Warming Up

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Saturday 22nd February 2003

Thankfully my parents managed to dissuade Aunty Joan from coming to my Burnley gig. They read her my diary entry apparently and she laughed uproariously, sounds like maybe she should have come along after all.
Unfortunately my parents did not manage to persuade anyone else to come and it was the smallest audience of the tour by quite some distance. Only 33 in apparently, in a room that can hold up to 400.
But as can often happen in these situations they were a great and responsive crowd (who also gave more money to the charity collection per head than any other audience- thanks for that) and I really enjoyed making them laugh. There was a time when playing to such a small crowd would have made me miserable, where I may have taken my anger out on them (where of course, if anyone, it’s all the people who didn’t come who you should be angry with, not the ones who did), but it is gratifying to realise that I am learning and getting better all the time. I may have said this before, but the reason I love this job is because I am constantly discovering new things all the time. Just when I think I know what I’m doing, suddenly I have a revelation and find there’s something new that I’d never thought of before.
But it was a long drive to perform to so few. A round trip of 450 miles, nearly 14 miles per person. Nine hours in a car for 80 minutes on stage. It’s surprisingly gruelling.
On the way home, with a pint and a half of Boddingtons sloshing around in my stomach, I fell into one of those uneasy and painful half sleeps which make you more exhausted than if you’d just stayed fully awake.
Luckily Simon Streeting was driving.