Blog: Leicester: The Final Night

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When I got back to Leicester i did INDEED have a bit of an old NAP, and it was LOVELY. Maybe it is the gentle slide into middle age (i am at THE TOP OF THE SLIDE tho, all right?) but sometimes in this crazy hurly burly life of hesticity putting aside an hour for a SNOOZE is DELIGHTFUL.

Suitably refreshed I had a shower and headed for The Criterion, there to meet Mr S Hewitt who had been out SEEING SHOWS. I was VERY impressed - when I used to live in Leicester the Comedy Festival seemed to happen one evening in a pub somewhere and never really affected me, so I was not only impressed that he'd managed to get out and SEE something - in fact TWO things - but also AMAZED that there was enough things going on to interest such a COMEDY CONNIEUSEUR. The Comedy Festival tho seems to have come on in leaps and bounds in recent times, and there did seem to be LOADS of things going on. INDEED there even felt like a bit of a Festival Atmosphere in the city... although that might be caused, in my case, by the fact that I'd seen John Cooper Clarke at Leicester Station that morning. John Cooper Clarke! He looked EXACTLY like you'd hope he'd look too, and SOUNDED like it too. COR!

We sat and compared notes on our divergent days, enjoyed some BEER, got set up and then watched as the room gradually filled with PEOPLE. We'd already sold forty tickets and by the time we started we had apparently SOLD OUT! Only just, but still - PHEW! We can keep calling it a SELLOUT SHOW on Press Releases!

The show itself was GRATE, by which I mean i really REALLY enjoyed doing it. I think it was pretty much the BEST version of it i have ever done - there were LOADS of LARFS (which is always a help!) and it all felt dead easy and fun to do. In a way I was sorry at the end, because it also felt like this was the very LAST time I would be doing this version of the show. When I did My Exciting Life In ROCK it never felt like I'd finished with it, as I still think I'll be doing it all again some day, but I'm pretty sure that from hereonin it's going to be the new Full Cast (2) Musical Version.

It'll be a shame to lose some of the GAGS - especially the "Platoon made of Vegetable Balti" bit, which i love - but when we do the TWO HOUR WEST END VERSION I'm going to try and get them back in as extra songs.

Hmmm... once I would have thought twice about telling people that I was genuinely, seriously thinking about writing a song about soldiers made entirely out of curry to fit into a West End Musical about Space Dinosaurs. Now: IT IS THE NORM.

Talking of curry - once the show was over there was time to finish our beer, profusely thank the lovely people who'd come, fill in our evaluation forms (audience members were evaluating the venue, organisation, and ME, while I had one to say what I thought of the festival and the people who'd help us: i thought it was all BRILLIANT) and then head off to ANOTHER West End: LEICESTER'S West End, for a celebratory CURRY.

The venue chosen was The Tamarind - I used to go there most weekends to pick up TEA for The Sauce In My Balti and I during our COURTING DAYS and I also went fairly often with The Board of AAS, because it was DEAD nice, but haven't been for a couple of years now. I was thus EXTREMELY pleased when one of the chaps there stopped, surprised, and said "We haven't seen you for a long time!" It was lovely!

As was the curry, and it was with a warmed tum and a happy GLOW that my colleague and I said our farewells, full of food and the satisfaction of a job well done. Leicester is ALWAYS brilliant, but this time it had been ESPECIALLY so!

posted 18/2/2010 by MJ Hibbett

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