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I drank a lot yesterday and was up early with my daughter (though my wife had done the really early shift) and I thought that it might be a difficult day. I had an awful lot to do. I had to complete the last 50 or so Hermione hands and draw another 8 or so T shirts and then Chris Evans was coming round. No not the one from Top Gear. No, not Captain America. The one from go faster stripe. I should have made that clear. He was going to bag up all the prizes and take them to Shepherd's Bush Post Office. He'd come all the way from Wales just to do this. I think we were regretting our kickstarter reward generosity.Though more generous with our time than the junk we were sending out. But it was also kind of cool that we'd done something so stupid for the people who'd been kind enough to support us.
I also had a newspaper interview and photo shoot to do in my back garden in the afternoon, whilst desperately trying to read Bridget Christie's extremely entertaining book and do some research for tonight's RHLSTP.
But somehow my hangover didn't kick in and I didn't even feel that tired. Being stupidly busy seems to suit me. Which is lucky. Because that's what I am going to be for the next two months.
We took four bags of T-shirts to the Post Office, where they now seem to have an early warning Richard Herring system. After five minutes queuing the manager came out to deal with our stuff personally. I feel a bit guilty for being a massive pain in their backsides as the staff are unfailingly polite and doing a great job. I left Chris to post out the T shirts - you can see the designs here.
And in spite of the disjointed day the podcasts went well. I have loved Bridget's stuff for years, but she is just something else at the moment, effortlessly funny, but fiercely intelligent and passionate about women's rights and the stupidity of sexism. She's run rings round me before with my cheeky attempts to be a dick as a joke, but tonight I really loved the way that she told the story of her disastrous attempts to work on a farm and appeared to be bamboozled and hurt that people were laughing, chastising them, telling them it wasn't funny and thus making them laugh even more. It was a masterclass in owning your on stage character. It's been so interesting to watch her develop as a comedian over the last decade. I loved her quirky early stuff (and she hasn't lost the playfulness), but she might be the funniest person in the country now. I'm just sorry that you'll have to wait until September for this one.
And relative newcomer Brett Goldstein, although a little cagey lest he said the wrong thing, relaxed into it all and was great value and we ended up saying some terrible things. Which is always good. Somehow I wasn't as tired in the second interview as I was last week. It's a weirdly demanding job, especially with a sore head and after a non-stop day, but it's also so enjoyable to do. I love the fact that it's a total leap in the dark. I have a few questions prepared, but as often as not I can't read my own hand-writing and forget all about them. It's a marathon for the audience too and though they all insist on keeping me as their own personal secret and never invite anyone else along with them, they are still one of the best audiences going. Come down some time to watch if you can. And don't forget I am doing all 12 of my shows at the Leicester Square Theatre in August and September. It's going to really hurt if I do all this work and hardly anyone sees it. But if a man learns all 12 of his one-man shows in a forest and only 100 people come to see them, does that make him a failure? And why is he learning his shows in a forest?
