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Off to Brighton Theatre Royal today for the first RHLSTP date of the autumn tour. Somehow it felt like a long time since I’d done one of these, even though I did 21 in Edinburgh.
Anyway it’s good to be back on tour, even if I had a pang of sad longing as I left my family on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It’s been a good decision to cut back on touring, but parting is not a sweet sorrow and it’s a shame to miss family time.
Maybe one day they will be old enough to travel with me. Brighton sea front looked glorious and was packed. A sad pikachu walked along the promenade. No one seemed to recognise him. Fame is a fickle mistress.
I had lots of work and research still to do, so sat in a cafe and researched my guests, Annabel Giles, star of Fist of Fun and Simon Evans. I hadn’t seen Annabel for about twenty years, but she has scarcely changed, although last time I met her son he was a baby and he was now a lunking 6ft + tall man. So he had changed a bit more. She’s a fascinating woman who has taken on many different jobs over the years and had to endure some hardships and perhaps most impressively was Gotchaed by Noel Edmonds but saw through the whole thing before it had even begun. She is now a therapist and I looked forward to her analysing me and working out how to make me happy. But no therapist is trained to deal with a stone clearer.
Then there was an enjoyable rambling conversation with Simon as we talked about making your own juggling balls and writing the letters for Razzle, plus the possibility that one day the virtual reality technology might exist for you to travel back in time and have a second go at episodes in your life. It would, for me at least, be mainly used to try and do better in various romantic scenarios where I messed things up by being a clueless chump. But I don’t think anyone else would be using it for anything any more worthy.
It was a good night, though I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get more people in. There were 260 or so, so it was far from empty, but last time we were in this area we did two shows and sold approaching 600 tickets. I will blame it on Romesh Ranganathan who was on in the venue up the road and thus sucked off all the punters.
Maybe if I sucked off all the punters I would have had better attendance.
With jokes like that I don’t know why attendance was not better.
There continues to be no rhyme or reason to sales with the forthcoming gigs - there’s lots of availability for Leicester, but Bristol and Newcastle are sold out now and Winchester is very close. Richmond has lots of availability and the guests are now confirmed as Nick Frost and Tape Face (who can do it after all).
Come along if you can.
