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I am on the mend today, which was a relief as I was up early to head over to the studios of the Wright Stuff. I have been doing this show on and (more often) off for maybe 15 years - it used to be filmed in Camden back in the day, but is now in a shopping centre in Queensway. Not many TV shows last that long with the same host, but Matthew Wright is still there. I guess his genius was to get his name in the title of the show and being better than Ian Wright. I like Matthew a lot. He's a smart man with a mainly liberal outlook and he remains professional, engaged and friendly after all these years. That is a rare thing too.
It feels like a long show to do once every couple of years, never mind five times a week.
I quite enjoyed it today. They kept giving me coffee and I kept drinking it and by the end I was on the ceiling, but there were some fun bits early on as we talking about Brexit and Trump's Muslim Ban where I got to vent a bit and got a round of applause from the crazy people (and that's not an insult, because I love them and their craziness) who come to see the Wright Stuff recorded. I got a free positive and a few negative comments on social media for my outspokenness, but not very many. I mainly dealt in logic and maths rather than opinion anyway. I love living in London and hate the way our multi-culturism is being challenged by ignorance and prejudice and it felt good to put a voice to this. Even if it makes no odds.
Phoebe watched a bit of me on TV and was excited apparently and then upset when the adverts came on and I went away. If only she felt this enthusiasm when I was with her! But nice to know I can parent from afar, but only if I get back on the telly.
Dominic Holland mistakenly asked me a question meant for the other guest, Jo Wood, expecting me to be able to wolf whistle any song. I can barely whistle, though I wish I had strung him along and pretended that I could. It made for a funny running joke, anyway.
I am hoping that tomorrow I will have the energy and inspiration to finish off the video script for AIOTM and to write an audio one too. I will be celebrating my daughter's birthday on Friday and Saturday and am very much looking forward to being more than a televisual and FaceTime presence in her life. So she can start to appreciate the corporeal version of myself (very corporeal according to some of my critics today - the diet doesn't seem to be working yet).
I wasn't home for long before we left to go to Leicester for my Comedy Festival gig. We sold a few tickets on the day which bumped numbers up to an only mildly disappointing 150 and I was in a big echoey room set up and more suited for music gigs. Plus the seating had been sold in a weird way where there were big gaps in the middle, so there were people at the front and people at the back, but not many in between. It was hard to tell if the crowd was enjoying it. The laughs (if there were any) did not always seem to reach the stage. But if Matthew Wright has taught us anything it is to keep up the effort day after day and I kept banging out the show and luckily realised I had the energy to do so without feeling sapped and poorly. I think they liked it. These 150 had chosen me over my erstwhile comedy partner, the elephant in another room, and I wanted to make sure they didn't regret their charitable decision.
I laid into them a bit for stealing York's rightful king bones, but apart from that I think it went well. They have been cursed for their thievery by not doing very well at football this year (admittedly after being rewarded initially by suddenly doing very well at football), whereas York have been cursed both years at football. Maybe there's no connection between a dead king in a car park and the fortunes of two football teams who were not established when he was alive.
