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There aren't many of them, but my fans are the best people in the world. It's quality over quantity for sure and that really pisses me off. I'd much rather have 10,000 people paying £50+ each to repeatedly shout Garlic Bread at me for two hours than 35 people paying £17.50 to shout RHLSTP at me, politely and only at points that I instruct them.
This is the hand I've been dealt though. Peter Kay and his ilk never have to work again, so they make the choice about carrying on. I have no choice. Just enough of you like me to make this thing financially viable. But you've kept me going so long that I have no other skill to fall back on. So I am in a beautiful prison where i have to keep working til the blessed relief of death. If I can manage it in the next nine years my life assurance pays out and my family can survive.
The more niche stuff I do has an even smaller audience - and when you distill you lot down to the super fans it turns out that the most extreme of you are weird, virginal perverts who even people who work in IT think are nerds. I must be partly to blame for this, but I don't mind indulging you as you like the things that I consider to be my finest work. The things that make me no money at all are ironically the things that I think are the best and Twitch of Fun is my favourite of these. It may have a very small and dedicated band of followers and the world at large might not recognise the genius of what I am doing and even think that it's all just a former TV "star" having lost his mind (which maybe it is), but it doesn't matter. Quality over quantity.
Sometimes fame and money aren't the best reward for your work. Sometimes a man in York deciding to take it upon himself to make you beautiful puppets that you usually haven't asked him for and send them to you in the post, is all the reward you need. Does Peter Kay get people making him garlic bread and sending it to him in the post? Almost certainly, but he fucking hates it. Prince Andrew, Little Dick (Herring) and Right Bollock are reward enough for any man. All made by the benign genius of a seemingly normal and pleasant man, Richard Ison.
The other day he emailed me asking for my new address as he had something to send me. I was filled with excitement and fear. Perhaps Richard Ison is a slow burning stalker who will one day murder me and my family, but if so, it's worth it. He has my address. You could get it too if you had any actual talent.
Today a box arrived in the post. It was small. Too small for a puppet surely. What could be in it? Was it even from Richard?
I opened it up to discover a box which contained a Solero. Had some mad fan found my address and was taunting me by sending me a frozen treat in the post, one that would surely have melted, but it would make the point. After a blog about getting soaked whilst writing my blog someone anonymously sent me a pair of waterproof trousers to my home address. They only knew that I was at number 17 or 19 but that was enough to get it to me and I have to say it was one of the creepiest things that's happened to me. It was someone I didn't know telling me they knew (within one door) where I lived. Perhaps they meant nothing by it. Perhaps they thought it was a bit of fun. But it's not nice to have an unidentified stranger sending you stuff to your home.
Someone else (maybe the same person) emailed me to let me know that they had worked out where I lived based on the bust of Hercules that I mentioned in my Hercules show. I'd actually been careful to check that the internet didn't readily reveal the location of Hercules Terrace, but this person had gone in quite deep and found a picture of the bust (in the days before reverse image searches were very easy) and was just getting in touch to let me know that people could find out where I lived. But you know, only if they went in quite deep. And in any case it was too late to do anything about it. Maybe again this person was just being nice, but to me it felt like a power play - I know where you live. There's just an edge of threat to it.
As someone who fairly regularly puts their location up online by admitting that I will be at specific theatres at specific times, I am not very hard to track down in the event that you want to do me harm. That's not an invitation. Just a fact.
Anyway I was surprised when I picked the Solero up and it was not a bag of mushy melted ice cream, but still hard. How was it still frozen? It took me longer than it should have done to realise it was not actually a Solero, but the impressive work of Mr Ison. Even as I write this with the puppet by my side I feel concerned that it's directly above the heater under my desk.
It's a fine piece of work and I was able to utilise it straight away in another update on my own No Solero journey. I let the puppets choose their own voice, but I think Ms Solero (she is certainly a woman, but also certainly a Ms too) may change her voice on the next appearance, to be something closer to the Cadbury's bunny. She's no nonsense and though I am seduced by her, she is very much not interested in me in that way. This could be the new Moonlighting.
Anyway here's the appeal and thanks again to Richard Ison for almost certainly not being a murderer and if he is one, also being a very good prop maker.
Clip here
We've got John Kearns on 3rd March.
Loads of tickets left (why can't I be Peter Kay?) and it's bound to be a good one. So support us if you can. Or just send me a puppet you've made (please don't do this - yours will be shit and I'll have to put in the bin, like I did with those waterproof trousers)
