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As if to prove how remarkable that 8 hour uninterrupted sleep was, let me present last night's stats. 6 hours and 1 minutes sleep and I woke up 8 times (only 2 or 3 of those were for trips to the loo though).
A couple of things I forgot to mention yesterday - firstly, obviously Ernie was 100% fit and fine, but still unable to go to school because of their 48 hour vomit/diarrhoea ruling. So he won that battle. Luckily his Nanna was on hand to look after him for the day.
Secondly it was a momentous day for me yesterday as it will (I think) be the last time I ever put programmes out on the seats at gigs. For almost every show since 2002 I have had a free programme and at nearly every gig I would personally put these on the seats in the theatre as the techs set up. Sometimes people would help, but I became quite skilled at working out the best way to get them on to chairs. If the seat didn't fold up, then it was an easy job, but if it did then you had to either balance the programme on the arm/seat or more usually flick the programme open to the center pages and drape. I was very adept at this and could do it pretty quickly in the end.
It wasn't too much of an imposition as most of my gigs were attended by modest crowds, but occasionally there were 500 or even 1000+ programmes to put out and so it became slightly more difficult.
At the end of the gig I'd take a collection for (usually) Scope and so especially in the early days before Natwest brought in coin counting machines, a good proportion of my post gig time was spent putting coins into pay in bags and then the next morning searching for a bank. I joked once to a girlfriend who had come to a gig that it would be funny if we tried to emulate those movie scenes where people make love on a bed covered in banknotes that they've won or stolen, by throwing the coins on the bed and having uncomfortable sex on top of them (you might end up with tuppence in your tuppence).
I think this joke ended up morphing into the rumour that Sara Pascoe recounted to me during a RHLSTP that I liked to throw coins in people's faces whilst having sex.
I have never done that.
But denying it just makes it seem definitely true.
This is what I get for being so charitable. There is no justice in the world.
Other comedians spent their post gig time taking nose cocaines and having sex on bank notes, I ended up with coin-soiled, brassy fingers, counting out 100 one pences and putting them in a little bag. But who was more fulfilled?
It was the other guys. The ones with the bank notes and cocaines. I have wasted my life.
Anyway, I do a lot of work for charity and I don't like to talk about it. These programmes and your kind contributions (particularly from the people who paid to get their name in them) have made something like £400,000 for Scope and Movember. Again, not something I would talk about, because it's better just to do something selfless and amazing and never mention it.
More recently the coin machines and the death of cash money have made the post gig part of this enterprise a lot easier and in the Ball Back tour the programmes were digital too so I didn't have to put them out pre gig.
I last did printed programmes for the 2019 RHLSTP tour, but there were enough left over to put them out for most live RHLSTP since then (though we stopped doing it at the Leicester Square Theatre and couldn't transport them to Edinburgh for the Fringe shows). This batch of programmes were kindly paid for by Bulb and that £5000 may have been the straw that broke that camel's back, so for a few years they have been advertising a company that no longer exists.
Yes, I also did pretty well out of the Bulb referral scheme and I know a lot of you came along on the ride for that and that Bulb didn't turn out to be as. good as I thought (though they were for me), but we all ended up at Octopus who are even better and look more secure. They also do a referral scheme so if you're thinking of switching and want to get a £50 credit, whilst also giving me a £50 credit as a thank you for all this free stuff
then use this link (nothing can possibly go wrong). I miss not having to pay for my heating.
I had a few boxes left, but decided that yesterday's gig would be the last one for these programmes and I felt a bit emotional putting out the brochures one last time. I made a final £37 for Scope in cash (and someone kindly donated £25 online- I'd totally forgotten about
this gofundme page. If you have enjoyed the programmes over the years and not given in the buckets, maybe consider making a final donation in tribute to this final printed programme).
There may be more digital programmes (though people were much less likely to donate via phone than by chucking coins or notes into a bucket), but that's me done with putting programmes out on chairs after a quarter of a century's service.
Did someone say "Give this man an MBE"? Come on, no one would want that. That's the reason I don't talk about this kind of stuff, to stop ridiculous comments like this.
