5536/18456
Emergency Questions give further services to education. Joe Zuntz (no one could think up a rude nickname for him) tweeted me to say, "Thanks for helping kick off my first ever undergrad lecture. 70% of Edinburgh physics 1st years went for the Armpit That Dispensed Suncream. Will ask them Q51 on Wednesday.â€
The physics students went for the armpit by 120 votes to 54. But they’ve only just started college and so do not appreciate the value of free food. Ask them again in a few months Joe. Some of them will have gnawed their actual hands down to the nub with hunger by then and will be regretting their decision. Also they’re in Edinburgh. What possible use would they have for suncream?
Luckily I am no longer going to be evicted from my home for the failure of payment to FedEx, even though I had paid them and they’d accepted the payment. The power of making a complaint on Twitter was shown once again, as they got in touch with my this morning and looked into it and discovered their error. And I don’t think this is just down to me having a lot of followers. Companies worry about PR. If you at them in, then I think they will be quicker to respond to your problem. And you don’t have to hang around on the phone for days.
Obviously for me, every little niggling thing like this is potential material, which is why I try to push things a little bit with these companies. See where we will end up.
They were still unable to explain why they don’t insist on payment before delivery, but did say they have introduced an online payment scheme that should make things a bit easier and less chaotic. Might be even more efficient if the people selling you the stuff just factored in the tax and paid it to the delivery company. But where’s the fun and the work for the bailiffs in that?
I was hoping to get a little way into my work on Relativity today, but was a bit poleaxed by the old-fashioneds and had lots of parenting and chores to do. I wanted to familiarise myself with the show and had read through script one of series one and was about to start on reading script 2 when my wife texted me to remind me to pick up Phoebe from the nursery. It was 2.45pm. I thought it was about 1. But walking home with my daughter is my favourite part of the day. We sang some songs and Phoebe tried to walk on every wall and splash in every puddle. And we had a chat of sorts. She is definitely in the top two sperm I have ever produced. The others I have mainly enjoyed for a moment or two, but this one gives a long term pleasure, without the nagging sense of guilt. If only they’d all produced a child. Imagine how happy I’d be then.
I am going to be pushing
the tour pretty hard over the coming weeks. Some places are selling great - Sutton Coldfield is sold out, Norwich had one ticket left the last time I checked and Chorley has about half a dozen tickets remaining. Cambridge, Cardiff, Leeds, Salford, Liverpool and Bristol also look to be selling well and are worth booking ahead for. Horsham, Scarborough and Walsall are the current low scorers and the ones with the most chance of dipping under the 100 ticket minimum sales that I have once again set for myself. And there’s no danger of massive venues like St Albans and Reading selling out. But don’t let that stop you.
I don’t think I will be doing a stand up tour next year and depending on what other work comes in the break might be extended a little. Certainly I feel like I should be touring every other year now, as it is hard work and difficult being away from the family. I hope there's at least two more shows before Oh Shit I'm 60 (or oh Damn I'm Dead), but who knows? It's not quite a farewell tour, but perhaps it is an Au Revoir tour.
I know that I don’t have to convince you that I am the most underrated stand up in the country, but if you have friends you’d like to persuade that I am OK even though I am not on telly like those that have proven they are the elite of the craft such as Paddy McGuinness and Stewart Lee (although you might like to warn them that I am not quite as mainstream as those two gagsmiths),
then you can show them 45 seconds of the show here.I might even try and do a tour diary podcast again- though as I have a fair bit of writing to do on the road then that might fall by the wayside (as it has the last few times I've tried it!)
