Warming Up

The boy had a bad night's sleep again, and like a sort of evil Bagpuss, when he wakes up, all his friends (me and his mum) wake up too. So I don't know if lack of sleep or kick back from all the ten pin bowling caused it, but I took a big step backwards in getting well today and needed to go back to bed in the afternoon. 

I watched Johnny Vegas' Carry on Glamping to prepare me for chatting with the great man on Monday (tickets here) and it was an enjoyable show, though I was distracted (as I am in a lot of shows like this) by wondering how much the stars are being paid for being on the show and does it offset the cost of all the drunken eBay purchases etc. It's the same on Dragons' Den and the Apprentice which is all about the businesspeople using their own money. But they are presumably getting paid for the show. So is it their own money? And are they able to say that they should really be getting paid on top of the costs of all the stuff because otherwise they are sort of working for nothing.

I guess I can ask Johnny on Monday, though a question like that does take one away from the story of the show. But if all the expenses are covered, then that changes the story…. 

Anyway if you don't have a brain like mine then this is a fun tale of a manboy who is not a businessman in any sense, who seems enthused and delighted by everything he sees, attempting to start up a business and being confounded by events, but (spoiler alert) making it all work out in the end. Johnny is a lovely, lovely man with a pure and trusting heart and so it's fun to watch him fail and succeed and to have his vaunting ambitions sometimes crushed by reality, but often managing to subvert reality to his own will. I am not as excited by old buses as he is, but his enthusiasm made me care more about old buses than I thought I might. And in spite of him apparently not being Richard Branson or Clive Sinclair, he seems to be making a success of the business. I went online to see how bookings were going and there's nothing left for 2021. And it's not cheap to stay there. Plus he might have got Channel 4 to pay for the whole thing, who knows? And the bewildered, big-hearted lunk that he portrays is actually very saleable as well. This guy is a fucking business genius. 

He isn't. But it's great that it works out that way anyway. He deserves it.

There's a bit where his mum, now sadly departed, says she doesn't like him doing stand up, despite never having seen it and wants him to be an actor. It's sort of funny and sort of heart-breaking at the same time. But her disappointment at what she imagines his act to be, and how she thinks her friends will react to it, reminds me a little bit of the sadness my grandad felt when listening to one of my early radio shows and his friend said, “What a waste of a good education.”

Johnny's acting is great, but his stand up, like his life, is a work of art, so I hope he feels no compunction to listen to his mother or to allow her condemnation to echo from beyond the grave. 

This show is also a great document of the friendship and symbiosis between Johnny and Bev, his assistant, who nearly has to do everything for him, but who he clearly loves and who loves him back. She is the guiding hand that keeps this free spirit within the bounds of reality, whilst letting him exceed them when he needs to. 

Anyway, I was glad I managed to get something achieved on this sick day - even it if was mainly just to watch a TV show (I did some prep from the interview with Jessie Cave too and she's another person who has achieved a huge amount of varied stuff, much of it off her own bat). It's going to be a fun show on Bank Holiday Monday. Come and see it live if you can.