7389/19909
Another day feeling like I’m back on tour, enjoying the joyous freedom of the drive to the venue, doing some extremely fun RHLSTPs and then enduring the Hellish never-ending drive home, exhausted, remembering why touring is hard. And that’s after just one gig. Have I got a full tour in me any more? I guess I wouldn’t do the driving if I did one, but Leicester isn’t that far away, until you have to come back home.
Really lovely chats (on stage and off) with two of my favourite guests, John Kearns (fourth appearance but has still never done one at the Leicester Square Theatre) and Nish Kumar (fourth appearance, though once he had to pretend to be Michael Sheen).
Last time I interviewed Nish I was holding on to a little secret, having just found out a week or so earlier that there was something up with my bollock. I didn’t confide in Nish (though did mention it to Lou Sanders, the other guest, and a member of the Clapham Grand crew who accidentally interrupted that conversation and was thus in the first ten people to know about my possible cancer). Nish was dealing with some stuff of his own at that point too, so it was interesting to talk openly about it two years on. He’s a fantastic man and fiery comedian who gets a lot of shit for… I’m going to say… his political comedy. Though I have seen other political comedians who don’t make people so angry, so maybe it’s something else.
And I just love talking to John Kearns, one of our greatest comic minds, who still doesn’t mind me treating him like I think he’s useless. Out of everyone I’ve talked to in the eleven years of this podcast, it is him that I think I have the greatest rapport with. Certainly in terms of riffing weird and fun comedy. We had some fun talking about Pumping Iron today and came up with a great new game show, Piggy in the Middle and whether it’s possible to stop a watch. I am delighted that Taskmaster has brought him a bigger live audience. If anything it’s shrunk my audience (though we were sold out today - and most of the tickets went before the guests were announced).
It was nice to do afternoon gigs, but I still didn’t get home til 9pm. I ate a very disappointing Macdonalds on the way home. I hardly ever eat fast food nowadays, so it’s a real shame if it turns out to be a crap one, where the fries have been sitting out a bit too long and everything feels wilted. But that Cadbury’s Creme egg the other night not just disturbed a night’s sleep but has sent me back into eating chocolate and junk food and I need to pull myself out of this spiral. It’s so hard when you’re tired, but full of adrenaline and your old bones are aching. Hopefully I can turn myself around again, but I might do a full 360.
