I am enjoying playing the Richard Herrin character in the live podcasts, but surprised by how many people are coming along to this small room who don't seem to have listened to the podcast before. It is dangerous putting Herrin in front of actual people. He is used to raging in his attic with only Collings for company, but when he gets to see actually people he is bound to get over excited. The schtick with this character is that he can't resist saying the worst possible thing at the worst possible time and it's better when the audience are complicit in that and know that they don't have to take him too seriously. And there's a real danger to it - only of hurt feelings or mild offence - but I don't know where he's going to go next.
On the last couple of shows the real Richard Herring (me) has felt a bit embarrassed about how far he has gone, but only because I wouldn't want anyone to go away feeling anything but entertained and maybe exhilarated from being the centre of attention and I wasn't sure that was necessarily the case, but today the balance was right. I was less tired and grumpy and Andrew was feeling better and Herrin promised to be nice to everyone. He repeatedly broke that promise, but in a charming way (I hope) gradually testing the boundaries that he could stomp on as he went and only causing a slight stir when he suggested that a nice woman with a broken knee cap might be a prostitute. Her husband came under more flak though, but was, as any fan who understands what's going on should be, delighted to have his physical appearance mocked by a man who could hardly claim to be an Adonis himself.
There is a lot more going on here than a hairy, fat man being offensive to people, even if sometimes in this entirely improvised hour he actually is. It is wonderful fun to overstep the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, but the character is also ludicrously sensitive and paranoid. I am giving voice to those parts of ourselves (well at least myself) that we usually repress through politeness or fear that we will show a part of ourselves that we don't want people to know about. Much of it is not true (as Andrew points out in real life we are both quite pathetically vanilla in our tastes and far from going out into the night asking people to wee on me I am spending most of my downtime sitting in the lounge drinking herbal tea and stuffing envelopes with programmes) or only very vaguely based on true feelings, so it amuses me when I sometimes get concerned emails.
Eleven hour long podcasts (including AIOTM) in twelve days is a pretty impressive turnover, especially given we've both had plenty of other stuff on our plates. I am very pleased with the hit rate we have achieved in this marathon task. Today's podcast was one of the better ones I think.
Judge for yourselves.
I had already written a magazine article and appeared on a BBC Scotland chat show before the podcast and then it was home afterwards to try and sort out the remaining programmes for the kind and arrogant fools who gave money to get their name in. There were two errors in the list and I have to apologise to Dave Owen who somehow became Dave Hughes in the programme and Sam Howorth who became Sam Howarth (but had donated twice so got his/her name right on one occasion). Many of you have not sent me your address as requested. I have managed to email many of you after detective work of either searching through previous emails or looking through the justgiving admin page for email addresses. But the following have no details anywhere, so please email me at herring1967@googlemail.com and send your address. The programmes are already in envelopes and especially dedicated to you and who knows might be worth something some day. I have no details at all for Derek Keilloh, Dale Wilks, Lulu dot com, Ben Hughes or Paul Sissons.
Friday nights are usually tough for the solo shows, with audiences that are often cold and not as responsive as usual, but tonight's were great and probably the sharpest crowd of the run. And I got the pacing and rhythm and general performance right tonight. This is an incredibly difficult and demanding show to get right and I have to really work and be focused to not drop the ball in places. As a performer you can sense when you're losing pockets of the audience, but tonight it felt like a room full of people who were engaged and getting it. I don't have time to wait for anyone to catch up because of the tight time constraints of the Fringe and some days I know that if I left more gaps I would get bigger laughs (and I'll be able to do that on tour) but tonight there was a sharpness to both the performance and the response. It was a joy to perform. I hope to watch too.
And sitting in the front row was a familiar face. Nathalie Brandon from TMWRNJ and Excavating Rita was beaming up at me. I haven't seen her for six years and looking at her it was hard to believe that it was 13 years since we'd done that play and 11 since the TV show ended. Fans of the easy on the eye Trevor and Nathalie will be glad to know that she has scarcely changed a bit, despite being a mum to a young boy now. She has apparently forgiven me for making her dress up as (amongst other things) a genetically modified potato. Though from the Twitter feed after I mentioned her it might seem that more of you remember the week she wore bondage gear, for some reason.
We had a quick catch up, but I was tired out and headed home to get the rest of the programme duties out of the way. I have now managed 40 days and nights without alcohol. If I can manage another day I will have proven myself better at resisting temptation than Jesus. He's a lightweight. And neatly enough if I don't drink during the Fringe (which seems to be very likely now - I can't see me cracking just yet) then that will mark 50 days off the booze. I think I will push onwards after that though. I am enjoying the weight loss and the clear mind and being at the end of Week 2 of the Fringe and having the energy to do my shows properly.
I had been overwhelmed by all the things I had to get done this August, but now just two podcasts away from finishing Collings and Herrin and AIOTM in the can and my programmes all in envelopes if not all yet addressed and posted I have the luxury of a whole week to sort out the first episode of the Radio 4 show (once I've got that
book reading out of the way) and to concentrate on getting Christ on a Bike as good as possible. This suddenly seems manageable. Though I might not get to see any more than the two shows that I have got to this year. It certainly is a bit of a different paced Fringe, but one that I am nonetheless enjoying (you know, most of the time).
