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I thought touring with ONE person to miss was tough. It was a real wrench to leave my new family behind, but baby needs bum ointment and the people of the West Country need laughter so I drove off into the rain to do a gig in return for a big vat of bum ointment. My daughter was too fixated on drinking milk to even notice that I was going.
For the first four hours of the journey to Exeter I was wondering if I needed a tour manager at all. But I did start to feel a bit weary towards the end and obviously traversing the highways of Britain is a lot less hassle on a Sunday. The solitude of touring is fun for a while, but I suspect that I would get very weary if I didn’t have some help for most of it.
There were well over 300 people in at the Northcott Theatre, a little bit down on last year’s numbers, but then Dylan Moran was also in town today so I was still pleased. If you could guarantee me 300 people at every gig I did from now till I die I would take that deal. Though it’d probably be a trick wish and I would either die straight away or every gig I did would have 300 dead people in the audience. I am not falling for your wish scams Satan. Also there is only room for about 150 in the King’s Theatre Cheddar tomorrow and even you with all your diabolical powers can not change that.
My energy levels remained remarkably high, given we’d had a slightly tricky night with Phoebe and it was a really enjoyable one tonight. It took the audience a few minutes to come with me, but the slow build of this particular show is what I rather enjoy. I don’t try and warm them up with some quick gags or audience banter, I just more or less get straight into it.
It was nearly a different kind of start though. Since I have had my hair cut, the Fringe is a bit floppy and I need to put a bit of product in to help keep it out of my eyes. I have been using something which is laughably and pretentiously called souffle. It’s a bit more sophisticated than mousse. Why do hairdressers want us to put food in our hair at all? It’s a gloopy white substance and as I applied some with a couple of minutes to go till stage time, I dropped a globule. It had gone on my tie, but luckily it wiped off quite easily. It was only when I was in the bathroom and happened to glance in the mirror that I saw that most of the globule had deposited itself in rather a suspicious splodge on my jacket. If I had walked out like that then I am sure the crowd would have spotted it, not all at once, but bit by bit and it would have been a distraction. I’d wonder what they were sniggering at and would never be able to guess, they’d be trying to work out how it had got there and whether it was mine or a remnant of some pre-show backstage bukkake session. It would sort of be the reverse of “There’s Something About Mary” where people thought that hair gel was sperm. And I would never have been able to convince them otherwise. But luckily I dodged that bullet.
I am not an act who likes to put in loads of local references and jokes into a show - Ken Dodd once said that wherever you go you can make a joke about the one way system or the roundabouts and the audience will always laugh - but it’s nice to slip in the occasional thing. I didn’t have a place in this show, but in the last couple of days a space has developed, where I parody the audience for not being impressed enough about something I said and then imagine them showing off about some local titbit, which ideally will be true, but not that impressive. Yesterday in Aylesbury I said, “It takes more that that to impress us, the trials of the Great Train Robbers was held in Aylesbury” (a fact I had picked up the last time I was here when I happened to be listening to a radio documentary about the crime) and today I had googled “Exeter claims to fame” and one of the top hits was about the fact that the town had been chosen above Plymouth for a new IKEA store. Which again fell into my lap, but was the perfect thing to use. That they wouldn’t be impressed by me because they will soon have an IKEA, especially given that Plymouth won’t. It’s obscure enough to be a surprise to hear about from a stranger, but common knowledge enough in the town to be universal. The Dave Manager routine is also extending as I make spurious claims about its point being to teach us never to assume and my fury that the audience don’t give me the benefit of the doubt about ironic jokes that will surely turn around later (especially after I’ve just done one) is also being added to each night. It makes it lots of fun for me and I enjoy refining, perfecting and even sometimes breaking a perfectly good routine.
I seemed to meet nearly everyone in the audience afterwards and I have to say I think I might have the nicest audience members of any comedian. There’s pretty much a total absence of dicks, which is one of the perks of not being on TV and thus getting loads of people who only half know you or who think that a TV credit in itself will mean that they like you. Other comics who get to play to my audiences (at previews or whatever) say the same thing. You aren’t a pushover, but you get the better stuff in sets and are happy to laugh and enjoy yourself, because you’re not paralysed by the cynical fear of looking uncool. So thanks for being great. I am massively enjoying the shows at the moment.
