylor was doing the tour manager duties for the last Hercules show of the year. Thanks to his unassuming cautious nature we arrived at the venue about four hours too early, but I much prefer to be somewhere with time to spare rather than rushing around at the last minute.
I played the venue last year (when incompetent thieves broke into our car and stole an empty suitcase, completely missing the two massive and jam-packed suitcases in the boot) and the staff welcomed me back and were very friendly and efficient. We even got a hot meal, vegetarian lasagne (oh how, Simon Streeting would have loved that, but he arrogantly preferred to take on other better paid work tonight. Obviously he would still probably have insisted on getting vegetarian sausages instead. There is no pleasing some people) and chips. It was quite nice and garners a respectable sandwich rating of 5.5. Although Dave Taylor would have preferred something with meat in he did not make a fuss and just ate what he was given. I could have told him that when you're in a place like Gloucester it is best to stick to non-meat based dishes. The place is entirely inhabited by blood-thirsty serial killers who delight in making lasagnes out of their many victims, so it's good to know you are only eating Quorn for once.
It was a nice crowd of around about 100 people, including my mum and dad who'd driven up from Somerset and the gig went along fine, though once again I found that I was a little rusty after a couple of weeks off.
The locals enjoyed my suggestion that things might have turned out better if like me Fred West had decided just to date 50 women, rather than rape and murder them. But it was the laughter of a room of people who were trying to make out that they weren't serial killers as well. "Ha ha ha. We certainly haven't got any bodies buried under our patios," was the suspicious subtext to the laughter.
Mum and dad enjoyed the show, despite me telling the story about my mum grabbing on to me that time I was trying to jump off the barge and thus causing me more physical and psychological damage than she would have done if she let me be (sure it's somewhere in Warming Up. Use the search facility to find it). I was more nervous than usual beforehand knowing they were going to be there, but not so conscious of it on stage this time. Not like when they came to Talking Cock. In any case, they read this diary and so know most of the stuff that's in the show anyway.
My dad wants to manage my career, which seems like a bad idea to me as he's quite old and can barely manage to eat his dinner without spilling half of it down his shirt and spent most of the time after the gig telling me how he would be able to get more people to come and see me. I notice that he is not prepared to use whatever magic it is that he has unless I give him some money up front. He does have some good contacts at the Cheddar Valley Gazette though, so I might have to consider it. Though on the other hand he didn't understand that I was joking when I said "I completely destroyed one of my livers. Thank God I've got another one or I'd be in trouble." So it's swings and roundabouts. (I never said the other liver was my own though. I bought it from a shifty looking bloke in Gloucester town centre).
We left Gloucester unusually not having been the victim of either petty crime or a sex-crazed serial killer. But there's always next time.
