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A bit later than usual due to not being at the Fringe I had my new show photos done today. Once again the shoot was with the brilliant Steve Brown who has done all my poster shots since Hitler Moustache and who lives on a boat almost in the shadow of Tower Bridge, which makes coming here feel like an establishing shot in a movie. But one set in a future where Londoners have been forced to live on the water due to Russians buying all houses. Not too distant future.
This time I had to wheel a pram along the gantries between the boats as a couple of the ideas included my wife and daughter. Unusually we hadn’t totally settled on a central idea yet, but wanted to try out a few possibilities. Maybe we’ll make four different posters, just to confuse people. But at not even four months of age Phoebe has already wowed a packed theatre of people and been in a professional photo shoot. My plan to be a controlling father who forces her to be a comedian and ruins her life is taking shape. On the plus side she’ll be able to make £2000 selling her story to the Daily Mail when I am dead. You have my blessing Phoebe. I am sorry I was such a monster.
We tried a shot where I am pushing Phoebe in a pram being terrified of all the imaginary dangers, a couple of family group shots where either I or my family looked unhappy or unsure of our own happiness and then just a simple shot where I looked into the near distance smiling with my mouth but looking unhappy in my eyes. I have no idea which will come out best, but at the very least we can turn the one of all of us in our Christmas jumpers into a horrific Christmas card.
It felt a bit weird to be doing something so simple. In the past I have been emerging from a grave or having my heart extracted or been dressed up as braveheart or Hitler or Jesus on a bike. There was minimal preparation for this and no make up artist turning me into a skeleton ( a shot that we didn’t really end up using for WAGTD). We did some straighter head shots too, though I was annoyed that Steve had missed the window where I was properly thin - Lord of the Dance Settee shots were taken before I’d lost all the weight and these ones are taken at a similar mass as I head back up the graph (hopefully temporarily). But my new suit just about fitted still.
I will be interested to see which idea we end up using. I will keep you all in the loop!
A short but eventful trip to the post office. It was a shortish queue and no obvious nutters in ahead of me and I was anticipating a quiet ten minute interlude and a boring #postofficequeuelive. An employee tried to convince me to go and use the self-service machines, acting as a willing human accomplice to the rise of the machines. Why would she help an automaton take over her job? i refused to leave and further the plans of Skynet, though a few puny humans were tempted away. Then as it looked like it was going to be easy, maybe a bit too easy, a man arrived behind me. He was on the phone and talking aggressively. I didn’t want to risk my life by turning round to look, but it was an engaging radio play. He was threatening the person on the end of the line, who apparently owed him £50 and was making out that he (or she) was unable to return it. The man in the queue made it very clear that this was not good enough and threatened to come over and kill the person in his debt. It seemed a trivial sum to end someone’s life over, but it is annoying when people borrow stuff off you and won’t give it back. I attempted to act as a stenographer of the conversation, aware that if the man carried out his threat then for the first time #postofficequeuelive might be used in court. I had anticipated that my cataloguing of ineptitude might one day bring down Ian Post Office, but not that it might help solve a murder.
Not that the police would need much help. The first rule of murdering someone is that you don’t stand in a quiet post office queue shouting about your homicidal plans. I suspected that the person on the other end of the line was not taking the threats too seriously. I’d be saying, “Come on mate, it’s only £50. We both know you’re not going to risk life imprisonment for that amount. Especially as you’re already mentioned to me that you’re in a post office queue which means up to 50 people have heard everything you’ve shouted. At least give me a threat that you might carry out, like coming round and giving me a dead arm unless I cough up a tenner at least."
But the potential assassin kept up his over the top tough guy act, saying he was coming over there right now. Again he’d given away that that wasn’t the case. The victim knew he was at the back of a post office queue and thus had a good half an hour to make his escape. They could be in France by the time this guy had got his stamps. “What the fuck am I supposed to fucking do?” asked the impotent and angry man, “I know you haven’t lost it. You’ve spent it on drugs.” This was hotting up. The drug addled idiot on the other end of the line was shaken cos then the man shouted, “Police or no police. I. AM. FUCKING. COMING”. Though he stayed where he was, because he’d already been queuing for four minutes and was not going to lose his place in the queue for fifty quid. I mean, he’d kill someone for that amount, sure, but not lose his place.
It always makes a trip to the post office more exciting when there is a potential murderer right behind you. You could be killed at any second. But this time the post office proved too efficient and I was served in 10 minutes (by the manager herself who was wommanning one of the counters - I like her, she’s really trying to turn this place around). So if there was a slaughter at Shepherd’s Bush post office this afternoon I missed it due to increased efficiency. And perhaps the victim of that man’s ire might have been similarly complacent and thought he had more time to escape.
The last retro RHLSTP for a while is now up on
youtube and vimeo and iTunes. It’s with Dara o Briain and is a good one I believe. Bob Mortimer should be loading up next Wednesday if all goes to plan.
Only a few more chances to see Lord of the Dance Settee - this Saturday I am in
Eastbourne.
