4734/17393
In the last couple of weeks I have noticed that the police in central London have come up with a new weapon in the battle against crime and terrorism. They’ve started putting little steps up in Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus that allow them to gain a vital extra foot of height so they can see over the crowds. Thank God for modern technology. I feel a lot safer now.
Another charming afternoon spent in the company of two funny and interesting people, Hal Cruttenden and Scroobius Pip. Even though I’d already talked to Pip for 90 minutes this week, we managed to chat for another 70 and scarcely repeated ourselves. People had been tweeting me asking if I’d be asking the terrorism questions this week, seemingly ignoring the fact that there has pretty much always been a terrorist atrocity every week I have asked that. It did briefly come up. It had been on all our minds, of course and on the walk through the crowds on the way to the theatre I’d been imagining and fearing the worst. And even in the theatre we were just in the same position as those other people who’d gone to a venue to have some fun at the weekend. Luckily my lack of popularity makes my gigs quite safe places to hide out for anyone fearful of this kind of stuff.
But all we can do is go on with our lives and keep on doing what we’re doing and to carry on laughing at the world and in the face of death. And so although people bristled a little at the subject being mentioned, it felt like a positive thing to not change the way we did things and to mordantly laugh at the horrors of the world. You are much more likely to die in a thousand other ways, so it’s not necessarily a terrible thing to be reminded that death lurks around every corner and that you should make the most of your time and enjoy your life. A car crash or a drunken fall or some other dumb accident is much more likely to cause your demise, but you don’t go out fearing that every single second. And like all the other times the heightened sense of fear will dissipate. Until the next time. These people are trying to stop us living the lives we lead, so carrying on living the lives we lead is the only real response.
But we managed to laugh our tensions away with mainly non-terrorist based stories. Hal opened up about a condition he suffers from that he’s never discussed before and Scroobius needed little prompting to tell me which animal he’d have sex with. And we learned a bit more about the drive and dedication required to make it to do a job you love. So the usual mixture of stupidity, smut and revelation.
The final line-up for this series of RHLSTP on 29th November will be Richard Bacon and the brilliant Cariad Lloyd. I still have one guest to book for the 22nd November to join Aisling Bea. You can book your tickets here. Please support the project by coming to see if live if you can. It’s a whole lot of fun and you’ll get to see this stuff months before anyone else!
