Date Night Stalls, Going in a Circle

Warming Up

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Ah, Milton Keynes, the jewel of the Milton Keynes area (not including anything outside of the boundaries of Milton Keynes). It's a little closer to us than London in distance and takes considerably less time to drive there. So we made the genius decision to have a night out there. The only downside is we'd be in Milton Keynes.

I am only kidding Milton Keynes. Your town has the feel of a place on the edge of zombie apocalypse, but the theatre is impressive and is surrounded by restaurants (and seemingly no shops other than a Post Office), so you go to see a show, eat any kind of food you can think of and post a letter all in one stop.

We were going to see Fern Brady's tour show "I Gave You Milk To Drink" (spoiler, she gives us no milk). I don't go to see much stand-up these days because it's a bit of a busman's holiday (is that an offensive term these days? Feels like it should be, but I don't know why. No offence to busmen -or women- who like going on buses on their days off), but I love Fern Brady (her book is sensational and you should read/listen to it if you haven't already and maybe also if you have already).

I can usually pass through life as a fairly incognito figure - I might get recognised a couple of times a week, though I am usually in my house and some of the people who live here don't really seem to know who I am- but what I hadn't factored in to this jaunt was that a lot of Fern's new fanbase (she's got a very funny takedown of her original fanbase) comes from Taskmaster. So when we were having a drink in a practically empty bar before the show, two of the three groups there recognised me and as we walked the ten metres to the restaurant we had booked someone else asked me what I was doing in Milton Keynes and once we got into the theatre it felt like everyone was looking at me.

I didn't really mind- nothing worse than someone in the public eye claiming they don't want to be famous: not being famous is really, really easy-  but it made me feel a bit weird and glad that I don't have this all the time. Though the plus side of being famous is you can sell several hundred tickets in Milton Keynes on a Monday night.

Catie had booked the show and had the tickets on her phone and she proudly informed me that she'd got seats in row C of the stalls. We headed for our seats and typically were in the middle of a very long row and pretty much everyone else was seated. As they stood to let us through some of them commented on who I was. I'd entered a Twilight Zone world where my adolescent dreams of success had come true, but I realised too late that the cons outweighed the pro... . Of course Taskmaster fans are the loveliest people and everyone saying hello or asking for selfies were unassuming and apologetic.

We got to practically the only two empty seats in the row which corresponded with our ticket numbers and sat down. We were close enough to be spat on by Fern Brady, which is a long standing dream of mine.

As we settled in a group of people arrived from the other direction, looking confused. They thought they had the same seats as us. I assumed they were in the wrong row. There was a row CC in front of row C, because why not? So maybe they were meant to be there.

I was pretty confident we were in the right. We'd talked so much about our great seats before the show that we had to be. We all checked our tickets. It turned out that Catie has booked us into the Circle. Coincidentally the seats were the only two unoccupied when we arrived or we'd have found out our mistake sooner.

The interlopers (to be fair with the correct tickets) were very nice about it and even wondered if we might be accommodated. The guy recognised me (of course) making it even more embarrassing.

So with three minutes to curtain and the theatre now full, we had to stand up and make our way out, and make all of row C who'd already stood up for us once (and who we'd had to squeeze past in the surprisingly small space between seats), stand up again. They didn’t love it.

Oh look at the Taskmaster Champion of Champions who works in theatres, but doesn't know the difference between the stalls and the circle. I couldn't shout out "It wasn't me, it was my bloody wife's fault" because that would make me look ungallant as well as incompetent. Also mentally ill. So I just had to take it on the chin.

Someone tweeted me, worrying that I'd been called our for an emergency. It was quite the scene.

And then once we got to the Circle, we were in the middle of Row C again and everyone was in their seat and so had to stand for us. All I can say is that I bring the comedy even when I am not on stage. Arguably more so when I am not on stage.

The show was great. The support act was Chelsea Birkby who got the crowd on side very quickly and delivered a confident and funny set. Not easy to perform to a crowd that have not come to see you and have actively some to see someone else. But she wasn't phased. She had grown up in Milton Keynes, but didn't even drop that into the set until quite a long way in, so she succeeded entirely on merit.

And Fern was terrific as expected. She's a force of nature and very much herself on stage. When she laughs at herself she's an incredible mixture of charming and slightly terrifying, but she makes her set look effortlessly improvised and reminded both Catie and me of Billy Connolly, not for the obvious reason of the similarity of the accent, but because she's just a fabulous, spiralling raconteur who flies off in hilarious directions but always returns to the thread. She incorporates her autism in a way that is very organic and always funny and like Connolly talks about the weird things that happen to her due to her fame, whilst still feeling like regular Fern who is just like us, just a bit more fucked up. 

Great to see that she is more or less selling out everywhere, but grab a ticket if you get a chance.