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Everyone is ill now. I am the least ill (hardly at all - even managed a personal training session today but it was hard going) which puts me in the position of having to nurse everyone if they get any worse. I wish I had testicular cancer again - that was a golden time of being the most ill.
Luckily it’s not too bad for anyone yet, though Phoebe had the stuffing knocked out of her at the end of the day. I thought it might mean another trip to A and E, which I was not relishing on a Friday night in December when I was very much ready for bed, but her temperature came down and she sat in bed with me watching the football and then fell asleep (take that review Argentina and the Netherlands - you are officially boring).
My own sleep has been disturbed of late, by ill kids and worry about ill kids and also just intrusive thoughts. Is old age going to be full of looking back at life, filled with regret and shame or anger about the things that happened to you and the bad things that people did to you and you did to them? I only get it occasionally at the moment, but it feels like it’s ramping up. I am basically pretty happy about the way my life has turned out and don’t have too many skellingtons in my cupboard, but my brain manages to dredge stuff up.
Last night it was I who was the slighted one, as I suddenly brought to mind a 35 year old grudge towards the Universe, which has had no real bearing on my life and which had lain mostly forgotten about, but suddenly seemed urgently important as I tried to sleep.
Back in 1988 I had just experienced a disastrous run at the Edinburgh Fringe with the Oxford Revue. It should have been a great year for me - I was the toast of the Oxford comedy scene and had co-written this show and had got into the cast, which was at just about the point of my wildest dreams (though my wildest dreams would have had me discovered and put on TV immediately). Instead our perfectly adequate and occasionally excellent show was arriving at the Fringe at a time when Alternative Comedy was in the ascendant and we accidentally represented the awful privileged past. So we were sabotaged by Keith Allen, I then went on TV to defend ourselves and point out that Allen had only stayed for one sketch that he had disrupted and then left and punched the theatre manager. But this just led to me being bullied and looking like I might cry on national TV. We performed at Late and Live and were heckled by seemingly every stand up comedian in the country. Most of the rest of the cast ran away and hid, but I stuck it out and even returned to fulfil our second booking (if with a somewhat regrettable act).
It had gone badly, as had most of the tour and maybe as the co-writer and performer I had to take the brunt of the blame. Stew (who co-wrote but didn’t appear in it) saw a later show and couldn’t understand why my performance wasn’t as subtle as it had been at the start, but he hadn’t been there and experienced the audiences. It wasn’t all terrible, but I had been battered by the experience, been unable to network at parties and hid in the toilet and had to endure stuff that I am still (clearly) working through now. I still performed, but lost my confidence and swagger and never really got it back. Looking back I know none of it is my fault and that most of it was unwarranted abuse of (basically) children because of what we represented. It put me off going to the Fringe for a good while and put me off the stand up circuit and certainly changed the trajectory of my career. Whether for the best of the worst is impossible to say.
Anyway we came back to Oxford, licking our wounds. I was now in the third year and I guess I thought there was a good chance I’d be President of the Oxford Revue. I certainly would have liked to be, assuming, ridiculously that that would be good for my CV.
Nothing was said about it, but at the next board meeting - which makes it sound grand, but it was a meeting a few of the children who did comedy - outgoing President Dave Schneider announced that they were going to decide the President at the meeting and that he was proposing my fellow Revue cast member Emma Williams and asked if anyone else wanted to do it.
I was a bit blind-sided by this coming out of nowhere and could already sense that something was up. From Emma’s reaction it was clear she knew this was coming, but no one had even discussed it with me. I put myself forward, but with a lack of confidence that came from the surprise and suspicion about all this. We were sent out of the room whilst the others discussed who should be the President. It was a little reminiscent of the time that Steve Cheeke and I were sent out of the hall as our house at school voted for the non-sporting House Captain (and I lost the vote by about 200 to 4).
Whilst it was true that the Revue had been a nightmare, both Emma and I had been in it and I had been the one who had stepped up to do the TV show and the one who had not run away when the going got tough at Late and Live.
I suspected, even at the time, that the fear was that if I was President I would insist on doing the next year’s show and would mess that up too. But there was absolutely no way I was going to put myself through that. I remember the surprise in Schneider’s voice when I told him as much. But the machinations were in process and there was no going back and as usual I lost the vote and Emma was President.
This was good for many reasons - comedy was male dominated then and this was a great blow for feminism - and also as it turns out being President of the Oxford Revue was not a fantastic calling call for making it professionally. Had I got the post I am pretty sure I would never have mentioned it again - I don’t think Emma has. It was of absolutely no importance and I don’t think Emma took it very seriously (which I knew she wouldn’t, so I was a bit annoyed when I turned up at all the comedy workshop shows and she came to none of them). It was just a bit of an extra slap in the face after all the many kicks in the bollocks I’d had that summer.
But for some reason as I lay in bed I felt aggrieved that those children had made this unimportant decision three and a half decades ago. How could they do that to me after all I’d been through?
I knew the answer, because we were all idiots, taking something irrelevant much too seriously and I’d probably had a bit of breakdown and so they were concerned about me being at the helm. The idea that any of these people would emotionally support me through this was as ridiculous as the idea that I would do the same for them. But after all I’d done for them…
It's difficult to make a judgement about yourself though, isn't it? You don't know hoe others see you or any real idea of how you're behaving, especially in difficult times. So maybe I'm just a dick. The Non-Sporting House Captain vote would seem to suggest it. I am just one of life's second-placers (something went wrong with Taskmaster).
This is, of course, life and I find it hard to blame anyone for this actions - even the stand up scene had a point, even if their ire was directed at the wrong people. I do blame Keith Allen though.
I think that in those moments between wakefulness and sleep I wondered how my life might have turned out had I not had my confidence shot by this experience. I clearly still had some confidence left as I still attempted to become a professional comedian, but would I have put myself forwards more as a performer if I’d not gone through this? I know being a big shot in college doesn’t mean much, but I was seen as a strong actor, which wasn’t the case in the outside world. And I think a lot of that is due to my belief in myself being undermined.
Mainly though, how weird to have that old grudge bubble to the surface and seem momentarily burningly important. Now I am awake I think it’s interesting, but ridiculous.
The 1988 Fringe is probably responsible for me changing from being the high status one in the Lee and Herring partnership to the low status one. Again, this might be a positive thing, both for our limited success and for the direction Stew’s stand up took. It’s impossible to know isn’t it? I still became a comedian and still had success below my wildest dreams, but above my realistic expectations.
And you may think, well whatever happened to Emma Williams? History has shown they made the wrong choice. Well she went on to become the actor and author Emma Kennedy. So yes, history has shown they made the wrong choice.
I am funny.
But the contest didn’t affect our future relationship and only bruised my ego slightly. Though those feelings got pushed down and mainly forgotten until now. What other shit is my brain going to revisit as I plunge downwards towards the grave?
