8204/21123
I seem to be getting better finally and without medical intervention, proving once and for all that doctors are a fraud. They just wait til you're better and then pretend it was them that did it. That testicle would have migrated out of my body itself if they'd just let me be.
Still a bit snotty and coughy but the fatigue seems to have gone, just in time for the filming of "Can I Have My Ball Back?" at the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage, which also had the benefit of being about 10 minutes from my house by train and a fair of only £3.90 (and I saved myself a further £2 by sitting in first class, along with some rowdy school boys who I am fairly confident had also not paid for this privilege - no hope for the future when young people break the law like this). I wondered about the kind of person who would pay the extra for first class for a journey of just a few minutes and decided fairly quickly that they would be an arse. But the option was there. I also noticed that if I used my Network Rail card which usually saves money, but only over a certain value of ticket, the journey would cost me £13. The machine helpfully asked if I'd prefer to pay £13 or £3.90. Is there anyone who would willingly go for the higher amount? Maybe the machine can make that decision for you.
It's a while since we've filmed RHLSTP so it was cool to have some of the crew back together for this job. Chris Evans (not that one) was there and it's always worth being reminded that all the stuff that we've achieved in the last two decades would never have happened if he hadn't taken it upon himself to start filming the stand up shows of comedians he liked. Tonight we had a dry ice machine and a spotlight and were in a big theatre (albeit one that was more than half empty), which was some step up from the (still wonderful) Chapter Arts in Cardiff. He's a spectacularly incompetent man which makes his achievements all the more incredible.
I met some of the kind folk who had backed the kickstarter at the top level before the show and they had their photos taken with me and Right Bollock. Most of them were bearded men who worked in IT (I am assuming) but a couple had somehow managed to find life partners and brought them along. The partners were, I think, generally quite confused about who I was and what was going on. One wife ended up with Right Bollock resting on her shoulder for the photo and that seemed a strange way to meet someone for the first time. She took it in good spirits. I suspect she has to indulge her husband's unusual interests quite a lot. She was unphased.
I went out with the crew for Wagamamas before the show, which was a lot of fun, but not part of my usual solitary routine and maybe I didn't quite get in the right mindset ahead of the performance (and was also full of chilli squid) or maybe I was just a bit nervous about this being the show that was committed to film or maybe my brain is a bit befuddled by the lurgy, but I felt a half beat off the pace to begin with. I'd foolishly not practised going back and forth to the table for water and to put the clicker down and it was in the wrong place which made it hard to get to gracefully and the script was coming into my head at the last possible second. I made a few unforced errors (though went back to pick most of them up) and it just wasn't quite as crisp as I can sometimes manage, BUT it went down well with the Stevenage crowd who enjoyed me mocking this toilet of a town and showing off that I lived in Hitchin. Chris Evans (not that one) will make it look brilliant I know and I am sure that no one would notice what I perceived as sub-par performance, but I wasn't quite as immersed in the space as I sometimes feel and there was the tiniest bit of self-consciousness that this was a performance.
In fact I challenge you to buy the download and even with the knowledge that this my internal monologue, to be able to spot anything amiss. Maybe if you look deep into my eyes so you can see my soul.
Look, this is me being very picky. It was all good, but it felt like a bit of an out of body experience for me. Everyone else seemed to think it was a great show. Which I think it is. You want the film version to be the best it can be. I was generally much happier with the second half, though I kept getting things slightly mixed up and was annoyed that I leapt forward a bit in one joke that I've never got wrong. Could I go back and rescue it? I did a half-arsed attempt and it weighed on my mind for more time than it should have done.
The tour is nearly over and we have the show on film (well on digital cards) and I am delighted about that and I also know that it's going to be way better than I am making it sound (I am just slightly fascinated by the internal monologue of the performer and how sometimes a show is almost instinctive and sometimes you are plagued by a self-destructive heckler - though I let him out into the open in this show with Right Bollock).
We will get to work on all the kickstarter extras and I think it will all be with you in November if God is willing. We'll be selling downloads then too for those of you foolish enough not to back us. I think, on balance this might be my best show and it's almost certainly the most consistently funny one. Last show of the tour in Bristol on 1st June.
RHLSTP with Paul Whitehouse is now up wherever you get your podcasts
My guest for the Chesham RHLSTP on 24th May at 1pm will be Esther Manito. Tickets here.
8205/21124
It was the Scope Awards today and I'd been invited along to give a short speech about my No Solero February Challenge. I am not sure anyone in the room had done anything as worthy and difficult as not eating an ice cream for 28 days, so I am sure I was a huge inspiration to them all, but some of then had done stuff almost as good and arguably more difficult.
For the 21 years that I've been involved with Scope I have always got much more out of it than I've put in and today was no different as I shared afternoon tea with some exceptional people. The afternoon was hosted by Adam Pearson, who I'd never met before, who is a charming and funny man who I'll hopefully interview on RHLSTP soon.
The event would be an anti-woke person's nightmare as everyone who went on stage was asked to give their preferred self-audio description (I went for "if you imagine someone who has eaten a Solero every day for the last decade then you have just exactly imagined what I look like) and the whole afternoon was a celebration of the mental and physical diversity of humanity. I wish those anti-woke people had been here though, as it showed the joy of difference, but also the shared experience of being a person. The shared struggle for us all might be the journey to self-acceptance and being allowed to be yourself. If you have that then perhaps you don't have to get into a flap about how other people self-identify or whether they conform to your ideas of what a person should be.
After years of joking that I only supported this charity in the hope that I'd get given a disabled parking badge, I was able to claim that as a result of the loss of a testicle I am now disabled. "Apparently that doesn't count though," I complained, "Your rules are tight. If even Scope don't recognise a disability then you know that the prejudice is real."
I understand why a lot of people don't want to think about disability and are worried about how they are meant to interact with disabled people or that they might say the wrong thing. But you don't need to worry. You will see the person not the disability pretty much straight away and realise what an arse you're being. One of the things I enjoyed about this afternoon was seeing people with different disabilities interacting and having to learn the rules of the other person's disability. Do you duck down for a photo with someone in a wheel chair? Does a deaf person have to tell someone the reason that they're staring a bit intently at their face is because they are lip-reading? Ultimately nearly everyone just wants to be polite and learn or be polite and explain.
As I explained my Solero challenge I said "Where's my award?" and thankfully the audience understood the vast chasm between a greedy man giving up an ice cream for four weeks and the stuff that was actually being acknowledged today. But Adam did then pop up to give me a framed cartoon of a Solero, which was a nice comically nod to both the uselessness and usefulness of what I'd done. As with most things in my life I am both proud and embarrassed of myself simultaneously.
I am fearful for the future in a world where hate and prejudice seem to be winning, but I am also hopeful that the positive energy in this room can defeat the negativity of the outside world. You may not be disabled, though as has been pointed out to me before, you're almost certainly just not yet disabled. It's in all our interests to fight.
8206/21125
Finally! Why have they wasted so much time on other stuff? Better late than never.
It's the illness that likes to trick you into thinking its gone, but then comes straight back again. The cough and the snot persist and even though the fatigue is gone and I am, generally speaking, better, it all did present itself more on stage tonight than I think it has for a while. But I managed to put some energy into it and was mentally present. Anyway lovely to be back at Salisbury Arts Centre after a dozen years away (I think) and it was a great crowd and pretty much full.
I wished I had done it as well as this on Wednesday. But never mind.
As I was being driven to the gig I started wondering if people in Heaven behave like people on Earth - they probably do, right, because they are still people, if supposedly the good ones.
Certainly religious people on Earth behave in ways that don't seem very loving of other people - if the fleeing baby Jesus and his family turned up on the borders of America there would be a whole lot of Christians furiously trying to prevent them getting in. The country is full - we were here first. America first.
What if the people in Heaven are the same? We've been here for centuries, we were here first, Heaven is full. You can't come in. You're not real Heavenites. Even if you pointed out that this was previously Mount Olympus and they killed all the heathen Greek gods and souls, they won't budge from believing that Heaven is theirs.
I am glad I don't have to decide who gets into Heaven though. It's a tough job of working out who believed in the right God combined with who genuinely apologised for misdemeanours and hypocrisy. It's probably easy to work out the really bad ones (unless they sincerely apologised at the last minute in which case I think they get to come in) and maybe the really good ones don't cause you too much trouble (depending on how strictly you interpret Holy Book law - there's some really weird ones in there).
The bit where it must get tricky is the huge clump of humanity in the middle, those of us who never murdered anyone and were usually quite nice to others and only moderately selfish and kept the wanking down to once a day and then felt guilty about it. It must be really galling when you have to tell someone they just missed the cut.
Sorry mate, if you'd done one less sin or one more apology then you'd be in, but we have to draw the line somewhere. Off to burn in Hell with Jeffrey Dahmer and Hitler. But we'll keep you at the edge so the burning isn't quite as bad. You will just spend eternity in unbearable pain, not excruciating. We have to keep this fair.
I don't know if there are areas of Heaven for people who were better than others or whether it's all-inclusive for everyone. Surely the proper saints get a VIP area and a few extra privileges that aren't available to the bloke who was one sin away from going to Hell.
I just can't imagine the kind of people who have been religious all their life and think that makes them special are suddenly going to change once they're dead. If you'd lived your life on top of a pole, praising God and had never sinned, you'd be annoyed if you got the exact same rewards as Richard Herring, who lived a mainly selfish and debauched life, but raised some money for Scope by not eating Soleros for a month so gets in for being basically OK.
And let me tell you, if I spotted people being annoyed about that in Heaven I would be straight over to God to tell him that people were being ungracious and envious and that he should probably send them to Hell after all. He might send me to Hell for being a snitch. Or He might reward me for keeping an eye out for people who'd snuck in and let me have some Ambrosia cream rice. There's no real way of knowing which way God will go on any of this. It's one of the flaws in the system.
RHLSTP Book Club with nostalgia nerd Tim Worthington talking about his fab book about the golden age of kids TV
“and kept the wanking down to once a day and then felt guilty about it”
So those on five a day are going to hell right? Asking for a friend.
No that’s not a disability. It’s a race. So basically it’s racist to point it out. But I do have a blue badge. And it’s not for being ginger either.