Warming Up

4584/17513

I had what could be loosely called my first preview show for “Happy Now?” tonight, although I only attempted two routines for the show (there was some promise in both I think). I also have 18 hours of old shows to relearn so decided to mainly try out old material. I spent about an hour this afternoon refamiliarising myself with the Rudyard Kipling routine from “Someone Likes Yoghurt” and gave it quite a good go tonight (nearly rememebering all of it). So that's 10 minutes of the 18 hours in the bag, with maybe approaching 5 minutes of the new show.

I read through some of the other scripts - I have five printed up (that's all I've found so far, but suspect I have more somewhere) and Chris Evans (not that one- and no he isn't the one who is presenting Top Gear and getting his cock out either) has sent me audio versions of seven shows- and was surprised by some of the content. Inevitably there is some material that I am not 100% comfortable about doing now, either because it's not that great or because it doesn't feel like the kind of stuff I'd do any more. And even though these shows only date back to 2001 at the earliest, public tastes have changed. In those mid-nouhgties years I was deliberately experimenting with bad taste and exploring the seedier side of my personality. I was actually quite shocked by some of the stuff in “Oh Fuck, I'm 40”. I can understand why I did it and even at the time I was trying to point up the unpleasantness that was going on inside my head and mock myself, but it's very blunt and I feel quite sorry for the 40- year old me, even though I know I was exaggerating some of the feelings. It is 8 years since I wrote that show and much has changed and I wonder if I will be able to convincingly perform some of this stuff now - it worked (I hope) with an angrier, more impotent character, but now I am softer and happier it might just be offensive for no reason. But that's what I quite like about this project. It's going to work on a few different levels and my own discomfort at the person I once was is an interesting artistic veneer. The only routine I don't see much merit in so far is the “Fucking a monkey” bit from “Someone Likes Yoghurt”. I can see what I was trying to do and it was a deliberate attempt to make a routine out of a stupid premise and see where I could go with it. But I don't think it's making a good enough point to justify some of the content. And though it's about my character treating a serious subject through a gauze of wilful stupidity (he is missing the point of what he's saying and getting caught up in his own illogic) I don't think it works as well as some of the other routines where I have dabbled with offence to make people consider their own beliefs. Tonight I performed the routine about racists being more liberal than liberals for the first time in a long time and that is an example of taking offensive ideas and flawed logic and making it work - it's probably the best routine I've ever written. Someone Likes Yoghurt is about a man on the edge of sanity obsessing about things that really don't matter - but the Rudyard Kipling routine does that much better than the monkey fucking one, managing to make some satirical hits. It will be interesting to see what other stuff stands up and what falls down. But those pre-Twitterstorm days gave enormous freedom to try and sometimes fail. Nowadays you can lose your job over a poorly thought out joke. The current environment might have stopped me even attempting some of these jokes. I'd have lost some bad ones, but also some great ones. Jokes, just like life, are about taking risks. And even something that you yourself find funny might not be funny to your future self. But being made to do those jokes again is thus artistically quite interesting. In one routine I profess to hate children and suggest that the solution to paedophilia is to get rid of them all (even though at the end of the 40 show, I admit that I like children- the correct amount- and regret not having any). Will that be less funny or more funny now I have a child? 

It's the changes in my life and my outlook that I think will make this quite a special thing to do. It's a journey through a quarter of my existence and I think it would be probably much more embarrassing if nothing had changed and all the old stuff seemed relevant and representative.

Anyway, although the me of the past was able to shock the me of the present it was actually terrific fun to do this forgotten (by me) stuff again. I had been trepidatious before the gig about what I have let myself in for (as much in the amount of work that it's going to take as anything), but the bits I did worked really well and there is much more gold than shit in these old shows. I left tonight's show really looking forward to the challenge I have set myself. Some of it should fill me with shame, but I should be proud of what I've achieved in the last 15 years. I hope that the Leicester Square Theatre run can be a celebration of that, as well as a ceremonial burning to death of the idiot I once was. 

RHLSTP with delightful mentalist Lou Sanders is now up on audio and video (also on iTunes in both formats)