Over a month late because, being the primo-Donna that SPB is, he wasn’t ready for his (excuse the pun) big entrance. It’s been a bitch to write and rehearse solely because I’ve never attempted anything like this before. SPB isn’t a character, he’s a vessel, a clean slate with no rules who could explore a fantasy world with the mindset of “what if…”? Imagine Mork from Ork with a brain injury.

I won’t say that I’m not a tad nervous. I have no idea how this character will play before an audience. If they understand him and like him then I’m off to a good start, if they sympathise with him then I can take them to places they’ve never been, but, and it’s a big but, if they stare at me thinking “what the f**k” then were all in for ten minutes of very odd unfunny titting about.

This could be my ‘Modern Man’ or my ‘Hitler’s Beard’, and currently I don’t know which. That said, I almost binned MM before his first ever gig, I was that certain of failure, and strangely he turned out to be my most successful creation, where-as with HB I was so sure I was onto a winner I didn’t even question it, and it failed big-time.

There’s very few hard fast rules with comedy, it’s wildly subjective. The same material can storm one day and bomb the next. Funny has layers, levels, twists, logic, rules, colours, shades, all of those and sometimes none. if you can figure it out, then you’re either a genius or a fluke.

Tonight my rule will be, “if I have fun then they’ll have fun” and that’s half the battle.

More later.
Mxxx (& SPB)