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To think, if the new Pope had been born in July we'd have our first Pope Cancer.
Can’t believe the sycamore Gap guys are going down. Based on what evidence?
The number of responses taking this at face value on Blue Sky makes me think that it might not be the sanctuary from Twitter that I had hoped.....
For a second when I woke up I thought that my cold had gone and also after several months that my frozen shoulder might finally be better and that whatever I'd pulled in my calf playing tennis last week had repaired itself.
Turned out I was wrong about all three (though my arm and leg are definitely better than they had been). My cough and snotty nose were worse.
Have I just arrived at the part of my life where there will always be something hurting or going wrong? I have so been looking forward to feeling better, just so I can get out and get fit again (in the hope that that will delay my decline). You had better hope I die soon, because from now on Warming Up is just going to be an old man listing his maladies. And you can get that in any pub or cafe in the country.
Tour bookers can't win. I complain if the journey between gigs is too long and I complain if it's too short. We were kicked out of our B n B near Warwick Arts Centre at 10 and in spite of trying to find anything interesting on the way we were in Wolverhampton by 11. I was going to have to spend 24 hours in Wolverhampton. No one deserves that. Least of all the people who live there.
I actually love Wolverhampton and the gigs are always great (and run by proper comedy enthusiasts) but it makes me sad and a bit angry to see the place crumbling before my eyes. This historic city deserves investment and opportunity, but it doesn't look like it's getting it.
We had time to kill before we'd be allowed in the hotel and my cold getting worse by the minute. I told my tour manager that I just needed somewhere that I could sit and write and drink coffee and he dropped me at a Costa at Next. I thought I could hack it. But the toilet seat was covered in piss at 11am and the place was packed with sad-eyed middle-aged to old-aged Wolverhamptonites and I had to escape. If you had to represent the city of Wolverhampton could you do any better than a piss-covered toilet seat in a Costa at Next? I don't think so.
Most city centres are quite homogenised these days, but what I like about Wolves is it seems to have shops and cafes that exist nowhere else. Not just independent ones, but places that look like chains, but ones that you've never seen anywhere else. Like it's on a film set where they don't want to infringe copyright. Or in some alternate post-Apocalypse landscape.
Eventually we headed to our hotel, which turned out to be in a previously unknown nice part of Wolverhampton with a big park in it. I had a slightly unsatisfactory cat nap and felt better afterwards.
The show went well and the audience were only mildly offended by me laying into Wolverhampton. I made it tough for Right Bollock who has to be as rude as possible about the place he's in.
I was very tired after the show and slipped into a deep sleep. I was woken up suddenly by a female voice whispering one word harshly in my ear. It was shocking enough to wake me up, but when I looked around I was alone. I couldn't quite grasp what the voice had said, but it felt very real and very much external, but very close to my head. I am pretty sure I'd just been woken by an annoyed ghost, but it's still the most action I've had on tour for many, many years. I don't know why ghosts only visit me when I'm asleep or just waking up, but there's no other explanation. Unless I'd been snoring and another hotel resident managed to sneak into my room, whisper shouted at me and then bolted!
And no woman who'd got that close to me would have the will power to just leave.
It was a bit spooky. But I went back to sleep pretty quickly.
