5801/18821
I had known it might be coming, but it was confirmed today that sadly Michael Sheen can no longer make it for next week’s podcast. I had really been looking forward to this one, and am hopeful that we can rearrange it for a future date.
My plans to ask him to play me in the forthcoming move Herring:Blessed will have to be put on hold (I am playing Blessed).
I had discussed with Ian Boldsworth yesterday, him coming on and fronting it out, pretending to be Sheen, deeply immersed in his character for a new role (presumably a behind the scenes look at Carry on Screaming where Sheen is playing Oddbod Junior) and today Michael Legge put himself forward as a more believable lookalike. It might have been fun to try and pull that off for an hour and see if we could fool anyone in the (presumably fairly disgruntled audience).
Instead we have got a fantastic replacement in the shape (and the actual body) of Nish Kumar. He used to live behind my house in Shepherd’s Bush (he might still do). It was only later I realised that our other guest for next week Rose Matefeo also used to live in that house. Which makes this the most parochial podcast recordings of all time.
There aren’t many tickets left
so book here if you want to hear a lot about Shepherd’s Bush. You can of course contact the theatre if you wish to return your tickets due to the change of guests. But it wil clearly make you a racist, so think hard about it.
In other news, I made some fab cheese toasties tonight and was eating them at the kitchen table with my wife whilst looking at my phone. There was a speck of something that looked like cheese on my iPhone screen, so like a scavenging monster I popped it in my mouth. It turned out to be a flake of soap.
That’s what you get if you eat things off your iPhone.
Before bed I was in the bathroom doing my ablutions and about to get in the bath. A ladybird had somehow found its way into the house. It was crawling across the floor, with a confused look on its face (I may be projecting). It seemed late in the year for a ladybird - though I don’t know where they go to survive the winter. At this late hour it seemed that putting it outside would be a death sentence, so I left it be. It started flying around the bathroom, which again seemed weird. I know they do fly - I was once attacked by a huge swarm of these placid looking fuckers on Weston-super-Mare beach in 1976 and turns out that when they’re in a crowd they get confident and bitey. It was a veritable plague.
I let the ladybird do his/her/their thing without fear. It was on its own. It wouldn’t attack again. And presumably there have been many generations of ladybirds in the last 42 years and I wouldn’t want to blame this one for the sins of its ancestors. Would a Hertfordshire ladybird even have any direct bloodline to the murderous Somerset ones of the the seventies? I am no ladybird genealogist and I can’t tell you. If you are a ladybird genealogist then please get in touch.
Anyway when I got into the bath, I found the ladybird had fallen in (or was having a bath itself). I could have let it drown and maybe someone who blamed all ladybirds for the actions of individual ladybirds would have done that. But instead I gently got it out of the water and turned it the right way up as it flailed on the side of the bath. It flew away.
This ladybird now owed me its life and I presumed one day it would pay me back. Maybe by biting someone who was trying to mug me. Or getting all of its mates to do the same, which might be more effective.
But when I got out of the bath I saw it flailing upside down on the bathmat and realised that this was a rubbish ladybird that was knackered out and no use to anyone, so I’d saved its life for nothing and I crushed it to death.
Not really. I let it be. I am no ladybird doctor and any attempt to assist would have caused more harm than good. If you are a ladybird doctor then get in touch. I suspect I will find its ladybird corpse in the morning and I shall make a tiny grave for it in the garden.
I am no ladybird undertaker, but I reckon I can manage this. But if you are a ladybird undertaker and want to charge me £350 for a specialist ladybird coffin/matchbox, then do get in touch.
This entry has made me realise just little ladybird expertise I have.
