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An early morning trip into the capital city to talk to Chris Moyles about Celebrity Pottery Throwdown which starts on Channel 4 on Sunday (don't miss it if you want to see how good I am at making pots). Moyles has a couple of new members of his posse (they go out on horseback if any crime is committed during broadcast hours) who I hadn't met before. We had been shown up to the Green Room by a nice lady who got me some water and then I went to meet the team. I said hello to new Posse member (who has already captured three horse rustlers) Polly and said "Nice to meet you." She made an odd sound and seemed speechless. I may be 59 but women still crumble in my presence.
Everyone commented on it, so Polly was forced to reveal that the reason she didn't know what to say was because it was her who had welcomed me and given me water, so I wasn't, in fact, meeting her in the studio.
Look, I was a bit tired and I hadn't really expected one of the posse to also have the job of bringing in the guests, but it was still an embarrassing faux pas, the kind of thing an arsehole who doesn't pay attention to anyone unless they think they are important would do. The only slight point in my favour is that I felt terrible about this for the rest of the day. A real arsehole wouldn't give a fuck. These little bits of social embarrassment hang around me like a pungent fart of shame.
Good on Polly for not just letting me get away with it. I did apologise and I don't think she really minded. Only I was mortified.
I always have fun on the Chris Moyles show and he's great at what he does and like Steve Wright who was one of the great DJs when it came to interviews, he knows his stuff.
Although I thought I was there to talk about pottery we ended up mainly talking about the demise of RHLSTP and then how much Chris had enjoyed watching the Craven Newsround. It was strange to be talking about this underground phenomenon on a mainstream breakfast show. I don't know if I want people to know about Newsround and I know you lot want to keep it to yourself. But it was nice to have it so enthusiastically.
There was a couple of minutes to mention pottery at the end. I am not sure my pottery overlords will be happy that we talked more about a speaking Solero.
Then I was straight home as I needed to go to the Lister hospital, not to have people extract bone marrow fluid or pump me full of weird chemicals or slice off my testicle, but get involved with a charity challenge (hey, why am I helping these people? They're monsters).
They were doing a spinathon cycle event to raise money to build a state of the art children's unit at the Lister. I had to cycle for 30 minutes, which I thought was well within my capabilities, though I am not sure the organisers were so confident. I had to look at various forms acknowledging the risk of death. At least I was in the right place if my heart decided to attack me.
As it turned out, although I am an overweight old man, I am surprisingly fit and the cycling bit was pimpsy. I ran a half marathon for these clowns five years ago.
I was home by lunchtime, but didn't manage more than catching up on my blogs and producing
a mammoth edition of Newsround (it's amazing what you can cram into 5 minutes). I suffered for my art and now it's your turn. I wonder what anyone who'd been tempted over by Chris Moyles made of this.
