Warming Up

Friday 20th June 2003

I am still unpacking after my move. There is always the danger when youÂ’re doing this to stop and look at old photos or read old diaries and scripts. Suddenly half the day has gone and there are tears of laughter or regret rolling gently down your cheeks.
I got reading an old Lionel Nimrod script which I can barely remember as it is a decade old. It is a weird sensation to be reading something that you know that you’re written, but that is so unfamiliar that the jokes can surprise you. It’s sort of the opposite of déjà vu. Because I write this warming up thing so quickly and often with other things on my mind, this is something I have even experienced when looking over entries from a few months ago. Maybe I’m getting old.
It elicits two different reactions dependent on whether what you’re reading is good or bad, but both of them involve the words “I can’t believe I wrote this.”

My favourite bit from the Nimrod stuff I read was when Gordon Burns from the Krypton Factor asked me if I was gay. Now if you want to find out why it was funny youÂ’ll have to get the BBC to repeat it. I also liked a bit about Stew getting drunk at the comedy awards, shouting at Angus Deayton and falling over when talking to Amanda Donahue (all of which was true). IÂ’m not sure that even made it into the final programme though, so it is a joke that existed only to make the me of the future laugh.
Like so much of my material.
I also found a diary I wrote in the weeks leading up to my finals in 1989. In hindsight I find it terribly embarrassing and thus amusing. I wonder if IÂ’ll feel the same about warming up in 15 years. If so it was probably a mistake to put it on the internet.