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I never thought I'd get so old that April Fool's Day didn't excite me. But today, tired out and looking at Twitter, it just made me a bit confused and unamused. It's got quite hard to pick reality from comedy. The Wendi Deng and Putin story, that had to be an April Fool's right? And I would assume the Donald Trump stuff was too, but if so they'd done a long lead up to that that I think disqualifies it.
I had a bit of a restless night sleeping next to Phoebe's cot, checking she was still alive, in order to vindicate our decision to bring her home without being checked by a doctor. So I was glad to see she was still alive in the morning or I would have felt like a right dilbert. Even though Catie rang the GP as soon as lines were open, she couldn't get through and by the time that she was connected after eight minutes of trying all today's emergency appointments were gone. The people of Shepherd's Bush are clearly pretty ill at the moment.
But our over stretched NHS will stretch even further and they arranged for a doctor to ring us and then for another to see Phoebe in her lunch break. Just amazing dedication. And luckily it turns out that Phoebe only has a minor virus that has inflamed her throat, so going home last night rather than keeping her awake for another two hours was luckily the right call.
Annoyingly having nearly got back to a place of feeling fit and half-rested I was in a bit of a blur for the rest of the day and not sure how I would cope on stage in Swindon. I spent the drive to the gig getting a bit over excited and sending out joke tweets to celebrities to try and encourage along the AIOTM kickstarter. It's still too close to call, but just about moving along at the £5000 a day that we require. And I think there should be a big boost on the last day or so if we haven't made it. I set this a bit higher than I thought we could realistically get (though a bit lower than what we actually need to make the series - the monthly badge subscribers are helping to make up the shortfall) and so I am utterly amazed and flattered that the support for this project is as strong as it is. I can't quite get my head round it really, but it's pretty amazing that three thousand people giving the average donation of £33 each would do it (well it would leave us £1000 short, but you know what I mean). I'd prefer it if it was all 50,000 AIOTM listeners giving £2 each for all that they've already had, but obviously that's not going to happen. But as it is the potential success of this ambitious push could have a revolutionary impact on the way that comedy is made and comedians can get their stuff out there. Perhaps I am unusual in that I was prepared to work for free for 8 years to build up the necessary good will - and just a reminder that I won't be taking any of this £100,000 for myself - I am essentially a shop that gives my wares away for free and then asks if the people who've been helping themselves for a while and can afford to, to give me a bit of money to restock so I can give more stuff away for free. And I can still make some money because the shop acts an advertisement for my other business enterprises.
But I am glad that people are starting to understand that small donations can help create more of the stuff they like and that it only needs a relatively tiny amount of people to do it. It's utterly mind-blowing. Win or lose this has been an amazing experience. So thanks for this amazing show of support. I promise I will give you good value for money.
Annoyingly hardly any of the celebrities got back to me. You'd think Lord Sugar would have RTed me after all I do for him. And Donald Trump didn't even respond to my offer of renaming the Cumpkin a Trumpkin. Rude man.
Anyway, back to Swindon Arts, a venue I played a lot in the early days of my solo shows, but which I've only been to once more recently. Weirdly as I told the joke about having a bath with my dad to advertise the Talking Cock DVD I had a flashback to 2002 or 3 when I'd done that exact same joke in this very venue with my dad sitting in the audience. It had been a rare moment of on stage embarrassment, though since then I have said much worse things in front of my parents (on stage and off) without mortification. It wasn't quite sold out tonight, but I'd done well and better than last time. And in spite of no sleep it was a pretty good showing in front of an audience who really seemed to get it.
Got home before midnight, but my wife has gone down with the same virus as my daughter (and there was no way I was taking her to the hospital to wait three hours to not get seen. I sat downstairs, drank a beer and watched a TOTP from 1981. I enjoyed being taken back to my teenage years and seeing Spandau and Depeche Mode and wondering at how uncool they actually were. Then Bill Wyman was on singing Je Suis Un Rock Star. Given TOTP2's purge of all the dodgy DJs it seemed odd to see him on the show, especially with him singing a line about his girlfriend being his daughter and making a Sid James face. I am not sure about censoring out stuff at all, but there seems little consistency, both on Top of the Pops and in the legal system. It's a strange old world.
