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How many days without a drink? 69 dudes!
Will I make it through my holiday without a beer? I think I might. American beer is horrid.
With my dad’s birthday weekend and our holiday in America zooming up fast, today was one of my last opportunities to get my affairs in order. So I worked through my emails, paid some bills and sent a box of crap to this month’s monthly subscriber draw winner Eoin Gould (fittingly an Edinburgh resident as the Fringe is just beginning). He has a “Mophead/Muppet” T shirt which will almost certainly make no sense to him until AIOTM comes out next year. And a photo of me playing the Minister of Homosexuality in a 1988 Oxford Revue sketch.
I also worked hard to get as much of the new tour programme completed. There’s still a chance to get your name in there, as well as a limited edition signed programme sent to your house. Just donate £15 or more (the more you pay the bigger your name) at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/herringthebest and then email me your address. There’s an unusually low take-up on it this year, (in the old days I think people used to pay for the free content with a SCOPE donation, but now pay direct) so those signed programmes will be proper rarities. I will be collating the donations page around about 15th August, so please get your donation in quick if you want to see the programme (almost) before anyone else. On the plus side sending out 50 programmes will be a quick job (I remember Fringes where I was attempting to sign and then write out envelopes and post about 200 of the buggers), so part of me is hoping no one else will give SCOPE any money.
I had fun on a double page spread called "Richard Herring: The Worst” in which I attempted to collate my least successful bits of stand-up. Or at least the corniest or weirdest gags. But of course in truth the worst bits of stand up are the terrible chunks of faff or the first attempt to get a difficult idea out. And I didn’t want it just to be two pages of boring nonsense. So some of my own favourite bits are actually in there. But it was fun searching for old sketches and through a file of half-written stand up to remind myself of some of the more terrible things I have done. Maybe I should do a whole show of my worst material.
I found loads of good old photos of me looking like I was doing quite unfunny stuff. I think that will be a fun couple of pages for you.
I am three weeks ahead on Metro columns and the programme is pretty much done - as long as I don’t think about the fact that the first AIOTM is on 11th September then I will be fine. I am looking forward to getting some down time. Not that my brain ever shuts down, the prick. And tragically when I have time to sit and think, the stuff I am thinking about is usually new ideas for stuff. Doubly so if I am not pissed.
