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Unlike grumpy old Bob Geldof, I do like Mondays. When I am doing RHLSTP at least. Even though I was very tired it was a real pleasure to spend the day researching the lives and videos of Lauren Laverne and Doc Brown and then an even greater pleasure to get to chat to them for three hours at the theatre.
Watching Kenickie videos transported me back to the 1990s, but also reminded me of the exuberance and joy of late teenage years: happy and fun music created by some regular looking teens. I don’t know if anything like that could exist nowadays. And it was fun watching Doc Brown’s early stand up routines again. I had gigged with him a few times back in the late noughties and had him picked out, along with Jack Whitehall, as a definite future star. Both of them were funny, confident and handsome and I knew TV would come knocking pretty soon.
Doc and Lauren had some parallels in their lives, both starting out in music before diversifying into lots of other areas and having the drive and talents to excel at pretty much everything they attempt. I knew when I’d booked them that this would be one of the better RHLSTP evenings and it proved to be so and I gave them both the room to discuss their upbringing and the challenges they have faced. They’re both very serious and thoughtful people, but also very game to answer stupid emergency questions and that’s pretty much the perfect RHLSTP combination.
I feel so lucky to have chance across this format. It takes a bit of work and a lot of concentration, but it’s usually such fun to do that it doesn’t feel too arduous. I love doing stand up and I don’t think I’d want to stop touring (though touring may soon defeat me and my ageing body), but it would be a lovely life to just do one of these every Monday for the rest of my life. If we could get to the point where it always sold out that might almost eventually work as a retirement plan.
I mean I say that now. A month ago when I hadn’t managed to book anyone I was wondering if this had run its course and I’d run out of people to chat to (or at least ones that would bring in the required audience) and even now I only have one name booked for each of the next three weeks. Ah, it will be OK. Unbelievably there are still tickets to see David Cross next week. I believe we may be up against some football, but you don’t care about that.
Anyway the work took me away from the horrible world for a little while, though once we were done and I was heading home I passed by the Ku bar, proudly proclaiming its status as an award winning gay bar and I wanted to high five and hug all the men drinking outside. I feared I would look like a patronising and idiotic prick and maybe the correct thing to do, is, as they were, to carry on regardless. It was both brave and necessary for those men to do what they have always done and it was about them, not me. But I love living in a world where people are free to be who they are and I strongly fear that these freedoms are being eroded by people looking backwards rather than forwards. Both those espousing medieval philosophies and those hoping our country can return to an imaginary past. The championing of and pride in ignorance is terrifying, especially for anyone with a history book that goes back 70 or 80 years. We should only be looking backwards to work out the stuff that we really shouldn’t be doing. Or maybe just to predict the next step in the cycle.
We live in interesting times. And this, as you know, is not a good thing. Good luck to us all. We are going to need it.
