Derby Assembly Rooms gets a sandwich rating of -2. This was even worse than the Leeds Varieties debacle. We'd arrived late, tired and frustrated after being stuck in a traffic jam for an hour and even though I knew the venue was not providing food it didn't make their strange decision any more palatable.
It's an odd decision to say you're not going to have food for the act. It doesn't cost much to buy a sandwich and that pound or two buys the venue both good will and time. I had to dash off into Derby to try and find something to eat myself, when I should have been preparing for the show. Sure I could have brought some food with me, I suppose, as I had been informed, but I hadn't expected to be late. And it would have been nice not to have had this extra inconvenience.
This was made worse because as one of the front of house staff led me to the front door to point me in the vague direction of Derby's post 6pm food outlets I checked that a couple of friends were on the guest list.
"Yes, they're on," the woman told me, "And I think that table of sandwiches are for them."
This couldn't be right. I didn't get sandwiches, but someone was making some for Brian Bancroft. I guessed this probably wasn't the case, but they clearly had sandwich making facilities on the premises and how hard would it have been to have pushed a few of these sarnies in the direction of my expanding gut?
As I walked through a dark and seemingly deserted Derby town centre (only some susupicious looking hoodlums hanging in doorways for company - it was only 6.45) I felt a bit depressed. My choice of food seemed to be either pizza, KFC or Macdonalds. I didn't have time to wait for a pizza and so it seemed like I was going to have to break the vow I made after seeing "Supersize Me" and go for one of the unhealthy fast food outlets. I decided Macdonalds was somehow healthier (and at least less greasy) than fried chicken and mournfully ordered a big mac each for me and Dave Taylor (thank God Streeting wasn't here. I'd have been traipsing ths streets for hours looking for a vegetarian sausage). I felt sick just ordering the food and it didn't help that the burger had obviously been sitting there for hours as it was curling at the edges. Derby is a ghost town and ghosts don't eat burgers. They are too cross with the burgers for having turned them into ghosts in the first place.
I felt almost as uneasy here as I had on that weekend night in Aldershot, which didn't bode will for the gig. But in fact it was probably one of the best received performances of the show that I have done with over 120 people in. I really enjoyed it, despite the fact that I was burping up horrible little bits of burger for the first half an hour. This was not good pre gig food.
When I mentioned my determination to complete my mission to steal Professor Greer's bra a woman in the audience piped up to say that Germaine was at the theatre on Sunday. I said that I wasn't so desperate to succeed that I was prepared to come back to Derby. The people laughed good naturedly, in the way that people who are happy to acknowledge the crapness of their town mostly do. I congratulated them on their choice of pre-show restaurants.
The truth is I liked the people and would be happy to come back any time they'll have me.
But you know, just buy me a sandwich next time.
