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It might have been a good idea to take a day off today, but RHLSTP has been in the diary since long before I took on Educating Rita and so it was an intense day of prep and then recording two interviews and fighting through my tiredness.
Luckily my prep involved watching and listening to the work of two actual comedy geniuses, Natasha Hodgson and Michelle Wolf. Even more than usual I was in awe at the skill of these two writer/performers.
I listened to Operation Mincemeat (which you should really go and see if you haven't already)
and also Natasha's
weird and dreamy and surreal The Sink. I had not heard this before but was impressed that the BBC had commissioned something so left field (admittedly only on BBC Sounds), but as usual realised how much extraordinary stuff is out there in the world. When you're creating your own stuff and getting frustrated about it not being made, or being made and not becoming a hit (and when I say you, I do mean me) it's easy to forget how many brilliant people there are out there trying to do the same. I have reached a point in my life where I am just delighted that the occasional wonderful thing blossoms and succeeds, even if I am nothing to do with it. Creative people are a hive and any individual success is a success for us all. And that’s why the money should all get shared out.
I watched both of Michelle Wolf's specials on Netflix (
and you should too) and again what a fantastic stand up she is. I just spent the morning laughing at the kitchen table, with Catie (HUGE Michelle Wolf fan) asking me which bit I was laughing at. It was sort of all of it.
You can also watch her extraordinary Correspondents' Dinner stand up set, which is very interesting to watch as it's one of those rare occasions when a comedian is performing for people who aren't in the room.
As expected when I got to meet these people for the first time, they proved themselves to be as excellent off stage as on. Natasha very kindly treated me as if I was an actor on the same footing as she is and asked about my play. I jokily complained about how tired I was after doing two performances where I mainly sit at a desk. She, of course, has done over 1000 performances of Mincemeat which is an incredibly physical show. But we are the same. That's the important take home here.
Maybe I was tired or maybe she just had an aura of trustfulness, but I found myself quite early on (backstage) telling her a mildly shameful story about myself that I have hardly ever told anyone. She promised not to spill the beans but I would have respected her if she'd brought it up in the podcast. We did have a very open and fun chat and somehow I ended up doing quite a lot of singing and she did hardly any. which is not what people had bought a ticket for.
Michelle was waiting in the dressing room when we came off from our chat and she seemed a little edgy. She revealed that she'd just been in a park with her baby and her nanny when a crow, carrying a dead bird, had flown into her head. And dead bird bits, she later discovered, had fallen into her bag. We tried to work out if this was lucky or a portent of doom, but it did at least give us something to talk about that Michelle had never talked about before.
I was starting to lose my voice and getting weary and she has two kids under four, so it was quite a relaxed and chilled and sleepy vibe. But two more excellent podcasts (though of course we only record one a week).
Mad to be doing something that required so much focus and energy on my day off and I just have to hope my voice recovers for tomorrow. But such a thrill and an honour to talk to these two that I am glad I did it. Might not be so glad tomorrow night though!
