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Into London Town today to record the audiobook for “Would You Rather?†and because me just reading out hundreds of questions and leaving a gap for you to answer, we decided that I would ask my questions to a guest, making a super long podcast for you to listen to. As we seem to have a nice comedic empathy and she’s an excellent improviser, I thought female Stevie, Stevie Martin would be a good person to do this with. And it turned out to be a great call.
There was some debate about whether we’d get through the whole book or just a few questions. I thought that we might be able to cover everything in three or four hours of recording time, but I was wrong. We were having such fun that we maybe did about half the questions in four hours (an hour longer than we’d initially thought the audio book would be) and it was a very good demonstration of how the book can spark conversation and revelation as sometimes we’d fly off at a tangent or blurt out a personal secret.
I think it’s going to be a great accompaniment to the physical book - it’s pretty much a totally different thing and I am hopeful that people will want to buy both - the book so they can play the game and the audiobook to listen to someone else playing it.
One of the positives of lockdown was getting to discover new comedians on line and work with them virtually (in some cases without ever having met them). Stevie and I have a very good understanding of each other and the conversation and the comedy flowed effortlessly. It’s always cool when you properly click with someone comedically - John Kearns is someone else that it seemed immediately apparent that we could work together on something. Bob Mortimer is someone who might have that ability with almost anyone and Greg Davies and I have a very similar childish naughtiness.
I don’t think I want to get into another double act, but the beauty of the podcast is that I get to have temporary partnerships with hundreds of other people without getting to the point where you have nothing but disdain for each other. Thank goodness it worked out today. Four hours with someone with you constantly missing each other would have been a disaster. But all four hours were fun and some jokey tetchiness crept in in the last hour, which is also accurate for Emergency Questions. They are not something that should be done for more than 60 minutes straight in most circumstances.
I have always wondered how much to rely on the questions in RHLSTP. Sometimes I do several, some times I do none and do a more traditional interview. We’d have missed some great stuff if I only did EQs, but the EQs do take people into different pastures of comedy and suddenly they reveal stuff that they definitely wouldn’t have talked about and often have never mentioned it before. It was interesting doing nothing but EQs and satisfying to find out that the many, many untested ones generally worked well. And there’s still half a book of questions left if we want to do another audio book. Which is insane.
The thing that became apparent was that there were a lot of questions about being trapped alone (with or without the internet) versus being constantly in the public eye. Which probably says more about me than anyone answering the questions. I guess it might be a consequence of lock down or just the state of my sad life.
Or at your favoured book/audiobook store.
For a few days there’s been a toy giraffe lying near the road where I walk my dog. Presumably a kid threw it out of a car window as it’s not the kind of place you’d go with a pram. I had left it there in case the owner returned looking for it. Someone has now put it behind the gate to the long driveway that it’s on. And it looks like it’s now been caged up. Perhaps the giraffe jumped to freedom itself but has ended up as an exhibit in a shit zoo. A reminder to us all to never attempt to better ourselves or rise above our station. I bet that giraffe wishes it was begin cuddled by a sticky chocolate covered child after a week in the rain and now behind bars. If you recognise this giraffe then get in touch and we will try and get it back to you.
