The tour restarts tomorrow and it feels like forever since I last did the show and there's stuff I want to work on, but I always start at the beginning and get bored as I run through and get distracted. This evening on my way to pick up my show suit from the dry-cleaners and my resoled show-shoes from the cobblers I was running through the opening again. I was trying to do it in my head, but my lips were moving and I was actually talking very quietly. I must have looked like a madmen, especially to anyone who heard me repeatedly saying the word "cock". I might have got picked up by the white van and taken to the funny farm and no one would have known where I had gone. "I'm Richard Herring," I would have screamed, "I presented Top of the Pops". "Yeah sure you did mate. You're never getting out of here. You're a danger to the public. Especially so if you were anything to do with Top of the Pops."

Well that much is true.

I want to add a couple of routines to the second half, but I didn't get too far in learning them and perhaps I should familiarise myself with the show as it is before I try being too experimental. I also did a bit of prep work for the podcast, looking through some more questionniare answers and I managed to knock together another old idea (with a bit of new paint) for next week's Metro column. And then, when I should really have been thinking about the show I got a hankering for some self-playing snooker. I thought maybe with the Talking Cock podcast to occupy me that the snooker might at least be rested, but even without that I haven't done one for a while and only two or three people seem to have noticed and even the obsessive Mike Stoner who runs the unofficial Me1 vs Me2 site has lost interest. But I suddenly missed it tonight and I do have to keep going until no one is listening and even then until I die and even then in some kind of ethereal snooker hall for all eternity. And I really enjoyed it. The cats were watching, but didn't get involved until after the frame was over when Lion-o's curiosity was piqued and she jumped up on the table and started playing football with the cue ball.

I am surprised it's taken her so long because she is a very curious cat. But you know what curiosity did?

Isn't that a horrible phrase? The one about killing the cat. Not just for cats and cat owners, but for kids too. It's designed to keep children's noses out of stuff and make curiosity look like a dangerous and terrible thing. Which it can be. But you know what curiousity did? It discovered fire and the wheel and America. It got us to the moon. It found the bones of long dead creatures and worked out how we were related to them. My cats are very curious and neither of them are dead yet (though Smithers has got a bit dirty going up the chimeny). Let's not scare children away from wanting to find stuff out. Let's make the phrase. You know what putting your face into a working blender did? It blended the cat's face. Do you know what running in front of a car did? It squashed the cat. Do you know what curiosity did? It improved the cat's life and made it ultimately much safer as it discovered its own boundaries under the supervision of a more knowledgeable cat or human. Might not be as pithy and you'd need a lot of different sayings for different situations. But at least we wouldn't be dissing curiosity so much!

Anyway the snooker podcast will be up tomorrow, as will the second Talking Cock podcast (for the moment it's still riding high at the top of the iTunes chart so thanks very much if you have subscribed). Do spread the word about the podcast and the tour. If you all bring a Herring newbie along with you then this tour will be successful enough to allow me to do more tours and more stupid free podcasts.

And tomorrow will be my first time with my new tour manager, Giles. I've met him a couple of times, but you don't really get to know a man until you've spend three months in a car with him. Will he be as annoying and arrogant as Simon Streeting? Will he be as reliable as the occasionally slightly unreliable, Reliable Pete? Will be be as slightly boring as One Two One Two Malcolm (before the time of this blog)? Or as scary looking but golden hearted as our first Lee and Herring tour manager Steve? Or as laid back as Mark Merkin who went from selling merch to touring with us in Australia? Ah, tour managers I have known. It's going to be seriously cool to have someone else to do all the driving and the lifting. And it means that I can learn my show in the back of the car on the way to Fareham tomorrow. That gig is sold out (check with venue for returns) but plenty of tickets left for Canterbury, Cheddar, Bath and Bridgend which are all coming up. Shrewsbury is closer to selling out. Book now and bring a friend or two and I reckon we'll all have a good time.

Shit, I'm back on the fucking road.

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