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Are you still shaking hands? I met lots of people today as I was in town for an actual job and I shook everyone's hands. As I understand it I probably have Hand Aids now. But I would rather that than look impolite. I met another comic who said they'd been recognised in the street and when he'd gone to shake hands with the stranger, the stranger had shook their head and refused. The comic was offended. I think rightly. It's rude to imply that someone has the Corona Virus with no evidence.
I shared a dressing room with another performer and they had a really bad cold. So this might be my last blog. I still hugged them, shook their hand and shared some watermelon that she was eating. Because I am polite. I'd rather be dead than look like I thought someone had the Corona Virus.
It will be interesting to observe over the coming weeks when the lights-hearted bravado changes into grim acceptance of the death of 1 or 2 in 100 people and the economic impact. But for now we must pretend like we think it's no big deal. You can usually get away with that as most times things don't turn out to be as bad as predicted. But you only need one thing to turn out to be as bad as predicted. And though there might not really have been one of those in your lifetime, that doesn't mean they aren't going to happen.
My day's “work†(my job increasingly involves being paid to play) was made tougher by the fact I had woken up at 4am. The benefit of my 13 months off booze was that this stopped happening. Today I wasn't filled with morbid dread, but with a couple of small glasses of wine and a beer processing inside me was enough to snap me out of slumber. I haven't drunk enough to get drunk or have a hangover since I started again, but the buzz of a drink or two is not really worth a day of tiredness. Can I put the cork back in it? Maybe I should.
My dressing room chum was watching Kevin Bacon films from the 1990s in our down time, which was a fun way to pass the time as scenes were set up. First up was “Stir of Echoes†which I'd never heard of, probably because it came out at about the same time as the similar, but superior Sixth Sense. And then we had a look at Flatliners, which certainly taught me that it was probably a bad idea to attempt to die and then be brought back in order to find out what the after life was about. It's nice when a movie has a message. Billy Baldwin plays a lothario who has secretly videotaped his sexual encounters and then is haunted by the women he has betrayed. Which is interesting because this film is from the 90s and the sensibility is clearly that this was a bad thing to do. Yet How I Met Your Mother uses the same idea comedically in the noughties and you're not really meant to dislike the guy who does it. HIMYM has no excuse.
The films shared a lot of themes and both ended with (spoiler alert) horribly killed people's ghosts finding resolution and leaving happy that stuff has been sorted. I'd still be pretty pissed off about the horrible deaths if I was them, but Hollywood seems to think ghosts just need an apology to cheer right up.
RHLSTP with Tim Minchin is now up on audio.
Also video.
