How Do I Sleep At Night?

Happy Birthday Warming Up

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I’ve been wearing my watch to bed most nights in the last month to check out my sleep patterns. I am not entirely sure how my watch knows, but it can tell me when I was awake, when I was in REM sleep, Core Sleep and Deep Sleep. I suppose it also shows me what time I go to bed and what time I wake up, which as you can see is nearly always before 6am and very very rarely after 7. I’d say this month hasn’t been very typical, in that half the time I have been woken by my alarm (which I don’t bother setting at home as I have a free 6am alarm called Ernest Herring), but sleep past 7am is rare luxury in my life now.

It also shows that in the last month I haven’t had one of my early morning panic attacks that keeps me awake for three hours until I calm down again, though tonight’s sleep was the most interrupted for a while and for once the orange bit of the graph did not demonstrate when I got up for a wee (well not only that). I can remember that I woke up a few times, but I can’t remember why, though it’s interesting (or boring I can’t work out which) that I snatched some tiny moments of sleep before lying awake again.

I don’t really know how to interpret much of this - does 4 equal sections of REM sleep equate to 4 dreams? And when will my watch be able to record the dreams for me so I can watch them back at my leisure? That tech can’t be far away surely. It’s the one time the internally visual part of my brain actually works so I’d like to make the most of it.

Overall I am impressed that I am averaging six hours and 44 mins of sleep a night. If I had had this technology when I was a teenager or even when I didn’t have kids, we’d be seeing a greater percentage of my day in deep deep sleep.

Maybe we should be able to view these stats for everyone we encounter (and our political leaders) because we might be more sympathetic to their foibles if we realised they were getting by on 5 hours sleep a night and were awake between 2 and 5am and howling into the void.

I am sad that the sleep stats of my youth and any time before last month are lost forever. I should probably keep this going for the rest of my life now, just so future historians will be able to ascertain how well I slept and speculate about how many times I needed to pee in the night (not all those orange sections are wees, historians - sometimes I just woke up).

I love a graph though. Hopefully one day I will be able to document my whole life in graphs and not words. Just post you details of my sleep, steps, minute by minute weight, toilet time, sexual activity and number of original thoughts per day. All right maybe per month on that one. Or year? Maybe a lifetime count. It’s just ticking up to three in the next decade.

Sorry. The fact I can’t really write about the stuff I am doing when I am awake has forced my hand on this one.

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Why’s your mum in this blog - keep reading to find out! She looks so cross.

I found myself rather emotional today and came pretty close to blubbing on TV. I just about held it together. It’s a combination of factors, including working too hard, doing better than I expected I would and missing my family. But over the last 24 hours this disparate group of celebrities who mainly had very little in common and most of whom I’d never met before have found even more in common and bonded into an even tighter unit and opened up about our vulnerabilities.

It’s quite a big thing for some of these people to wear their hearts on their sleeves as they are aware that newspapers would pay for any personal stories, so it shows how much we trust each other that we all opened up. Obviously I am not going to divulge anything to you idiots, though will be giving a full run down to all paid subscribers on Substack......

So subscribe now for all the goss

Hopefully that will trick a few of you into finally parting with some cash. Of course I am not doing that… or am I?

No. But maybe I am secretly. Only one way to find out.

My own revelations are available in all good book shops and very soon as a stand up special download, as I discussed my cancer (which I don’t like to talk about, so you can imagine how hard this was for me). The others, all so confident and successful, have surprising vulnerabilities and outrageous stories of bad treatment/experiences. Like you, I am sceptical when people on TV shows talk about their journey and their bond with H from Steps who they’ve only just met (sadly H is not one of the celebrities on the show), but we’ve been through something mildly tough and now emotional together and I am really surprised at how well we’re coping and getting on.

So surprised that I was not really able to answer questions for a bit because my bottom lip was wobbling and I was in serious danger of losing the impenetrable hard man image that has got me so far in the career.

This has been one Hell of a month. For once I have to keep the experience to myself. Imagine how weird that is for me. It involves fire and a footballer and tears and my cat Oscar. That’s about as far as we’ve got.

Something I can talk about is how I look on screen. For continuity purposes for the couple of episodes we’ve been doing this week, I have had to be clean shaven for the longest time in living memory. I very occasionally shave, usually on holiday, but I can’t remember the last time I shaved every day for a week. Not only does it allow me to view my neck vagina but it’s also slightly disconcerting. Especially in tandem with the fact that the wonderful make-up team are puffing up my hair, like Rik from the Young Ones when he becomes rich, in order to keep it out of my eyes for the filming.

I look, as many older men with hair tend to, like a elderly woman. Or the brother of the lead character in The Power of Parker. Someone has already commented on Substack that I look like their mum.

It’s a tough thing to accept that my days of being an impenetrable hard man and sex symbol may almost be over. Luckily growing a bit of a beard hides a lot of the flaws (and allows me to do ventriloquism without a wobbling turkey neck) so I will be glad when I can put my razor blades away again.

And there’s another brilliant retro RHLSTP out today, this one with James Acaster if you missed it.

Or watch the full video for free on Youtube

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It’s Warming Ups 23rd birthday today, an occasion that goes unmarked by anyone but me and rightly so. That’s 8399 consecutive blogs without missing a single day, since 25th November 2002, when I was 35 and some Australians had been mildly perturbed by a man drinking Special Brew at Balham Station.

It’s an achievement of almost total insignificance (the blog, not drinking Special Brew in the afternoon, though if you are able to do it 23 years ago then you are something pretty significant) and yet it’s still surely staggering. Sometimes something meaningless can take on meaning, just due to the stubbornness of the person doing it. If you’re read all 8399 entries then you’ve done something even more ridiculous than me. There can’t be many of us who’ve read every word. I am not sure that even my mum has managed it.

Well I’ve given you the link to start from the beginning if you want to,

It’d be crazy to think that anyone will make a fuss for just the 23rd anniversary. There was a point where I thought blogging every day for a year might raise some press interest, but you definitely have to do more than that. I guess when people have hit 25 years of blogging daily on the internet, then that’s when it will become a news story. Not even 750 more entries then.

I am guessing of course, because as far as I know, no one has yet blogged every day for 25 years - there is one person who might have blogged every day for over 23 years, though I keep forgetting his name and haven’t checked his website for a while. Hopefully he has died by now and I will be the longest consecutive blogger in the world.

Being the second longest suits me better though. That’s the Herring brand.

Anyway, a lot has happened in 23 years. I’ve moved house three times, got married, had two kids, started podcasting and won Taskmaster.

Oh, it’s not that much as it turns out.

Some stuff has happened though.

Me and a heartless self-serving robotic creature in 2002. Also Stewart Lee.

Today was a long working day of over 12 hours and I am writing this in the back of a car that is taking me the not inconsiderable distance home. The job is not over. We’re back for the weekend and then it is done. Then I will be coming home and straight into doing a RHLSTP where I have got Richard Osman back on, solely to ask him about his experience with urinals. I bet he has never experienced the thing that has happened to me, where a urinal is so high that you have to stand on tip toes to avoid your penis brushing the porcelain (and don’t always avoid it) but suspect he may have other issues with the bathroom appliance.

There’s only one way to find out. Buy a ticket now.

Or listen to the podcast. Damn two ways to find out.

Or ask him yourself. Three. He might not tell you though, but I am confident he will discuss it with me.
Or ask someone who has either been to the show or listened to the podcast. Five.

But there are only five ways.

Even standing next to him at a urinal won’t give a definitive answer.

Anyway, it was eventually a good, though long day at work. I have surprised myself at this job by somewhat losing my temper, or at least my cool, at certain points when I am unable to achieve what is asked of me and have no access to help. It is frustration with myself, but others fall in the firing line and though I think and hope it’s mainly a comedic experience for them - is there anything funnier than an impotent old man flailing and failing and getting cross with himself as a result? - it’s not entirely comedic. So apologies to the excellent crew who are working longer and harder than us and remaining cheerful and friendly.

Am I the arsehole?

I don’t think usually, but maybe as I approach my sixties I have some arsehole in me. Or more pertinently (as there has always been an arsehole in me) I am letting the arsehole in me out.

It’s been a tough gig and I had to get up at 5.30am after five long days and I think you’re allowed to go off the rails (and it was only for a bit today - I have usually made it til the afternoon before going mad on the other days).

It’s not like I was drinking Special Brew on the train and shouting “Mind the Gash”. I wonder if that guy is still alive (doubtful). I wonder if those Australians are still together (also unlikely). None of them will ever know I wrote about them or that you’ve read about them today. They won’t even remember the incident and nor would I if I hadn’t written it down (ditto most of the subsequent entries). But it’s kind of cool that it’s still there, right?

RIGHT!?

FUCKING ANSWER ME. DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I’M RICHARD FUCKING HERRING AND I’VE WRITTEN A BLOG EVERY DAY FOR 23 YEARS AND A FUCKING DAY. SO HAVE SOME RESPECT....

Or not. Fair enough.

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