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A long and testing day, but one that was ultimately triumphant. Now that’s a rare Warming Up feeling, right?
We needed to get from Leeds to the Southbank in London for the biggest show of the tour, if not my career. It took some getting to, but we rolled up at about 2.30pm and I was shown into a dressing room that was nice than most hotels I’ve stayed in. Usually the backstage of any theatre is in sharp contrast to the glamour of the stage: peeling wallpaper, broken toilet, no room to swing even a baby cat. But the Queen Elizabeth Hall has been newly refurbished and I guess the dressing rooms have too. The room was not only huge, but comfortable, with room for at least 10 people. I felt like a Disney Princess.
Is this what I’ve been missing out on. Do all the successful comedians get luxury (and Wolverhampton whirlpools) everywhere they go? I can see why so many successful comedians go mental. I don’t think I can go back to the old days now.
And the venue was breathtaking - so freshly renovated that they were actually painting the back wall when I got there. It was a big room, but still impressively compact given there were 900 seats in there. And the seats were comfy and there was leg room and the acoustics and lights were amazing. I was going to be in a spotlight. Man I have come a long way since Scarborough.
Chris Evans (not that one) was there with his crew setting up. I lived in London for a quarter of a century and even I was overwhelmed by this venue, so goodness knows what this simple peasant Welshman made of it. Go Faster Stripe has come a long way since Chapter Arts as well.
We recorded a few bits and pieces for extras and then went and had an early dinner together, before heading in to meet the Willy Wonka Superfans who had paid extra on the Kickstarter to get a backstage tour! It did feel most of them would get sucked off by oompah loompahs leaving just one of them to take over my gag factory, but none of them turned out to be ungrateful children who needed punishing. Quite the opposite. They were all very lovely and interesting people - one of them had come from America and bought Twinkies! Another gave me a book inscribed with a message referencing a part of the show that had connected with him.. it was a part of the show I had dropped in the last week or so and wasn’t intending to do tonight. But this gift made me reconsider and I put it back in. It was the right choice.
They sat in my huge dressing room and asked me some questions and chatted amiably with each other. I had to remember that I needed to save my voice for the show. The podcast and my stand up show are built on the generous support of people like these. It was humbling to meet them and then give them each a Penguin Race game that I had scribbled on. I can’t imagine many other comedians doing that and at the heart of it it is probably the cause of both my relative failure and my relative success. But boy, do I appreciate the support of these charming people and everyone who has given to the kickstarter or become a badger or a dripster, or seen a live show or just told a friend about me.
You’ll be able to see them all as part of their prize was to appear in the audience shot when I am in the crowd laughing at my own jokes (it’s a long term DVD gag). It will be noticeable because the theatre would not let us film the faces of the audience tonight without a consent form. So they (and some of the crew) will be the only people you see.
And amazingly we’d sold over 700 tickets (more tickets than I have ever sold in a solo stand up gig) and there was a guest list too, so the place looked almost completely packed. A month ago we were looking at getting half that number, but some hard tweeting and the promise of a free book had brought the people out. Perhaps they would have come anyway. Today was a vindication for the long suffering fans of Richard Herring. For years they’ve been met with blank looks when they tell people they like me, their friends and partners unwilling to come and see me perform. But today, maybe for one night only, I might make them look like they were comedy gurus at the cutting edge of what is cool to the cool kids.
The reception was overwhelming. I managed to just about hold it together and was impressed at the follow spot’s ability to pre-empt my attempts to trick him. As always with being filmed I was conscious of my micro-errors and messed up a couple of bits in a way that was only discernible to me. But I also managed to ride the laughs and make up new ways of doing things, plus a couple of new jokes. It was electric. You never quite get the actual show when it’s filmed as an invisible layer of self-consciousness and an internal voice of self-sabotage descend upon me. Tonight was the closest I got to getting it right though.
I hope it’s not the actual end (not least because there is still a month of touring to go) but it felt like a culmination. All these years of slogging round the country to gradually diminishing indifference and finally this. I may always be niche, but tonight I got a taste of what it would be to be nationally famous instead of nationally known. It was nice to show people who already know what I can do, what I can do.
If this was the only time that I had a gig this big and this exciting (and let’s face it, it might well be) then it would be enough.
As Welsh Ray drove me and my wife home (she’d taken all the jokes about me wishing her dead and wanting to have sex with CBeebies presenters in the right spirit) nothing that had just happened seemed possible or real. The juxtaposition between being in the literal spotlight and real life was never sharper felt. I can’t believe this is my job. I can’t believe anyone pays to see me doing it. I am pretty sure I must have been in a terrible accident when I was 14 and this is the scenario that is playing out in my brain as the doctors switch off my life-support machine. If so, kudos to the 14 year old me for not just going for immediate super stardom and imagining a career that has taken years of struggles and disappointments.
Exhausted by the time we were home and rueing and lamenting the decision to spend this bank holiday weekend away from my family in Wales at the Machynlleth Festival (rather than catching up on sleep after this laborious few days), I still elected to sleep in with my baby boy. He woke up at 4.45am and cried for an hour. This weekend is going to be something of a challenge. But thanks Ernie mate. Really bringing me down to earth and preventing me being the kind of prick who expects a 5 star dressing room and hundreds of punters.
