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Valentine’s Day and I owed my wife 16,384 Ferrero Rocher (the cheapest deal I found was for around £4000). I didn’t pay up. We didn’t even do cards today, so apparently it takes 15 Valentines Days for the love to die (or for people who love each other, but are too tired and busy for fripperies to realise that a proscribed day of love is not really in the spirit of things). My daughter made everyone cards. Mine had me falling into lava and said “I like it when you fall into lava.” I do too. At least in picture form.
I think she loves me really.
Catie and me were off to London today as the Drunk Women had been nominated for a Writers Guild award for best online comedy
for this sketch.
It’s also Sky Potato’s first outside commission so I was there as a producer (and also the best actor in the thing- I can both look through a window and play football). I have never been to a Writers Guild Award ceremony before, which probably tells you all you need to know about my thirty two year long professional writing career (I think On The Hour might have won an award, but we weren’t invited to the ceremony and only found out about it when a producer at the BBC congratulated us in a lift). It was a rather lovely affair though and a terrific celebration of the largely unsung heroes without whom no (decent) TV, radio, films, play or books would exist.
There was certainly some glamour, but also a lot of nerds, who you don’t usually see picking up awards in more glitzy ceremonies. I like that the nerds got their time in the spotlight. Predictable their speeches were much better than the ones that actors do. It inspired me to try to do more writing and less sitting around avoiding writing. Ultimately it will make no difference to the amount of writing I do. But at least I felt inspired. It did feel that whatever we were writing, whether dick jokes or plays about Syria, we were all connected. All of us doing this infuriating, heart-breaking and wonderful job.
The internet award was the first of the evening and the Drunk Women’s excellent and succinct sketch correctly won the award, which was a big thrill for all concerned.
Sandi Toksvig (who had stepped in at the last minute) did an incredible job of hosting, full of spontaneous wit, joy and the right amount of cynicism. Paul Chuckle presented a couple of awards, which was a delight (and it was amazing to see everyone losing their shit at having him in the room - even the cool, worthy, serious writers). I had an awkward hello with the man who sacked me from my last non-Herring writing project. He didn’t tell me that he thought I was a terrible writer, like he was thinking and I didn’t tell him that the manner of my sacking had almost convinced me to give up writing comedy. I shook hands with Billie Piper and then realised I shouldn’t have done that because of Covid and apologised awkwardly. That will probably be the extent of my interaction with Billie Piper. But I will remember it always. There were a few comics there and it was cool to hang out. It’s the first social event I have been to for a very long time (and I can’t fully blame Covid for that) and the pressure was off for me, being just a spouse of a nominee, but with an early win it meant everyone (in our party) was happy.
