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So far the tour is going OK. I am not sleeping well, but there's less to do in the daytime than in the podcast tour, so I can relax a bit (and snooze) on the drive. I am slightly losing my voice because I am not used to talking for 100 minutes every night (200 on Sunday).
James was going to pop in to a family wedding on the way to Chorley, so I had lunch in a country pub and watched the end of Baby Reindeer. There's a lot to admire about it, not least that it's great to see a drama that doesn't divide people into straight goodies and baddies and acknowledges how complex the issues it deals with are. Weirdly I felt the comedy bits were the least authentic part of it, though it's always tricky to recreate gigs on film. Sarah Kendall has pointed out that generally speaking the problem with gigs on film is that it doesn't capture the fact that audiences generally don't act as ones. In films the audience are either all pissing themselves laughing or silent and embarrassed, but the truth is that even when a gig is going well there are a few people looking on sour faced or confused and when a show is going badly, nearly always, someone is finding it funny. In Baby Reindeer Donny is nearly always greeted with confusion, but when an audience gets him, they all get him. Silence is a very rare thing in comedy, usually only coming when you have an audience in the palm of your hands. If an act comes on and is bad then there might be heckles, but a few people will laugh encouragingly or sarcastically. Also Donny's stuff is clearly trying to fuck around with expectations and in any audience a few people would spot that and like that, especially if others were confused.
He's meant to be a good comedian who hasn't quite found his voice, but the stuff he is doing would get a different reaction than it gets I think and I am not convinced that the bit that goes viral would go viral.
But none of this matters beyond my own interest in trying to authentically recreate a comedy club. It's an amazing piece of work and the fact that it makes you question it is part of that. It's bold to leave the explanation as to why Donny makes such odd decisions as late as they do (I've seen people say they stopped watching because no one would react as he does, but the point of it is that there are lots of complex reasons why he doesn't run away or call the police or whatever). I have had a little experience with obsessive people, one of which involved the police having to have a word and I have friends who've had full on stalkers and it seems bold/dangerous to risk reigniting all of that by writing about it (though is the kind of thing Donny would do I suppose) and the way this is all blowing up now perhaps shows the dangers, but equally the obsessions of others and ourselves are fascinating and all of us will have been guilty of falling in love with someone who doesn't feel the same. The way this has all spilled out into the real world was possibly predictable (though I don't think anyone involved could have imagined this show would be the phenomena that is has become) and may already be out of control, but it's a drama that grips you and which most people are binging and the Piers Morgan interview is both morally reprehensible but endlessly fascinating and makes us all a bit culpable and like Donny or Martha, because we're all still watching it.
Anyway it was a weird show to watch in a pub with other people around, but I was on headphones and angled the screen so people couldn't see (though the waitress saw and said how great it was and asked if I'd watched the interview).
On to Chorley and the usual wonderful welcome from Ian and Estelle who have created this amazing venue and a full room of punters. Chorley is very lucky to have this place and I am very lucky to get to play here. As expected the show is getting tighter (and looser in the right places) as a result of doing it for a few days in a row. The slideshow clicker didn't work at all tonight, after being a bit unreliable last night, but it didn't matter.
