7705/20644
Woken up at 4am by my boy and didn't get back to sleep and back to being dizzy and exhausted today. I had to go back to bed and Catie, who has just about recovered from her own maladies, had to get the kids ready for school. I stayed in bed most of the day. Nothing to worry about, I don't think. My body just turns off now when it's had enough. I thought I'd got over Christmas, but the Herring robot had to shut down.
David Richardson tweeted me this list of questions you get when you search for me on Twitter. Top one is "What happened to Richard Herring?" which could be a sign that I've fallen off the radar, but at least it suggests that I am remembered enough for people to ask. Smudge Smith would not have asked that question had the internet been available in Somerset in the 1980s. She just forgot me, if she ever even noticed me.
Of course the question could be taken two ways - it might be, "Where is he now?", but it might be "I know where he is, but what happened to him? Why does he look like that? Why does he think like that? Why has he betrayed his firmly held political beliefs of the 1990s of (checks notes) drinking the milk of different animals and having sex with gnats?
The answers are
He works from home/he just got old, like everyone. Leave him alone.
Yes, amazingly. For ages too. Can't last.
Presumably he isn't, because if he was you wouldn't have to ask,
Ally Sloper - still going strong.
Yup.
Catie Wilkins.
5 ft 7, if you're rounding up from just under 5 ft 6
Don't think she has one.
So hopefully google will bring curious Richard Herring questioners here for all the answers.
Thanks to the awesome Ruth Husko tweeting about it, I fell down a "Mad About Alice" rabbit hole in my sick bed (apt I suppose given the name of the titular character). I had forgotten all about this, a sitcom starring Amanda Holden (not surprising - I remember from my own attempts to get sitcoms on TV that execs were desperate to get her into every project and succeeded in getting her into a few [Big Top anyone?]) and Jamie Theakston (maybe a bit more surprising, as he was seen as a presenter and not an actor, though for my money had more than proven his comedy chops with his part in Rock Profiles - he was superb). 20 years on it seems impossible that this happened and you would suspect that the opening titles had been put together by AI.
https://twitter.com/dank_ackroyd/status/1745735462310858868But it ran for 6 episodes and had an impressive cast and was directed by Gareth Carrivick, already world famous for directing TMWRNJ. I ended up watching a good chunk of the first episode, which I can not recommend you doing (it's on youtube - find the link yourself if you're desperate). They hammer a lunchbox joke into the fucking ground, coming back to it so often that it takes on a surreal quality and I suspect this sitcom was the inspiration for the entire career of Stewart Lee. Theakston got hammered by the press for being wooden, but he's perfectly OK in it. People just don't like to see someone they associate with one thing doing something else. The writing team behind this one certainly liked to play around with putting someone surprising in a sitcom as their only other notable credit is Sam's Game starring Davina McCall (I believe we talk about it in the upcoming RHLSTP).
I mean, look, I'm not knocking it. I have a fondness for flawed sitcom and have even contributed to the form - it's just weird how a mainstream piece of work can fall out of everyone's heads and be more or less forgotten. It's probably a sign that it's just mediocre rather than terrible. You remember the bad ones.
But having watched it, the scripts and the chemistry are all wrong (though Theakston and Holden are still a radio double act, so who knows?) It was just a weird way to spend a slightly dizzy time in bed.
By the evening I felt better. I just have to accept my age and the fact that I can't push myself quite as hard. Good realisation in a year when I am doing two tours. But I have a feeling that being away from home may actually be less hard work than being here.
I love the hard work though. We had a fun bedtime where we played a drumming game that made Ernie laugh til he was nearly sick and an improv game where one of us had to arrive at the office late and try to explain why to the boss, whilst the other two had to mime the reason for the lateness without being seen and hope they could communicate it to the late person. Catie and me pretty much failed to get across to Phoebe that she'd been kidnapped by aliens who'd eaten her breakfast, but it was fun seeing what she guessed. Parenting is islands of intense and beautiful fun in a sea of shouting and trauma and no one listening to you. But like a character in a terrible sitcom I wouldn't have it any other way.
