4665/17324
I didn’t really think we’d manage it this time, given the proximity to the last campaign and the increased total, but with five days to spare we have surpassed the kickstarter target and made enough to cover the unexpected filming fees we’ve been hit with at the last minute. Do feel free to donate more if you want the rewards, as your money will go towards future series of the podcast. Or you can give to future RHLSTPs by making a one-off badge donation here.
I am overwhelmed by the support and delighted that it’s possible to make stuff in this manner and hope we can branch out into making ever more ambitious projects in this way. If all our 150,000+ RHLSTP listeners gave one pound a year for the 40ish RHLSTPs, 365 blogs and dozens of other podcasts then we’d be able to do some amazing stuff. If they all thought this stuff was worth a pound a month, then we would have the money to make pretty much anything we wanted. We could do a monthly AIOTM, a sitcom and even a film a year, all for a tiny investment from the listeners. You may call me a dreamer, and I am one, but £12 a year for about 60 hours of RHLSTP seems a pretty good deal in itself and if you got all that other stuff as well….?
Of course it’s not that easy, but the success of the kickstarters as well as the badges which are bringing in a small but steady stream of money, is a great start. I wonder how many TV shows would be able to finance themselves solely by donations from the viewers. Admittedly their budgets are a bit bigger than ours, but their reach is much greater. I will do all I can to reward the generosity and dedication of the people who are helping to make this stuff happen. The exciting thing about this, I suppose, is that for relatively tiny individual outlay I can produce a huge amount of stuff and if people buy into that and trust that my motivation is just to bring out interesting and entertaining stuff (for its own sake, though recently it does seem to pay off down the line for me financially as it means people come to my tour shows or employ me to do paid work) - which by now, after nearly eight years of podcasting and thirteen years of blogging and I would guess an huge body of free comedy, surely more than any other individual has given away (correct me if I am wrong) can’t seriously be questioned. What’s interesting is that I don’t need to be any more famous than I already am to be able to be able to fund everything I want to do (if only one in four of the listeners gave me the price of a coffee every quarter).
Someone on Twitter told me that I would never make it on the Apprentice, giving away the audios of ten 90 minutes shows for just £12 (http://www.gofasterstripe.com/12shows), but I am not sure he is right. Well, I might not do well on the Apprentice where they try to sell tat at a high price, but in the long term selling something good for a low price could lead to a better business model. I guess Louis CK proves that. But even at more modest levels it can work.
For the moment it just feels great that enough people care to cover the not insubstantial costs of putting together a relatively simple series. I am doing OK, but I certainly couldn’t have afforded the £80 or £90,000 it will cost to film the 38 RHLSTPs we are doing this year, so thanks to the 1800 who gave an average of around about £30 each to make filming the next lot possible (as well as the thousand or so who paid for the last series).
My favourite thing is that by this model people who can’t afford to pay still get to see the stuff. Another reason I wouldn’t do well on the Apprentice is because I am not a cunt (well not in a financial sense).
I wish I was ten years younger (for many reason) as this is a long game and I may run out of runway before I can get to the place where this is a self-sustaining media empire, run on micro payments and goodwill. But for some autonomous writer/performer out there in the future, you might be able to make your living and achieve all your artistic goals without ever having to go to interfering broadcasters or executives for money. All this came about because I was fed up of waiting for someone else to pay me to do the work that I knew I could do on the ideas that I knew were good enough. The only downside is that everything has to be a bit more ramshackle than I might like as non-payment limits the time I can give to all this. But so far the projects that I have done have largely benefited by being ramshackle ( I just wish we’d had the time and money to make RHMOL a bit better - mainly in the end, just give me time to properly write and learn it, as once we got going the production values were pretty good- especially for the budget).
I had one of only two remaining try-out gigs for Happy Now? material tonight, but signs were encouraging. The show is not going to be “finished” by Saturday, but it will not be finished by the end of the tour either (though hopefully will be a lot more solid). I think I need to write another 15 minutes of material to get me up to the full hour, but I think the deadline will focus the brain and given its relative new-ness I got some big laughs tonight. Ideally I would have had a few more previews (and not had to relearn 11 other shows at the same time) but the routines that I’ve been doing on and off since June are getting better all the time and it will be fun to try out some stuff for the very first time in front of a packed crowd at the Leicester Square Theatre - There are only about 20 tickets left for this final show, but plenty left for “Lord of the Dance Settee” on Friday. The new show is the last big challenge in this stupid challenge. I am starting to think I might pull it off. Which I really didn’t think I was going to. This and the kickstarter show that if you just force yourself to do something difficult, you might also force yourself to complete it. Potential humiliation is the mother of invention.
And we’ve announced the first three guests for RHLSTP
They are
4th October Lee Mack
1st November Jack Whitehall
8th November David Mitchell
There are lots of other exciting possibilities for these and other dates so book now to ensure you get to see them
