A positive start to the new year, with my first Christ on a Bike gig being half full (to look at it optimistically), though things are looking quiet until Saturday, so if you're kicking around with nothing to do this week, then you know where I am. Christmas was a bad time to be on cos people had so much else on their minds, but I think the first week of January might be even worse. For a few days most of us just want to stay in and recover from our excesses and save some money.
I was hoping things would be at least looking healthier for the last two weeks of the run, though I realise suddenly that there are now only three weeks to go. So it's going to have to pick up sharpish. Is God's clever retribution for my mockery of Him to make me tour round the country for the next five months to just enough people to mean I have to do it, but not enough for me to make a living? If so, kudos to the big man. I watched the Morecambe and Wise drama this afternoon and it demonstrated acutely the vagaries and ups and downs of show business. The double act who would go on to capture the hearts and minds of the nation had their fair share of knocks and misfortune and yet they picked themselves up and got on with it. After a failed TV series they had to return to fourth on the bill, but they decided to go for it and eventually it paid off.
Alas I can't help thinking of the hundreds of acts who were not so lucky. We don't really get to see their stories because there is no happy ending. Nearly making it and then not making it does not make for feel-good drama. And yet, it is more reflective of life and most of our experiences. We should be celebrating the nearly men. Well future drama writers - this blog has all the raw materials for you!
But if Morecambe and Wise show us anything it is the benefits of positive thinking. Whilst sometimes I wonder about giving it all up and going to work as an aid worker in Africa, I know that that won't happen. I will keep plugging away and hope that my progress is not so gradual that I am a spent force by the time I have got anywhere. Though being the nearly man might provide more material for my twilight years than being the hasbeen. Who knows? Hopefully I can be both.
Ah, I am only taking the piss. I've invested too much to give up now. My story will be of the man who neglects everything else in his life to achieve success and realises too late that the prize was not worth the effort. But as long as I get a prize eventually, who cares if I am empty shell with nothing meaningful in their life.
Or I might just concentrate on my writing and go and live in the countryside. Ah, there are endless possibilities for dissatisfaction!
The man I picked to be my disciple tonight turned out to be a journalist. I asked him who he worked for, wondering if he might be reviewing the show, but it turned out he wrote for a magazine about helicopters. So I doubt that they have a theatre correspondent. Though you never know. In a regular gig this revelation would have been a gift that some comedians would have made a whole show out of, and I did have lots of questions for him, mainly about how narrow a subject and market that was to produce a regular publication. But I guess if you're rich enough to buy a helicopter, you're probably happy to pay £500 for a good magazine. Alas I had to press on with my show, though I did take a couple of minutes to examine the comedic possibilities open to me. The show has been getting a lot looser and I have been a lot more relaxed recently, although I lost the audience a bit, or maybe just unsettled myself, with a weak comment about helicopter crashes - such is the danger of ad-libbing. I don't think anyone seriously held it against me and maybe it was just that my digressions had made the first half longer than it should be. Luckily, as usual, the second half convinced any doubting Thomases. There seemed to be more than the usual number of slightly scary drunk people asking for autographs (and shouting out a bit - in supportive way- during the show). But then I suppose it's a bank holiday weekend
And I shouldn't be grumbling because today saw more awards from inter-nerds, with a good showing at the
notbbc.com comedy awards. I wish the internet would hurry up and replace all existing media, because if it did I would be the king of the world. But these nods from real comedy fans mean more to me than all the perspex trophies from the comedy industry in the world (this is a lie - I would kill all my internet fans for just one off TV Quick award and I WILL DO IT, so beware). The fact that I have won some of the awards is tempered by the fact that Andrew Collings has also won one - even if it is for a show that he does with me. That taints the whole thing for me. Oh dear, broken my New Year's Resolution to be nice to him already and I haven't even seen him yet.
If you want me to maintain my dominance of web-based fan awards then you can vote for me (or other people) in some of the categories of
The British Comedy Guide's awards. There are enough of you to artificially skew this in my direction I think. Hopefully it won't lead to be being disqualified as I think might have happened in the Channel 4 100 Best Comedians thing.
Also my autopsy of 2010 has been added
to the History page on this website. Which should remind me that I am definitely making forward movement, but perhaps at too slow a place to outrun the forest fire of infirmity and death that is catching me up.
I'm playing with you.
