I was previewing at the Mill in Banbury tonight. I was sure I must have played the venue before as by now I have gigged in pretty much every pub room, arts centre and theatre in the country, but it didn't look familiar when I got there. Had I really not played Banbury before? Only one way to find out - I used the search function on Warming Up, which is very useful if looking for a fairly obscure word like "Banbury", less helpful if you search for "yoghurt" or "cock".
Banbury hasn't been mentioned since 17th January 2005 - which does not guarantee that I haven't played there since then as I don't always write about my gigs - and only has a total of 8 mentions in Warming Up. And none of these mentions are because I ever did a gig in the town - quite the opposite in fact. They're all there due to a
cancelled book reading in 2003 (I can't believe I didn't think to make a cock horse joke on stage tonight - what an idiot). Due to being shunned by the people of this town I declared them to be my enemy - along with Carlisle who had similarly eschewed my work at the time. It was a joke that ran for two years and which I then totally forgot about. That is how long I have been writing this blog.
But Banbury has learned its lesson and doesn't want to be a temporary object of fun in a blog read by 3000 people. Tonight some people showed up. Well over a hundred. I have broken Banbury and I lift the curse that I had forgotten that I had placed on it. Carlisle though is still cursed. To be honest even if I lifted my curse, it would still be pretty much cursed.
And it was apt perhaps that the Talking Cock show would mark my return to Banbury after they had so cruelly rejected the book version. They were a great crowd too - they really liked me talking about cocks. There was an unusual moment when someone seemed to drop or throw some small silver balls slightly explosively on to the stage. I thought they had dropped their bag of foil wrapped chocolates (though later found out that it was a bracelet that had broken), but made some joke about it being ejaculant and suggesting whoever was responsible was quite ill. Perhaps it was so long since that they had come that the pressure in their balls had turned their semen into pearls. As always it's unexpected events like this that are more likely to flummox a comedian than a rubbish heckle - something funnily enough that I've just written next week's Metro column about.
I wondered if it was some kind of Dick Dastardly Whacky Races attempt to bring me to my knees and mimed tripping over the tiny baubles. There are some things in comedy that you just can't prepare for. And it's fun to try and deal with them as they crop up.
