So it's begun. It was as nerve-wracking and unpredictable as I had expected, but I was really chuffed that 350 people turned up to watch this first foray into more adventurous territory.
It was always going to be a sharp learning curve with this new project and the thing that I suspected and fully realised today is that is expecting too much for me to both write and learn a brand new show every month (unless it starts to earn me money rather than cost me). We need to work out some kind of autocue system so that I can concentrate on performing the show rather than worrying about remembering it. We have some ideas on how we can do this, even if it is just that I read it from the script in my hands. I hope that we managed to get a reasonable take of everything without me being too distracted and all the stuff seemed to go pretty well. We have the option to shoot some of it again in the January record, but I'd like to see how it looks first.
I seem to remember that the first episode of AIOTM was an uptight and nervous affair and I am sure I will relax into it more once we're up and running. I was earing my wedding suit again which again reminded me of how much I've piled weight on when a button popped off just as I was about to leave the house. This felt apt after all the reading I'd done about the expansion of the Universe, but my clothes were going to cause me more problems. Even when I try to dress up smart my body and my innate inner tramp rebel against me. Just as we were about to start recording a kindly audience member told me that my trouser leg was tucked into my sock. A few jokes in my wife pointed out that the right hand sleeve of my shirt was sticking out much further than the left - but even though I tried to adjust it, it kept on peeking out, so I now have to make that my trademark, like Michael Jackson's one glove.
The show, like my suit, is a little more formal than my other internet work, but it's always going to be shabby like I am and I think the other main lesson is for me to mess around and enjoy myself as much as possible. The audience felt like they were holding their breath sometimes, as worried about me fucking up as I was, but there were plenty of good laughs, both intentional and accidental. I had bought a cheap smoke machine from home (we'd bought it for Halloween) to make a point about how little money we had to spend on special effects. Though it had worked perfectly in rehearsal once we tried to use it on stage it had shut itself down and nothing came out of it. Which was probably funnier than it working.
I stumbled and bumbled my way through and it's all a bit of a blur, but we recorded about two hours of stuff, including a long and informative interview with cosmologist Marcus Chown who was very good value. Again without a script to worry about I relaxed and ad-libbed and we got plenty of laughs along with the brain-aching facts about quantum physics. I had further mishaps with a tin of tomatoes as I tried to demonstrate the stupidity of everything having once fitted into a tiny space and my copy of Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time was soaked in tomato juice, which somehow seems apt.
It was a relief to get it over with, though I felt dazed rather than happy. This wasn't perfect by any means, but I think the project has an awful lot of potential and unlike most recorded pilot episodes that you'd do on TV I wasn't left worrying about whether I'd get to do any more. I can do as many as I want (or until my money runs out) and the comments I got in person and on Twitter afterwards were very positive. I think it will make a good edited down show. But what is more important in some ways is the fact that I've done it at all. It's as much about showing what is possible as it is about making a successful show. I hope we can do both.
And we've learned a lot already.
I am very lucky to have the support of Chris Evans and his team on this. It would be impossible to do it without his enthusiasm and the fact that he cares more about producing comedy than making money. It'd be great if it could do both, but I massively appreciate the time he is giving to my dumbass ideas. I am sure that if he became a billionaire he'd become as big a cunt as Rupert Murdoch, but luckily he will never be a billionaire. I will make damn sure of that.
And it's also a massive boost to have fantastic support from the staff at the Leicester Square Theatre.
So suit malfunctions and tomato covered physicists and broken smoke machines aisde I think we can call the first recording a qualified success. It's over ambitious, but I like that about it. I am throwing myself over a cliff to see if I can fly. And if the Universe is infinite then the experiment is going to work an infinite amount of times. It will fail an infinite amount of times too of course. But there's still hope. The first one won't be up until next year (and maybe not until February if we need to have another crack at any of it). And we're still thinking of different ways in which you can contribute if you wish.
The video of the RHLSTP with Simon Pegg is now up at gofasterstripe. Only £3.50. The free audio will be up soon.
