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The tour went live! At least for Badgers and Plussers and as suspected that led to a lot of admin as some links worked and some didn’t. I also had to rejig the newsletter with the non-secret links and update the gig guide. And I hadn’t even really thought about the organisational nightmare of booking around 80 guests for a variety of locations. How could I have forgotten how difficult that was last time? Not only do you have to find out who might live near a certain location, but also find a way to contact them and then hope and pray that they are interested AND free on a specific night. I got one lead for a favourite guest for one of the venues where I think we might struggle to sell tickets and he got back to me very quickly, to say he’d have loved to do it but is filming in Scotland that day. I think this is going to be typical. But I will get there. And am aiming high for these gigs.
You can see all the dates here.
Some venues appeared to be shifting tickets, which is a relief, but I really have no idea how this is going to go. The London gigs feel like demand is diminishing, but the other ones I’ve done round the country have sold quickly without any guest announcements. Downloads and ads are a bit down this month, but we had a record month (at least in terms of revenue) last month.
Is the bottom falling out or is the bottom being hammered hard and fast (preferably by a robot) firmly into place.
I have no idea. I don’t know what’s going on. I am still enjoying doing it (that may change after the rigours of touring), but I have been doing it a very long time. Even if I wanted to stop it would be tricky to do so. For the first time in my life I have a job that gives me reliable income and also provides a regular income for others. But it does make it more difficult to get going with other projects.
Either way this podcast lark has been quite the journey and whilst I swam in this ocean almost alone for a long time, I have more than kept my head above water as the place has filled up with podcasting buffoons.
So I hope the tour is the moderate success that I hope it will be. I hope to sell out some of the smaller venues and the ones in the places that I always do OK and that the bigger venues don’t have too many hundred empty seats (though I’ve been paying thousand seater venues with tens of people in them for almost 30 years now. What a strange and unique career I have enjoyed (and not enjoyed sometimes to be fair). I am in a strange hinterland where my audience will be somewhere between 100 and 500 people (with the occasional 1000 to make me think I’m on the cusp of something), whereas most comedians will either not be able to do solo tours or be selling 1000s of tickets a night. They might have a few years of being at my level, but will then either explode or implode. I’ve been on this track for 20 years. I’ve moved up from average (half full) 200 seater venues to (three quarters full) 500 seater venues in that time. I am not complaining - this might be the best possible path- but it’s confusing. I can’t work out why anyone wants to pay to see me as well as not being able to work out why more people don’t want to pay to see me!
I am hoping this tour will smooth out the slight wobbles I am having about RHLSTP. But whatever it will ensure you keep getting podcasts well into 2025 (so the podcast can continue after my inevitable death - provided I survive the whole tour, which is not a given). And the plan is to do a tour of Can I Have My Ball Back? straight after the RHLSTP one. I think it’s fair to say that I am back on the road.
Come and see my funny shows.
