I last visited the Hull Truck Theatre on the 17th April 1998 on the TMWRNJ tour. I know this because I kept a diary of that tour (which you can read at
http://www.leeandherring.com if you are interested).
As I arrived tonight I was greeted by an oddly familiar face. It was Dave, the same technician who’d been there almost five years ago. In my previous diary I described him as a “smiley cross between Charlie Chuck and Rod Hull”. This description is still fairly accurate, though he’s had his hair cut. It is quite rare for a theatre technician to stick in your mind (touring is such a whirlwind of venues and faces that I often can’t even remember if I’ve played a theatre before), but although I hadn’t thought about Dave in the interim, he had stuck in my mind. The reason being he is an extremely friendly, helpful and competent man. This makes a big difference. I was happy to see him again and was made to feel welcome. Immediately the night was off to a good start. Funny how these things can help a performance (and it’s true in any job. People forget the value of being a decent human being).
I was interviewed before the gig by a journalist from the Big Issue. He is aware of this web-site and had read my previous entries. So he will probably read this. Hello.
I blathered away to him about myself and cocks (my two favourite subjects). My computer was on in the dressing room and reverted to its screen saver thing. In Edinburgh last year Dan Antopolski or Chris Addison (or maybe both) had changed my screen-saver to a floating and cascading sentence saying “Herring is a gay”. This was a kind of funny joke.
I noticed the journalist looking at this and then clumsily tried to explain why it was there. I didnÂ’t do a very good job. It looked like I was trying to say that I wasnÂ’t really gay despite what my own computer was claiming. I suspect he thinks IÂ’m insane (actually heÂ’s read this diary, so he probably thought that already).
The show itself was good and as with 1998 (I notice from that diary) there were around 200 people in (but no Steve Coogan performing in town tonight to steal away the audience. Maybe Jethro was on somewhere in Hull!) A woman was eating crisps in the front row for the first five or ten minutes. This was very distracting, though I resisted the temptation to tell her to shut up or wait until later to eat crisps. ThereÂ’s always the danger that telling off an audience member in the first couple of minutes will make you look like a sour and potato-faced curmudgeon.
It was worse because she was making a cursory effort to eat them quietly, but I could hear the way she was trying to deaden the crisp crunch against her palate. So that was worse and prolonged the noise. It was as if I was actually inside her mouth in some kind of Fantastic Voyage fantasy. The sound reverberating round my microscopic ear drums. Huge bits of crisp and gushing drops of saliva falling around me from her slavering gums, Raquel Welch covered in anti-bodies and me having to rip them off from around her throat and breasts to keep her alive.
DonÂ’t eat crisps in the theatre. ThatÂ’s the lesson for today. Though it was nice to be reminded of Raquel Welch covered in bodily fluids.
Dave cheerfully helped us pack away after and told me heÂ’d enjoyed the show. He sent us on our way with a smile and a joke. What a top bloke.
I hope I donÂ’t have to wait five years to see his funny face again!
