7611/20550
As I said yesterday, I slept for about 13 hours, but the lurgy did not leave me, though my nose was streaming. I was up early and tidying up the chaos in the living room from yesterday's present opening. I presume that while we slept a burglar came in and opened everything and threw it around the room.
I had a 9am zoom to do with Ed Gamble and Matt Crosby for their Radio X show, which is always a lot of fun. Ed is about to embark on his pretty much sold out tour of Off Menu, playing the Albert Hall for two nights and many more gigs, which puts my modest efforts and half full Leicester Square Theatre into some kind of perspective. Sometimes something like that can depress me, but it mainly just makes me wonder how much money those boys must be making (because I do OK with my modest numbers) and feel quite happy for them. There's room for us all. Just a lot more room in their gigs. Or in mine depending on which way you look at it.
At least we know how many (arse) holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall now. Just two.
We had a fun chat about aphantasia and getting caught short (not in the same sections) where I could reel off a surprising amount of times that I've come close to pissing myself and the time I had to shit up against a wall about 100 metres from my house because I couldn't hold it in any longer. Sadly (I think) that came in the days before Warming Up - though let me know if I am wrong - but I remember enough about it. I didn't even think of having to do a Paula Radcliffe on my run the other week. Maybe this should be an entire podcast. It should be presented by Gamble and Acaster though, partly to bring in the punters, but mainly because it's the perfect companion to a podcast about consuming food and drink.
Unnervingly my zoom image appeared on screen behind Ed at all times and so I wasn't sure if I could get away with blowing my nose while the records were playing (I did it anyway) and when the internet looked like it might go down I couldn't go and throw my cord out of the window to connect it to the router as I was just wearing my pants on my bottom half and I didn't want Matthew Crosby to see an outline of my genitals. Not after last time.
I don't know if any of this stuff works in terms of selling tickets. The Tunbridge Wells Theatre charged us either £75 or £150 last week to email their own mailing list (weird to have to pay given that ticket sales also benefit them- it's almost like they don't believe it will work) but as far as I can see we only sold 8 more tickets after the email and it's entirely possible that none of them were down to the email (we usually sell 20 or so in the last week at least). Similarly we spent about £500 a gig for the first few gigs on facebook etc and certainly didn't see anything like that return. I wish we'd just given away a few thousand pounds of tickets in retrospect. Back in the Fringe of 87 on the last day of our weekly run we came up with the clever idea of giving couples in the street one free tickets to our show. I think that had more success than any of the things we've done on this tour. But RHLSTP is a weird case. The people who know about it will find out about the tour from the podcast and no one else cares about it. Still, I am happy to give the PR people something to do and some pin money (again most of their tours will fill the Albert Hall and because the acts are famous it's a pretty easy job to sell all the tickets).
I thought I was rallying, but we went out for lunch at the in-laws and I crashed again. I tried another early night when I got home, but this time I slept in fits and starts. It was going to be bad enough doing a RHLSTP feeling unwell, but being tired as well. It's a recipe for an absolutely cracking and mental show. Do come along if you can. Oh, you can't. You're at the Albert Hall.
Little slice of deja vu - many of you will already be with Octopus as we were ejected there when Bulb went under, but it's a lucky move because they are an excellent company. And now they're doing the same referral scheme that Bulb did (which makes me think that it wasn't that that and specifically me that brought Bulb down). If you're looking to switch energy companies and want one with 100% renewable electricity
then use this code and we'll both get a £50 credit.
