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Richard Herrings continue to flirt with death, but at last here's one that has survived attempts to take him out. Richard Herring of Kennett Square (no news on middle initial, but that usually only comes out on death) crashed his car in a one-car accident (seems unlikely- probably being chased by a Terminator from the future, trying to take down all the twenty-six Richard Herrings). He had minor injuries but refused to go to hospital (knowing full well that would give his potential assassins a clear shot at him).
And isn't it interesting that just like another Richard Herring he had had to cope with branches in the road?
If that's not proof of a Richard Herring murder conspiracy then I don't know what is. I thought it was strange how that branch got in the road at the exact moment that I was approaching.
Anyway, it probably makes sense to leave the Kennett Square
Richard Herring alone. He's 92. He can't have that much time left. Seems a waste of time travel and Terminator resources to me. Some might say the same about me though.
Today my manager suggested that it might be a good time to revisit my 1993 show, Ra-Ra-Rasputin. I sometimes think that my manager has taken me on as a bet or part of a prank TV show (and you have to admire that show for creating pranks that last at least 35 years before the reveal). It's probably a more time consuming job for him than managing his successful clients. He has to get me enough work and opportunities that I don't just give in and become a teacher or something, but also ensure that nothing I do manages to get over the hump and become a runaway success. There have been a couple of close calls where things have either been disastrous enough to make me consider quitting or being forced to due to Edinburgh losses or almost actually a success. But my manager has managed to ride those waves and ensure that somehow I enjoy a career of mediocrity. I don't know how he manages it.
Luckily it turns out to be the perfect career path. Successful enough to carry on, failure enough to be able to live a relatively normal life. Maybe he was being kind all along.
Anyway, Ra-Ra Rasputin is one of those shows that more people claim to have seen than actually bought tickets. It was the life of Rasputin told as if he was the world's first pop star, who had written all the songs that are now associated with Boney M. There were some clever undercurrents about celebrity and the royal family and the unreliability of the historical narrative (I would, of course revisit the ridiculous fictions of history associated with Rasputin in my 2014 play, which lost £45,000 in Edinburgh - one of my manager's more successful pranks), but really it was just a very silly show about putting on a singing and dancing musical on the tiniest stage and trying to squeeze all the Boney M songs into the narrative.
(Though amazingly the Tsar really did call his wife "Sunny" which no one believed, assuming I was just trying to crowbar in another hit like I had done with the Rivers of Babylon with Rasputin on a pilgrimage
Where are we now?
Babylon
I'm tired let's sit down by these rivers here.
Ok
I was just thinking about Zion, Zion Harris, our village idiot
etc
It was a jukebox musical years before Our House, Mama Mia and We Will Rock You (the mistake I made might have been choosing Boney M) and I don't think the Fringe quite knew what hit it. Ahead of its time? Your words, not mine.
Guardian critic William Cook was a big fan and also on the Perrier panel that year. Apparently he raved about it to an unconvinced panel, who he managed to persuade to see it. They all turned up on a Monday afternoon when they were basically the only people in the audience and none of them laughed at anything. It was the only performance not propelled along by a happy, giddy crowd. It was like they had a point to prove to Cook and there's nothing worse than an audience determined not to enjoy something (again, another fine prank).
The show was ramshackle (sometimes deliberately) and stupid (though hiding its cleverness) and not like anything that anyone else was doing. At the time nearly all comedians were doing stand up or sketch shows (though those were unfashionable at this point) and comedy was the new rock and roll. It wasn't the new 70s pop and I was not being edgy or cool.
Yet the more people than actually saw it, who claim to have seen it, remember it fondly. As do I.
And though the sub plot about Charles and Diana (As Nicholas and Alexandra) will no longer work, I think there's stuff to say about what happens when the obscenely rich people have no regard for the poverty all round them and the way that celebrity corrupts men and how religion can be used to charm people, control people and cover your tracks. I have a vague memory that at one point Russell Brand was mooted to play Rasputin in the TV version, which would have been a little bit on the nose.
So I am considering it. Not the Russell Brand bit, but the rest.
My memory of Ra-Ra Rasputin version one is that we had a lot of fun. We were young and working for no money (and there was a considerable amount of rehearsal as we had to learn songs and dance routines) and I was writing the show right up to the wire and two of us fell in love and we were doing something stupid and amazing (we also did the first incarnation of This Morning With Richard Not Judy that year -where we auctioned tickets in the Pleasance Courtyard and gave away prizes, including a car - we were really doing some innovative stuff). It didn't really matter that it bamboozled the Perrier committee. We conjured this hour of nonsense up out of nothing. It was exactly what the Fringe should be about.
It would be different to do it again and strange. But as I say, I am thinking about it. The prank show and my manager are rubbing their hands in glee.
