7583/20522
Back on the road for the first proper tour since the beforetimes. I had to think hard about all the things I'd need to take with me and still forgot loads. My tour manager is the ultra-reliable Bex who did the Oh Frig I'm 50 tour. We were winding that up just as we were moving into this house.
It was a big gig to start the tour with over 700 people in the bankrupt town hall. I had searched around for something healthy to eat before the show, but not had much luck and my chicken katzu salad ruined my run of 80+ on the Zoe app. A man with a horse's head on was playing a keyboard outside the venue. It was pretty hot out there even with a regular human head on, so I hope he made it through.
My guests were both top notch, brilliant human beings and great ambassadors for this city: Adil Ray and Joe Lycett. I haven't met Adil before, but he has the kind of CV that if someone claimed to have you'd assume they were lying, refusing to be pigeon-holed. I don't think there's anyone else who would write and star in a sitcom, present GMB, do a game show and act with Judi Dench in the same ten-year period and he was a radio presenter and cricketer as well.
And Joe Lycett continues to be a national treasure and fantastic comedian. I was one of the few people he'd told the truth about with his money-shredding stunt (because he was fearful that I'd wheedle the truth out of him if he didn't tell me beforehand), so it was great to catch up on the highs and lows of how that turned out.
As with last night it was just a real buzz to be back on stage and making stuff up and making people laugh. I know I've continued doing RHLSTP despite stand up being on the back burner, but it's undoubtedly thrilling to be taking it around the country and the audience was very appreciative. Three of the top four selling RHLSTPs ever have been in this city (one was cancelled due to Covid, but it still sold out before we'd even announced the guest) and it's not much more difficult to get to for me than it is to get to London, so I hope we'll do more here. Though not for a while as we'll have enough podcasts to keep us going to 2025 by the end of this tour.
I was spent by the end of it. The days of going out after the shows and getting drunk are long gone, but even though I had a couple of pals in, I had to think about doing all this again tomorrow night in LIverpool and was straight back to the Premier Inn. A couple of decades ago this would have made me feel sad and alone, but the days when my shows were a mild inconvenience that got in the way of me socialising (or more often than not sitting in the hotel bar alone) are long gone.
