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There's a great camaraderie developing amongst the people I am on this secret show with. Everyone involved (apart from maybe me) has wonderful self-assurance, but also a charming softness and vulnerability. I really admire both those attributes and they all display them in different but equally pleasing ways. If you're not going to take any shit, you also have to not be a shit and everyone here gets the balance right (again apart from maybe me who both gives a lot of shits, is a shit and also spends a lot of time shitting).
One of them is a former professional sportsman of about the same vintage as me (though arguably better at sport - though I am world champion of self-playing snooker) and there were some pictures of him from his playing days knocking about. As we assessed his relative levels of fitness then and now he asked if we had any pictures of ourselves from the mid-90s and I found a couple of Lee and Herring shots on my computer.
Nobody in the room seemed able to believe that the photos were of me and pretty much all said that they wouldn't have recognised me as the same person. Some said how good looking I was then - and I wasn't sure how to take that, given the implications for my current state. It was also a bit discombobulating that people couldn't believe I was man in the photos, some even asking if it was me on the left or the right. Thirty years (of hurt) have gone by, but am I really so ground done by life that I am unrecognisable?
I did point out how many different looks I had even in the few brief years of the 90s, sometimes bearded, sometimes much more overweight.
When I look back it does feel like a different person to me did all that stuff. I wonder if the original me died and was replaced by a lookalike so that the lucrative Lee and Herring bandwagon could keep on rolling. I am certainly going to suggest that if anyone discovers any of my less politically correct material from back then and tries to cancel me. Is there a movie in someone who has been put in a band or comedy troupe to replace a dead member, but also somehow hypnotised to believe they actually are the person.
The new Paul McCartney is certainly a lot more talented than the first one, even if his ear lobes aren't quite as nice.
Sometimes people recognise me as being that young boy and shout Moon on a Stick at me, but mostly I guess, if anyone does remember me from those days they might not realise that the shambling grey-haired, eyebrowless old man is the same prick who used to annoy them in the 1990s. Which can only be a good thing. I've mostly forgotten me too.
