My wife came with me to Dublin today so that we could celebrate our anniversary tomorrow together. Even though a year ago tomorrow we woke up in separate beds it seemed wrong for that to happen now. Once you're married you're allowed to go to bed with each other and now I've made the commitment I want to make the most of it. It was a long 45 years waiting to go to bed with a woman, but I thought it was important to save myself for someone special.
I hoped that I could make the jaunt special for her, but having to talk about cocks to a couple of hundred strangers for 90 minutes didn't help the romantic mood. Plus in typical Herring fashion we managed to get lost a couple of times - walking past the club and on for a good half a mile before a couple who were coming to see the show pointed us in the right direction.
We had time for dinner before the show and I asked the guy who'd booked me if there was anywhere nearby. He gave me directions, but once outside I realised I hadn't listened properly. My wife wanted me to go back and ask again, but I am a man and that is not how we work so instead I tried to guess what he meant and ended up on a frustrating walk around Dublin city centre looking for somewhere suitable that wasn't packed out on a Saturday night. Show time was looking and we were both tired and hungry and this was not the anniversary eve romantic night that I had hoped for. And it was entirely my fault for being disorganised and too repressed to go back to the club. So with the clock ticking we ended up in possibly the worse ever option TGI Fridays. It wasn't even Friday. That's how inappropriate this choice was. So we ate a sad little dinner amongst courting Spanish tourists and families with toddlers (a 2 year old boy took a fancy to one of the Spanish girls and scooted over to her to try and win her affection and then scooted back to get his Thomas the tank engine toy which he proudly showed to her, thinking that would seal the deal - all human life encapsulated). I was annoyed with myself that my own stupidity had led to us being here - we'd come to Dublin and our one meal here was in a gaudy, generic chain. But as long as I was with my wife then all was fine. And we got given a free glass of wine due to a waitress mistake (she'd poured one for another table and they hadn't wanted it).
There was something appropriate about this being our celebratory meal. My wife had ended up with an idiot and this was her punishment, but the fact she didn't mind showed that somehow I was the right idiot. All the hours of my life I've wasted in exciting foreign cities, not knowing where to go or what to do. This is the Herring way.
The Sugar Club was a lovely venue, twice as big as I had been led to believe initially and packed with punters. I lightly teased them as I held up my Hitler Moustache DVD saying they'd like that, given their history. "Look, it's our friend, Hitler" I said. They took it well. In fact the only joke they didn't seem to like was one about Whitney Huston. I said, "I thought it would be the Jesus jokes that got you riled up, but it turns out that you can't come to Dublin and mock Whitney."
Back at the hotel I had a pint of Guinness and then we went up to our room. We're setting off quite early so I was making sure I was packed and checked the room mini-safe. I am not very good at observing things, which is why I am not a more famous comedian, but suddenly I observed that fact that mini-safes in hotel rooms always have some loose carpet in them. It's annoying because you always worry that some item might have slipped unnoticed beneath it so you have to lift it up. Surely this was the making of a brilliant Michael Mcintyre man-drawer style routine that I could sell to the highest bidder. "Carpet in a safe? What's that all about?" That's about as far as it got, but still - comedy gold I am sure you will agree. Steve Paget on Twitter pointed out it was probably there to stop keys and coins clanking against the metal base. Which made sense. But probably isn't the punchline I was looking for. Back to the old drawing board.
