tour

diary entry from the Road (i can't drive)

As my brain adjusts to barreling round the country showing people my wares (I’m on tour doing my little silly comedy show), I’m unable to finish the creative and engaging posts in my Substack drafts. So instead I’m going to do a tour update and then next week something less indulgent. Or more indulgent. It’s difficult to get an accurate indulgence projection at this time.

Anyway, let’s crunch those stats:

No. of shows: 9

No. of things that have exploded in my bag: 2 (a green juice powder I’m using to avoid illness, a moisturiser I am using to look moisturised)

No. of items left in hotel rooms: NONE

No. of items left in Ubers: NONE

No. of items I thought I’d left in an Uber, so went through the ‘I left something in the Uber’ process on the app (Uber), only to find them in my bag ten minutes later: ONE (headphones)

No. of items left in the reception of a venue that I called to ask if they could be posted to me, only to be told by the receptionist that she remembers seeing me put them in my bag and, upon checking, finding out she was absolutely bang on: ONE (headphones)

Good sleeps: 2 (after not sleeping more than three hours a night for the first week of the tour - leading to my brain starting to shut down mid-show - I have developed a foolproof wind-down process. Would you like to hear it? Oh, that’s nice of you. So I order a deliveroo while walking back to the hotel from the venue, buy/fill up a massive bottle of water in the lobby, get in the shower, drink the water (after the shower, not in it), get into my pyjamas, collect the deliveroo, then eat said deliveroo while listening to any podcast where successful people talk about how they sometimes have imposter syndrome or feel under-confident in any way, read Wolf Hall and go to sleep listening to a podcast called The Sleepy Bookshelf where a breathy woman is reading me Alice in Wonderland. Is that interesting? Is this why you subscribe? Shall I list my dreams? Last night I dreamt my tortoise started coughing and a huge plant grew out of her head. I then started shouting ‘MY TORTOISE IS FRUITING’ and woke up feeling full of dread)

Shows where I’ve forgotten to plug my laptop to the mains and a low battery sign flashes, meaning I have to run screaming to the dressing room mid-show to get the charger: 1 (it was actually quite fun, thanks Bristol)

Shows where I’ve been unable to start the show due to becoming distracted by the wood panelling on the walls: 1 (again, thanks Bristol)

No. of times I’ve put up the wrong projector slide: NONE

No. of times I’ve forgotten where I am in the show and panicked: NONE

Poke bowls consumed: 1 (this is huge. Massive. When I filmed Mitchell and Webb, production gave me a flat for six weeks near the studio and every single night I deliverooed myself a poke bowl. By the end it had become a sort of joke with myself but also I knew it was good for me, that it wouldn’t give me a weird stomach, would fill me up and I’d brought a huge tub of crispy onions for some mad reason that I had to get rid of because I didn’t want to have to throw away the onions at the end of the six weeks. In retrospect, you can put crispy onions on most things can’t you. Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of Pho, a lot of Wagamama and other night I bought a pre-show gyro in case the gyro place closed, so it ended up sitting in the dressing room for three hours. By the time I ate it the chips tasted like dry wall.

Almond matcha lattes: So many. I’m such a prick.

Dark chocolate covered cherries: SORRY HAVE YOU TRIED THESE??? THEY’RE CALLED LIKE FOREST FRUITS OR SOMETHING. NECTAR OF THE GODS.

No. of anti-fascist counter protests to the far right joined: 1 (bought a bagel in Bristol, saw the counter protest and thought yeah why not; the two protests met in the square and it was great because there were five times the amount of anti-fascists as fascists. Plus one of the fascists had a flag that said ‘I’m not a racist, I’m just a married man’ with an AI picture of a lion on it, and I cannot for the life of me work out what this means. Anyway, it was very joyful and hopeful.

No. of emotional support messages from my partner, my friend Lola, my wonderful family and popular stand-up comedian Nish Kumar: 400? (I’m fine, I just get tired and am like ‘oh my god why am I so tired’ and need multiple people to say ‘you’re tired because you’re on tour and that is normal’)

Pages of Wolf Hall read: 144 (I thought I’d struggle with this book, so have put off reading it for years. I think I presumed it would make me feel thick because I don’t know enough about history. Turns out you don’t need to be a historian to enjoy Wolf Hall, it’s an absolute rollocking read and I’m horrified that it’s taken me so long, but glad I am ending this substack post with a long paragraph recommending one of the most well-loved, most read books of all time. On a similar note, if you want to get some updates on current affairs, I’d highly recommend watching/reading/engaging with ‘the news’.

Thank you for indulging me and can we all agree it was really good of me not to talk too much about rail replacement buses or the train network. What I will say is I’ve been on more rail replacement buses than I dreamt possible, and Birmingham New Street is a shit-hot train station. It’s got a giant mechanical bull that looks around and roars. Why doesn’t every station have this? Food for thought.

BYE xx

PS Thank you so much everyone who has come to the shows so far. Especially Bristol.