Cant type for long today as I have to go away and be a zombie. Luckily this doesn’t involve being killed and then reanimated, or being bitten by another zombie or any sort of voodoo charms. If it did then although the poster would look great, lives would be jeopardized and my Edinburgh show, more importantly, would be really rubbish. It would just involve me slowly staggering around and making a low zombie groan noise. I can’t even think of a gag with that noise as a punchline, so I’m sure it would only be a 2 star show at most. Unless I fell over a bit. Everyone likes some falling over. Anyway, today’s zombification is a lot easier that any of those and it just involves me covering my self in liquid latex to look all undead. I made a special trip to a theatrical make-up shop to but things yesterday which I got very excited about. The shop itself was rather deceiving as, on first entry there is wall to wall blusher and other womanly make-up type things. I was worried I was in the wrong place. Then sitting on the counter was a pretend (I hope) severed head with blood dripping off it and a zombie hand. They seemed completely out of place, until I asked the woman at the counter what I needed to be a zombie and she became all excited and handed me many goods. Yesterday afternoon was then spent applying a little bit of said ‘stuff’ to my arm to see how zombie it looked. It looked zombie indeed. There was a while when I was a bit scared of my own arm. I am a little terrified to see myself in a mirror later as I might get one glance and run away out of fear. That would make the whole photoshoot very awkward.
What terrifies me more is that the woman told me that taking the latex off my self wouldn’t be easy and gave me some special remover. I thought nothing of this until later when I coated my arm in the special alcohol concoction and then tried to peel the zombie effects away. They came off ok, but so did all the hair on my forearm. To say it didn’t hurt would be a massive understatement. It hurt like fuckery. Still on the plus side by the end of today I should be a lot more aerodynamic than I was before.
After toying with the undead – a term I use lightly as it could also be used for playing football with vampires, something I would never do. Mostly because their fangs could puncture the ball – I drove to Brighton for a lovely lovely gig run by the equally as lovely Angela. The gig is held in a really small and intimate room above a pub and is the perfect venue for trying out material and generally having a really ace gig. Sadly, just as I got into Brighton, Angela called me to say only 5 tickets had been sold and so the gig was cancelled. This was a little bit rubbish but also what happens in comedy so not a lot you can do. I headed to the gig anyway and stayed to have a drink with Angela and several other comics before everyone drove home. I picked up Rob Heeney and we raced all the way back to Old Rope to catch the last ten minutes of Stephen Merchant’s headline set. While it was all pleasant and nice to see Rob, Angela and the others it was definitely the longest way I have ever driven for a drink. Essentially a lot of gigs are just driving long distance to do 20 minutes and then leave again, but you usually combine a little bit of sitting, maybe eating and basically not driving in there just to break it up. Without those bits you just become a driver which is whole lot less fun, unless you spend everyday pretending you are Knight Rider in which case driving anywhere is good. As me and Layla share a little VW Polo, the Knight Rider dream only ever lasts about 10 minutes.
It was a good insight into why lorry drivers are usually such miserable bastards. Maybe if they gigged at every stop they might enjoy it all a bit more. Guaranteed the jokes would be racist and mother-in-law-y though so perhaps its better they just stay lonely and depressed.
Right going to go zombify. Will post pics tomorrow if I can.
