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Back into London Town once again, this time for the first in a new series of Leicester Square Theatre dates. It was a great bill tonight, maybe one of the best we've had in RHLSTP history, certainly in terms of range: Paul Chuckle and Dr Janina Ramirez. This is a show where you can find out about the genesis of To Me To You and the genesis of world religion (and never be quite sure which guest is responsible for with answer).
It was a great night - the only slight downside being rather disappointing sales. I thought this combo would have the RHLSTP faithful out in force, but generally speaking the sales for this series are currently the worst we've had in the ten years of doing the show. I don't think that people are losing interest and maybe it's more to do with people still feeling uncomfortable about nights out in the theatre (the irony being that you could easily socially distance tonight) - though it didn't seem to bother the audience at Frozen.
Obviously we're live streaming too - so maybe that's encouraging some of the stalwart fans to watch from home, but it still seems an extreme shift.
Next week's show with Charley Boorman and Terry Christian (another combo that I assumed would be tempting to the RHLSTP fan, but sales are really low. Hopefully things will pick up (the Armando show is basically sold out) - one of the things that makes this podcast a bit different is the inclusion of an excellent audience.
The 100 or so that were in tonight were very good though and there are two good interviews in the bag. Paul was very open and had some great stories from his almost 60 year career, revealed the truth about his moped accident and spoke movingly and lovingly about Barry. Janina is an excellent and enthusiastic communicator and talked brilliantly both about the history we're (hopefully) living through and of the past. She was certainly up for a laugh with some good stuff about how to escape a crocodile and the effect that diarrhoea has had on history. She's also an excellent exponent of women in history, as well as all every day folk that don't make it into most history books but whom science is still helping us learn about.
Thoroughly enjoyable and good to be back in the chair. Before the show my daughter was texting me (from her mum's iPad) and it felt rather cool to be at the stage where we can now converse this way. Suddenly she can read and write well enough for this to be no problem. We had a silly conversation and sent some photos and I just thought that being a parent is (for me) the best thing.
Janina texted me to say she'd enjoyed the show and I got the text just after midnight and said I was home just in time to Wordle. So we had a race to see who could do it first. We both succeeded but I got it in 4 and she got it in 6 and took pretty much exactly the same length of time. So I won. It struck me how post gig fun is not what it used to be. What have we become? I have never felt more alive.
I didn't have Paul's number or I'd have taken him on too.
