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Happy International Non-Wassocks Day everyone. A day for all the non-wassocks who don’t ask when International Men’s Day is on International Women’s Day. They don’t want the day, but it’s just there to appease all the Wassocks who ask “When’s International Non-Wassocks’ Day?†on International Wassocks Day.†They think they’d never be one. But there is. And it’s the very next day.
I had a fun early afternoon chatting with Adam Buxton for his truly excellent podcast. Adam, you might remember once gave me flowers one Edinburgh Fringe and today he brought me another gift (I’ve never given him anything) of a dainty and fancy pack of Earl Grey tea, complete with its own little single cup strainer. I am bowled over by these romantic gifts and am pretty certain that I am going to leave my wife so I can marry the hairy little man Hobbit. I could do a lot worse. He is funny and kind and shorter than me. I am not sure about all the hair but I think I could grow to love that too.
I don’t know how much of it he will use, but it was a long old chat in my front room and it now means that he, I and Scroobius Pip have completed the podcast triangle and all interviewed each other. I felt that I wasn’t as funny as some of Adam’s other guests, but we got into some interesting read of chat and the questions were more serious than I had expected (on the whole). I don’t know when he will put it out or how many parts this two hour discussion will be in. And I didn’t think I really liked Earl Grey tea, but I enjoyed the cup I had as we talked.
Then I was off to Croydon for a little bit of a bump down to earth on my so far rather satisfying tour. I knew sales had been low and there were only 85 tickets sold when I got to the venue. Up to now (aside from the first two run up gigs where the capacities were 100 or less) I have been selling three or four hundred tickets at pretty much every gig, so I don’t know why Croydon was showing such a lack of interest. It wasn’t like the theatre had made no effort. My name was up in lights outside, which is a rare thing to see. Well not exactly lights, more like on a big bit of paper on the canopy, above an old car and below a 1970s office building, but… yeah, about right. When I got in I was informed that the show had been moved to the 100 seat theatre, which was mildly humiliating, but as I say, good to be brought down to earth and this sort of thing used to happen a lot more on the tours in the old days. It would have been nice to have been asked though, as I would actually have preferred to play a third full theatre rather than this small room which wasn’t really conducive to comedy. Also I had been confidently telling people that they’d be able to buy tickets on the door tonight, but suddenly there were just 15 tickets left for the show and these sold out pretty quickly and at least a couple of people were turned away. So technically the show was a sell out. But again, seemed a weird decision to put a lid on numbers when we were so close to having sold that many tickets.
I think this all put me in a bit of a bad mood and I had too much time to kill before the gig and consequently I am not sure I did the best of performances. Certainly the small crowd were much quieter than I’d been used to. I dug in and tried to give it all some fizz, but it felt a little flat. I tried to inject some jeopardy by adding new bits, when I talked about the awful things I imagined happening to my baby I referenced the fact I was in Croydon where they are suffering from a wave of mysterious cat killings. The audience seemed more upset by the idea of bad things happening to cats then they were to the baby. I also had a go at slagging off Croydon which I’d briefly walked around before the show and which seemed more jaded and sad than Shepherd’s Bush on one of its madder days. So maybe I alienated them a bit at the start. I think I did a little better at bringing them out of their shell in the second half and they seemed happy enough when I was doing my signings afterwards. But maybe I was smarting from the minor humiliation and reality check. When they’d all gone I hopped up on to the low stage to get my stuff, but misjudged the leap and tripped. Once I was going down I decided I might as well make the most of it and rolled across the stage, which might actually have helped me avoid a heavier fall. It was symbolic of the evening.
The toilet in my dressing room had a sign hanging up on the inside of the door saying “Out of Order†which made it appear that the toilet was working fine, but everything outside the door was broken. I don’t know if it meant the rest of the Fairfield Halls, or the whole of Croydon or maybe the whole world. But it seemed about right. Stay in the toilet, because the rest of the planet is fucked mate. You’re safe in here. It could be the start of a film. Sit down on the loo, see the sign, open the door and the world is in chaos.
But like I say tough gigs like this used to be the norm rather than the exception and it was still far from disaster. And I managed to write my Metro article in the car on the way there. Finally you’ll get to read the story of how I got from Miami to Cheddar with just $100 and ten days of food and lodging to buy (on top of travel to New York).
