I FEEL NOW THAT I AM FINALLY A COMEDIAN. I DIDN’T BEFORE. THERE IS A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING A COMEDIAN AND A COMIC ACTOR. YOU USE MANY OF THE SAME SKILLS: TIMING, MULTIPLE VOICES, LOOKS, TAKES, AND so on, but being alone onstage is the key. Talking to an audience in your own voice and making them laugh with no one else to help you, that’s the difference. Of course I am lucky. I don’t come on alone. I have the ghosts of the Pythons with me, and the audience is already alive and warm and welcoming and buzzing with expectation, and yes I do get a huge greeting, which I now shamelessly milk, but I still have to make them laugh. And that is something I have learned how to do on this tour. How to extend my monologue and edit it, and go with new thoughts. How to forget what’s next and not panic. How to listen to the audience and pick up the pace. How to fly solo. How to perform five different nights in five different cities and still be able to stand up! All this has been a new experience for me. The bus has been my secret weapon. It has made all the difference on this tour, carrying your world on your back, it’s like traveling in your own suitcase. It’s a cozy, warm den, and I shall miss my little space, so carefully organized with tea and books and music. You can keep the curtains drawn and have some Beethoven on the stereo and a nice cup of tea and a laptop to tap away on and you might as well not be parked outside a former porno cinema in Portland, Oregon. The Aladdin Theater is famous for having screened the longest-running film in history: Deep Throat. It ran here for more than twenty years. There is still an old print of it somewhere on the premises. Frankly I think the movie sucks. [Yes we get it.—Ed.] But at least there is something appropriate about having the whole audience sing “Sit on My Face.”
Our magical stage crew transform this unlikely venue into a warm golden bowl ready to leech the last leavings of comedy. [Pretentious bastard.—Ed.] Because it is a cinema with no backstage we can only use one side for entrances, and I have to change in the bus, but the house is full and responsive and the show goes off like a rocket. They make so much noise by the end for the Christmas song that I think they will never stop bellowing. In all my four hundred years in comedy I have never known anything that generates more of a response than this song. It’s fantastic. It’s like touching the comedy G-spot. Very appropriate for this venue….
Of course, it really should be Day Sixty-nine.