I was a bit nervous collecting my car from the haunted car park, though to be honest having walked around the streets of Leicester this morning there were more howling and hollow faced ghouls outside than down in the dark. My benefactor/prankster/ghost was nowhere to be seen. He hadn't spilled his ectoplasm on my car. Though weirdly I did again see stuff moving in my peripheral vision which wasn't there when I quickly turned to look. I may just be tired or the Premier Inn in Leicester might be the location for Ghostbusters 3. I have a feeling that the whole of Leicester might be a ghost town. That when I got to Wolverhampton and told them where I'd been they would say, "Leicester? There's no such town as Leicester."
But the hauntings continued. When I got to Wolverhampton my sat nav was unable to locate either the road or the postcode of my hotel. I was driving around a little bit lost so pulled over into a car park to check my iPhone. A homeless woman who looked more like a zombie than anyone I have ever seen in real life was standing in one of the spaces. I pulled into another one some distance away and the woman, either unfocused and drunk or undead and hungry for human flesh started staggering towards my car with her hands held out in front of her. It was properly freaky. I drove away, having to beep my horn at her to get out of my path. When I needed a neighbour...
Over the last few years Wolverhampton has become quite a symbolic gig on my tours as I have made it my ambition to one day play the big room here in my own right. It's a silly and probably unobtainable ambition and partly just a joke because whilst I do well in Birmingham, I have never really cracked this town. The main Civic Hall would be a massive venue to play even in a town where I have a following, but in Wolves it is almost certainly a pipe dream, but one that keeps me and the staff at the venue amused.
There are four or five different sized venues, leading up to the massive Civic Hall. Though I played the largish Wulfrun Hall with Talking Cock, hardly anyone came and the next year I played a 100 seater room above a pub. But over the next three or four years my audience grew and I moved up to a bigger room next to the theatre (I actually got to use the main stage dressing room in a tantalising vision of what might be to come) and then for the last two years have been back in the Wulfrun Hall, not getting a big enough audience to fill it, but having too many people to go in any of the smaller venues.
And to demonstrate the foolishness of making Wolverhampton this symbol of success, on a tour where generally speaking my audience numbers have reached new heights (getting over 400 on quite a few occasions) tonight I actually got less people coming to see me here than last year. I had been moved to yet another venue, the 160 seater Slade Room, a slight knock to my dreams of getting back into that posh big dressing room in my own right. Why have the people of Wolverhampton not taken me to their hearts, after I have somewhat arbitrarily and not entirely sincerely given their town so much importance?
It seems we will have to wait a few more years for things to take off for me in Wolves.
But this was a much better room for comedy than the cavernous Wulfrun Hall, where the stage is high and it feels like a school assembly crossed with an unpopular Nazi rally (when I am on at least). Plus excitingly I could park my car inside the building right behind the stage, so I was more than happy. They've always looked after me very well when I have come here and so I can be confident that the friendly greeting and takeaway curry were not as a result of someone having read the blog of late.
It was a good show, aside from a man deciding to start having a conversation with his neighbour during the sensitive bit at the end of the show - I asked him to be quiet, but he carried on talking, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was a show going on at all. I felt a surge of anger at this rudeness, especially as I was paying homage to my grandma at the time and threatened to come down and punch him in the face if he didn't shut up. And I meant it. The rest of the audience annoyed by his interruption seemed to be on my side and I got through to the end without violence or breaking the atmosphere too much. But I had felt tired and a bit light-headed throughout the first half particularly (I think the large curry and naan bread I'd had just before the show might have been a mistake) and was worried at times that I might faint. I got through it all, only to find out from a tweet or two that my flies had been part way down for the entire first half. It added an extra dimension to things I guess.
But I was glad that I had elected to stay at a hotel rather than drive home tonight. After a full on few days and some freaky supernatural experiences I didn't want to face the ghosts of the motorway.
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