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Another of those satisfyingly busy days where things went well. I am more and more convinced that I work better when my life is all mapped out on a timetable. This is why I did OK at school. If there are places to be and things to do then I get them done. It's the sitting at home trying to build up the energy without deadlines and flowcharts where I find it tricky!
After a swim I had 45 minutes to sit down and finish the sitcom script I have been writing for the last month. It's an episode for the next series of the very enjoyable "Man Down". There's no guarantee that the script will make it to air - I have basically been having a go at a first draft for the writers of the series to take onwards from there - but I think I've done an OK job with it and so it might be my first script thing that I've written that will actually be shown on the telly for seven years. Which is kind of depressing now I realise that! Oh, hold on, I wrote the links for "Battery's Not Included". So it's not tragic at all.
Man Down is a great show, so I was very happy to be asked to contrinbute. If you haven't seen it yet, catch up on it here. Greg and me got on so well on the RHLSTP he did that he thought I might be able to write in the correct tone (ie childish nonsense). So that, along with appearing on "The Museum of Everything", is the second job my podcast has got me. The most exciting thing about it for me though is that I may have written some stuff that Rik Mayall will end up saying (and doing - I out in a fair amount of fairly nasty stuff for our heroes). I am genuinely thrilled at the prospect. I made sure I wrote him saying the word "the" in a sentence, so whatever happens to the stuff I've written I should be able to claim at least one word!
It's a relief to have got that completed though. It means that once I have done the final Meaning of Life on Sunday I can concentrate on Edinburgh.
I then shot across town for my penultimate Fubar show, where I heard reassuring stories of other people destroying expensive gadgets in embarrassing ways. And then I was straight in a cab, back to Hammersmith to appear on Alan Davies chatshow "As Yet Untitled" once again for the Dave channel (who are inadvertently helping me to finance my expensive podcast and Fringe projects by giving me work). It's a freeform chat show where Alan and three guests just chat about stuff with no plan or agenda (so maybe RHLSTP helped me get this job too). I was concerned that I might be talked out after the radio show, but had a couple of hours to rest before the recording. We were at the Riverside Studios, where we'd recorded the second series of TMWRNJ in 1999. I went out on to the terrace in the evening sunshine and remembered our Red Bull and vodka fuelled post-show Sunday afternoons. We once saw a man cycling down the river Thames. I promise you. He was on a bike with floats on. We might just have been drunk.
The show itself was a whole lot of fun, with fellow guests Jessica Hynes, Phill Jupitus and Jason Byrne. It flowed freely and hilariously, a particular highlight being Jason's stories of the horrific pranks he and his workmates played when he worked on the lighting rig in a theatre. We recorded about two hours of stuff and there wasn't really a duff moment. It's a very simple format, like RHLSTP working on the assumption that if you get some funny people together they will have a funny conversation.
So good to complete three jobs in a day (and jobs that all paid me actual money - what the fuck) and I'd even had to turn down another appearance on Pointless Celebrities (which might be a good thing, if the fallout from the last time is anyting to go by).
My slow climb to the middle continues at the breathtaking pace of a mediocre snail. I am not complaining. This might be the nicest place to be. I'd had a twelve hour working day, but all of it had been fun. And all of it was timetabled for me.
The final RHLSTP of series 5 (there will be a bonus one from Mach Fest out next week with Mike Wozniak), with guest Nick Helm is now up at the British Comedy Guide and iTunes. If you felt this 12+hours of entertainment has been worth anything to you at all, please consider making a one-off or monthly donation here. But really, just telling your friends that this stuff exists is very helpful too. We don't need many of you on board to be able to make more fun stuff. Your support is both appreciated and necessary.
