Warming Up

What a day! If Twitch of Fun World ever gets off the ground, today will be a big part of it. We (that’s me and the puppets) did our first ever Twitch of Fun in front of a live audience!

It was a pretty full on day and I was tired and dizzy throughout it, but somehow managed not to keel over at any point.

I started early with a radio interview at 8.30am (it was a prerecord for tomorrow afternoon but for some reason we had to do it that early. It was Lou Sanders and me being interviewed about Taskmaster Champion of Champions by Chris Hawkins. He seemed to be under the impression that we’d formed a double act, but not that either of us knew about, though we did of course present a show on Fubar radio together a few years back. 

I was then more or less straight into recording an hour long podcast (and I’d had to postpone doing another one this afternoon) before then getting on with researching Dick and Dom for RHLSTP (an absolute pleasure - their TV stuff is ridiculously stupid and funny) and trying to find news stories (on quite a slow news day) for Twitch of Fun. It felt weird though. I didn’t want to change the desperate format of Twitch of Fun where everything is about to fall apart and nothing is prepared, but knew that might feel incredibly uncomfortable in front of an actual audience. Even of diehard fans. Especially of diehard fans, because they were unlikely to be interested in puppets and just want to know about Bruce Willis.

There were about 70 people in to witness this triumph/disaster and I was glad that they got to see a strong RHLSTP first. Dick and Dom were very good value and open to being a bit rude, though I admire the fact that they have kept their live show as a family event and not done what some kids’ entertainers do and come up with a blue or adult version of their old act. Their childishness and enthusiasm is infectious, but they are very modest about how their careers have gone. They are still able to fill thousand seater theatres, which is not something that I have managed very often in my 33 year long career.

I had very very minimal plans for Twitch of Fun. We hadn’t even really worked out how I’d set up the puppets, which I had to place on chairs and lower tables behind my main table. The audience cheered as they caught a glimpse of each puppet, so I thought that it might not be too judgemental a crowd. We were all there just to see how this would go and I knew they would want everything to be as ramshackle and precarious as usual. I hadn’t even thought about what each puppet I’d brought along might do in their section. It made me feel a bit sick (and my dizziness was making me feel a bit sick already) as it’s against almost all performer instincts to try something like this without even a plan. I wasn’t very inspired by the stories I’d found and just hoped Ally would be on better form than me.

It was a little bumpy in places (but then it has to be) but looking back at it a surprising amount of OK material appeared out of the ether and it was rather delightful to share this show with some of the people who have been watching it for the last two years. I took the piss out of them a lot and Ally took the piss out of me a lot and it had been the right decision to go into this with nothing but my wits and the wits of my puppets. The audience were happy to see the characters live and things developed organically. As I looked at Sibyl’s predictions, I googled a couple to see if they’d come true. When it seemed unlikely it looked like I wasn’t going to bother and the audience demanded “Check it!” Thus creating their own same phrase. They were also not ready to forgive Prince Andrew (who works a lot better with a collection of proles in front of him to talk down to), but seemed less angry with the arguably equally unpleasant Marvin the Monkey. 

It had gone well enough for the audience to give a thumbs up and declare that I should try again on July 11th.  You’ll be able to listen to the audio soon and whilst I can’t rely on the crowd just being glad to see the puppets if we do this regularly, I was pretty pleased that I managed to improv an hour (or thereabouts) with at least a few properly funny bits.

There’s something in this. Support us with a ticket purchase if you can! Buy here

Next week’s RHLSTP should be brilliant too - it’s Bilal Zafar and Seann Walsh. All live dates here.