Last time I was in Colchester I spent the day cleaning up elephant shit. I was hoping my gig here tonight wouldn't be a similar experience. You know, metaphorically. If it was literally the same then I would have some words to say about the cleaning staff of the theatre.
We were a bit late as Simon Streeting had suggested we leave at 5pm, presumably arrogantly expecting the rush hour traffic of London to move aside for him as if he was some tour manager version of Moses. As it was he was more like a kind of Cnut in reverse, expecting the cars to move at his command, but they stayed where they were.
So we only had about 40 minutes to set up and eat our sandwiches (quite poor homemade sarnies this time, not as bad as the nadir of the Swindon sandwiches, but still only worthy of a sandwich rating of 1.5).
Slightly spookily the gig was once again partially interrupted by a violent thunderstorm. Booming thunder could be heard overhead and then I thought someone had turned on a loud air conditioning unit, but it turned out to be rain crashing against the theatre roof. If this happens at every gig I am going to have to assume I have indeed angered gods of some kind. Either the CNPS gods feel I am misrepresenting them, or some other god is angry that I am promoting false deities. It would be much easier if whichever god is real would come down and tell me, then I could do something about it. But I am supposed to second guess the gods as if they were some girl I was going out with when I was 19. Aren't the gods secure enough to just let us be, without having to have their existence constantly vindicated. I hate gods. They are idiots.
The gig went fine. There was about 150 people in, which is enough to have fun. I decided to try a gig where I didn't wear a suit and see how that went. It made the performance seem a lot freer and relaxed and I wondered whether it had been a mistake to have worn one for every other gig of this show. It's hard to know if it changes people's perceptions of you. I think it probably doesn't. But maybe makes me feel more restricted and formal. So either way I think it's probably better to ditch the suit. As long as I've still got my comedy shoes, nothing can possibly go wrong.
In a week of walk-outs (we lost a section of the TWTTIN audience on Tuesday who were drunk and who had been wanting tickets to the Paul O'Grady TV show, but had been given some to ours as recompense - how they loved our crazy take on the Crimean War!) I had probably the nicest occasion of audience members leaving ever. As I was about to tell the story of my parachute jump two old ladies who had been sitting right at the front centre got up and made for the door. I had recently made some very unfair and unpleasant comments about legendary statistician and racist Norris McWhirter and wondered if I'd offended them (what I say is really beyond the pale and indefensible, but it's funny and I kind of mean it). But as I suggested maybe they were part of the McWhirter family one of the women simply commented, "Life's too short. You're a very funny man."
Isn't that a confusing and yet ultimately sweet thing to say. They didn't want to waste another forty minutes of their life watching this show (which in a sense is part of the message of the show - make the most of your life) and yet they still thought I was funny. I guess when you are old time is even more precious. OK, I was funny, but then there was only a limited time left for these ladies to achieve all that they wanted to achieve in what time remained and I am man enough to accept that I wasn't in their top ten things. They had sampled a good hour of the show and now it was time for them to move on and experience a taste of something else before the ice cream store that is life closed its doors for good. If you spend too much time gorging on the Phish Food you might never get to even sample the Karamel Sutra. Better to have a small taste of everything than become fat and bloated on one thing alone.
For the rest of the show I was left wondering what exactly they had headed off to do at 9.30pm in Colchester to make sure that they weren't wasting their precious last minutes. Life's too short to sit there watching me, so I hope they were out go-karting or making love to 18 year olds. I suspect they just went home and had a cup of tea. But then I have no problem with that. Life is too short to waste doing things you don't really like and doing stuff you do like is a good enough substitute.
But if I lived my life by this philosophy then I'd possibly try and choose an aisle seat near the exit, rather than the front row centre. I think they were just trying to show off about how exciting their lives were. They'd always intended to leave.
