The final AIOTM was proving typically difficult to get together. I was tired and a bit spaced out and spent most of my day sitting, staring at my laptop or the newspapers with little to no inspiration. As so often I felt that this would be the week that I would have to work out on stage and apologise for having nothing to say at all. But with nine shows under my belt I had to believe that the fear and pressure would mean I would squeeze something out of my mind that would work. But what if I didn't?
I had vague notions of turning the whole show into a parody version of "A Christmas Carol" but I didn't seem to be getting anywhere with that, but did manage to come up with a sketch based on "A Wonderful Life". I was also wondering how self-referential I should get. Would the show be too indulgent if I brought back running characters from the series? Or would that actually make it better?
My indecision was making it harder to progress and still there was little to nothing in the script.
Luckily for me someone hit Silvio Berlusconi in the face with a plaster model of a Cathedral in the afternoon, which was going to be a hard story not to get some comedy out of. Usually a 73 year old man having his nose and teeth broken by an assailant would have little to no humour in it, but this was different because a) the 73 year old man had been hit by a cathedral and b) Berlusconi is a cunt. Also he does't look 73. God had been kind to him and given him that thick head of natural hair and smooth unwrinkled face.
I was conflicted about joking about it because physical violence is something I would never condone - though perhaps it is OK in more slapstick and less painful circumstances such as when Bush had those shoes thrown at him. But there is a part of the human psyche that feels a certain satisfaction when someone who deserves it is punched in the nose. Berlusconi really is a horrible and morally corrupt man. And it was a cathedral. What a surreal and unexpected choice of weapon. At the end of the day I guess the Italian leader was lucky to get away with broken bones and teeth. This assault could have killed him, or at least cracked his skull or burst an eye ball. I would have preferred a less vicious method of pricking his pomposity, but with a topical comedy show you have to take what's given to you and this was a little gift to me at a difficult time.
I was at least 24 hours away from the end of the series and something would come together. And just as midnight was approaching the joke factory in my head finally hummed into life and some basic ideas came chugging into my head. And I'd persevered with some sluggish ideas about Tiger Woods and Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer and the massacre of the innocents and had approaching half the script completed.
I felt that it would probably be OK, but there was still a long way to go and a lot of pressure to get this final show right.
