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Thursday 11th October 2018

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I was at the swanky-wanky-woo Cheltenham Literature Festival tonight providing light relief from serious novels and political autobiographies by talking about my cock-based questions book.
And I got my biggest ever Cheltenham crowd of over 400, which suggested I was getting a lot of casual walk up and that not everyone was going to know who I was. The festival don’t pay the authors for attending, but they do treat us like minor nobility and I got to stay in a nice hotel, travel by first class train and enjoy a hospitality tent with free food and booze. I wished I’d got here three days early and just filled up on scones.
I was being interviewed by sports reporter Jill Douglas (I assume because they had me pegged as a sportsman due to my self-playing snooker prowess). I don’t think she really knew who I was before this week, but in a sense that made the interview better - she was finding out about me at the same time as the audience. And she did a great job and clearly got and liked the book. 
I got the audience quickly on side by mentioning how upset I was that my train had stopped in Gloucester and how relieved I was that I hadn’t had to get out there. I wondered if any of the Gloucester residents had managed to somehow get over the wall round Cheltenham (a wall that Cheltenham made Gloucester pay for) and gain admittance. I hadn’t planned any of this, but it’s lovely when you come out of the gates getting laughs. A couple of beers, in this case, may have helped.
A dog started barking outside the tent about five minutes in. “I’m being heckled by a dog,” I told the audience who chuckled. “It’s difficult to respond to that…” Then I shouted, “Your mother’s a bitch.” I had proven my comedy chops to the crowd and none of them knew that I had set the whole thing up just to deliver this impeccable script. Not really, Cheltenham. I really am that much of a comedy genius. And the dog shut up too.
We got some good stuff: with the audience shouting out question numbers every now and then and Jill asking some good stuff about the process of comedy writing. And we made the book look pretty good as the random questions were effective in generating conversation. I might actually have created something quite good here. Obviously entirely by accident. Keep spreading the word about it and buy it for all your non-podcast listening friends. 

And on the unnecessarily long and tortuous train journey I was able to put the finishing touches to episode 2 of Relativity. Mainly because the first draft was essentially the finished product. The next two eps are going to be a lot more challenging and they are meant to be in in four days time. Ha! That’s never going to happen.
But really pleased with how it’s going and also of course annoyed with myself for being so filled with fear about this project and my ability to write, that I didn’t at least finish off these two earlier. 
When will I ever learn who I am?
But edging towards getting this project completed - it’s hung over me a bit this year, though mainly during the tour when I had the seemingly impossible task of writing it on the  road. Thank goodness all the actors are so successful that they couldn’t make the original recording date - though I guess the deadline would have been reached and the project would be completed and broadcast by now otherwise.
And at least the characters are back alive again for me and for the moment at least, I am finding it easy to think how they'd react and what they'd say in any given situation. I think the first two are good. Let's see how quickly I can do the next two. Still a month before we record it, so might wait a bit longer! Hope my producer doesn't read that (though for some reason she seems to have faith in me - which is good because for the longest time this year I did not have faith in myself and I'm still not quite sure that I can do it!)


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