This wasn't looking good.
This wasn't looking good at all.
I was still feeling lousy and tired and ill and yet had next to nothing written for AIOTM tomorrow and as I sat on my sofa staring at my computer screen not too much was springing to mind. I had quite a few ideas bubbling around, most of them about Nick Griffin, but wasn't convinced any of them were going to make it into the show. Especially if I continued to feel so sluggish that I was unable to type. Plus very soon I was going to have to have a bath, get dressed and head down to the Lyric for another Comedy Night.
I was trying to make myself feel better about it. The task I had set myself was a difficult one - to come up with 45 minutes of new material every week, whilst working on other stuff for 5 days of the week and it was even more Herculean if I also fell ill. I could probably get away with the occasional dodgy show, but what if I couldn't pull anything together in time. Last week I'd written a lot of the show on Monday morning and maybe I could do the same now, but there was a lot less on paper.
Emma got in touch to say that she was feeling a lot better, after having dragged herself from bed to do AIOTM last week, but that she had found out she'd been suffering from Swine Flu. Did I now have it too? Had I caught that off her? That was all I needed.
I decided to dress up in my suit for the show, in the hope that if I felt smart I would feel well. I put on my ridiculous and expensive two tone pointy shoes from Oliver Sweeney that are just stupidly ostentatious. I was a bit late, so had to cycle down, which in these clown shoes with smooth soles proved to slightly tricky. My feet kept slipping off the pedals.
Even though it's just a five minute bike ride I was feeling knackered by the end of it. My guess was that I just needed a good long sleep, but there was not going to be time for that just yet.
Luckily the show lifted me a little, though I wasn't on top form. It was a great line-up of thoroughly lovely men: Stephen Merchant, Tim Key, Paul Sinha and Doc Brown and there was a friendly and supportive atmosphere backstage. I chatted about the predicament I was in regarding the show I was writing and chatted about some of the ideas and not only did some of them suddenly seem rather better than I thought, but in discussing the issues with the others I got a clearer idea of what direction I should be going in. I was thinking of writing about how ridiculous it was for the papers to be saying that our soliders were fighting for freedom of speech and so Jimmy Carr shouldn't make jokes about them and Paul Sinha made the very valid point that
Varr's joke isn't even offensive in any case, it's more a statement of fact. And though the consensus was that lots of people on the circuit were doing gags about the "almost entirely non-violent branch of the Ku Kluz Klan" comment, that my idea of picking up on the guy who had said "I'd like to ask Dick, I beg your pardon Nick Griffin" was a more interesting and original way into the subject.
On stage I said this line up would be a disappointment to Nick Griffin as it was ethnically mixed and included a gay man, but ad-libbed, "No women though. There's no need to go mad." This got a massive laugh and meant I had yet another line for the show tomorrow.
It was also helpful to be able to try out some of these ideas in front of the capacity audience and see what hit and what didn't. It's a shame I won't get this every week. But I was outside of the vacuum of my house and getting some feedback and some response and it was much more helpful than I'd imagined.
I'd been telling Stephen Merchant about my various run ins with
uncool Ceith Allen and my desire for revenge upon the man and as I was standing back stage wondering what the Hell I should talk about in my next bit I suddenly realised that that might be a funny thing to talk about. And having done it on stage and come up with a possible revenge I realised that that would also be a possible topic for the podcast.
Things were coming together by hook or by crook, through the glaze of sweat created by fear and illness.
Most of the comics hung around after the show for a drink, even though the audience disappeared immediately into the night. It had been a good night, with a group of charming, modest and talented men. There are comedians out there who are paranoid, selfish and egotistical, but there are many more who are supportive and giving and decent (even if they are indecent on stage) and I was very lucky to have assembled a gang of the good ones tonight.
I headed home, feeling a little bit less ill, but still rather apprehensive about the task ahead of me, hoping against hope that I would be stricken down with serious illness in the night and be unable to do the show.
