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The ever reliable Bec drove me home and I think that counts as the end of the tour. She is off to tour with Julian Clary - I get two weeks off before I go off on tour again.
I got a hug from my little boy and a sarcastic comment from my girl and a kiss from my wife. It's good to be back. It felt like a long time - I haven't seen these idiots since Tuesday morning - and there will be longer chunks of time away with the stand up tour, but I get the next two weeks with them and no one else (so will be ready to be away again by mid-April).
It feels like I should have podcasts to last me into 2025 and if we'd only put out one a week then that would have been the case, but because we've done some live book clubs and because we're going to put out three a week during Edinburgh (though need to record four more for that), what we have should last us til October. So the good news for RHLSTP live fans is that we'll be back recording at the Leicester Square Theatre in September (and I am going to try and put in the occasional non-London gig) and the good news for me is that I don't have to record any live podcasts til September (except maybe those four for Edinburgh, but might do remote ones). I am not as sick of doing RHLSTP as I assumed I would be by this point. How long will this thing continue? Who knows what adventures we'll have between now and when the podcast becomes unprofitable.
I'm joking about that. I did podcasts for a good decade before they started making any real profit and money was never the motivator. And though making money from it doesn't hurt, I will stop when I am no longer enjoying it. So I think there's life in this old dog yet.
What I realised when away this time was how precious my time with my family is. Whilst my job will mean that I can't always be at home, this tour made me appreciate the cost of missing time with my wife and kids and how it's not worth giving too much of that up. Or at least that if I'm giving it up then it has to be for a good reason.
It's still rewarding taking the podcast out on the road and to see how much it means to the people who listen to it. It's still very small sky potatoes compared to the big hitting podcasts out there, but it's quality, not quantity and given that I am the host of this thing, my audience is remarkably free of arseholes. They're an incredibly good crowd who aren't pushovers, but will laugh when something genuinely funny happens, listen when something interesting is happening, show empathy when hearts are open and fidget in the right places to let me know when it's time to move on. One young man last night told me that he believed that an online interview I'd done with him about podcasting had got him into University. Whilst I am sure that's not true, it does help make the whole thing feel like the family affair that it is. I mean I which there was enough of you to fill the Albert Hall and that I got a million downloads a month, but I get a million in a month (or a month and a bit at the moment) and the tour will have made enough money to justify the schlep and the missing night time hugs from my son (and night time sarcasm from my daughter).
