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Back to Harpenden, where we lived for six months back in 2012 - in fact that's where we were living when we got married (nearly made it to 10 years - let's not jinx it). This time I was appearing at the Eric Morecambe Centre in an afternoon of chats in celebration of Morecambe and Wise. I was chatting with Robin Ince and Tommy Pearson about what made the double act work - though there is some sprinkling of magic that makes it hard to define. It was interesting to try to get to the bottom of it. I love Morecambe and Wise and most of their stuff still stands up, because it's the comedy of relationships and sort of love and they got such amazing guests that most of them are still famous 50 years on.
Excitingly Angela Rippon and Michael Parkinson were doing the talk after ours, so we got to share a few words with them. Angela does not seem to have aged at all and it's very hard to believe that she's 77 years old. Although she is very much associated with the news and her spectacular turn on M and W, for me she is forever the host of Masterteam, which I watched with my mum and dad at tea time, eating homemade soups and stews (at least that is my memory of it). Very exciting to meet her in the flesh.
Parky is nearly 87, but still going strong, though not surprisingly not quite the strong ox of a Yorkshireman that he was back in the day. I have been on Loose Ends with him, back in the distant past, but I didn't expect him to remember.
Robin and my's session was notable, not for our scything analysis of comedy (though there was some good stuff in there) but because about 50 minutes in a lady in the front row stopped proceedings to say that she was worried about the lady next to her. An elderly woman did seem to be having a medical emergency - her head had gone back and she wasn't responding to anything and the other lady thought she'd stopped breathing (she hadn't as it happened). We had to bring the chat to a close as we cleared the room so the woman could be checked over (though she was recovering and talking by the time we did that). Some comedians have killed audience members through being funny - I think we'd almost managed to bore someone to death.
Luckily she turned out to be fine.
I'd noticed a man in the third row had been asleep from about five minutes in. It's good to have a nice warm room for the elderly inhabitants of Harpenden to nap in.
We'd been doing our chat in a function room due to limited interest (this must be the curse of Eric Morecambe for me - when I played the theatre he died in, there as so little interest I had to play the bar), but we had the bizarre experience of being moved to a much bigger venue mid-gig as the decision was made to get everything set up in the theatre and for us to then do our remaining ten minutes before cracking on with the main event. Sometimes things go so well that you get moved to the big room the next time you come to a theatre - it hardly ever happens whilst you're still doing the show. The new audience was much bigger and much better than last week's crowd.
I am pretty sure the woman who went into a coma of boredom (or as it might otherwise be known, falling asleep) was back in the front row for this, so all was well.
The event was recorded, so we will probably release our bit as a podcast in the next couple of weeks, (though it wouldn't be appropriate to include the only truly exciting bit of it). Robin and me are going to record a bit more chat to give the podcast some value. He said ten minutes, but knowing him I think it will be another three hours. Let's try and kill someone at home if we can't do it in the theatre.
Photo credit Steve Collins
