Warming Up

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St Albans tonight, though for the first time on the tour the numbers were down on last year. This time we didn’t even get 250 people in, whilst last year it was 350. Was the downturn due to the fact that last year I played Me1 Vs Me2 Snooker in the interval? Or was it because I wasn’t playing Me1 Vs Me2 snooker? It’s impossible to know. You never quite know the outside factors that might change audience numbers, but I was disappointed to lose so many. Especially now this is such a local gig. It’s too early to guess whether fortunes are heading upwards or downwards in general. But 250ish is still a decent turn out from my point of view. The venue might not agree though.

In more positive news, Brighton has been selling so well that we’ve put in an extra gig at 3pm  (still some availability for evening show, but be quick) and there’s also a new date added at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival (as well as a RHLSTP) in May . Check out www.richardherring.com/ohfrig/tour for all tour dates. Let’s make St Albans the exception not the rule.

And quality not quantity - it was another appreciative crowd and the big room meant I could do a big performance and the show keeps on improving. I even came up with a new line that might become my closer. Which is quite a significant development after so many performances. This is feeling like the most crowd-pleasing show for a while. I tell people that I don’t care about their individual opinions, but they tell me anyway and the feedback is very positive.

In my dressing room I noticed that there was a picture up in a slightly unusual position, right in the corner of the room. It was of my childhood (and still current) heroes, Morecambe and Wise, lounging in a dressing room in 1977. I quickly realised that they were in the very same dressing room that I and the picture were in. Eric was sitting on the counter top and Ernie was in a chair with his dog beside him. The basic set up of the room and indeed many of the fixtures and fittings, were exactly the same 40 years on. So I took a photo of the room for comparison with my coat standing in for Eric and a chair in the place that Ernie had been sitting. It was very exciting for me to be able to prove that I was walking in the footprints (and sitting in the bum prints) of giants. I expect they managed to sell the venue out back in February 1977, but would they have taken as much money on the door? I had to get something out of this. I tried to find evidence of what their ticket price might have been and with a little help from Twitter discovered that their 1977 ticket price would be somewhere at the 2 or 3 pound mark. Even if they had sold the 850 seats they would not quite have made as much as I did selling 250 at £17.50. So what that proves is I am better than Morecambe and Wise. And I didn’t have to split the takings.

Someone on Twitter pointed out that in February 1977 Eric was 50 and Ernie was 51, which added an extra poignancy to this. No one mentioned that Eric would be dead within seven or eight years. But he very nearly died nine years earlier, so we were very lucky to get all that time with him.

Trips to the theatre were a rarity for the Herring family in the 70s - even at £3 a ticket I don’t think my parents could have afforded to take us all too often, but it’s sad to think that I could have seen Morecambe and Wise live at a time when it would have been super exciting and lodged in my memory. I’d have been nine when that photo was taken. Being in the dressing room with the echoes of their presence was enough, imagine if I had got to meet them…

But just being in the presence of the same metal grill on the door, the same piping taking the electrical wires up the wall and possibly even the very counter top that Ernie was sitting on was enough for me. Of course I will have been in the same dressing room at some point as every major live performer from the last 100 years, but to have such clear evidence…. I sat in the Ernie chair, but I didn’t dare to presume to sit on the Eric tabletop.

This would have been a local gig for him too. He lived in Harpenden. I bet he expressed his joy at the short trip home.

And I am limbering up for international “when’s international men’s day?” day. Last year I directed people towards Refuge’s website and asked them to donate if they were enjoying my pain. This year we’ve made it a bit more official and I’ve set up my own justgiving page which aims to turn ignorance and stupidity (mine as much as anyone’s) into cold, hard cash for a brilliant cause. So if you want to sponsor me in something that is much more draining than a Marathon or thank me for my previous endeavours, then chuck a few quid at me here.