4537/17456
International Workers’ Day? When will there be an International Shirkers’ Day? There is one already, it’s November 19th. Am I right, ladies? (I am saying men are shirkers, in case you didn’t get it. November 19th is International Men’s Day - you probably didn’t know).
We got another night out and night off from the baby tonight thanks to Phoebe’s very generous Nana, who agreed to look after her till the morning. Some parents don’t like to leave their babies for the first few months, but as much as I love my daughter (and I love her an awful lot), I am delighted to take a break every now and again. We’re a mum and dad now, but we’re also still individual people and we’ve both earned the opportunity to let our hair down. And we did let our hair down. It’s worth having a baby because it makes nights out feel like the greatest thing in the world. I don’t want to risk being irresponsible, but you should all have babies with the first person you can find to have one with you, just so you can really appreciate your nights out.
We went for sushi and I started with a “pornstar martini”. I don’t know what made it pornstar (unless someone had spunked in it - but then it should be called a cumartini) and I bet loads of people order it just so they can laugh awkwardly as they order it. I ordered it because I liked the sound of the drink and the name nearly stopped me ordering it, so the restaurant’s trick almost backfired on them (I mean, not too badly, I would just have ordered something else). I still giggled awkwardly as I asked for it though and the waitress pretended to find it mildly amusing too, even though she must be sick of going through this pantomime. And it didn’t make me into a pornstar or attract any pornstars. It was just some vanilla vodka with some passionfruit juice in it, making it essentially an expensive alcopop, but it came with a shot of champagne, which made it classy. Well classy for porno. So that’s a porno shot with soft lighting and which has stuff in it that women like, like subtlety and affection. Thank God I am a man.
We had saki with our meal, which I claimed wasn’t particularly alcoholic, but I might have been wrong about that, because by the end of the meal we were nicely stewed. I’d pretty much forgotten we had a baby at all. It was glorious. It’s worth having a baby, just to get to the point where you’re drunk enough to forget that you have one, so you can act irresponsibly and stupidly again, like you would have done if you’d never had a baby.
We rolled down Notting Hill, foolishly stopping to buy more wine. It’s funny to think that in the old days this would have been a very lightly pissed night for me and that I would go out pretty much every day and get hammered. I don’t really know how I functioned through some of that (though it took me a lot more booze to get drunk then). It’s nice once in a while, though in the last 17 months I’ve hardly got blotto at all. I think I will regret it in the morning and predictably even though I had a night where I could sleep uninterrupted I woke up at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep for four hours. Ah yes, that’s why I gave up drinking. And when you have a baby you can do all that without spending anything on cocktails and rice wine.
It was probably worth it though. Thank God for my mother-in-law. She’s amazing (apart from the dishwasher murder plots). I have been drummed out of the 1970s comedians union for saying this though.
This month’s monthly subscriber monthly draw was won by Nicola Larsson. She wins some as yet undecided prizes, including a hand-drawn T-shirt and an old script from one of my shows, and whatever else I can find in my office. The kind of things that make tens of pounds on eBay. And I have started up a special secret newsletter for all you subscribers which has revealed two more confirmed guests for RHLSTP (the rest of you will get the news on Tuesday) and includes some exclusive bits of writing and a peak at the first draft of my press release for my run of shows at the Leicester Square Theatre in August and September (check your junk folder if you haven’t received this subscribers). And of course new bits and bobs are added to the secret exclusive channel on a (usually) weekly basis. So if you want some of that (and to fund a future series of AIOTM) then
pay a pound or more a month here.
