5602/18622
One year til we're out. How many til we're back in again?
Closest guess wins a baguette and free roaming.
Can anyone save us from ourselves? Nope, we're British. We'll only be happy when everyone loses.
I awoke from a dream, full of anger. I had been on Just A Minute and was steaming through- I had been speaking for almost the full minute and surely nothing could stop me now. I was concerned I was repeating myself, but the other panellists didn't seem to notice. I have never spoken for more than 30 seconds on this show and getting through a full minute is a rite of passage. Was I finally going to do it?
As the seconds ticked away I saw fellow panellist Tom Baker theatrically lift his finger, timing his buzzer at the exact time that the whistle went. He'd deliberately scuppered me. His challenge was for hesitation, which Parsons upheld even though I had clearly not paused. I was also pretty sure the buzzer had come in after the whistle.
I was furious with the former Time Lord for this unsportsman like interruption. Received etiquette on the show is to allow people the glory of the full minute and not buzz in at the last second, even if there is a valid complaint which there wasn't on this occasion. I went up to Baker and pushed him around a bit, but he pushed me back harder. No one was listening to me.
So I went to the producer's booth and made them replay the tape, whilst the show carried on without me.
And then I woke up. Genuinely pissed off with Tom Baker and to a lesser extent Nicholas Parsons. It was good to see that even in my dreams I am unable to win at a quiz show. And that even in a dream I am petty enough not to let something like this go. Taking my complaint much further than would be deemed necessary and taking something that is by its very nature ultra-trivial, much too seriously.
This is why I am a good person to have on a panel show and why my continued failure to win anything is all the funnier. But come on dreamscape. Let me at least have a pretend triumph.
More touring. But the last day of this punishing fortnight and weirdly I end it all feeling less tired and more healthy than I started it. Can't believe I got through it all still standing. But fuck it, my job is pimpsy, what was I moaning about?
A surprisingly big crowd of about 300 in for a place I've never played, Eastleigh (though the locals told me I was actually in Chandler's Ford). The theatre was in the school and run by an enthusiastic staff who were delighted to find my show not only had an audience, but my audience drank so much they actually had to send out for more beer. Hooray for my affable drunks. Other theatres take note. Most of you take a percentage of my merch, but I never take a percentage of your bar.
You don't have to be pissed to enjoy my show, but everyone who has done so far has been.
