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I was a lot better today, but that didn’t really make much amends for the fact that I had to write a 20 page script and then rehearse it and the 30 page video script and then record both in front of an audience. But thanks to the magic of AIOTM somehow we made all these things more or less happen.
Somehow things had been permeating in my brain overnight and I had three or four ideas of where to take stuff. The audio is more in the spirit of the old AIOTM, although possibly even more relaxed as it’s just a free extra and weirdly that lack of pressure makes me happy to Ben Elton this shit and go pretty much with the first draft. It’s the way I write Warming Up too, excusing myself the pressure of having to get everything right and just see where things take me and essentially improvise the whole thing. I felt sure that writing everything in two or three hours would result in something charmingly ropey, but the stream of consciousness actually led to some quite good jokes. Whatever happens with the video (which is an extremely exciting experiment which is producing good results) I wonder if we should go back to doing the audio shows on a monthly basis. Although one of the interesting developments of doing both simultaneously is that the non-topical video shows are much more about me, whilst the audio ones have become more (though not entirely) about the news.
It’s also of course a huge safety net to have the cast and producer I have, to help me improve on what I’ve created and to improvise funniness where there was none. I am putting the audio scripts up in the downloads section so you can see how things develop from page to stage.
It was a much more seat of the pants experience this month. The theatre charges us a significant amount of money if we come in earlier than the (apparently) agreed 3.30pm get in time - we paid that tax for episode one as we had to set up for the first time, but I’d rather your money ended up on screen and despite that impressive kickstarter sum it’s really not quite enough to make this show even to our ramshackle standards, so we risked only have four hours to get everything ready. And less time than that, because the cab (full to the brim with props, scripts and AIOTM adapted toilet mats) was caught up in traffic in Knightsbridge. I considered jumping out and getting the tube, whilst the car crawled its way to the venue with the props and finally did so when we were caught up at Hyde Park Corner, but as it turns out the race between car and tube was won by the car by about a minute. I was only 20 minutes late.
Also the person we’d booked to act as runner had let us down at the last minute. Which might not sound like a massive deal, but when we were up against the clock and realising that certain props had not turned up and sending out the producer or a cast member to get coffees, it did eat into our time.
I think because last time there had been a bit more waiting around the rapid progression of time surprised us a bit. We had to film a little bit of extra footage backstage for the end of the show and then we read through the surprisingly OK audio script and then moved on to the main script, suddenly realising it was past 5pm and we had two hours to rehearse the whole thing…. And there was some complex stuff in there. Last time we’d had some time to learn the sketches as we waited, but this time we could only do a slow rehearsal and then we were pretty much on.
But the cast and crew on this are fucking awesome and dedicated (even if Dan Tetsell pretends to be above the whole thing now he’s been on War and Peace) and somehow we pulled this shit together.
Ticket sales were good - by no means full and a couple of dozen down on the first episode, but enough to have a fun time and to help us off-set a few of the costs (do come along to one of the remaining four if you can - it’s a long evening, but a fun one I think and you get to see all the hilarious bloopers and fuck ups). I was tired from my illness and the long, long day, but it didn’t really hit me until the last sketch (the most complicated and least rehearsed one). And we made up for forgotten items. Someone was meant to be playing a homeless man with a white beard and hair, but too late I discovered that no prop had been purchased and Beards-R-Us closes early on a Sunday. We were struggling to find anything to substitute and I’d considered making something out of cotton wool (but there none at the supermarket) but then someone spotted a clean mop head on a shelf and we used that. We are certainly not wasting your kickstarter money. But it’s very much in keeping with the cheap and cheerful approach - at least to the studio bits. I found myself laughing my way through a lot of it, but I hope that will be part of the charm of the series. God knows. We’re putting an awful lot of work into this and learning a lot as we go. It might be nice if it got some attention outside of the usual core fan group (and it sort of deserves it just for its sheer audacity, but it’s also a little step forward in terms of what is possible for independent internet comedy) but then again, in a sense it will be cool to remain a little secret.
I was actually amazed that we not only got through the show, but also finished by 10 to 10 (more costs are incurred in we overrun). And we had way too much stuff of course. The £15 pass to the kickstarter secret channel is looking like it will be good value.
I am incredibly grateful, as always, to the amazing cast and crew of this show, as well as the people who turned up to watch it. And especially Chris Evans (not that one). My favourite bit was when Dan Tetsell came on as Ian Asda, still wearing his Merrill from Pointless badge. I guess you had to be there.