Warming Up

I drove my wife to the station as she had some appointments in London and though I’d treat myself to a sneaky lunchtime Pizza Express in Welwyn Garden City. I knew the place would be empty (as it always is) and I could do a little work, have a pizza and using my app get free coffee and water (and more if I wanted). It was pretty good. 

Later I would go into town to meet up with my wife and author Evie King (if that is her real name) for dinner before Evie’s book launch. My wife had selected the restaurant, not knowing where I’d been for lunch. It was another Pizza Express. Could I go double pizza?

Even I could not do that. I had chicken wings (and a free Diet Coke).

Take that Ian Pizzaexpress. You’ll never save Venice giving away all that free drink (wait, do you think he’s played me?).

The book launch for the excellent Ashes to Admin was a lot of fun. There were a few comedians there (as Evie used to be a stand-up) but otherwise it was gloriously un-showbiz, with lots of reassuringly nerdy looking people from the many jobs she’s done in the past turning up to support her. Evie is secretly one of the funniest women in the UK, though has an admirable lack of ambition to let people know that, so I am delighted she’s written this fabulous book to prove her talent (though there’s funny stuff in there, it’s not really a comedy book, but turns out she’s great at writing seriously about life and death and humanity). Read the book and you will discover what an individual and great human being she is. This was really reflected in the people in the room including the manager of the supermarket she worked in twenty years ago. 

Evie’s agent is someone I haven’t seen since the last millennium, the former actor, Jo Unwin who appeared in TMWRNJ. It was lovely to catch up with her, though always strange to see someone so familiar a couple of decades on - she remarked about us both being grey-haired, as if it it should be a surprise. But it’s a quarter of a century since we worked together. She was a brilliant comedy actor - her perfect reactions in this old Prudential advert were what made me keen to work with her- but she was a terrific script-editor for us too and so I am not surprised she has made such a success of her career in publishing. 

Evie herself was an early fan of Fist of Fun and used to write to us when we were on the telly. I thus feel weirdly proud that one of our followers has done so well and it’s gratifying that she’s not the only person from that small but dedicated group who has gone on to do something in the world of comedy and writing. We may not have made too big a splash for the general population, but quality is more important than quality!

Before that I'd been to see Phoebe in a rock concert - she's been doing a club at school where they play in little bands and she's on drums. It was a lot of fun to watch - the whole school were there as well as parents of the band members. Between sets pop music was played and the kids spontaneously joined in with some of the songs. When Flowers by Miley Cyrus came on the place erupted into song and everyone knew all the words. I thought about interrupting with my hilarious take down of the lyrics, but it would have spolied a beautiful moment.
Phoebe's band did Happy by Pharrell Williams and she kept the beat up nicely (with a couple of decent fills), though the most electric moment (aside from Flowers) was the final band who did Another Brick in the Wall. They were a bit older and did a decent job, but it was so rebellious to see a 10 year old singing about not needing no education in front of all his teachers and I thought he might inspire a revolution. I thought about informing him that he did need some education as in fact the line should be "We don't need *any* education". In fact by employing the double negative he was fully agreeing with my point. So maybe he was cleverer than I thought.