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Fingers were heavily crossed that I would be feeling better today, as even on a normal day the RHLSTP double record takes it out of me. But morning came and it was apparent that I wasn’t much better. I have scarcely ever cancelled a gig due to illness (I think only once and that was just a small Edinburgh Preview) and I wasn’t going to start today. I just had to hope that the flow of snot would somehow stop and that the little preview of dementia that this virus was giving me wouldn’t make me an even more terrible interviewer than usual.
I was confident that Armando Iannucci would be a good guest even if I happened to expire on stage, but was more nervous about Hans Teeuwen, who I had seen on stage for the second time on Friday and who is an unpredictable and provocative man, who I’d have been scared to talk to if fully in control of my faculties.
It didn’t feel that long since the last series, and of course I have seen the crew when we did the first AIOTM together, but it was still a fun reunion. George the incompetent sound man had fallen off his bike and broken his wrist, but he can’t record very well with two working arms so what difference could this make?
The tragedy of interviewing Armando is the inferiority complex that it inevitably makes emerge. He’s done so much and it’s all so brilliant and he just goes from strength to strength and it’s hard not to look at his career and then my own and just feel like throwing myself out of a window. He’s just made a film with Steve Buscemi and I am signing toilet mats to thank the people who have crowd-funded my stupid sketch show. To think we were once almost equals (though to be fair he was always head and shoulders above me right from the start - only figuratively, we’re both small men). He seemed pleased to be on my show though and we had nice chats both off stage and on and he was game for piss taking and in an amazing improvised section about a post-Brexit Thick of It showed how effortlessly brilliant he is. He wasn’t even really trying. I got some great stuff about the genesis of Veep and the houses of ex-Tory ministers and near death experiences. It was a great start to the 10th series and will be out next week.
By the second interview I was flagging and at times found it difficult to think of what to say next. Hans was a charming man and very funny too, but we ended up talking about a lot of dark and depressing stuff and I was annoyed about how badly I was knocked out by my lurgy. At times I struggled to keep things moving, which is unusual, but I think we managed to dig our way out of the holes I was creating. Teeuwen has had to deal with a lot of tragedy in his life and though there are similarities between us: both both in1967, become fathers later in life, and obsessed by the sexual possibilities of the afterlife and enjoy making jokes about Nostradamus, I have had a relatively uneventful personal life.
I think it went better than I thought it did, but part of the charm of RHLSTP is to take the rough with the smooth and given how bad I was feeling throughout the night and how sapped I was once it was over, it was perhaps a triumph. The post show tweets and comments were good anyway and it was great to start with a packed theatre.
Back home to my equally ill girls, hoping I can get through the rest of the week. If I feel like this just getting to Sheffield on Thursday is going to be a challenge, let alone doing a show and then coming straight home again.
The first of three bonus podcasts coming to you this week was released, this one from the Great Yorkshire Fringe and featuring eccentric Lord Mayor Dave Taylor. Mark Addy and Dan Schreiber to come.
