Hats off to the sitcom Gods who write my life. They pretty much gave me a break over the weekend of nuptials (with the odd little flourish added of course), but they had planned a little Terry and June style prank to let me know who was in charge. I opened my suitcase this morning to discover that something had caused a big blue stain on my brand new white shirt. I was a bit confused as to how colour from my tie had transferred itself on to my shirt, but then I saw that a glass bottle of aftershave that I had put deep inside the case (which also has a hard shell so I thought I'd be safe) had somehow been smashed. It had been almost full and its contents had covered everything nearby in its cool and sexy aroma. My pants were going to pull tonight. So not only was I picking glass out of my clothes and wondering if I had ruined a hundred or so pounds worth of new smart gear, I also had to check out my wedding certificate which I had placed for safe keeping in the case, very near to the bottle. If I opened the envelope to find that all the ink had been eaten away, did that mean I was no longer married?
As it turned out there were a few blotches on the certificate and it smelt like a love letter from an teenage boy who had been a bit overenthusiastic in applying his dad's eau de cologne, but it was still legible.
It was very hard to adjust my honeymoon mindset to being back on tour, but I was was also a bit conscious that the audience might be aware I was married now - I was not going to take off my ring for the sake of theatre - and knew it was going to be odd to refer to my wife as "my girlfriend" in the early part of the show. But I'd have to rewrite the whole thing and ruin the pay-off to change it and also the news of my engagement has been out there for the whole tour, so I suspect the worry was all in my mind. I joked at the start that being in Andover was the best thing that had happened to me all week. It got a laugh, but I suppose it was funny even if you didn't know I'd got married.
Sales tonight were a bit sluggish - unusually worse than last year's gig - and the audience seemed very quiet, even for a more intimate show, which added to my fears that they were all thinking, "Why's he talking about his girlfriend? He's clearly married. Look at his ring." In such an honest show it felt a bit of a jolt to be mildly lying. Meanwhile as banker jokes seemed to get no audible response I was worried that like Samson losing his hair, Richard Herring being married had sucked him of all his powers. Had my wife managed to ingest all my funny by osmosis, or had my sexcrement escaped with it all and transferred it to her when I lost my virginity at the weekend? Sometimes after a few days off the show feels a bit unfamiliar or the timing goes off, but I actually thought I was delivering it pretty well. I had to assume that the audience were enjoying it but mainly internally, so I pushed onwards. But so much of being a comedian is about confidence and I could feel a clumsy sculptor taking his chisel to mine, leaving me like the Venus de Milo, but less good looking. And worse I was like the Penis de Milo - the Cynthia Platercaster cast of Jimi Hendrix's massive cock which shattered. Like an Action Man with his pants down I felt my inadequacies were exposed for all to see.
This was, of course, largely in my own head, but a comedian does need the audience behind him to really fly and performing to 100 people, who are laughing internally is a hard thing to do for any comic.
A few people left in the interval, which is quite a rare occurrence these days, but perhaps suggests that there was a proportion of the audience who had taken a punt on me without knowing who I was, and the second half did go a lot better. After the show the people who spoke to me were effusive with praise. A performer should get used to nights like these, but you never do. Every audience is different and your mind can be your own worst enemy on these occasions.
The staff at the theatre were all lovely and friendly and laughed when I joked about having been in Paris last night and now this! It's a great little theatre and I hope that I can do a bit better for them in audience numbers next time I come (if they have me back) - I've just realised I forgot to sign their book of leaflets. So they'll have to have me back so I can do that.
I was driving to Cardiff tonight, as it was only a couple of hours away and it'll be cool not to have to do any driving tomorrow. I realised I was going to hit the magical 123456 on the journey and wasn't going to miss the opportunity to make it even more special so reset the journey odometer 78.9 miles before the magic number (which took some working out - my once sharp mathematical part of my brain is now just sludge) and stayed sharp enough to see the numbers turning over and to get a photo of the momentous event (obviously taken by a passenger - lucky for me that my snooker partner was in the car tonight). I think I will always remember April 2012 now, thanks to this.
Other comedians may have sell out tours and their own TV shows and million selling DVDs but do they have a picture of their car hitting 123456 78.9? No. And not only because they can afford to buy new cars before they get anywhere near that landmark. Because they are LOSERS.
