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I have revived the Me1 vs Me2 running rivalry that served me so well in getting to my half Marathon personal best last time I ran one. Me 1 set out to attempt the 4km half up hill run and though he had no time to beat (other than my own last run of about 31 minutes) he knew he was laying down the time for Me2 to beat and he put a bit of effort in to come home in 29 minutes and 40 seconds. Given that in the Park Runs we had been closing in on 25 minutes for 5km this is still rather slow, but the initial steep hill is getting easier and it was pretty warm so Me1 is happy. Me2 is pretty sure he can beat that (though I don’t think we’ll be running this 4km route for much longer as we build up to 13 miles).
My weight has plateaued a little bit this week, but I am noticeably thinner (I was a bit surprised by how comparatively trim I looked in today’s RHLSTP photos) and the extra energy is my real reward. I am feeling stupidly good and making cancer look like a stupid bloody idiot for making all this happen. You could have just left me to slowly die through my own laziness and now look at me.
I shouldn’t goad cancer. It might have something up its knobbly sleeve. But I can’t resist it and am determined to never die to teach this horrible creature a lesson.
Down to Clapham for the fourth week in a row for RHLSTP and I got to spend the evening with some of the loveliest and funniest people on the planet: Isy Suttie and the No Such Thing as a Fish buffoons. Isy’s new novel is clever and funny just like her. Her honesty and charm are disarming and it’s no wonder she gets such brilliant stuff out of the guest on her podcast. I had to stop running a couple of times because I was laughing so hard listening to her interviewing a drunk, but sharp John Robins and also then tried to remember what we’d talked about when she’d interviewed me for “The Things We Do For Love†last year. The series is coming out soon.
It’s pretty effortless interviewing the Fish team as you can basically wind them up and they will chat and joke and tell you interesting facts til you die. At the end of this podcast I laughed so much (admittedly at something largely of my own invention) that I had tears running down my face and could hardly talk. But then I had tears running down my face at some of their mono-testicle facts too.
I loved the backstage photos. The one with Isy particularly has so much going on in it that Isy could no doubt turn it into an hour long show. It looks to begin with, as usual, that I am the creepy old man stalking the nervous woman, but then look at her smirk and the fear in my eyes. What's going on here? And what happened to that armchair?
The bad news is that social distancing won’t be lifted in time for the final show on 5th July so there won’t be any more audience tickets to sell BUT the good news is that you can still live stream it. Robin Askwith alone will be worth the £12 price, but then you also get James Acaster and Ed Gamble thrown in for nothing. It’s a great way to help support the theatre (and the podcast) through these difficult times, so do buy a ticket if you can. Get 11 friends to watch along with you and it’s only £1 each. Get 23 friends and it’s only 50p each. Get a billion friends, charge them a pound each to see it and you will be be just £12 away from becoming a billionaire. And shrewd investment of your nearly a billion pounds will make you a billionaire pretty quickly.
And coming soon news on the autumn run of RHLSTP and which guests from the March/April 2020 cancelled gigs we’ve managed to rebook. If you are holding tickets we will transfer them across to the most similar line-up (I’ve done pretty well in getting those guests back) though you will of course be able to get a refund if you can’t attend. And I think there might be some VERY tasty line-ups for the 7 shows.
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