Oh yeah. Sleep makes the world so much better. I was able to perform tonight's show without too much of a headache and without feeling that my brain had been taken out of my skull and placed in a fuggy swamp full of marsh gas. Even though there have been some good gigs I haven't really enjoyed this week very much, but today, with my senses restored and over 300 Milton Keynites there to see me I found the fun in the show again. A tour is always a hard slog and I am pleased with my professionalism in most cases and I don't think audiences will have spotted my malaise, but the finish line is in sight now and more importantly I have had some fucking sleep.
One of the tweets I got at the interval was from an ex A&E nurse who said that a man used to come in regularly with a pencil stuck up his penis. So much for medical confidentiality I joked as I read it out, hoping the man wasn't sitting in the auditorium wincing (though then again he must be quite used to wincing if that's how he gets his kicks). The tweeter added, "They made a stick with a ball on the end for him so it couldn't go all the way in. He didn't like it." Which says an awful lot about the NHS. What dedication. But also about the pencil fuckee (he was, I suppose being fucked by the pencil) who obviously didn't do this just because he liked having a pencil in his urethra. He must have enjoyed the danger of not being able to get it our and/or more likely got off on coming into the A&E to have someone remove it. There was no fun in it for him if the pencil was easily extractable. I questioned whether the pencil was inserted tip first or eraser end first, which made everyone wince. As if putting a pencil in your Herring's Eye was not bad enough. A man in the audience said, "That'll put lead in your pencil," and I repeated his heckle to minimal laughter. I said, "It's not as easy as it looks this job is it? I thought that was quite a good heckle, but the audience disagreed and they're the ones that decide."
Even at this late stage in the decade long cock journey I have been on there are still cock stories that can surprise me.
Before the show I was scanning old blogs looking for death related stuff I've written before. There are over 400 entries that mention the word "death" which shows that I probably do have an obsession with the subject, though of course a fair few of those refer to comedic deaths. I am in this odd hinterland between old show and new show and in the first few minutes of performance my mind was wandering and trying to think of death jokes. My subconscious is warming up for the next big job, to come up with a brand new show in just under two months. I will need it to be doing this when I am doing the previews, but it was slightly distracting tonight. But other demons in my brain were trying to make me trip up, questioning how I knew what to say next, wondering if I would go wrong again. Why are there these self-defeating voices living in our own heads? Do they actually help us stick to our resolve and do a good job by warning us of what could go wrong? Am I the only one who experiences this?
You can get an idea of where my new show is going
from this week's Metro article. That's pretty much everything I have, but at least it's a start.
