4648/17307
I can't quite remember why I decided to do all my 12 shows in one crazy season (though thank goodness my original plan of doing the 12 shows in 12 consecutive days didn't come off. I think I partly liked the idea because I would be able to get rid of some of the boxes of old programmes that I have stored in my attic. I liked the idea of them continuing to bring in revenue and thus justify my decision to keep them. Plus it would be hopefully a dozen or so less boxes to move when and if we do go to a new house. I mean that wasn't exactly a brilliant reason for doing this, but I think it was at the front of my mind. It certainly managed to knock out any thought of this being an impossibly difficult thing to do.
I decided to try and get all the programmes down to the theatre today so booked a cab in and got to work trying to find the necessary boxes. I knew I had run out of menage a un programmes (but had some original leaflets to give out in their place), and had used up the last Hercules ones last week (though found five loose ones in a little alcove in my eaves), but I thought I had a good supply of the others. But it turns out that that I have dozens of boxes of Christ on a Bike and Lord of the Dance Settee programmes and a fair few What is Love, Anyway?s, Someone Likes Yoghurt and Talking Cock:The Second Coming, but only two boxes each of “Oh Fuck I'm 40!†and “The H2eadmaster's Son†and only one each of Hitler Moustache and “We're All Going To Die!†(very surprised about that last one).
It's not reflection on the popularity of the shows by the way (although I partly have so many Lord of the Dance Settee ones because I needed to ensure i had enough in the unlikely event of selling out my Edinburgh Fringe venue), just poor ordering skills. But now I feel like I should do a long run of the shows with loads of programmes just so they don't go to waste. Which is crazy, but in essence each of those boxes is potentially worth £200-£300 for SCOPE so it's hard to leave them out for the recycling. And as I've shown I can never be quite sure when I will do the shows again.
Well, whatever. I got a lot of exercise today lugging these fucking things out of cupboards and up and down stairs and in and out of a taxi. But snap up those rare programmes. They might be worth something (not Christ on a Bike though - I will sell you 200 of those for a tenner.
But if you can't make it to the shows and want signed copies of these programmes then you can have all the ones that are currently left (plus all the different leaflets I still have) if you donate at least £20 via www.justgiving.com/happynow (make it £25 if you are abroad) and then email me your address (herring1967@gmail.com). The first few to donate will get those last Hercules progs too, so be quick if you want this. All your money will of course go to SCOPE.
For tonight's show I put on a T-shirt and jeans and pretended to be 39 again. It was the first performance where my present day reality added proper dramatic irony to the old jokes and I got laughs for making out I was single and that I'd be dead and childless by 45. I also enjoyed the fact that my yearning to be in a relationship with “6 legs†has come true in a different way than I anticipated. I forgot two of my favourite jokes (where I have a go at the audience for being upset at my fantasies about stigmata sex with Jesus, saying “Ten minutes ago I was talking about essentially raping a wound in a woman's body and none of you complained, now I am talking about having consensual sex with a fictional character and you're all upset - you're hypocrites!†and also a joke about me not being racist as I actually prefer black people to white people - so I am racist but the good type of racist.
Some of the stuff, as you may have gathered, was a little shocking, not least to me and as I had to cut 30 minutes I lost some even more inappropriate stuff - imagine. But it was another pretty solid performance with a great audience reaction. It was the smallest audience yet, but still 240 in which is more than enough to have a good time and get paid.
The current league table of sales of completed shows is
Yoghurt, Hercules, Christ, Cock, menage - ranging from 240-325 sales
As it stands on current sales (but some of these still some time away and I tend to sell most tickets lat one) it's
Yoghurt, Happy Now? (which seems likely to sell out), Hercules, 40, Cock, Christ, menage, Hitler, Headmaster, Lord of the Dance, Death, Love. So if you want your favourite to rise up the league then vote now (each vote is just the price of one ticket). It will be interesting to see which shows are the most popular in the end. What is Love, Anyway? is my favourite, but seems destined to be the smallest crowd, though maybe things will pick up in the next fortnight. I'd be delighted if I can get over 200 for all shows, though Love and Death might not quite make that.
After the show I had a couple of drinks before heading to the BBC for a couple more drinks and to appear on live radio discussing masculinity on Woman's Hour Late, which I was kind of hoping might be like Hollyoaks After Dark, with a bit more sex and partial nudity, but there were actually barely even any women, with only host Lauren Laverne representing the sisterhood. It was another eclectic but interesting panel and the hour passed very quickly (but then I was pissed). I tried to put the view that it was good that masculinity was shifting and that we had a chance to redefine what it meant to be a man and a woman (or just a human being) in the 21st Century. It was a bit hard to get a word in edgewise though, but I thought Lincoln Jopp, the only man on the panel to have taken a bullet (as far as I know) did the best job in making his points succinctly, calmly and with brevity and made them count. You can listen to it here - I think I only made one stumble that betrayed how pissed I actually was! This is the closest to a night out with the lads that I've had for a while!
