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This Twelve Shows shit is starting to get real. I am fairly confident that I will have the first two shows up to speed in time, but I am not really thinking beyond that at the moment. There is a lot to do. But I am preternaturally calm about it all. None of this is creating the stress that I’d be feeling at the Fringe. I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing.
There’s going to be a lot of press coming up this week - look out for me on the Wright Stuff on Wednesday morning if you are retired or unemployed - and today I warmed up with an interview with Shaun Keaveny for 6Music (which will go out on Thursday) and my annual visit to see Robert Elms on BBC London. The years tick by and yet still both of us are still here. He has been doing this job for almost as long as I’ve been going to Edinburgh and inevitably he doesn’t always remember everything about me, but I always enjoy seeing him and reminding him that I live in Shepherd’s Bush (where he was born) - though only off-air. He has the efficiency of a man who knows what he is doing and does not want to do any more than required, but I respect that. He does his job well and without pretence and I guess that’s why he’s still doing it. You can hear my interview at 1.41.00 here.
And the curse of having seen Rasputin in real life has struck again and maybe for the last time with the death of Kyril Zinovieff who slightly unbelievably saw Rasputin in the street in 1916 and yet lived for almost another one hundred years. But finally Rasputin claims his (probable) last victim. And so Rasputin finally becomes a totally historical figure, unseen by living eye, but it’s totally crazy that last week there was someone around who could remember seeing him.
Incredible also when so many Russian aristocrats died in the 1910s that one of them would live this long
The first episode proper of the 12 shows podcast is now up on
itunes
and the BCG
