Warming Up

Phoebe was watching a kids TV show about history and there was a sketch about Einstein. “Wasn’t he a monster?” she asked. “I don’t think so,” I replied, wracking my brain for some Cosbyesque skellington in his cupboard that I’d forgotten about. I could only think about him maybe shagging Marilyn Monroe, but if that happened it was all consensual and would surely rate as his greatest lifetime achievement. “He is…. You know, Frankeinstein.”

She wasn’t trying to make a joke, but it was of course, an amusing bit of confusion. But my immediate thought was - what a brilliant idea for a kids’ book. Someone digs up Einstein and reanimates his corpse with hilarious consequences. It was genius. I knew that having kids would eventually pay off - all you need is one ridiculous misunderstanding and then BANG you’re the new JK Rowling (without the unpleasantness) and you’re living in a fucking castle.

Then I googled it to discover someone else had noticed the pun and there’s a whole series of books with the title. Annoyingly it isn’t about a reanimated Einstein, but I bet Jon Sciezca is living in a fucking castle regardless. And I am left to just write a kids book about what goes on in a fucking castle. It’s a lot of fucking. Maybe with some zombies. I doubt that’s going to sell.

It was the last shows from this run of RHLSTP at the Leicester Square Theatre and I was the fittest I’ve been since the one on the 20th February, though still with a nasty cough. But my mind was unclouded and I had fun riffing with young Rhys James and chatting with the naughty and brilliant Janet Ellis. I’d tried to google the famous episode of Jigsaw where seeing her dressed as Nell Gwyne had ignited something in the young 14 year old Richard Herring, but the only results that came up were me talking about that in various blogs and newspaper articles. Subsequently a member of the audience has sent me a YouTube video of the episode and the outfit is much more conservative than I recall it being and as lovely as Janet looks, it really shows how innocent/horny I was back in 1981. It just shows how hard it was to come across (so to speak) erotic images back then. But it means there is some purity to my teenage fantasies that I guess would no longer be possible in a 21st century 14 year old. 

What an amazing show Jigsaw was though. And how incredible for me to be able to chat with another of my heroes. 

It was a bit of a relief to get through the series, which has felt like harder work than usual, but only because of the illness, I think. Eleven years in and I am still getting a lot out of this project and tonight was a good example of how different the interviews can be. It was another smaller audience, but they were better quality than some of the bigger ones. It feels like I’ve done enough interviews to take us through to the autumn, but they will have basically run out by the time we’re back in the theatre in June. You can book for those and some tour RHLSTPs now. Details here.