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A sleep deprived Richard Herring (Phoebe was snotty and hot throughout the night and looked like a lobster this morning, but she’s OK) and a sleep deprived Richard Bacon (who had been up all night celebrating his 40th birthday - where does he get all his energy? oh right) met in the Leicester Square Theatre this evening, for my 100th Leicester Square theatre podcast and the final show in series 8. As you can imagine two tired men one nearly out of his forties and one just about to enter the quagmire from which no human returns was quite an event. Richard was very bright and breezy and self-obsessed for a man who had been out on the last (oh I get it now, I am always the last), but it made for a funny and frank podcast, in which I accused him of having a life that was just a series of apologies, and in which he sort of needed to make another one by the end of the day (though like most of his apologies, he hadn’t actually done anything all that wrong). He was a disgraced Blue Peter presenter (though when you look back at it he hadn’t done anywhere near the worst thing that a Blue Peter presenter did - even if Channel 4 once used the headline, “Richard Bacon strikes againâ€, which might be more apt for the supposed crimes of one of the other presenters of that programme) and a disgraced Top of the Pops Presenter (though he turns out to have been the least guilty of anyone who took the helm of that show, coming just below me - I do steal pick n mix). I like him an awful lot (it’s one of the pre-requisites for being on my show) so even my attempts to criticise him were half-hearted. He’s a fascinating man, bumbling in some ways, but sharp and charming as well and determined to enjoy his life. And when it comes out you’ll find out that it’s all down to his genes. He only attempted stand up once and it didn’t go well, but on today’s showing he should maybe try again with some of the stories he told me. His dad at the airport is worth the viewing price (of 0p) alone. I wish I was him. Somehow adrenaline got us both through and it was a fitting 100th show.
And number 99 was a lot of fun too. I had had a lot of fun watching Cariad Lloyd being funny online all morning and now I got to chat with her. She’s super talented and really sharp and charming too (like Richard Bacon but without the instinct to do the wrong thing in every situation). Check out her pilot (shamefully not made into a series) here or go and see her in the frankly astonishly good Austentatious (you can buy a DVD of theirs at www.gofasterstripe.com). She’s already in pretty much everything (Peep Show currently), but she’s destined for even bigger things, plus I found out in the podcast that she worked with Ken Campbell too, who is one of my heroes, so really enjoyed this chat too. Plus I forgot that I’d talked about and promised to watch Hallo Panda with Sara Pascoe, but I talked about it and promised to watch it with Cariad. I was lying. I will never watch it. Ha ha ha ha ha.
And after the podcast I somehow stayed on my feet to present the LST 2015 New Act of the Year Award, which unprofessionally I did mainly quite drunk. But I saw myself very much as a warning to new comics about what could happen to them if their dreams of becoming a professional comedian came true. And I am one of the success stories. It’s fucking tragic. It didn’t put them off though and they did their best to win. I pity those poor young fools. They were all good though. More worryingly for them than for me.
I considered murdering all the judges, some of the UK’s top comedy critics. Sure I’d go to prison, but I’d be a hero amongst comedians. I let them live. In reality they are all quite nice people, if slightly nerdy. In some ways senseless murder isn’t the way forward. Like terrorists, killing these critics would have just encouraged more people to take up their pens and write scathing and essentially accurate reports of how good comedians are.
I didn’t party with the new comics afterwards though. I was just a husk somehow formed into the shape of a man by being filled with hot air. And by midnight the hot air had started seeping out. And it smelled really bad. I went home to my ill daughter and my exhausted wife and hoped neither of them could call on me to do anything until 9am. My wish came true. The dreams of the older comedian are more prosaic than those of the new ones.
The evening is reviewed by one of the pleasant nerds here.
Somewhere in an exclusive member’s club, a miraculously still awake Richard Bacon (I’ve just twigged) turned 40 and was accidentally rude to someone of no consequence. And then apologised.
