We had an ideas meeting for the new series of “That Was Then This Is Now” which will be broadcast on Radio 2 in September. I meant to read through all the research notes this morning, but got side-tracked scanning some stuff to put up in the downloads section of this site and updating my iPod. I thought there’d still be time, but after going for a coffee and a swim I had to dash across town to Celador for the meeting. In the end I was 20 minutes early so nipped into Starbucks planning to scan the material and come up with a couple of intelligent sounding things to say. Inside I bumped into Christian Reilly who does all the music for the show doing exactly the same thing as me. We chatted about how rubbish we were which meant I only had two minutes to make some notes and my notes only amounted to copying down three of the events that happened in history on the first week of the series.
Then it was up to a meeting room decorated with pictures of Chris Tarrant, Punt and Dennis and a tiny Gillian McKeith sitting amongst loads of food that is bad for you (presumably trying to imagine what kind of pooh the said food would produce once digested) to face the music.
Luckily and predictably no-one else had really done anything either and Emma Kennedy was too grand to even bother turning up. I spent most of the session trying to remember what we had done in the first series. It seems such a long time ago and it’s been a bit bizarre getting a second shot at this so long after the first. After various confrontations with the Radio 2 censor, I’d been so sure of the demise of the project that we’d actually ended series one with the studio burning down, presumably killing the entire cast and band. I’d forgotten this, and had had to be reminded by Christian who seemed interested to find out how we would resolve this cliff-hanger that I had assumed would hang from its cliff for all time without getting a chance to be answered. “We’ll just ignore that Christ,” I told him, “No-one will remember.” Though in fact I am quite tempted to have him bring it up at the start of the first show and for me to tell him that there is no point in dwelling in the past. We must look to the future. Which is pretty much the opposite of the point of this particular show.
I am very weary and still lippy and all too aware of how much I have got to get done in the few short months before Edinburgh (weÂ’re recording two episodes of TWTTIN in July and thereÂ’s the not so small matters of writing my Edinburgh show, my Channel 4 drama and 15 minutes of stand up for Political Animal next week). My run down body is trying to disfigure itself in order to persuade me to take a break, but itÂ’s just not going to be possible. IÂ’ll get through it all one way or another.
IÂ’m looking forward to doing another series of this history based sketch show. Not as much as I am looking forward to finding some time to go and lie on a beach for a fortnight doing nothing, but I canÂ’t see that thatÂ’s going to happen any time soon, no matter how much my stupid face tries to tell me that I need to.
As further incentive to make me realise that I have to pull my finger out my Edinburgh poster is now all finished. ThatÂ’s it up there. Hope you like it. And I hope that youÂ’ll be able to make it up to Auld Reekie to see it. By then, all being equal, I should have lips the size of car tyres, which should hopefully be funny enough sight to distract attention from the fact that I donÂ’t have any actual jokes.
