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Evan Smith tweeted this article from the Leeds Student from November 1994. I feel I may have seen it before (maybe even blogged about it) but it's an amusing little slice of my past history (I'd forgotten we had open spots during that tour - though feel it's a little unfair on poor Alison Ross). I had forgotten about the urination joke, which is pretty good (though it sounds like a Stewart Lee line to me) and at least Hannah fancies me a bit (I just didn't realise how good looking I was Hannah - Stew told me he was better looking and I believed him, but look at that photo). I like the fact she calls my material "self-depreciating". Nothing could be truer than that. Of my material and of myself. Fun to read, even if she didn't really like the show too much.
I don’t think I have ever cancelled a tour gig before. I may be wrong and doubtless Warming Up can correct me somewhere down the line, but I have fought through snow and illness to get to every single gig (as far as I remember) and the only gig I actually recall cancelling was an Edinburgh preview above a pub on the week that I had the norovirus. And only then because my wife insisted I stay at home because I was probably contagious.
I have done gigs with food poisoning. I have done gigs where the snow is piling up outside. I am a big proponent of the idea that the show must go on.
So I hadn’t even considered cancelling the gigs this week because of the dire reports of storms to come. I was a bit nervous about heading all the way down to Dartmouth tomorrow, but more nervous about the fact that we’d booked a hotel in Salisbury which was three hours up the road (on a normal night), but I presumed if we got stuck in Dartmouth we’d just make our way home when we could.
But the promoter of tomorrow’s gig got in touch and wondered if in light of the forecasts I wanted to cancel. And we hadn’t sold a million tickets and the risk was not just to us but anyone driving into town (or even walking in on icy pavements) so the decision was made to postpone the gig until a later date.
I felt weird about it. But was confident I’d be doing the gig in Bath tonight. We were only an hour’s drive away. The snow was only coming down in dandruffy amounts. We had a hotel in Bath so all would be fine even if we did get snowed in.
In fact we had a 5 star hotel in Bath and a massage booked in for me. In a first for me a hotel had got in touch with me and said I could have two free rooms for the night and a complimentary treatment if I tweeted about it. That seemed like a good deal to me. Plus I was assuming I would hate the massage as usual and be able to write a good blog about my discomfort. I have no problem with Premier Inns or paying to stay in them, but if someone really thought that a couple of tweets from me was worth free accommodation then I wasn’t going to turn it down.
I hadn’t slept brilliantly at my parents and so was also looking forward to a lie tomorrow as my poor wife had to struggle for three nights alone. Ha ha ha. And I was getting a massage, which she would love. It didn’t matter that I would hate it. It was enough to know how jealous it would make her. Marriage is a competition and one that I intend to win. Though I admit on current scores I am some way behind. But the race isn’t over yet.
But it’s sitcom week in Warming Up, so of course, just as we drove into Bath and were maybe 5 minutes from the hotel I got a call from my management team to tell me that the venue had decided to cancel the gig. The storm was coming in and a significant number of the audience were travelling in from other places and Bath is situated amidst some pretty treacherous hill roads…… Would it have been funnier if I’d just checked in and seen my room when I got that call? Or maybe changed into my massage pants? Or had to endure the massage only to be told the gig was not happening?
Welsh Ray my tour manager (who was wearing a suit made out of leeks and daffodils today for St David’s Day and insisting that he be paid in seaweed - he is very Welsh) and I could have decided to enjoy a romantic night in a snowbound hotel, but instead we felt it prudent to stay ahead of the storm and go home.
I was gutted to not do the gigs. I hate to let people down (then why do you do the gigs usually Rich? Shut up Stew), but also, of course that is not only two days of lost revenue, but also no one reimburses me for the expenses. Luckily we managed to cancel tomorrow’s hotel and tonight’s was free anyway, but I was still down on the deal. On the plus side I got to go home and see the lovely people I thought I was going to be away from for a lot longer . We’d bought a bunny costume for Phoebe to wear to nursery for World Book Day (so I could cover it in blood and say she was from Watership Down) but yesterday she was insisting she wanted to dress as Spiderman. As far as we knew she’d never seen anything with Spiderman in it, but she said she loved Spiderman and somehow Catie had managed to borrow a Spiderman costume from someone in the village, so I would at least get to see the tiny Spiderman that I’d only witnessed in gleeful photos.
On the downside there would be no lie-ins for little Richy.
The drive home was pimpsy and I wondered if it had all been a fuss over nothing. But apparently Bath was blanketed in snow by night time. I’d been denied a luxury afternoon and night, but I got to see my son’s smiling face and wonder what the secret identity of Spiderman was and my wife had won another point in our eternal battle because I was unmassaged.
I guess it was a win, but apologies to those who had tickets (some of whom, like I, had already travelled to Bath). The Komedia date has been rearranged to
11th April - your tickets will still be valid, or you can return them. Or you can now buy tickets to that night instead
Hopefully no more gigs will be postponed. It left me feeling oddly hollow.
