5044/17964
I took part in a Podcast Festival at Kings Place in London, where the Guardian has its offices, a couple of hours after Jeremy Corbyn retained his leadership of the Labour Party. I thought there would be more celebrations. I was chatting to Dan Schreiber from the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish and the TV show No Such Thing as the News for an extra audio RHLSTP (which I guess will go out with my other audio extras from the Great Yorkshire Fringe, on Wednesday week when we won’t quite have had time to get the Armando Iannucci podcast ready).
Dan is a charming and (quite) interesting young man and as you might expect if you’re listened to his award winning podcasts (we and our respective teams are in fact the only ever winners of the Chortle Internet award) he is able to talk. So I wasn’t too worried about being exhausted from a week of rollercoaster emotions and varied work. I was just concerned that I get home in time to bathe my daughter as my wife had been looking after her all day. I did just manage to do that one last duty (but it was fun to draw the podcast to a close with that as my excuse - earlier I had wondered why his podcast had got to TV and mine hadn’t, but it’s probably due to that lack of professionalism. But if it’s unprofessional to want to do your kids’ bath time then I don’t want to be on telly - please let me be on the telly).
It was nice to get this warm up to the new series, which is approaching with indecent haste - I still have a lot of people to book, but we have 3rd October Armando Iannucci and Hans Teeuwen, 10th October Dane Baptiste + TBC 17th October Chris Addison + TBC and November 28th David Baddiel. There’s a few irons in the fire too and if 31st October comes off as I hope it will then that one will sell pretty fast, so take a chance and book now. And will let you know about other guests asap.
Dan was full of stories about how he got into the comedy business, the wonderful madness of Brian Blessed and facts about pretty much anything that I could mention. We chatted about Stephen Jay Gould, having sex with ghosts and the world’s most reluctant TV star. Time passed quickly - weirdly we had a clock counting it down in front of us. Starting at 90 minutes and working its way down like a bomb that was going to blow this theatre of left wing nerds to kingdom come. It changed colour with ten minutes to go, which was enough reason for me to go home, even if my baby’s bum didn’t need washing.
I took the piss out of everything, as usual, but it was lovely to be back in the chair (even if it was a different one) and chatting to a witty near stranger for 80 minutes. And trying to remember how the emergency questions worked. And cool also that the kickstarter to film the upcoming series (and pay for the ones we did earlier in the year, that currently we’ve paid for ourselves) seems to be creeping towards its target. Every now and again it strikes me how astonishing and also wonderful that so many people are prepared to put money into this year’s very expensive projects. No Such Thing as a Fish has essentially gone to TV with a similarly crazily small budget and I did also posit the idea that I’d be happy to have a series on BBC and take no money for my work. Partly because I’d like to thank the corporation for the support they’ve given me (at times) and the entertainment they’ve given me (consistently) and also because just like the work I do online, a TV show would pay me down the line by increasing my live audience and other work.
My manager probably won’t like me making such offers, though I think I am fairly safe on having them taken up - and as with my podcasts, I don’t expect everyone else to work for free.
Maybe being on the BBC should be honour enough… though not for my written work or my Radio 4 sitcom. I am not an idiot.
