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Nearly back to normal now, though the ball is yet to grow back, which is a bit concerning.
People are always talking about growing some balls and being manly. It seems I am so unmacho that I can't even grow one. All these tough men out there growing multiple balls ("some" certainly implies more than a couple and presumably they mostly had two to start with) and walking round with a scrotum bulging with testes and however much I hold my breath and push my diaphragm, I still have that solo bollock, rattling around in there like a hermit crab in an oversized shell.
Maybe I am trying to rush things. But even a ham hand grows back after a month.
I had a productive day working up a brand new ten minutes of bollock-busting material for the XS Mallarkey anniversary online gig and recording a bollock-based sketch for the new series of Twitch of Fun (the commission came through and I am dipping my toe back in the puppet-based fun on Thursday) and thinking about how to cover Ian Snell getting testicular cancer for the new series of Relativity (where do I get my crazy ideas?) I think there's room for a book and a one-pod podcast too. It turns out that losing a groin-walnut was just the creative kick in the nuts that I needed.
It was a real thrill to try this new stuff out in front of a virtual audience. Toby Hadoke was a charming, almost bumbling, host, but in fact he was just relaxed, riffing, eyeing his seven-eighths eaten sausage and having fun.
And the material went well - it's kind of nice to preview on zoom, not least because you can have a script in front of you, but also because you have the freedom to improvise and not have to worry too much about whether laugh are coming or not. But pretty much everything worked, or had the potential to do so and it felt like I had the makings of a show. Which is quite exciting. It's four years since I started working on my last stand up show and I think this subject, combining my personal journey to demi-eunuchhood with an exploration of why we see masculinity housed in our spunk sacks. I know they're a part of it, but testicles don't make us brave (the opposite if anything as they are so vulnerable) so why are we told to grow balls if we are cowardly?
I've neglected my balls, literally and figuratively. They hardly got a mention in Talking Cock. But you can be sure I will be making up for that in the coming months.
Even though I was sitting down, I felt like a stand up comedian again for the first time in ages. I enjoy these online gigs, but I am really looking forward to being back on a stage, on my own and doing a proper set. I haven't felt like this for a good long while, but I knew I was waiting for my next show to find me. It didn't have to be quite such a brutal meeting, but to be fair, for the amount of stuff I should get out of this, a bollock is a fair exchange.
