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The lovely thing about RHLSTP is that I get to chat to some of my comedy heroes and today I was lucky enough to do a zoom call with the wonderful Steven Wright (not that one and definitely not THAT one), the brilliant American stand up turned novelist who has written a unique and mind-blowing new book called Harold.
Steven has an Oscar and some Emmys and just missed out on a Grammy, so is practically an EGOT, but also, of course, is famous for his sublime one liners and his new novel is a little window (with a bird flying into it) into the way his brain works. It’s packed with enough ideas to fill hundreds of books and isn’t something you’re likely to get through in one sitting, but it’s thought-provoking, inspiring and very enjoyable (as well as being satisfyingly batshit). It reminds me (and others) of Vonnegut.
There’s a chance that people will turn out not to be what you hoped when you talk to them for an hour and maybe Wright would be reticent or up himself or tired of interviews, but fortunately he was open and funny and charmingly modest and delighted to hear how much I’d enjoyed his book.
Utterly thrilled to chat with him and delighted to know that he was equally thrilled (not to talk to me you idiot) to have met Kurt Vonnegut on a few occasions. It’s nice when the people you respect turn out to be great in real life. I wish I had met Kurt, but good to meet a man who met him.
The Can I Have My Ball Back? Tour is some way away (and hasn’t been definitely confirmed) but I am doing more WIP shows and others will be added, so Goblin King, Rob Sedgebeer has set up a tour page to gather all info.
Check it out here.
I had a little browse of the show tab on this site once he’d set it up, for a walk down memory lane. I Killed Rasputin got better reviews than I remembered, but my memory is perhaps coloured by the £45000 loss that that show made.
