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Not only did I have to prepare for two podcasts, travel to Birmingham, do two podcasts and then come home again (thankfully Bollings was driving) but this morning I had to pop into hospital for my annual scan to check that I haven't got any more cancers inside me. I am not complaining. I am not only lucky to seemingly have survived my scare, but to get these regular check ups so I'll get early warning of the next time my own body tries to kill me.
I'd been reading about Sir Chris Hoy's cancer, which just shows what a fucked up lottery of a piss take this horrible disease is. Little tubby Herring gets a bite out of his bollocks and three years work and healthy superman Chris Hoy is gifted terminal cancer.
I don't know Chris, but we've followed each other on Twitter for a while and I knew he was a fan of my stuff (as I am of his arguably even more impressive haul of gold medals). I'd hoped to interview him for RHLSTP in Edinburgh last year, but he'd privately confided in me about his cancer (though it sounded hopeful back then, or at least he made it sound like it was). He hadn't told many people and I think felt able to talk to me about it because of my own experience and I appreciated why that would be the case and kept his confidence. It's annoying that somebody else who knew did not do the same. I worried that he might think it was me who'd blabbed, but I didn't even tell Catie.
Chris will be as inspirational with this as he has been in his sporting career. Amazing resilience and calm, especially given his family is also having to cope with his wife being diagnosed with MS.
So yes, I feel like the luckiest boy in the world to have just had testicular cancer.
Cancer can 100% fuck off though. I don't care who knows that that's how I feel about it.
And though I'd been told to allow 90 minutes for my scan, I arrived early and was seen almost straight away and was almost out of there before my actual appointment time. I didn't feel like I'd pissed myself when the iodine got into my blood stream, but I did sense some warmth in my throat. I'll find out what delights my body has managed to grow in the last 12 months. It's already given me a bonus cysty bollock - I am hoping it might have fashioned me a replacement penis this time. The one I've got is knackered.
Great to be back at the Birmingham Town Hall. It was a more modest crowd than I've had at previous podcast records here, but still enough to have fun and my guests Ruth Husko and Josh Pugh were both great. Particularly Ruth given how little stage experience she's had. She's been reliably hilarious on Twitter over the last 3 years as @dank_ackroyd and I hoped the occasion wouldn't overwhelm her (as it has some much more seasoned performers), but she's an absolute natural. She's back to her proper job tomorrow, but I was trying to persuade her to take the leap into full time comedy writing and performance. Understandably she's a little reticent, but she's sharp, quick-witted, rude, attractive, regional! and funny and I think she could do very well.
She was a big comedy fan as a kid and used to write to us when she was 10 and asked Stewart to marry her. Luckily for her she had chosen to write to the only two men in showbiz who would not be interested in taking up that offer and Stewart respectfully turned her down. But I am oddly proud that of the limited fans we had in the 90s, there's such a high hit rate of talented comedians. Ruth reminds me of Christina Martin who is also for me, one of the funniest people in the country (check out Ashes to Admin by her alter ego Evie King) and also used to write to us regularly in the Lee and Herring days. My pride is avuncular and thankfully not creepy avuncular!
I am a terrible and immoral man, but by the low bar set by my showbiz contemporaries I am basically a saint. Though the Church has a pretty low bar too to be fair.
Josh Pugh has also blown up thanks to his social media videos, but he's also a terrific stand up and it was great to meet him properly and thoroughly
enjoyed his free special too, recorded in this same room.
It was another knackering day and I got home after midnight and didn't get to bed for another hour, but worth the trip. Doing it all again in London on Tuesday.
Come along if you can. 
