A rare treat which isn't going to happen too often on this tour, we're in the same town two nights in a row. I hoped that with a full day to myself I might get a bit more work done on my script. I managed to progress it by maybe half a page, but was hit by a wave of tiredness and had to have a snooze. I always forget how draining touring is. It might appear relatively easy from the outside, but it is relentless and mentally exhausting and even if I am only on stage for a couple of hours, I don't really escape the show or its tensions at any point in my day. And it's nine days since I had a day off, so maybe it's not surprising a man of my age needs an afternoon nap. I am still hopeful that I can write the script by the end of next month. It is certainly occupying my thoughts. But however good one's intentions, it is very hard to make progress with work on tour. The same thing happened when I tried to write my book on tour a couple of years back.
I had to hope that my tiredness wouldn't affect my gig, but I did feel a little bit disconnected on stage. It was one of those shows where the words came out of my mouth, but sometimes my brain felt like it was elsewhere. Like an out of body experience. Then suddenly I snap back into my own head and wonder where I am and what I have been saying and whether I have missed out anything. It's automatic pilot and that doesn't mean the show is a bad one - Pete said he thought that it was sharper than last night - it's just an odd phenomenon that comes from doing a show every night for months on end. It's so familiar that it eventually becomes almost strange and alien.
I wasn't helped tonight by the fact that a table of people near the door seemed to be talking to each other pretty much all the way through the gig. The volume was not loud enough for it to be considered heckling, it was just a low constant drone, which made it very hard to deal with. I could hear annoyed people shushing them and could sense that other audience members were not as engaged with the show as they could have been as a result. And it also was irritating to me as a performer and perhaps I was already irritable. But it's rude to other people and doubly annoying when so many people who would like to have seen the show tonight had been turned away. I don't know why they had bought tickets to the show, as they clearly didn't want to watch it.
It was some way into the show before I got an opportunity to deal with the mild disturbance and even then it wasn't the best place. I was in the middle of the theatrical dream sequence, something that I don't really want to have to step out of to do the teacher act of getting the loquacious to be non-loquacious, but the buzz of chatter had been so relentless that I had to say something, if only for the sake of the paying customers around the hubbub who were having their evening ruined.
I could see the main culprit who was a woman and stopped the performance and made a little whistling sound to get her attention, but she chatted on oblivious. Finally she realised that something was up and I asked her to stop talking, trotting out my old line about Rohypnol. Usually people are embarrassed enough by having their rudeness pointed out to shut up, but this woman took issue with me, saying she had paid to come and see the show - I did point out that the pertinent word in that sentence was "see", but allowed that she could also listen if she wanted to use another sense. She was in talkative mood still and asked whether that meant I didn't want her to make any noise through laughter. It was tedious and there was a tension in the room. The people on the balcony would not really have been aware of the disruption and so might have felt I was just attacking an audience member for no reason. In my irritation I did hear myself telling her to keep her big fat mouth shut, which given she was a rather portly lady wasn't the nicest thing that I could have said. For a while I wasn't sure if I had lost the rest of the audience due to my grouchiness. The drama of the dream had already been derailed and every time I made an effort to get back into it, the chatter started up again immediately. I wasn't happy with the way I had dealt with it. I had maybe come in a little too harshly, but there is little reasoning with people who have so little respect for anyone but themselves that they don't have the decency to keep quiet during a performance. I told them to leave and they were adamant that they were going to stay, even though they were making no attempt to engage with the performance. It escalated a little and the bouncers became involved and apparently when one of the women sarcastically indicated to one of them that they should keep quiet, he dragged her quite spectacularly out of the room. I couldn't really see any of it and didn't know it was a woman who had been forcibly ejected, but it was hard to ignore the kerfuffle. I suggested the rest of the audience all gang up on the remaining people and we could have a face off, at which point a man near the front stood up, noisily screeching his chair against the floor and walked in the general direction of the idiots. He didn't look like the type to start a fight, and I commentated on his bold move, but it turned out he was just using this unscheduled intermission as an excuse to go to the toilet. Eventually the disruptive table left one by one. The last one to go was a man, who I imagined might have been the husband of the noisy woman (who carried on shouting crapulously from the street when the doors were opened) and I joked that he had used the opportunity to stay in the club for a few minutes and get some respite from his talkative missus. He gave me a little friendly wave as he went, as if to say that I was spot on there. I didn't envy him his life.
It had shaken me up a bit and derailed the show, but we got it back on track and I was able to back reference the incident a few times and also threaten a totally innocent women with being ejected when I felt she wasn't trying to imagine something I had asked her to imagine with enough commitment.
The general remarks I got from the rest of the crowd were that I had dealt with it all well. The shows are filmed at the Frog (though only by a static camera pointed at the stage) so this might well find its way on to the DVD as an extra. It's not something I am very proud of - I think I ballsed it up a bit - but it'll be an interesting portrait of the rudeness of an audience member and the petulance of the performer (I jokingly threatened to leave the stage when she responded that rather than her shutting up, I should shut up, but I am sure it looked like genuine sulkiness to some - I think I dropped the mic too. It's a bit of a blur). Still it is kind for all these strangers to provide ways for me to fill up the discs that will finally go on sale. To be honest I prefered the Zion Baptists to this woman.
But that's nine days of this thirteen night run down and they have all pretty much sold out, which is great news. On the downside I am in Barrow-in-Furness tomorrow where only about 50 people have bought tickets (I think it's a 350 seater theatre) and then I am in Bishop Auckland the next day, where the theatre warns me, local Christians are planning to protest against the show. There is also so uproar in Lowestoft, which is another of the worst selling venues on the tour. I would suggest that those angry Christians might want to keep their mouths shut because they are actually in danger of spreading news about the show and meaning more people get to see it. I am not relishing the protests. It is tedious to me and embarrassing to other more reasonable Christians (and I suspect to Jesus Himself - I think He's up in Heaven shouting, "For Me's sake, you're supposed to turn the other cheek you dumb shits. Haven't you even read my book?"
And alas this year there are no Sony nominations for my podcasts (or my Radio 4 show, though I don't know if that was even entered). We had put in AIOTM
and Collings and Herrin into the broad church that is "Best Internet Show" (and would suggest Sony need to get with the times and make this into more categories because it's hard to judge all these different types and styles of shows against each other) and boldly also put AIOTM into the Best Comedy Show category (putting it up against proper radio shows). We walked away with nothing and a bill for £600 (you have to pay to enter these awards, which you might think is unfair and wrong and that Sony should be looking for the best shows, not the best shows put forward by broadcasters who are looking to promote certain performers). But at least we will save the £1000 it would cost to get all of us along to the awards ceremony and get our disappointment in early. I have given Ian Sony so much money in the last two years that I could have had a surround sound cinema set up in my lounge instead, so maybe next year I'll just do that instead. Andrew Collings is delighted we didn't get nominated because he said we wouldn't. Plus he likes being the only one in our double act with a Sony Award. But the fact that Ian Sony has never given me an award just proves how worthless those awards are (I just want a Sony Award, why can't I have a Sony Award. I paid £600).
