I like a good Sunday and would normally spend it horizontally in front of Scrapheap Challenge but today I had to face a two hundred mile drive through rain and fog to Sunderland for a gig. A little while ago I might have been annoyed at this but I’m enjoying stand-up so much at the moment that it didn’t seem like that much of a chore. It’s easy to put a positive spin on things in you try and seeing as I’ve never been to Sunderland before I treated it as something of an adventure.
It was also a great opportunity to visit some more motorway service stations and have the pleasure of being robbed blind. I adore the inflated prices in Welcome Break and Moto facilities and have now devised a system to rate individual sites based entirely on their imaginative pricing. I have to tell you that the Welcome Break on the Eastbound carriageway of the M62 at about junction 26 is pretty high up there. I was impressed. I purchased a thin prawn sandwich and a small bottle of water for £5.08. That’s very good going and I think it lays down a formidable challenge to Moto, whom I shall visit on the return journey, to somehow charge more than that.
Any service station worth it’s salt should have a prices that are based on those at The Savoy Hotel. I’d assume that a round of prawn sandwiches at The Savoy or The Dorchester would be about £15, but you’d get more than at a service station, so it’s still on track and comparable. A cup of tea at The Savoy would also be about £3 so that’s in line with any self respecting Moto too.
If only the Savoy were savvy enough to follow Welcome Break’s example too and install a pick n’ mix facility for their wealthy clientele to feast on whenever they fancied some over priced and sickly sweets in a paper bag. If I ever own a high end London hotel, I’ll be sure to sort out the lack of pick n’ mix as my first priority.
In all seriousness I don’t know why service stations charge so much and neither do I understand that we just accept things will be twice as expensive in certain specific yet unspectacular locations. The other day I was at Liverpool Lime Street station about to catch a train and bought a bottle of water from W.H.Smiths. “That’s £1.76 please.� said the check-out woman. “That’s expensive.� I said. “Yes, well, you’re in a station now!� she said.
It’s very British logic.
The gig tonight was in a converted building called the Quayside Exchange. Actually it was in a large function room upstairs called, unimaginatively but accurately, The Grand Room. Ticket prices were a very reasonable £3.50 and so it was full and the atmosphere was such that any comic would have been champing at the bit to get on stage. I really enjoyed watching the show tonight which is also a change from previously, when I’d lost interest in stand-up to such a degree that I didn’t even much fancy seeing anyone else perform, let alone do it myself. It was a strong bill and everyone did well. I was headlining which obviously means going on at the end but things were overrunning slightly and I was worried that, because of a time constraint on the room’s licence, I would have to cut things short but in the event I was given until 11 and not 10.45 so I was able to speak for about 40 minutes and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was a mix of some old stuff blended with some Pathetic Lot material and I think that’s the way forward at the moment.
I’ve also been giving some thought to Edinburgh this year and am now 90% certain I’m not going to bother with it. It’s a whole month’s commitment and vastly expensive to boot. What’s I’ll probably do instead is do a one-off Pathetic Lot show at The Liverpool Comedy Festival in July and film it. Then I can just play the DVD thirty times instead of having to perform every night for a month.
Bizarrely, I was speaking to my beautiful agent about that very matter this morning and tonight there was a film crew at the gig making a film about the local comedy scene. I asked them if they’d record my set for me, which they kindly did, and speaking to them in the bar afterwards we came to an informal agreement that their company could produce an official recording of the Liverpool show in July, using several cameras and a proper sound mix. It’s spooky how these things seem to fall into place. One minute I’m discussing filming a show and a two hundred mile drive later a film crew turn up out of the blue saying they could do it.
Fate’s a marvellous thing. All types of fate. Except a village fete, which is rubbish.
As I was walking back to my hotel an expensive and sporty Mercedes pulled up and the passenger window slid down to reveal an attractive Korean girl. She wanted directions but I told her I wasn’t local and wouldn’t really be of much help. She showed me her mobile phone, on which she’d got a text message giving her the name of the Travelodge Hotel I was staying at.
Again, fate playing tricks.
“Well that’s the one place in Sunderland I do know how to get to.� I said. “I’m staying there.�
I got in their car, which was driven my a trendy looking Korean man, and we drove back to the hotel. I got out, said goodbye, and headed towards the door presuming they were a couple and had a reservation. But the girl got out the car, briefly exchanged words with the driver, and headed into the hotel alone. In the foyer, she spoke in Korean to someone on her phone and didn’t want the help of the receptionist who had asked if she could help. “I’m visiting a friend� said the girl abruptly.
It’s my guess that she was probably an escort girl and the guy driving the Merc was a pimp of some description. Although this does seem quite odd because he was very friendly and I’ve always imagined pimps to be quite hard nosed. Anyway, I left her to her evening and went upstairs. At least I’d got a free lift back to the hotel.
But I wasn’t sleepy and although it was midnight on a Sunday decided there must be some bars still open and so headed back out into the night. The only one people said was open was a short walk from the hotel and was playing some loud and scary dance music. Still, a beer’s a beer, and so I headed in. My fame in Sunderland is now such that when I entered they stopped playing their stupid dance music and put on some good indie.
I was enjoying myself although not speaking to anyone and started to plot the coming year in some detail. Then an enourmous fight broke out and I watched that for a bit, the bouncers having their work cut out trying to drag some enourmous men and, invariably, a girl to the exit. I thought about my evening’s work and how lucky I was to have been paid for just having a bit of a laugh when these men had to deal with this sort of mess every night of the week.
How could I ever have turned by back on stand-up? Service stations, Korean escort girls, laughs and punch ups… It’s the best job in the world.
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