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I bought a dinner jacket to go to Buckingham Palace and meet Princess Anne back in March and today I had my second black tie event of 2015 as I was providing some entertainment at a big charity bash for Action Aid. And it wasn’t unexpected but I got a good illustration of the toll taken on my body by nine months of fatherhood as there was no way I was going to get into the suit that had fitted me just eight months ago. Nobody ever goes on about the toll taken on the bodies of the fathers. But a lack of exercise, trying to self-medicate with booze and get through the tiredness with chocolate means that I have no hope of getting into the trousers that I was wearing at the start of the year.
After all the effort losing the weight in 2014 it is of course doubly depressing to have put a lot of it back on in 2015. But at least I know that it is possible. And although so far attempts to fight the battle of the bulge have just made the bulge even worse, I am hopeful that I can at least partially turn things around. Before they then turn around again and so on until the yo-yoing inevitably kills me.
Usually appearances at charity events are pretty easy for a stand-up. You do five minutes of jokes, eat some free Celebrations and go home, but Action Aid got their money’s worth from us tonight (mainly because we weren’t being paid). I don’t think I’d really understood this when I was booked some time ago, but we were doing a Whose Line Is It Anyway?/Mock the Week style improvised comedy show, supposedly in three segments throughout the evening. Clive Anderson was hosting and the teams were made up of comedians, all of whom I knew, but most of whom hadn’t done much improv or worked with each other before. Making a room full of strangers laugh is pretty difficult, especially in this kind of situation when they aren’t there expressly to see you, but whilst I don’t think many people think that comedy is easy, there is a weird assumption that if you just chuck some disparate funny people together laughter will ensue. This is not in any way true.
The venue was a high-ceilinged ballroom and the guests would be seated at tables. I wasn’t overly confident that this was going to be a brilliant night for us. On my team was Sara Pascoe, one of the best and most intelligent stand-ups around and someone I am slightly in awe of for her professionalism. The last time we had worked together was on this bizarre and unsettling pilot. I felt reassured that she again would be beside me throughout the night, but wondered if we’re deliberately being put in difficult situations for some kind of secret reality show. Or maybe she’s just pranking me for her own amusement
Everything was running late and every now and again one of the huge balloons that had been put up above the tables to indicate the table number would explode with a big bang. Which in the current atmosphere was somewhat disconcerting.
It became apparent that the sound system wasn’t very good. As introductions were made, Clive’s voice echoed round the room and it was hard to make out what he was saying. This was going to make sharp improvised comedy quite difficult, even for people who had some experience of that. Luckily the comedians were all in this together and we had fun chatting. Arabella Weir told some magnificently indiscrete stories about famous people she has encountered. But there was a Blitz spirit, occasionally almost literally as the garage balloons above us burst and we gave it a good crack and somehow rode our luck and got away with it, eventually managing to persuade the organisers not to make us go back on at 11.30pm as the event overran. A potentially slightly squirmy lip-sync battle, turned into a bonding exercise as we got up and danced along as Sara gave her all (she later commented that this was somewhat reminiscent of an end of year concert at school concert where the teachers got up and did crazy skits - except this is how we make our living). But by throwing ourselves into it almost all of the embarrassment dissipated and we helped to raise some money, especially Hardeep Singh Kohli, who did amazing work at the auction, managing to raise about £10,000 by agreeing to cook for four lots of people, instead of one.
I was totally wiped out after a day of childcare that had begun at 6am and a charity event that lasted seven hours (for us), but we had some laughs, heard some amazing stories and Sara Pascoe and me know to be ready for something a bit unusual next time we’re booked on the same thing.
