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Back to the Leicester Square Theatre and it felt like ages since I'd been here or done a podcast in front of an audience (Edinburgh is just a distant dream that I am not sure even happened).
I had two fantastic guests lined up and the show was sold out and so I wasn't too worried. And turned out that I didn't need to be. When this place is full the atmosphere is already amazing and tonight had the added excitement of this being one of the last chances to see this.
Before lockdown the podcast had got to a point where the shows were normally sold out and rarely under half sold out, but since then it's been more of a struggle to get people out on a Monday night. And tonight I realised how just how much the show flies with the roaring jet engine of the crowd behind it.
There have been some great shows in the last few years, but I think there would have been more if we were filling the place. Having an audience and more specifically having my particularly fantastic and comedy literate audience was what made this podcast different - even when there were relatively few competitors. The energy of the audience was my secret weapon. Encouraging the guests on to greater flights of fancy or revelations. It sort of sounds insane, but it's true - a group of people can project an attitude or an emotion or positivity or negativity or encouragement or discouragement. If they are too blindly positive then that feels fake and my crowd has always had taste. Not every joke lands, but the good ones do. And maybe most importantly they know when to be quiet and when to just listen. There have been some really magical experiences in this room where that shared energy has been palpable. Sometimes it has helped push things too far into the hinterlands of bad taste, but mainly it's been a joyous celebration of the guest and of comedy in general.
And maybe, over the years, I have slightly lost some of the early magic, where my unpredictability or bluntness or rudeness has taken things to a different level. Usually a higher one, sometimes destroying the whole thing, occasionally completely regrettable. For these last few shows I think we might be seeing a proper return of the Richard Herring who has nothing to lose, nothing to gain and who sees what new stuff he can get out of people, rather than just have them repeat a story they've told on other podcasts (or even this one sometimes).
Tonight, I'd say, I got the wrongness right. Isy Suttie was superb and open and very funny and we both admitted to some of the dumb stuff we did in the days when we had no responsibility. Ed Gamble, in to replace James Acaster because as I said, "I thought about who would be the most disappointing substitute for James' fans", was fantastic as well. He took my insults and desire to murder him as an infant in good heart and gave back better than he got.
My favourite thing to happen in these podcasts is to take a horrible or absurd idea and riff on it with my guest or for my openness to revelations of my own lead the guest to open up too. There was loads of that in this episode (and a good amount in Isy's chat) and at one point I was actually helpless with laughter. Mainly at an idea I myself was having and attempting to state to an incredulous Ed. I was actually incapacitated and wasn't sure I was going to live through it. I was laughing and hurting in my very core. I'd like to stay alive and I'd hate for Ed Gamble to think he was so funny that he had killed me, but this would not have been a bad way to go. For your heart to just pop as you are filled with the joy of laughter from a joke that has appeared from nowhere.
All the other pleasures of life fade or dull, but laughter and the kind of laughter where you fear you may expire, is if anything more vivid and enjoyable as you age.
What I am saying is that talking to Ed Gamble tonight was better than any physical or sensory or sexual experience I have had. And admitting that now makes me wish I had actually died.
I am going to push this thing until it breaks over the last two shows. It might destroy me, before I can destroy it. But it will be great to go out on a high, in a room full of love and disgust. Things are going to be emotional in November, I am sure.
I will miss this, for sure. But it's the right time to stop. Or pause. But probably stop.
