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.