Warming Up

My top tip for staying cool in this weather is wear some sunglasses.

And maybe say “Heeeey!”

I managed to stay indoors nearly all day long (I dropped the kids off at school in the relative cool of the morning) and had lots of bitty bits of work to do. I had a few interviews to promote Edinburgh and also 550 title pages of “Can I Have My Ball Back?” to sign. I'd done a few in the studio last week and thought that I might be a decent way into the job, but by the end of the day I wasn't even halfway through. To begin with I was just doing my usual lazy squiggle (that looks nothing like Richard Herring, apart from he possibility of a capital R) and a drawing of a one-balled phallus, spunking up three drops. But as I got bored I started messing around a bit and putting the cock in different places or with more impressive arcs of spunk. I did one in colour and added a note saying that whoever got this one should contact me and would get a special prize. I am not sure what it will be, but something good and not by excised bollock or my unexcited one. I was a regular one-balled Willy Wonka.

I also started feeling bad that my autograph is such an ugly squiggle that most people might not even realise is a name, so halfway through I made the decision to try and make more effort to make it halfway legible. I don't know if that makes the squiggle ones more or less valuable.  It was strange that in my desire to get the job over with I was making it more complicated.

These 550 signed books are available to the first 550 people who preorder the book via Waterstones, so if you want a 1 in 550 chance of winning that prize then order NOW. And each signed one is different, so I think some if not all of them will be quite collectable (if the book goes on to be a smash hit).

Maybe my desire to give a Masquerade prize to one of my readers was due to the fact that I have been engrossed in “The Skeleton Key” by Erin Kelly, which is about the chaos and madness caused by a fictional picture book that led people to treasure. It's not out until September, but it's a gripping read about how success comes with terrible consequences and how obsession can drive people to madness. I have raced through the first 300 pages in the last couple of days, thinking of my own pathetic attempts to find the Masquerade Hare, though at least I didn't try and cut anyone open to find it (which is something that happens in the book) and Steve Cheeke and me heading to Cheddar Library so we could look up things and try and figure out the mystery. It was much harder to research stuff in those days. But as we only collaborated for one evening, I don't think we were likely to get it. We didn't even get the One of Six to Eight reference, that might have been enough to crack it if you were prepared to think laterally (if I remember correctly, the bloke who found it claimed that this and some crossed fingers over the Equinox were enough to get him to the hare, but in fact, he had cheated his way there by collaborating with an ex girlfriend of artist Kit Williams. The true story is fascinating and intriguing, though Erin's fiction is a bit crazier and involves murder, though it is an accurate portrayal of how something mysterious, in the wrong hands, turns to conspiracy and madness.  I will be interviewing Erin this week and that podcast will go out in early September when the book comes out.

And a quote from Bamber Gascoigne about the real Masquerade Hare shows that Erin's fiction isn't too far from the fact “Tens of thousands of letters from Masqueraders have convinced me that the human mind has an equal capacity for pattern-matching and self-deception. While some addicts were busy cooking the riddle, others were more single-mindedly continuing their own pursuit of the hare quite regardless of the news that it had been found. Their own theories had come to seem so convincing that no exterior evidence could refute them. These most determined of Masqueraders may grudgingly have accepted that a hare of some sort was dug up at Ampthill, but they believed there would be another hare, or a better solution, awaiting them at their favourite spot. Kit would expect them to continue undismayed by the much publicised diversion at Ampthill and would be looking forward to the day when he would greet them as the real discoverers of the real puzzle of Masquerade. Optimistic expeditions were still setting out, with shovels and maps, throughout the summer of 1982"

Retro RHLSTP with Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney is up here

Nearly got guests for every day of the Fringe run now and am starting to enquire about the autumn run at the Leicester Square Theatre - details here.