Sorry, I made a mistake in yesterday's entry. I talked of the bloke from the Libertines "eating heroins". Of course as everyone knows, you drink heroins. Apologies to anyone who was offended by my ignorance.
I was at the London Studios on the South Bank tonight to watch Al Murray perform his "Audience With..." show for ITV. A cavalcade of stars had turned up to see him, including Edwina Currie, Frank Carson and Madge from Neighbours. It was quite something to see one of my contemporaries given the accolade of being asked to do this show which in the past has generally been given to bigger stars, but it was probably more entertaining to see someone at the height of their powers doing it. It is worth watching for the treatment of Dean Gaffney, which was about as bad as any of the atrocities that have been carried out on the prisoners in Iraq. Al was relentless with him, but somehow you ended up respecting Gaffney for going along with it all (even though he had no real choice).
We were in the very studio in which we recorded
Time Gentlemen Please and many of the cast and crew were there to watch (or work on) this new show. It didn't seem like nearly three years since we'd done this. It was good to see that we all still had enormous affection for each other and for the show. You can still see it regularly on satellite TV if you haven't seen it before. I remain very proud of it and hope that one day it might get some of the recognition it deserves. At the time we were sick of comedies that were ultra-realistic and so the style was very unfashionable, but we deliberately wrote it with very few cultural references (or jokes about current celebrities) so that it might still make sense in a time when people no longer find it funny to just replicate life exactly.
I am either ten years ahead of my time or ten years behind it. I am not sure which, but I think it will remain my fate to ever be so.
