The last Lyric Hammersmith gig of the year always looked like being fun. It was an all star line-up with Jack Whitehall, Shappi Khorsandi, Jason Manford and secret, surprise guest Dara O' Briain (who rather spoiled the surprise by buying pizza from the cafe just before the gig). I was glad to have a distraction from the writing of AIOTM 8 which was not going too well - too much watching Battlestar Galactica had left me with little in the way of experience to write about.
It was fun hanging around with the acts, none of whom I know all that well, but Jason, whose been off on tour remarked that it was fun to be back in a room full of comedians. It's something you are used to at the start of your career, but the more successful you get the lonelier that job can become. Apart from the young whippersnapper Jack Whitehall (who like most young people these days needed to pull his trousers up - but didn't), everyone else was talking about their young children. When did all the comedians grow up?
Apart from me.
I tried about a few of my childhood tales on the audience, interested to see whether they would work as stand up as well as they had worked in the Collings and Herrin podcast. As I explained what I was going to do a disappointed voice shouted "Oh, you did that on the podcast!" But it would be a shame if I felt that if we'd come up with something good in our weekly chats that I wasn't able to ever try it again. After all, most of the audience hadn't heard the podcast and I was actually rather pleased to have some new material to try out on a crowd, as I've been tending to do the same 40 or so minutes of late (outside of my full one man shows). I think the heckler was only expressing slight disappointment at hearing something they'd just heard online, but it's asking a lot after Andrew and me have given away over 100 hours of free entertainment, for us not to do a bit more with it. Luckily the stories worked quite well on the night. I don't think I was at the top of my game, but all the acts were amazing. Dara was working up material for his new tour and it's looking in great shape and Jason is a very likeable and funny man who said it was rather enjoyable to be able to put the actual swear words in a routine about football chants - something he can't do with his rather more family friendly audience.
I cycled home through the rain and should have gone to bed given there was so much work to do on the script. But I stayed up and watched two more episodes of Battlestar Galactica.
And if you want to see Dara and me again in Hammersmith, along with Richard Dawkins, Robin Ince, Chris Addison and many, many more in an incredible bill, then why not come to the Hammersmith Apollo to see
Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People on the 20th December. All the other gigs (at the Bloomsbury) sold out ages ago, but there are tickets left for this big extravaganza - it's the perfect Christmas gift!
