I couldn't quite believe it when I finally made it back to Shepherd's Bush after these nine long days away. My exhaustion was not helped by the fact that I had got a bit lost getting out of Oxford due to a diversion and ended up heading down some tiny country roads that required maximum concentration. The house was cold and unfamiliar and after I had looked forward so much to being back here it was slightly anti-climactic to be finally here. Maybe because there's little to no rest for the wicked. I will be up early in the morning to do podcast 56 and then heading over town to do my photo session for my Edinburgh 09 show "Hitler Moustache".
I watched half of
Kevin Turvey Behind The Green Door on Youtube. I had been obsessed with this character and this show back when it was first broadcast and many of the lines from it had entered my every day conversation. Looking back on it it was strange to be so familiar with something from so long ago, even odd bits of dialogue or phrasing. I thought it was the greatest comedy ever written when it came out, but now it seems in need of a bit more editing and a bit less self-indulgence. But there's still some great stuff in there. Ah Youtube, how I love you. Thanks to the good folks at
for pointing me in the direction of this and this other
Rik Mayall curio in what seems at least a partially improvised, or at least badly rehearsed sketch (on Cannon and particularly Ball's part anyway). It's two worlds colliding a bit, though there was a bit of old school variety in Mayall and Edmondson's early work. I used to love Cannon and Ball when they first got on TV, but by this stage they were shadows of their former selves (or at least I was older and had outgrown them).
Nice to see early Rik Mayall though, especially as he is mentioned in the show as one of my major influences.
And it had been fun being back in the town where my comedy career had started. As I sang "My Penis Can Sing" I commented that this had already been performed in this city twenty years before. In fact it was hearing about this particular song that had piqued the interest of Stewart Lee and made him interested in working with me. I do like the fact that something written by the 17 year old me is now being performed on a national tour of UK theatres. And I suppose given that it takes up about a minute of the show that for every pound I make with this show, 1 pence is owed to the younger me. I there anyway to send that cash back in time to him so that he can make the most of his good fortune?
But I hadn't been so different to the younger me that I argue with in the show when I had started at St Catherine's college, so there was a bit more poignancy tonight. Plus one of my fellow trumpeters from the Kings of Wessex Brass Band was sitting in the front row. Like many people from my school who have seen the show she had different memories of the younger me than I did. But the Headmaster's Son is as much as about the false memories we have and the ridiculous and unwarranted concerns we used to have.
I genuinely thought I was fat and that my tiny hands meant no woman would ever have sex with me. Yet I was at worst just a little tubby and no one really cares if a man's hands are a little smaller than you'd expect. But teenagers won't be told about these things, I guess.
