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So today was the first day I didn’t get to kiss my daughter. But we made a good run of it and luckily she’s really stupid at the moment and can’t remember stuff or speak or really understand what kissing is, so I am just going to pretend that I kissed her every day and leave no evidence to the contrary and she’ll never find out that I abandoned her in order to entertain 160 people in Wolverhampton, the necrophile capital of the UK (at least according to me tonight - I told them that’s what everyone else is saying about them, but only I was honest enough to tell them). Wolverhampton was also the first place to have an automated traffic light and had 200 bicycle making factories between 1868 and 1975, but no bicycles are made there anymore. This was my fun reason for them being unimpressed by me being kissed by someone from the 1800s. I also had some fun ad libbing some rubbish at the end of the first half. If the recording via my phone in my inside jacket pocket comes out OK I will put it up in next week’s LOTDS podcast.
It was a sell out tonight, so things are heading back in the right direction for me achieving my ambition of performing in the 2200 seater Civic Hall and getting to use the hot tub and the sauna in the dressing room. Dara O Briain was in there tonight and I apologised to him via Twitter for potentially having stolen his audience (although I think he might just have managed to sell out too). We also wondered what terrible things had happened in that sauna and hot tub in the 1970s and Dara expressed relief that neither facility was working so he wouldn’t have to share the water and hot air and have a homeopathic connection to the crimes of the past. It seems unlikely that I am going to build up to selling 2200 tickets in Wolverhampton - my fortunes have dipped since my high of selling maybe 280 tickets a few years back. But I like the Slade rooms and the freezing cold, non-hot tub dressing room has pictures of the band on all the walls. What a weird combination of men that band was, with Dave Hill looking like he’d cut his own hair using a bowl. And Holder and one of the other ones looking like Jimmy Savile’s weirder brothers and the other other one being handsome enough to be in the Bay City Rollers.
I was sad to hear that Leonard Nimoy had died, as it seems everyone was. He was one of my favourite people on Twitter, charmingly ending every tweet LLAP (Live Long and Prosper) and once offering to act as grandfather to any tweeters who no longer had one. Which was a lovely gesture, though now makes it feel for anyone who took him up on the offer that they have lost a grandparent. I love the way he embraced his iconic role of Spock, after initially trying to distance himself from it or at least point out there was more to him than the pointy eared Vulcan. He wrote a book called “I Am Not Spock” before relenting and writing one called “I Am Spock”. And weirdly by accepting the enormity of that part on his life, it actually demonstrated much more eloquently how he was so much more than Spock. By embracing his past and people's love for what he did be actually gave himself a more joyous and varied future. I don’t need to list all the amazing things he did, both as an actor and a human being, but Spock made him ironically enough an Ambassador for so much else. His Twitter feed showed what a great human being he was and made us all feel closer to him.
I have a feeling that when people look back on the icons of the 20th Century in a thousand years time, the museums might show us little models of Charlie Chaplin, Adolf Hitler (who may be confused into one figure by then, some mythical half funny/half evil beast), the mop top Beatles and Spock.
I was glad that Benjamin Spock was already dead or his family might have got a shock if they’d gone on Twitter or even watched the news to see that Doctor Spock had died. I made some attempts to mock this common error on Twitter, leading to inevitable misunderstandings and a fair amount of people “correcting” my error. Did you know that Dr Spock never actually said, “Beam me up Scotty”? Despite many of his patients persistently asking him to do so.
Others wanted me to mourn in the same way as them with pompous solemnity so didn’t like me making “jokes” or pointing people towards Nimoy’s (completely excellent) album “Music From Outer Space” (if you haven't seen
"The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" then you must correct that immediately). But we mourn in different ways and I prefer to remember with a smile and a laugh and by taking the piss out of the idiots who don’t know the difference between Mr Spock and Dr Spock. When I had heard Nimoy was in hospital a few days ago and things were looking grave I simply tweeted LLAP. Better to show respect whilst someone is still alive in my opinion. But now my grandad is dead I am looking for a new one. I asked Dick Van Dyke, but he didn’t respond.
And of course, Lionel Nimrod, the host of our first radio series, owed a little bit to Leonard, if only in name. I have a feeling we might even have made enquiries to see if Mr Nimoy would play the part, though unsurprisingly he had better things to do.
Still a few tickets left for my vaguely Manchester-based weekend gigs in Salford on Saturday and Chorley on Sunday. But not many, so book now.
http://www.richardherring.com/lotds/tour for all the tour details.
