The live Brighton Collings and Herrin podcast was a lively affair, with the audience and at least one of the performers perhaps having had one drink too many. But portions of the audience were a little bit over excited perhaps and trying to get on to the podcast. Yet as always with hecklers it was the ones who bided their time and then fired in one high quality line, took their deserved laugh and then rested on their laurels that were the best. Quit while you're ahead is the motto of the heckler. Too often you see the audience member who manages to get a laugh become puffed up with the response and keep chipping in to diminishing returns (this is also the case with the hecklers who never get a laugh), but the king of the interjection tonight was Rob, who when Collings commented that there was only one kind of knoll - ie the grassy one, shouted loud and clear from the balcony - "Edmonds!" And got a proper massive laugh for just one word, which is ultra-efficiency. He won a Clockwork Orange clock for his efforts. Whilst most of the other people desperate to join in were merely slightly scary. But it was a fun atmosphere, even though it felt it could tip into anarchy at any point.
I may have been the one who came closest to derailing the thing, after making a decision to introduce the public to one of my more contentious pieces of juvenilia, a "comedy" song I wrote probably in my teens, which is only amusing now because of its ridiculous unpleasantness and racism. I think had I been slightly more sober I might have been able to contextualise the piece better and to better explore my reasons for singing it, but it created a couple of minutes where audience reaction veered wildly between tear enducing laughter and open mouthed horror and offence. But that was the point, as usual, to embarrass the adult me with the unrefined work of the younger me.
I think, to be fair to young Richard Herring, he was aware that this song over stepped boundaries and knew that lines like "can they make them normal if they really try?" were amusing because they revealed the bigotry of the singer. But like many youngsters trying to experiment with offensiveness there was not enough of a point beyond that basic knee jerk. But also the late 70s and early 80s were a time when such things were not disapproved of in the way that they should have been. And looking back at my diaries, my friends and I were a little bit racist, or at least unaware of the broader implications of our jokes.
I don't know how good an idea it was to sing the song again tonight. It's not one that I would want Nathan Jay to adapt. It's horrible and inappropriate, but that's kind of the point of finally sharing it with the world. I think it will prove the talking point of the show and will apologise once more for it here, but I think we generally have to keep the podcasts warts and all, and though I did have some reservations I didn't think it was right to edit it out.
Go listen to what an idiot I was (and perhaps am) and then try and decide if the past is best left in the past.
I think there are some other great moments in the night, but it felt like quite hard work and we give the crowd a long show and think that the question and answer section we do after the 66 and a half minute show (and 45 minutes of stand up before that) might just be a bit too much. It was tonight.
But as with last night, the audience seemed to enjoy it a lot more than I had and I ended the night lying on Collings' bed in the hotel, so the whole thing looked like it might be worth it. Alas we were only having a drink up there because the bar had closed. And the only intimacy we enjoyed was when he took off his trainers and the room filled up with the stink of his foot funk. Hopefully he can use some of our fee tonight on buying some new daps.
Come see us
in London in February or
in Cardiff in January and I will attempt not to be racist, unless the audience insist upon it.
