A Bug's Life

It's Red Nose Day for Comic Relief and what am I doing, on this my day off? I'm going to the phlebotomist, then to sign my Will, then in to London for a concert. Comedy - I cannot haz it!

Last night I went to see the nationally known comedian Richard Herring at The Junction. His current show is called "The Headmaster's Son," and Herring looks back over his childhood and his younger self (through the medium of his teenage diary) to see if the constant impact of his father in his school career is what has damaged him and turned him into the man/41-yr-old failure/comedian/sex-obsessed dick he is today. It was funny, and sexually repulsive, and insightful: time gives Old Rich a position from which he can effortlessly puncture the pompous, annoying, pedantic kid he was, but he's sympathetic to what Young Rich would think of the life he's made for himself and YR manages to make a few good wounds. Sometimes the window he holds up on his past turns into a mirror, and as I crane to see I realise the irritating, socially incompetent, self-important teenager I'm peering at is myself. But we seem to get through that okay, mostly, and can laugh at ourselves, as Herring laughs at himselves, and we laugh at him.

The gods were laughing on me though - my first night out to a thing with friends in yonks, and although it's unassigned seating mine was unassigned in the stalls and theirs was unassigned in the balcony. Arse! There's nothing like sitting on your own all through the interval at a comedy gig to make you feel utterly sad like a really sad person who's the saddest person in the universe with no friends. Well, there was the time I went to a restaurant and sat at a table all by myself, in a restaurant all by myself, when the muzak comes up with "All By Myself". But the food there was great :-)