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Suella now so confident that she’s out and about with her devil horns showing. Just makes her sexier for me.
I got a message on Instagram from a guy who’d been prompted to visit his GP after seeing me on Gone Fishing and realising he had the same symptoms as I had. It turned out that he also had testicular cancer and has had the cancerous ball expunged and is about to have a shot of chemo - like me he was in his 50s which is unusual, but clearly not unheard of.
I never thought I would feel happy to hear that I had caused someone to have a ball cut off, but it’s been an unexpected bonus of my own diagnosis and my willingness to discuss it, has led to a few men seeking medical advice. Some, fortunately, had nothing serious wrong, but there are now a handful that have found out that they had cancer. Hopefully they would have gone to the doctor without my encouragement, but the earlier you seek help, the better your prospects. So it’s really rather lovely to have improved and maybe saved some lives with this. I am not saying I am the new Jesus… but the first one was very much here for the two balled community (and to an extent the no balled community) and he almost certainly believed (as the Old Testament does) that anyone with damaged genitals can’t get into Heaven. So I am here to offer salvation to the uniballs.
It's amazing that my story is saving lives. But that does mean that if you don't buy copies of my book for every man you know and one of them dies, then you have committed MURDER
Tonight Catie and me headed to London to do a gig at the Bill Murray. It was quite a big deal for both of us, as though we’ve podcasted (and I’ve done a couple of charity gigs and some sort of stand up gigs for the Bollock podcast) we haven’t really done any proper stand up since before the pandemic. It wasn’t exactly a date, but it felt nice to do something together and be trying to get back to something that we’ve both let slide due to podcasts and parenthood. Catie was doing a short set before I attempted what was left of the hour and I have vague plans to get a new tour show together about my testicle shortage, but was also keen to just try out some other ideas too.
The team behind the Bill Murray have really created something amazing - a venue dedicated to comedy, with a brilliant clientele of comedy fans and several shows a night. It’s the perfect place for someone like me to dip my toe back in, but also a great place for newer comics to work up material or just perform an established hour. And it was a top crowd tonight - Catie was excellent and looked like she’d never been away - it was all new material for both of us, so some of it worked better than others but the success of some bits seemed to surprise even her! The crowd were not a push over. They didn’t like my pi joke and groaned (I reckon they didn’t get it and were trying to cover their arses! Though the convoluted explanation of why it was wrong did get some laughs). I was working off a script mainly, but had the freedom to break off and just chat and I think in future weeks I will try to work from just a few notes, so that I can find the way to tell these stories for stand up, as the bollock ones have mainly been written for the book.
Of course the podcast has been scratching the performing itch a little bit, but it’s not the same as stand up (and this year has felt like much harder work, mainly due to me being ill for most of it) and it was actually quite irritating to realise how happy and complete I felt after my stage time. I am a different person on stage and Catie has observed in the past that I become a little depressed if I don’t perform for a while, but I still don’t like how easy it is for me to feel like a new man, just because I’ve made 60 or 70 strangers laugh.
I have no idea if my years away from stand up will mean that any potential touring audience will have declined. I did something like 18 straight years of touring my stand up shows and gradually built up a modest crowd nearly everywhere and managing to get 500+ in some of the venues, but would they be there for me again after 6 years?
It sort of doesn’t matter.
When I was touring stand up was my main income and I needed bums on seats so I could earn enough to live off for the year - and latterly the podcasts were a way of advertising those shows. But now I have an income from podcasting and whilst I don’t want to lose money, I can have more modest aspirations for a tour show and just concentrating on having fun with it and making it as good as possible. I just worry that I might find it all exhausting.
Anyway, all very encouraging tonight. I did about 25 mins of non-ball and 30 mins of ball and people seemed happy. As well as telling the story there are other things I want to do with the show: there’s the story of the relationship with my daughter through all this which was shaping up nicely tonight, but also how Catie stepped up, how my masculinity was challenged and I’d like to get Right Bollock in there too who represents a lot, but maybe also how sometimes, when you have a toxic relationship in your life it’s healthy to cut it off.
There’s life in the old dog yet. If maybe not the energy.
But thanks to everyone who came to see this -
five more chances, plus there are planned WIP shows in Wells, Balham, Leeds and maybe the Isle of Wight in the next few weeks - details when I have them
(Wells on sale already).
