Wow, how extraordinary. This may be the best day of my life. I was astounded to start it with Collings and Herrin at 11 in the iTunes chart, but at close of play we're up to 9. We're in the top ten. This is probably the greatest achievement of my life (and by far the peak of Collings' moribund career). Even though it's down to the lovely people who follow me on Twitter and you lovely people who read my blog and within days we'll be back down where we belong, a few giddy hours up there with the big boys are all we need. Much as the podcast Richard Herring says he hates his listeners, the actual Richard Herring is very touched by their affection and support for two rubbish old men.
And he hates them.
The podcast Richard Herring added that last sentence.
No, he didn't. It was the real Richard Herring.
That was him again, sorry. You're all really cool. Apart from the dicks who don't get it or like it but still keep listening to it.
That was both of us talking there.
I think me and Andrew should make a pact that if we get to number one in the podcast charts I should actually have to bum him. It's a fairly safe bet as we clearly never will, but ironically may provide the incentive to create an internet viral phenomenon where everyone works like crazy to find new converts to make this abhorrent and ugly union come about. I know that Andrew would so like to be number one that he might actually go along with it and whilst the podcast Richard Herring would be delighted to get the opportunity, the real Richard Herring would be mentally scarred if he carried out such an act. Still better than the physical scarring that Collings would get.
It's so impossible that we should agree to it, and yet our very assent might be enough to make it possible. We'd get to number one, but at what cost?
And the problem with these will they/won't they affairs is that once they do it all the tension goes out of the show and people lose interest.
Collings will pretend he doesn't want to be number one enough to make this devilish contract, but I individually will promise, as God is my witness, that if we are ever number one in the iTunes podcast charts, I will bum Andrew Collings... even if it it must be burglary.
Yes as a homage to the career of Richard Curtis, and some shit film
that Collings walked out of, even though he was supposed to be reviewing it, I vow that if enough people subscribe to the podcast then I will anally rape Collings, live (though recorded) on air. As Collings is the one responsible for uploading the podcast (no double entendre in there so stop looking for it) it is unlikely that you will ever get to listen in as the crime is taking place (and imagine how freakish his Mr Bean voice will get under the circumstances), but I absolutely guarantee that it will happen.
Which places us in an interesting legal conundrum. Who will be culpable in such a circumstance? Me for perpetrating the violation or you, the listening public, for orchestrating a campaign which can only have one consequence?
I think it will be you.
But I am not sure the law will see it that way, and it galls me, the actual Richard Herring to be imprisoned for a crime that the podcast Richard Herring will have actually have committed and (because it seems he is writing most of this entry now) have initiated.
I can only thank the popularity of Ricky Gervais and Eddie Izzard which will ensure this unholy union will never come about.
Unless you make it so. So who is culpable?
Imagine the excitement of me and Collings as we climb ever higher and the way it would turn to nausea and fear as we got ever closer to the top spot (again that's not a euphemism - it's completely wrong if you think about it).
Like some kind of experimental, show offy comedian threatening my own suicide if the audience do not come to rescue me, I will leave it in your hands.
The human race is on trial here. What will you do?
My guess is that we will discover that you are the worst monsters to have ever walked this fine earth.
My other guess is that if we get to number one that Andrew probably won't turn up at the house that week.
But then again if he does, can't we take that as a kind of implicit consent?
This is the point where cutting edge experimental comedy designed to make us think about the world and morality, oversteps a mark and begins to eat itself.
But if we get to number one, the podcast Richard Herring will bum Andrew Collings (who is the same in real life and on the podcast and not able to claim Jekyll and Hyde style character change is responsible for his misdemeanours).
I am so not looking forward to the day when my attempts to simulate madness for comic effect actually reach the tipping point where I am mentally ill and shouting swear words at respectable women in the street. I am pretty sure that that day will come. So enjoy the entertainment version before I am either homeless or incarcerated for life.
All I am saying is thanks for getting us in the top 10. Ignore the rest of the stuff.
Even though it is a legally binding contract.
I actually had a good day today. I've been a bit caught in the crazy world of touring, where it's easy to lose sight of who you actually are and what's important and start going crazy and proposing slightly frightening sexual assaults on your work colleagues (he is not my friend). Thank God I am passed that.
I think I have the perfect metaphor for touring on your own and let's see if any comedians out there agree with me, because it's not something you can really envisage if you haven't done it. But what I think the experience is like is having you chest frozen in a gigantic freezer that resembles one of those boxes that a magician uses when he is cutting a woman in half (ie your legs and head are sticking out one end, and thus your brain and head based senses are fully operational, but everything inside is frozen solid into a human popsicle. Then someone lifts the lid and with a spoon slowly and meticulously scoops out your heart, as if it were ice cream and eats it.
I don't think you'll find a better expression of the soul destroying nature of life on the road. Tell me that I am wrong comedians!
On this leg of the tour, partly cos it's close to the end and partly because in Stafford and Warrington I have worked with some of the most charming, friendly and efficient theatre staff that I have encountered (and many of them are charming and so on elsewhere, though not at the Warwick Arts Centre), I feel the freezer/magician cabinet has had its power switched off and my heartless cadaver is beginning to thaw. I am closer to being myself again, which is a frightening thought if you read the rest of this entry.
I am also partly feeling better because I got some good work done on my book today and was writing a chapter in which I was cool and did something of which I can be proud, rather than the other stuff I've been writing which is mainly about me being a dick. A lovable dick, obviously, as long as you didn't actually have to be around, loving me at the time!
The audience were lovely tonight too, although there was a woman on the front row who didn't seem to be engaging with it too much throughout, especially towards the end of the first half when she started talking to her partner and pointing at my feet, which was distracting when I was trying to tell the audience about my fantasy about having sex with Wee Jimmy Krankie. It turned out that there was a small, but long legged spider scurrying around on the stage. You know someone hasn't engaged with the show when they are distracted by a tiny arachnid. But she was clearly a bit of an arachnophobe and so I kindly picked up the tiny spider and deposited him out of sight backstage, when perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight I should have thrown it into the woman's hair to teach her a lesson about paying attention.
In another show I would have done ten minutes about what other creepy crawlies might have been on stage and how I shouldn't have been double booked with the cirque de araignée (though I would have had to have Google in my brain to come up with that translation). I did manage some minor quips, which did derail the following routine a bit. A few minutes later a man commented that there was an ant on stage - a reference to my bit about
"Un Chien Andalou". It would have been a good one if he had come in with it sharply and clearly at the time, but it needed explanation from me and had taken him too long to think about. So a great idea went down to near silence. Heckling is a tough game. Only the truly experienced, or totally crazy should attempt it.
No one in the audience should ever notice a ground based spider on stage. But despite this, the gig was a lovely one. The funny bits got laughs and the touching bits got silence. And the bits when spiders came on stage got a woman pointing at the spiders.
It's about as much as you can ask for.
And in other great news, almost as if they were being controlled by me playing Football Manager, Magic York City managed a 1-0 win, which provided they beat at least one of the rubbish sides they're playing in the last three games should ensure that they don't get demoted. It would be just like them to give me hope that their safety was secure only to let me down. But I think they might have avoided the drop into the Conference North. As footballing achievements go it is pretty low on the list of desirable outcomes. But it's about the same as being so delighted that you are 9th in the iTunes podcast chart that you literally become mentally ill. I doubt that David Mitchell is as impressed by his chart position.
But what you've got tonight is (a surprisingly mainly sober) thank you for helping me achieve an accolade that I thought I'd never receive.
You know what you have to do if you want things to go further. But consider your own culpability and whether you could live with the guilt.
Success shall be our destruction.
That is a motto I have lived my life by.
And it's why I am still here, very much alive and undestroyed.
In a hotel in Warrington.
Waiting to get tired enough to go to sleep.
The podcast Richard Herring is never writing another one of these things, I promise you.
