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Two more Leicester Square Theatre Podcasts in the podcast can. Although TV's Emma Kennedy has been a fairly constant presence in my life since I met her at the start of 1987, I haven't seen her for quite a while, so it was great to catch up with her. She's looking smoking hot (why didn't I marry her when I had the chance?) and is getting married next month (not to me! Why? Why? Oh hold on, then I would have had to have sex with her, I have just thrown up in my mouth) and her career is going from strength to strength. You probably largely know her for her stories involving poo, but she's written a proper grown-up novel about life in a Welsh village during World War II and a TV show based on her brilliant, crazy family and episodes for the new Danger mouse. Plus she has a magic machine that makes spaghetti out of courgettes. I am so proud of her I almost forgot to be jealous.
She has worked hard and with real focus and I hope she's about to reap all the rewards of that. I work hard, but it's mainly on dumbass stuff like this blog and my snooker podcasts which won't get me anywhere. But writing TV scripts and books are two of the hardest things to do in this job and Emma has just got on and done them. What a woman!
We had a fun chat, reminiscing about our first Edinburgh Fringe, TMWRNJ and much more and then I chatted to Romesh Ranganathan, a relative newcomer who is already a stalwart on TV panel shows and a very accomplished stand-up. I don't know him all that well, but we ended up talking for about 1 hour 45 minutes, making this possibly the longer RHLSTP yet. It was a smallish crowd, but these were the stalwart diehard fans (who have come to love me too due to how often I do that Die Hard joke) and it was interesting to keep stretching the conversation ever onwards to see where things went if we stretched the show beyond its limits. I enjoyed our conversation about veganism and whether a vegan is allowed to smear animal based produce on themselves as long as they don't ingest it, as well as my arguments that asparagus and chocolate should count as being animals. But as always with these chats, when I try to remember what was discussed my mind is largely blank. We must have talked about something though. Cos it was still going 100 minutes after we began. Romesh is well on the way to being a big star and deservedly so. He stood facing the headlights of the juggernaut that is this show (it's quite a challenge to talk that long without a script or any planning about where we might be heading) and didn't waver. He is charming and very funny. Go and see him do stand up if you get the chance (and buy Emma's fancy pants grown-up proper novel too).
Much as it's great to sell the theatre out (partly as that's the only way I can make any money), there's something great about a smaller audience who understand the show and are prepared to let us take chances and stretch their patience and not necessarily have to have a laugh every ten seconds. There were lots of laughs in both these podcasts though, even if people nearly missed their trains in order to see them all.
I had been pretty exhausted before we started so I am amazed that I stayed pretty much focused for so long. The audience and the guests quickly dispersed into the night and I somehow got home without falling asleep. And then fell asleep. Though not for very long.
Next week is sold out, but still tickets for the two after that and I suppose I'd better get on with booking some guests for July too (and then for the autumn)
