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I was doing RHLSTP at Leicester Comedy Festival today - annoyingly finding myself scheduled up against Stephen Fry being interviewed in the big theatre, though still managing to get a decent 170 in. I saw Matt Winning posting that he was up against Stephen Fry AND me and that we'd taken all his nerds. It's all relative.
I was interviewing the fantastic Fatiha El-Ghorri who was with me on the secret project that I did in November and with whom I bonded very strongly. We are quite different in many ways, she's religious and working class and I am atheist and middle class, but we really helped each other through both the tough TV show and stuff in our personal lives and I feel very lucky to have got so close to this remarkable comedian. She's very tough on the outside and very soft on the inside, though I am not sure her comedy would work if you didn't at least suspect that.
Her BBC short film Donkey is well worth a look.I can't believe that they are still debating whether this gets a series.
I was also going to be talking to the remarkable Rob Auton. He has been producing original and thought provoking work for a decade and a half now - a dozen stand up shows, a daily podcast that ran into about 700 episodes and books of poetry and comedy. A straw poll of the audience suggested nobody was aware of his work, but if RHLSTP teaches me anything it is that there are a huge amount of very talented people, creating beautiful work that most people will have never seen. Like me and Rich and Ally's Craven Newsround. Arguably some of it even better than that.
Some great jokes, some lovely bits of philosophy and some cool filmed inserts illustrating some of the stand up.
It got me thinking again about that phrase "That's an hour of my life I'm not getting back", because it was about time, not because it was bad (though you don't get the hour back if it's good either). How much do people who say that value an hour? Are they usually filling it with something more worthy than watching a film or reading a book or whatever?
I worked out that I had lived for over 510,000 hours so far. Complaining about a wasted hour is like someone with half a million pounds in the bank spending a pound on something and being annoyed that it had reduced their mini fortune. I reckon if you have £510,000 then you can risk paying a pound for something that you end up not liking. You learn more and save more in the long run by trying something out and thinking you don't care for it.
Pounds and hours are different in the sense that when you have accrued a lot of hours you don't have many left and so maybe you need to get a bit more discerning. But still, take a fucking chance with an hour. When I think of all the hours that I did fuck all and that I am never getting back..... To quote Ron Auton "Outside is having an open day tomorrow", so don't miss out.
Anyway, had a blast with my afternoon gig and both guests came up with some revelations, as well as getting big laughs. It shouldn't be too long before these podcasts are up. And both comics have tours on this year and are well worth catching.
