"Nice."


At tonight’s Mostly Comedy I got to introduce John Thomson in his guise as Bernard Righton, thinking how I used to watch him do the selfsame character on my copy of ‘Steve Coogan: Live and Lewd’ as a thirteen-year-old.

What made it particularly ridiculous was, while we were talking over the introduction backstage, he said ‘If you could just mention that Bernard used to be racist and sexist, but has seen the error of his ways’, not realising how often I’d heard Steve Coogan say much the same on my overplayed VHS over half my lifetime ago.

They say you should never meet your heroes. I’ve yet to be disappointed. John Thomson was a case in point. He was lovely. He also had the exact same onstage sparkle behind the eyes that drew me to his performances as a youngster; a look that says we’re all in this together, we’re all on-side.

It was also a good night for me. I did my longest solo set thus far, and felt I’d started to turn a corner. Half of the material was untried (and the other stuff had only been performed a few times before), yet most landed pretty well. It’s given me the confidence boost needed to plough ahead. So, I’d better get my plough out.

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