Warming Up

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My best wishes to anyone attempting No Solero February this year. I gave it a go, but ended up eating a Solero at 12.30pm on the 1st. Still an impressive achievement to last that long and I hope all the people who promised to sponsor me for £1 an hour will honour that and donate £12.50 here. https://www.justgiving.com/page/nolero

Thanks to BeardedIan who has already done so.

Into London again today to record some podcasts. Whilst on the tube to Oxford Circus I got an email saying one of my guests couldn't make it as they were ill. I am surprised how little this has happened in the history of the podcast. It was about 11am and my first interview was at midday. Luckily the cancelled interview was the last one, giving me a faint hope of finding a replacement guest and not wasting the £100+ it had cost to hire the studio for that hour.

The additional problem was, of course, that I'd have little or no time to research the guest so it'd have to be someone I knew pretty well (or I could have fun with knowing nothing - it's not like the show looks as researched as it actually is when I do it).

Sadly it was not to be. I sent out a few requests but no one I checked could make it into the centre of London on 3 hours notice, so I got to have an early bath. I did manage two lovely interviews with Ian Leslie (about his excellent Beatles book) and then a studio RHLSTP with Adam Pearson, who I met last year at the Scope awards. What a great man he is. I didn't realise until recently that he is also an identical twin, who also has neurofibromatosis though it hasn't affected his face (though has in other ways). There's a brilliant short film about them here.

Adam is also a brilliant actor with some very big roles already under his belt and more to come. I love his understated performance (including I think the only laugh out loud moment in this dark and weird, but excellent film) in Under the Skin.

He is a wise, patient, very funny and (he claims) flawed man and it was an absolute delight to spend an hour with him. He even brought fancy biscuits and cakes! What a guy.

I would have loved to do this one with an audience, as Adam is great in front of a crowd, but I do really like the intimacy of doing these studio chats. Though I felt a bit short-changed only doing two!

And exciting news (for me). I am going to be playing Frank In Educating Rita at the Queen Mother Theatre in Hitchin 18th-24th April. It's selling very fast (and it's in a small studio space) so BOOK NOW if you want to come. We're looking at adding at least one more performance.

It's a 7 minute walk from Hitchin train station which is only about 25 minutes from Finsbury Park so it's very reachable from London (and other places)

Due to calendar based incompetence, I realised yesterday evening that the final planned date was actually the date of my niece's wedding. I had a sleepless night thinking I'd screwed everything up for everyone as a lot of tickets had been sold and maybe they'd have to recast, but we're moving that date to the previous Saturday, so I could sleep OK tonight. I really hate making mistakes like that! Thankfully it's all worked out OK.

It's been a while since I've been in a theatre play so will be very nice to return to the stage. And I am surely the first actor to be in both Educating Rita and Excavating Rita. I probably won't get my cock out in this one though. Not unless the role demands it.