Wednesday 31st May 2006

Driving to Sheffield is a dream, but I don't mean in a positive way, I mean it's like one of those dreams where you're running towards something you can never reach, as no matter how hard you try, it keeps getting further away. Like a mad monster. The first bit of the journey is fine, you skirt around Manchester on the motorway, but then you have to enter Derbyshire and go over the Peak District on a lonely, winding road, and this is where the clock starts ticking. You'll pass a sign that says 'Sheffield 18 Miles' and then drive for about an hour, and then pass one that says 'Sheffield 17 Miles' and then drive for a week before passing one that says 'Sheffield 19 Miles'.

I'd looked at the journey on the map and there's a road that leads straight into the Steel City, and this is the one I was on, but as we finally got closer to our prize, the only option was to drive onto the M1, which wasn't the plan, and then go a further 15 miles. I was in the car with the comedians Paul Betney and Paul Smith (I only give lifts to comedians called Paul, if you're hitch hiking then hold out a sign that says 'I am a comedian called Paul' and I'll definitely stop) and we couldn't believe the hours this trip was taking. We feared we would never reach Sheffield, and I started to accelerate out of desperation, tipping 100mph on the motorway but seemingly never getting closer.

When we did finally arrive we walked around the evening streets feeling as if we were somehow in a different country. Not only did it seem like we'd been on a long flight, but Sheffield has trams and so we might have been somewhere like Brussels. Then someone walked past in a shell suit looking for heroin and that illusion was put to bed.

But honestly, I've never known a journey like it. We've all had long, traffic clogged nightmares that have taken hours, but I've never experienced a journey where you're driving fast and making good progress the whole time, without ever seeming to get closer to your quarry. It's almost as if Sheffield exists in some weird vortex, where time and distance mean nothing. I for one think the government should investigate. How dare the people of the Steel City have their own rules of physics?

Really fun gig tonight. I was on last and there weren't any time constraints so the stage was set, if you will, for a bit of a knockabout with loads of audience participation and improvisation. These are the best gigs, far better than the more regimented 'You do twenty minutes, not twenty two' that exist in some places. I tried some new stuff which all worked (no guarantee it's reliable material yet - the audience in Sheffield were very responsive and up for odder stuff, others might not be) and at one point got the entire audience to leave their seats and follow me over to one side of the club where, out of a large window, you could see a nightclub over the road and two-stage neon sign that animated a man doing the most bizarre dance. So we did a bit of the gig standing by the window laughing at the sign, and then getting members of the crowd to come to the fore and try and copy his moves.

I've got an ancient routine which I rarely do anymore where I dance to I Am The Walrus by The Beatles, trying to act out the surreal words. I though I might do it again tonight so had instructed the soundman it was the second track on my CD. But I'd given him the wrong CD, like an idiot, and it only had the one song on it, which is the Space Oddity thing that I'd already done. So when I asked for the I Am The Walrus cue, he said he'd tried everything but there was only one track. Apparently he'd been panicking for ages. So I asked him to put on a random CD from his collection and I'd do that instead. It was The Soup Dragons and 'I'm Free'. So the gig ended with an improvised dance to this, as well as pulling audience members up to join in. A bizarre show, but really enjoyable.

It's amazing I can earn a living by getting random people to dance to The Soup Dragons and laugh at silly neon signs.

Afterwards I joined a few people in the audience (all Morrissey fans, wonderfully) in seeking out a late drink and we ended up in the Spearmint Rhino strip club until about 4am. I was annoyed that they kicked us out at 4am when they shut, because surely Sheffield should have it's own licensing laws, existing as it does in it's very own vortex?

Do you know what - I'm not going to mention gigs in this Blog again because I'm fully aware they just sound like I'm showing off. I'll mention them if they go really badly so you can laugh at me being knocked off my perch, but they're going well right now so I'll talk about anything but gigs from now on. No-one likes a big head. And I, physically, have the biggest head in existence. I look like the love child of Sophie Ellis Bextor and a meteorite. So if I was to get characteristically big headed too I would be the biggest big head of all time.

No mention of gigs ever again.

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