I love Warming Up. It's like a little community. Quite a few of you emailed with addresses and phone numbers for lastminute.com, but first in was Chris Harper who knows how to find out all about company details due to a recent attempt to get money out of a sadly defunt company recently. He found me the email address of Brent Hoberman, one of the founders of lastminute.com and I emailed him immediately drawing his attention to the entries about his company. Within ten minutes he had responded saying, "Will look into it now. Thanks for letting me know. Will get back to you asap, brent."
So hopefully the wheels of justice and the more important wheels of compensation should be grinding into action very soon. Hari Thukral has remained quiet this time though.
The British Library, it turns out, is packed with comedians. I come here to attempt to get away from the distractions of home and also the internet (the latter hope has been kicked into touch by the recent introduction of wi-fi. I am writing this very entry in the hallowed establishment). It seems that others have had the same idea.
I popped out to the ground floor cafe for a bottle of diet coke at around 4.30 and as I looked for a table I spotted the unmistakable figure of Arnold Brown, drinking a tea and making notes on a pad. For those of you not in the know, he is one of the godfathers of what was stupidly called "alternative comedy" and might possibly even have been on that bill with Jerry Sadowitz all those years ago. I certainly saw his act that year and greatly enjoyed it. I remember being astonished and honoured to spot him standing at the back of the room during either a rehearsal or recording of Fist of Fun. That's the comedy fan boy in me coming out again. But you should go and see him if you get the chance. We greeted one another. He was working on his show, which he's performing at the Glasgow comedy festival in March. "It's a case of just moving around the same six jokes I've always done," he told me. "No, I'm being self-deprecating. It's seven."
What a delight to bump into him.
I settled myself round the corner, playing backgammon on my computer whilst I had my drink and who should appear at the next table, but Robert "Rob" Newman, from off of Newman and Baddiel, which me and Stew had the idea of copying exactly in the hope of getting onto TV.
"What are you doing?" he asked me.
"I'm playing backgammon on the internet," I told him.
He chastised me for wasting the vast resource of the British Library with such prevarication. I argued that I was on a break, though didn't tell him that I'd spent most of the afternoon messing around on the internet. But then he can't talk. I saw that TV programme where he was writing his novel and spent most of the time moving his desk around instead of working.
He was there to research some anti-globalisation issue for his new show, but perhaps all comedians of a bygone era will end up here. Brown from the 1980s, Newman from the early 1990s, Herring from the mid-1990s. If I come back here long enough no doubt I will be bumping into the likes of Avid Merrion and Gareth from the Office from the early 2000s. But they won't be here yet. They are still basking in their current success, unaware of what fate has in store for them.
