'Not tonight, Joke-sephine.'


Unfortunately, I've had to cancel tomorrow’s preview in Winchester with Norman Lovett as the take-up hadn’t been as much as we would have liked - and while I could have left it a little longer to see if we sold more, it made sense to call it now, to allow time to inform ticketholders and to save the hassle of getting there tomorrow to find we're just as quiet.

It’s very frustrating, but ultimately can’t be helped, and it feels better to make the decision today instead of leaving it hanging, particularly as most of the day was spent going through the mechanics of cancelling it, leaving me no time to work on the show itself. All this does is echo how I’m sick of being the one doing all the organising and how I'm seldom, if ever, the one previewing my show on someone else’s night with them doing all the booking and promotion. In fact, now I think of it, in all the time I’ve worked with Glyn or on my own, we’ve never previewed a show at someone else’s event. Not once; yet the times I or we have offered other acts the chance to try something out in front of audience having not had to do anything other than show up are countless.

The aborted show in Winchester was the first example of someone meeting me halfway by allowing me to essentially perform under the umbrella of a club that wasn’t mine, but I still booked Norman, took the financial risk and led the promotion. I know it’s not the way these things go, but it would be nice if these arrangements went both ways.

The plus side to losing tomorrow is it actually frees up the diary, giving me more time to work on the show for the next preview at the Actors’ Temple with Phil Kay next Friday, without having to rush. Here’s hoping I use it correctly and make the most of it; what I’ve lost in not having a chance to try the material out to a new audience tomorrow (which is obviously always beneficial) I gain in having the time to fix what I don’t like about it.

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