This is where Rainer mouths off about anything that takes his fancy about life, music and comedy.  Click on the comment buttons to tell him what you think.  We'll post anything which doesn't involve swearing.

11th July 2008 12.42

Once, years ago, I recorded a stand-up set on German TV.  On the day the programme was shown I got a call on my home number in the UK from two girls in Schwerin (northern Germany, about 120km from Hamburg) who had decided that there couldn’t be that many Rainer Hersch’s in the London telephone directory (correct) and who looked me up.  Flattered, shocked and faintly scared I chatted to them for half an hour before making my excuses, asking them not to call again, and ringing off.

So, last Thursday, I am creeping towards central London on the Piccadilly Line, reading everything of interest in the free newspapers (which takes a full 30 seconds) when the mobile rings.  I glance at the display and the incoming is number 0049….
Germany.
Bollocks!  Who is it now? Two builders from Bremen? Students from Stuttgart? Because, apart from my in-laws (both in their 80’s and who have seen mobile phones but think they work by connecting to the electricity supply) I know nobody in Germany who has got my mobile number – a few drug dealers; Cologne central police station maybe but, really, that’s it.

Well, it turns that I am more detectible than I imagined.  On the other end it’s Detlef - the manager of the Lindener Spezial Club (“Lindener Special Needs Club” – only joking) in Hannover, Germany.  I have won a prize!  And not one of those “congratulations, you are the one millionth person to access this web site!” prizes neither, but a real prize.  The audience voted my gig there in March the best this year.  Me!  Won a prize!  Stone the crows. The only other prize I have ever won was one at the wrap-up party at Winnipeg Fringe Festival where the only criterion for winning was cheering louder than the others when your name was read out from a list.

Detlef wanted to know if it was...er OK to come back to Hannover to do another gig and collect my cash in February.  “Cash!?”  say I.  “Yes, you get an engraved beer glass (it’s a beer company that sponsors it) plus €2000?”  “Bloody hell. €2000 - that’s £1600 in real money.  But of course”.  I couldn’t suppress a quiet cheer as I scrabbled for the diary to write 'Tuesday, February 24th 2009 HANNOVER' in thick red pencil, making the 'E' of HANNOVER into a '€' for good measure.

Bit of a result then. Bought Ted the dog some special treats to celebrate and made a note to self to win more prizes.  At €2000 a pop I could use the money to employ a secretary whose sole job it was to field weird phone calls.  Actually, with enough prizes I could even employ a secretary to start making them.

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1st July 2008 10.38

A rumination backlog no less...

Friday 20th June
I hear from my producer that Gershwin’s Horns – my radio programme about whacky orchestral instruments (anvils, taxi horns etc) made it onto Pick of the Week on Radio 4.  Hoorah!  Frankly, after all the effort of pitching the idea; recording interviews; writing and recording the script you start to wonder if you haven’t just spent a month creating a load of old poo.  So that's poo to the contrary.

The original broadcast and the “obscenely long” repeated excerpt on PotW took place while I was in Oz.  I didn’t report in this journal at the time that at the appointed hour (+ 9) I tried to listen to it on-line in the bar of my hotel in Strahan, Tasmania (the only place with high-speed Internet in…er…Tasmania, probably).  Having spent an hour crouched over my laptop downloading the umpteen necessary updates to BBC RealPlayer, the said bar promptly shut.  “Sorry, mate, I can’t let you stay here but you can get the Internet in the corridor” says the barman (one of the last Australian barmen left in Australia since the rest must be living in bed-sits in Earls Court).  More crouching – this time in the freezing corridor – until my high-speed Internet credit ran out after about 15 minutes of the programme.  Bollocks. And the bit I did catch sounded like a load of old poo.

Saturday 21st June
Did a solo show at Woolpit Festival - a wonderful little village in the heart of Suffolk with half-timbered buildings older than America (actually - 14th century - older than the U.K. for that matter).  Makes you proud to be British…or should that be English.  After the gig amongst many cheery plaudits I meet the actor Ian Lavender who is somehow associated with Woolpit (owns sheep?).  Almost crashed the car on the way home phoning my mother to tell her.  Ian Lavender, for the uninitiated, was the youngest character, Pike, in Dad’s Army.

U-boat Captain: Your name will also go on the list! What is it?
Mainwaring: Don't tell him Pike!
U-boat Captain: Ah Pike!

...how we laughed.

Suffice to say that, 35 years on, he now doesn’t look anything like Pike.  In fact, half way through our conversation, I felt like asking him if he really was Ian Lavender and not a bearded Ranulph Fiennes.

Friday 27th June
Went to Alfred Brendel’s last recital at the Festival Hall.  Standing ovations, much cheering, hats in the air et al.  As he walked off for the final time, I had more than a slight sensation that we had reached the end of an era since, like many musos, I feel that I have sort of grown up listening to him.  Being slightly more fanatical than most, I might claim slightly greater reasons for nostalgia:

When I was in my teens, wandering aimlessly around the Southbank with a friend (Tim) one afternoon (as you do), we realised that Alfred Brendel was playing a Beethoven concerto that evening in the Festival Hall.  We sneaked past the cordons, let ourselves into the hall and there he was doing some final practice all alone on the stage.  After he finished, Tim and I approached  and pledged the undying troth of teenage fans.  I remember him saying in his Germanic rumble “follow me” whereupon he took us into his green room in the bowels of the Festival Hall, signed our hall events programme and asked us questions about which of his recordings we had heard.  Since most of these didn’t actually belong to us, we rather fumbled our answers I remember but left elated nonetheless.  I have still got the signature somewhere upstairs in box of treasures.

Suffice to say that in the ensuing 30 years I have become friendly with the younger Brendel clan, though I can’t honestly say that I know the great man himself.  Adrian, his son, has asked me to do a comic tribute to him at a private concert in Dorset in July 19th.  I’ll probably mention my autograph story but will doubtless botch the ensuing questions about recordings just the same.

Ted Tears
Ted the dog’s conjunctivitis is much better – thanks for various concerned emails.  Unfortunately, having spent two weeks dabbing his eyes with various drops and ointments, now I’ve got it. What else can I catch off him I wonder? Let's not even go there.

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10th June 2008 09.32

Somehow, deep down, I always fear going away from home.  Between the moment of departure and the safe return to my comfortable bed lie all the vagaries of poorly maintained airplanes, foreign taxi drivers, exotic diseases.  Then, of course, are all the bad things that can happen to my humble abode while I’m away – chiefly (I imagine) at the hands of local ne’er-do-wells who, are going to break in, nick my computers and trash the place. It's a deeply felt feeling of Ying and Yang - you can't have a good thing without it being balanced somewhere with a disaster.

In travelling to Australia, my fears about the bad stuff probably have less foundation than otherwise.  For a start Qantas is the only airline never to have had an accident (is that true or merely traveller’s legend?).  Meanwhile, the taxi drivers there speak English and don’t drive like their crashing or not is merely an expression of the will of God’s will.  Finally, apart from the occasional venomous spider, I am pretty sure my GP can at least spell the names of most things that are likely to kill me. And, the good stuff? Australia - packed with top quality experiences which I will be able mull over when I finally slump, dribbling and incontinent in my future old folks home - the sights, the sounds, the simple chance I am given to casually zoom off somewhere that some people never manage to get their entire lives. Quite a lot of Ying not much Yang then.

Well, now it is all done I can report that I survived with no ill effects.  And to boot managed to have fun.  The concerts were great – ending up in Toowoomba with the Queensland Orchestra.  (The word ‘Toowoomba’ is to British ears emotionally equivalent to ‘Ouagadougou’ but, suffice to say that, the back of beyond it is not.  Most surprising of its many worthy chattels is a fab art-deco theatre seating 1,500 and packed to the rafters with an audience up for a good time).  Add to that my own wanderings with Mrs Hersch (my wife); Koala bear cuddling in Cairns; the dingoes on Fraser Island (not cuddled) and general lazing around hotels way above my price range, the result was a growing feeling that being away from home just ain’t so bad after all. So what's the payoff?

Twenty six hours later, back in Blighty, and it turns out that the household has not fared so well.  During my absence, Ted the dog has developed some kind of galloping conjunctivitis which none of his sitters seemed to have noticed; a leaking tap in the upstairs bathroom makes it look like one of the ceilings may now come down and the always over-sensitive fuse box tripped out on day 3 cutting power to the building and reducing the contents of our freezer to a mouldy mess (including a carefully preserved tier of our wedding cake).  Bugger.

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19th May 2008 02.30

Hello from Tasmania, Australia – about as far as you can get away from leafy Ealing before you start coming back on yourself - three flights; five titchy airline meals and enough jet-lag to still wake me up at 2am a week later (it’s 2am).  The aim: three concerts with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in Burnie, Launceston and Hobart.   All done and dusted now with great success (methinks) including a standing ovation in Burnie – the first ever there according to all reports (hoorah).

The Tassie’s are great and full of vigour.  Beautiful countryside and interesting buildings – ancient by Australian standards though many postdate the average kitchen extension in the UK.   This history is due to the convict era which established the original colony here, reminding me of that old standard about Australian immigration.  Question: “Do you have a criminal record?”.  Answer: “Didn’t realise that was still a requirement to get in”.  Oh how we laughed.

Naturally, I enjoyed the banter with the audience at the top of the show, gradually developing my routines disparaging whichever town we had performed in last.  Thus, in Launceston: “bloody Burnie, talk about Darwin’s Waiting Room – at one point I asked if anybody had been to London - one hand went up.  One hand, six fingers etc” [CHEER/APPLAUSE].  In Burnie: “The good news is, I think someone is trying to burn down Launceston (there is a hell of a lot of wood smoke around town)  – we heard on the radio that there had been a fire there which has already done over $200,000 of improvements etc” [CHEER/APPLAUSE].  In Hobart: “Yes, we just came back from what we have been calling the hillbilly tour – Burnie and Launceston.  Have you seen the monkeys in City Park in Launceston (a troop of about 20 kept in a special enclosure)?  I bloody loved those monkeys.  But, reading the notices, I couldn’t work out whether they were the gift of Launceston City Council or whether they were Launceston City Council etc” [CHEER/APPLAUSE]. 
All good clean fun.  The Queensland Orchestra next.   I can hear it now:  “Just came from Tasmania – they have a big problem once a year down there – Father’s Day etc” [CHEER/APPLAUSE]. 

Come on people – it’s my job!

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5th May 2008 09.09

Dubai, Qatar and Abu Dhabi - all great gigs in front of audiences who were completely up for it.  However, there a reason for this: there is bugger all else to do in Dubai, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.  And they know it. 

This, for example, is a joke that goes down very well at the top of a stand-up set in Qatar:
“So we arrived today at twelve o’clock.  We got picked up and were given this big sightseeing tour round everything there is to do….and by ten past twelve we were in the pool at the hotel.”  [BIG LAUGH/CHEER]

On Day 2, fellow comic Owen O’Neill and I ventured out of the hotel on a pedestrian safari across town to find little except dusty streets.  What pass for highlights are: a desperately uninteresting waterfront promenade (known locally as the corniche – the only other corniche I can think of is the one running around Monaco and the Côte d'Azur, Qatar ain’t); a museum of Islamic Art (closed) and something known as the Old Iranian Souk (picked up a retired couple from Baghdad for a fiver).  Two thirds of the population (900,000) are expatriates but being sent there seems to me an odd kind of prison sentence.  Abu Dhabi (the Milton Keynes of the Emirates) is not much better.  Only Dubai offers a spark of variation though it will only be really interesting when it is finished (never). 

Don’t get me wrong, the people are great. Also the tour organizers (Duncan and Gayle: much love and praise be heaped upon them for their professionalism, friendly help and encouragement).  I also enjoyed myself very much though didn’t manage a return trip to the famous, sail-like hotel the Burj Al Arab for tea ("the world's only seven-star hotel" - makes a nonsense of the system, surely?). You know there are rooms in the Burj which go for $50,000 a night.  For $50,000 the Sewing Kit is this little Chinese lady who sits in the corner, darning.  And if you want to watch a soap opera, they fly the actual actors in…

Now that I’ve got to see.

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2nd April 2008 18.27

I have just an on-line interview with Time Out Dubai (to whose jurisdiction I am jaunting off next week).  Naturally, it is a pleasure to have my opinion asked about anything but my inability to just answer the bloody questions and hit send mean that a task which might take me 15 minutes, tops, ends up absorbing the best part of a morning.

What we are talking about here is the “what’s your idea of happiness”; “tell us your best joke” style of journalism.  The resulting column is fun to read and about my level on a bleary Sunday morning but there is clearly also a bit of lazy-arsed filling of column inches going too. 

I must have done about ten of them in my time.  Some are fun, some are simply preposterous.  “Tell us your best joke” sails in that direction.  Let’s face it, even if I had one really good joke I am not going to piss it away, free to be presented completely out of context in a listings magazine.  There my so-called best joke can be read and dismissed: "hmmph. Best joke! that's not very funny". I laughingly call myself a professional comedian.  The key is in the word professional – i.e. for money. 

In etreme cases, a solution I have found is to simply be equally preposterous.  To a South African newspaper in 1999: What are you looking forward to in the new millennium: Living in it. What are you not looking forward to: Dying in it.  I mean – what the hell do they want you to write?  A summary of putative highlights over forty years?

Ahem...well, in case you don’t happen to be a subscriber to Time Out Dubai and so I get at least some other use out of it…herewith my latest effort For best effect, print it out and read it with a throbbing hangover over tea with a boiled egg and toast soldiers.

Tell us your funniest joke
 Q. What’s grey, got four legs and a trunk?  
A. A mouse going on holiday
Q. What’s brown, got four legs and a trunk?
A. A mouse coming back from holiday.

…that’s two jokes. Not necessarily mine or the funniest but they work on my five-year old nephew.

Describe a funny...

...audience ice-breaker
Setting fire to the curtains 

...personal experience
Sitting in a traffic jam and seeing one of my four step-brothers in a car next to mine but not recognizing him.  I must add that I have had two step-fathers in my life and I have hardly met the most recent clutch of step-siblings.  He started honking.  I opened the window.  Me: “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?” Him: “MY FATHER IS MARRIED TO YOUR MOTHER”.

...but terrible moment as a comedian
Doing a guest-spot at the comedy store and hearing a version of your best joke being done (quite coincidentally) by the guy on just before you. 

...person
Victor Borge.  I made a programme about him for the BBC and got so interested in his story that I felt compelled to write a one-man play “Rainer Hersch’s Victor Borge” which I first did at the Edinburgh Festival and have subsequently toured in North America and Australia amongst other places.  Borge managed to combine comedy and classical pianism in a way which was completely new and which entertained a very wide audience whether they cared about classical music or not.  Although the peak of his fame was in the 1960’s, he is still unbelievably fondly remembered – a testament to the aura he generated on stage.  I also met him once (very briefly) in 1996 backstage in a concert hall in Stockholm of all places – a moment which I have to recreate in the play.  He died in December 2000 aged 91.

...place
The CN Tower in Toronto where the floor is made of glass and you can see right down to the ground

...word
“some spoiling of the tile nibs” – this is the one phrase that I can remember from the surveyor’s report on my first house in Brixton.  I have still no idea what it means

...animal
Ted the dog.  My dog.  ‘Ted’ is an abbreviation for “insTed of children” 

...song
Leporello’s list song Madamina, il catalogo è questo from Don Giovanni.  In it he describes how many women the Don has slept with.  And they include: 91 in Turkey; 100 in France and over 1,300 in the county of Essex to the East of London.

...sound
The sound of someone else laughing uncontrollably on stage or at the microphone.  Corpsing is frowned on by the acting profession but I don’t understand why.  It is a rare moment when you get a glimpse of the real person.

...celebrity
Sir Les Patterson (the alter, alter ego of Barry Humphries - aka Dame Edna Everage). In the silent movie era I believe there were similar camps: fans of Charlie Chaplin and fans Buster Keaton.  For me, Sir Les trumps Dame Edna and I am pretty sure most comics would say the same.  Why? I don’t know: the teeth, the spitting, the glass of whisky – the fact that he is cultural attaché.  I just have to think of that character and he makes me laugh.  I am wiping away tears of laughter just writing this (really).

...crisis
Not sure that I have ever had a funny crisis.  I generally just put my head down and get on with it.  I am not good in situations which involve conflict.  I seek my wife’s advice when dealing with those - unless it’s her that I am in conflict with, in which case I defer to the dog.

...fellow comedian
Plenty of people.  To mention any by name would seem sycophantic or worse.  Once, at a Comedy Store party in London, I decided that I would be genuine and just tell a certain comedian how much I liked what he did – that I thought he was funny and original.  “OK….thanks” says he, awkwardly before moving away.  With hindsight, I realised he thought I was trying to chat him up.

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8th March 2008 09.44

Living in London can be like being a member of a very expensive gym you never actually visit.  You fork out monthly, daily, in the form of more expensive housing; expensive travel; generally inflated cost of living - meantime the facilities lie there untouched.  Over the last few days I have been gripped by a desire to exercise my rights.

So:
Saturday, March 1st: Tosca at the Albert Hall.  Tosca is the one where everyone dies including the eponymous heroine who chucks herself off the battlements at the end (at which the music…just ends which I have always found a bit strange).   Never seen it live.  Performing that suicidal stage dive has become one of the great causes célèbres of operatic dramatics and source of many disaster stories.  And I quote:

(Dudley Moore’s Musical Bumps, 1986)
“In one production a group of students were recruited to play the chorus – in this particular opera, mainly soldiers.  As usual, the producer was more concerned with the principals, and left giving the soldiers their instructions until a few minutes before the curtain. ‘You march on as a firing squad, line-up here, and shoot’.  When they asked how they were to get off the stage, he told them ‘Oh…just follow the principals.’

In the third act, the firing squad came in on cue, but instead of aiming for her lover, they pointed the guns at Tosca herself.  None of the signs she attempted  to give them were understood, and they fired at her.  They were rather perturbed when a man standing some distance away fell down dead, while the person they had ‘shot’ continued singing even louder than before! But even worse was to come.  As far as they could see, Tosca herself was the only principal left onstage.  So, when she threw herself over the battlements, they looked at each other and with a shrug walked towards the same spot.  The curtain came down to the sight of a platoon of soldiers throwing themselves - lemming-like – over the edge”

… better than the usual trampoline under the heroine yarn, but clearly hokum (you mean they had the orchestra and all the singers but no rehearsal when they went through the whole thing?).

In our production, Tosca threw herself most convincingly, approximately 4 meters into a specially designed pit behind the orchestra.  Mrs Hersch (my wife) was full of admiration ("zat vas a hell of a long vay" - Mrs Hersch is German) until I pointed out that singing Tosca had been cleverly switched for plunging Tosca seconds before it happened: she momentarily passed a covered area out of the audience’s sight (thinking of Dudley Moore, I had been keeping a beady eye out). 

Unfortunately also, this moment was the highpoint in more ways than one.  Watching opera in the vast, circus-like space of the Albert Hall is disconcerting.  For a start, everything has got to be amplified (including the orchestra) which gives you the faint feeling that it wouldn’t really matter if they just mimed it.  Meantime the singers seemed lost in the space – tramping here and there amid their rather naff scenery. 
4 out of 10.

Tuesday, March 4th: Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia at Tate Modern.  Mrs Hersch (my wife) is a particular fan of modern art and, being a paid-up camp follower of every gallery in London which offers it, frequently marches me around as her modernist cultural consort. 

Marcel Duchamp and company mean Conceptual Art - not to be confused with Concept Art or ‘Art de Concept’ (bastards! see the People's Front of Judea) - and Conceptual Art means the idea of the thing takes precedence over it’s actual execution: I draw two flowers on a piece of cardboard (badly) to illustrate that I hate flowers rather than to present you with the image of two flowers on a piece of cardboard done badly.  Geddit?  Not sure I do.  Such constructions often lead me to the feeling that it would save everybody a lot of time and effort if the artist just told us about what they were going to make, instead of going to all the time and trouble of actually making it.  If someone sent me a piece of paper describing how they had thought of screwing thirty deckchairs to the ceiling to highlight our false understanding of beach volleyball, for example, I could read and consider it over breakfast, then move on with the rest of my day.  As it is, I have to schlep into Tate Modern to nod and say "I see, they have screwed thirty deckchairs to the ceiling”.

Be this as it may, I have grown rather fond of walking into rooms full of Wellington boots/cows sawn in half/ticking metronomes etc.  The only problem is that when you’ve had enough  you’ve had enough.   Once you are tired of the new ideas, there is nothing else to look at and in this instance (as often at the Tate) I realised I had spent far too much time absorbing the details of Rooms 1 to 4 – little realising that there were another 20 still to go.  And, yes, the experience of actually seeing Duchamp’s famous signed urinal was just the same as being handed a piece of paper with the words “I am going to sign a urinal and put it in a gallery as a piece of art”. However, fun while it lasted.
6 out of 10

Friday, March 7th: Dealers Choice by Patrick Marber at the Trafalgar Studios.  There was a time when I knew Patrick Marber and those that similarly remember him from the London comedy circuit with his puppets and songs (really) are amused/amazed at his rise to the position of celebrity playwright.  All of that serves only to show what a small minded world the London circuit is and how, if you have got any sense (and I don’t think I have) you do it to grab what you can and move on.

I enjoyed this evening, though there was a slight feeling at the end of it that I had seen something meaningful acted out in front of me but wasn’t quite sure what.  I remember the same sensation at another Marby offering - Closer - which I saw in on tour in New Zealand in 1999 (oddly.  Perhaps I couldn’t get tickets for London).  The action focuses on one round of a weekly poker game, played by the staff of a London restaurant, though the central story is a complicated father-son relationship (the restaurant owner and offspring).  All very well acted (but acted – nobody ever actually speaks like that) and with a developing tension which kept us entertained and involved. Money well spent.
8 out of 10

(And by money well spent I might even mean the more expensive housing; expensive travel...).

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22nd February 2008 10.20

My sister has just written off the third car in her driving career: an unfortunate case of an unexpected early morning bollard at 30mph.  I am loath to gloat that I have never yet had an accident since I regard that as more luck than anything else.  Come to that my Dad never had an accident but saw loads in the rear-view mirror and that doesn’t include the time he mistook forward for reverse on his (automatic) Humber Imperial, smashed through the back garage wall and ended up in the sitting room.  Driving is dangerous and, the older I get, the less I like it – especially on motorways.

Not too far from me in Chiswick, West London is the headquarters of something called the Institute of Advanced Motorists.  What’s that Rainer? Well folks it’s an…institute…for…er…advanced motorists.  Apparently, apart from a generally superior attitude, they have special test for people who feel they need documentary proof that they are truly a much better driver than all those other arseholes.  Once you pass it you pay less on your insurance and get a little sticker to put in your window (I suppose two fingers up under the Institute’s motto: If We Crash, It’s Your Fault).

Yes, the purpose of taking the test is to reduce your chances of having an accident by…well, I don’t really know by what but I am sure the Institute of Advanced Motorists have got statistics to show that it does.  What I do know is that during the test you can choose between either doing a running commentary to the examiner about the situation presenting itself so that they can hear how you are thinking ahead to avoid early morning bollards; not squish small children and slow down on the motorway as you pass the police OR you can just let the examiner deduce how observant you have been by dint of the fact that you have not wrapped your headlights round some concrete pillar, killed an infant or been arrested.  From what I understand, the biggest problem with the running commentary approach is that, when do encounter a diffucult patch (that oncoming Articulated Lorry in the middle of the road) your natural reaction is not to calmly announce to the examiner “oncoming lorry, I am changing to second gear and preparing to die” but either just shout expletives or shut up.  Either of those, I understand, is a fail.

Ahem.

All this is an incredibly long winded, vague and (probably) self satisfied-sounding way of explaining my blog silence over the last few weeks.  As it turns out, all my oncoming Artic’s all passed by without disaster for which I am truly grateful.  They culminated in a performance with the excellent Leicester Symphony Orchestra at De Montfort Hall as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival on February 16th. Prior to that there was my hosting of the Welsh Contact Centre Awards at City Hall in Cardiff and prior to that the unfortunate case of an unexpected early morning piano recital (Bach, Chopin, Liszt) at the London College of Music – the less said the better.

Now I am cruising on the open road with only the entertainment of my teenage nephew on the horizon.  He’s on half term this week and so, metaphorically, am I.  Thus, instead of fretting over the piano or practicing my conducting moves in the mirror, I will be idling away this (Friday) afternoon at the cinema with Harry watching Juno "a funny, savvy, feel-good comedy that reminds you why you fell in love with movies” (sounds rubbish already doesn’t it?) His Ma can’t take him owing to a minor episode with her motor.  Whatever.  You can now expect my full, blow by blow report in these pages…

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6th February 2008 10.24

There is a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up routine about visiting his parents in Florida (“my parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that's the law”).  He’s in the hot tub - a U.S. domestic institution judging by the number of times I have heard it mentioned in stand-up sets.  Around him are his Dad and his Dad's friends and, looking at all this geriatric flesh, Seinfeld feels like asking them “what the hell happened to your body?”.  What started out as regular contours has become a mess – droopy, wrinkled with hair that has somehow migrated from the top of the head to inside the ears (I am paraphrasing here but that’s the gist). 

Now, I am not repeating this from a position of snooty superiority:  I’m in my 40’s, struggling to hold on to my hair and deaf as a post.  It goes without saying that getting older is about subtle changes which, over time, result in a fairly ruinous transformation.  I once read in a colour supplement (so it must be true) for example that throughout your life your ears keep growing.  Meanwhile the sensitivity of your hearing declines markedly after the age of sixty.  This, I suppose, is why you end up with a hell of a lot of old people with massive ears who can’t hear a ruddy thing.

On January 11th I went to a New Year’s Day concert (yes, you read that right) in Leatherhead, promoted by a friend: A thirty-piece orchestra running through Strauss waltzes and polkas; a thin, Slovakian geezer with a colourful waistcoat playing the cimbalom; soprano doing cheeky songs in languages nobody understood; at the end: Auld Lang Syne - pushing a point I think. The audience average age was about 70 - not a word of a lie.  It was a sea of white hair and comfortable shoes, smelling of lavender.  I looked around me at one point and realised that Mrs Hersch, my wife, and I were the youngest people there by twenty years, at least.  

Like Seinfeld, I felt like turning round to the ancient couple next to us and asking “what the hell happened to you?  What the hell are you doing here?”  They, quite reasonably might have asked me the same thing.  But it is enough to make you wonder.  Is it picking up an old age pension which suddenly starts you listening to classical waltzes?  Or have those people always gone to naff concerts at their local theatre and they can't help themselves.   Either way, when those people die out will another wave of old fogies replace them or is that it? 

I haven’t got the answers but it troubles me that classical music is so deeply un-hip.  More hip replacement. My (75 year old) mother used to worry that, being an itinerant entertainer I didn’t have a proper pension.  I used to say that I had a comedian’s pension: every month I set aside two jokes which I can use to support myself in my old age (you scoff but it worked for Victor Borge). Now I realise that I may not actually need a pension at all.  By the time I get to 70, I will have more work than I can handle. And have the pick of the laaadies. Eurgh! It's enough to make me choke on my Werther's Original.

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10th January 2008 16.11

As the year creaks to a start, I have had confirmation of a gig conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra at London Festival Hall on 7th March 2009 in aid of Comic Relief.  It’s called Classic Relief and will be so totally awesomely fab I can hardly contain myself.  Guests include Alfred Brendel, Nicola Benedetti and Paul Lewis – all doing funny things. It goes in the Southbank big brochure this time next week; tickets on sale from April 2008 - yup, classical music listings cheer you up about your chances of getting to March 2009 hale and hearty. I believe Luciano Pavarotti had gigs up to 2012...

You read it here first.

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2nd January 2008 15.56

2008 began on stage at Birmingham Symphony Hall with the London Concert Orchestra (not to be confused with the London Chamber Orchestra, the London Community Orchestra, the London Charity Orchestra, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra or Lara Croft Online).  The hall was packed and glorious, happy and glorious in fact though the National Anthem was virtually the only rousing air missing from the programme.  At the stroke of midnight Mrs Hersch, my wife – looking glamorous - even managed to join me on stage for the singing of Auld Lang Syne after which we repaired to the hotel, two cocktails and a pocket full of mini sewing kits stolen from an unattended cleaning trolley. Oh yes, 2008 bodes well alright.

Now back in luxuriant West London (with every loose button firmly returned to its place) work on my resolutions has begun in earnest with the tidying of my office which has been looking like a kick-boxing match has been held in it for as long as anyone can remember.  I am hoping that, if I can finally get my old computer from under the desk and down to the dump, warring parties across the world with settle their differences in wonder.

Hoping you are full of the same spirit...

Happy New Year!

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24th December 2007 09.29

The last horrendous Christmas stand-up gig is now under my belt.  For the record it was Roehampton Sports Club – audience of about eighty (composed of employees of the club) split at 180º to the right and left on large circular tables, meaning that half of them are, by definition, facing the wrong way; free, meaning that nobody had committed to being there by handing over some of their own hard-earned cash; no raised stage and no lighting, meaning that there is no difference between us and them.  I was on first and survived only by standing on chairs (to raise myself enough above their heads to be noticed) and shouting.  The second act walked out and the closing act (the much fancied Reginald D Hunter) arrived too late after the disco had started to even make the attempt (very clever, Reg). It goes without saying that the disco is what they really should have had in any case.  Oh yes, it was comedy alright (but not art).

Now, the holidays...

The best analogy I have ever come across for Christmas is the massive cathedral on Mexico City's central square (the Zócalo).  When the Spanish arrived in (now) Mexico they found an enormous Aztec temple where that building now stands.  They plonked a cathedral over it in order to encourage the heathens in their religious associations with the site while cleverly diverting them from Aztecism - or whatever their bloodthirsty headchopping routine was called - to Catholicism.  Brilliant really.  So, also, the early Christians overtook Yule – a previously existing pagan festival celebrating the change of seasons - and made it the “remember the real meaning of Christmas” story we are made to feel guilty about today. Actually, according to research (and trust me on this), Christ was probably born in the spring in what we would now call 4 AD.  So, dear reader, eat and drink all you want without a shred of doubt that fattening up for the long, cold nights ahead is really what it is all about. No offence meant to Christ but I am sure he is big enough to take it in any case.

This observations has the added spin-off that the difference between 0 AD and 4 AD means we were all not born in the year stated on our birth certificates but four years later.  Thus we are actually four years younger than previously advertised.   Now that is something I really want for Christmas.

Sorry, Yule.

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17th December 2007 21.30

20 years ago exactly – and by that I mean 20 years ago to the minute -  in the function room of a pub in Sydenham, South London, I made my first ever appearance on the London comedy circuit.   The setting was the Rub-A-Dub Club, one of the many occasional comedy clubs around town.  I appeared doing a guest-spot (an unpaid five minute appearance) in a double-act called Stepping Out with the Tebbits - later abbreviated to just The Tebbits  and, even later, abbreviated to Rainer Hersch, formerly of The Tebbits.  My partner in crime was Peter Wylie and old friend from Lancaster University with whom I had written a student review.

It goes without saying that we were absolutely rubbish.  The central part of our performance was a sketch which I had written at Lancaster about Barnes Wallace and the Bouncing Bomb – 'nuff said.  It had been hilarious in front of our student victims but in the setting of a grimy pub in South London the joke was not quite so transparent.    We entered with clipboards and acted out our story.  My abiding memory is not of the confused indifference with which we were received but of a very weird moment in the action:

I had been to Glasgow that day on some sort of task for the London Festival Orchestra (my last office job).  I met Peter at the pub before the gig for a final run through before chancing our arm and we found an odd storeroom full of stuff upstairs for the purpose.  During the rehearsal, I realised I was missing a pencil which I needed as a prop.  Failing to find anything  pencil-like amongst all the junk, I substituted the mouthpiece of a trumpet which just happened to find lying around.  (At this point I hope you are thinking ‘this is so bizarre it has to be true’.  It is).  So my enduring memory of December 17th 1987 is of being on stage at the Rub-A-Dub Club in Sydenham so nervous that I when I looked down at my hands to write with my pencil I was actually looking at a trumpet mouthpiece, clutched between forefinger and thumb literally shaking uncontrollably before my eyes. 

Only a few times in my life have I ever experienced fear quite like it.  One notable other was when I conducted an orchestra for the first time having had no more than a two minute lesson from the presiding conductor who was taking the rest of the concert.  That episode, I’m afraid to say, didn’t go to prove my innate musical genius but that conducting an orchestra on just a two minute lesson can’t be done.  The best part about it was when I stopped.  People do bunjee jumps to achieve the same sensation I believe.  I had the same experience - quicker and without the intervention of some Australian hippy a bridge and a precipitous gorge.

The Rub-A-Dub was the scene of other first appearances - I remember clearly bumping into at least one other such debutant  in the course of my travels though I can’t remember who precisely.  Where are they now I wonder? In therapy? In cyberspace writing their blog?  (cheaper but the same thing).  Perhaps he has gone on to develop some kind of hilarious trembling trumpet routine and is even now storming the Sydenham club scene.

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13th December 2007 16.47

A couple of weekends ago a large picture caught my eye in the inside pages of the Sunday Times: “Mozart autograph under the hammer for £100K”.  An accompanying picture showed a half sheet of manuscript paper in fading ink sketching out the cadenza from the first movement of Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola.  This was the same piece that Maxim Vengerov and Lawrence Power did at the Proms last year with Vengerov hushing the audience between movements - like it mattered.

Anyway, it turns out that Sotheby’s was having an auction of signed manuscripts and other musical bits and bobs at which this scrap was going to be one of the highlights.  At £100,000 for half a piece of paper, this would make it more valuable than gold.  In fact, there are probably auctions of moon dust that command less interest.

I have always fancied exploring Sotheby’s but, by the time I have worked my way that far up Bond Street, I am so intimidated by the ridiculously expensive jewelry shops with their permanently locked doors and Armani security staff, I have never ventured further than the foyer. Feeling like this might be my one opportunity to ruin an important musical artifact by inadvertently dribbling on it, I set off for the viewing.

Sotheby’s is a labyrinth.  The small shop front belies a Dr Who-like interior full of passageways and little rooms, mostly packed with stuff that just looks like it should be in a museum, not participating in a rich man’s Flog It.  Actually, I had anticipated this by trying to look smart and, parking my duffle coat and Bay City Rollers scarf in the Garderobe, approached one of the many security guards to ask “where the auction was”.  “Which one?” say he.  “There’s more than one?” Surely taking £0.1M for a half a piece of paper would be enough turnover for the Sotheby’s week?  But, it turns out, not - the music auction was but one of the many, and a small one at that.

And so it is I enter a room lined with cupboards and a few display cases on the downstairs floor.  In one of the cases the Mozart scrap is exhibited under glass (thus thwarting my dribbling schemes) along with a (completely illegible) letter from Beethoven - allegedly to a friend though, frankly, it could have said absolutely anything including “no milk, Tuesday”.  Having marveled at these, I moved on to a table where a handful of ne’er-do-wells were examining other items under the scrutiny of one security guard and two old ladies who were responsible for dishing them out.  The whole thing had more the feel of a village fete than a multi-million pound extravagance. Most surprising of all -  the examination process was completely unregulated.  Letters from Puccini, signed photos by Liszt, a manuscript by Schumann – all these could be rifled through at will without recourse to white gloves or any form of accreditation other than a scribbled note with your address on it (in my case, in pencil).  I sat myself down and had a good hour-long brush with the masters, all the while checking against the sale catalogue (itself £22) which gave lavish information about each and every slip.

This was all fine and dandy until I came to lot 149 “Tchaikovksy, Piotr.  Fine photograph signed and inscribed in French”.  This was a 24 x 18.5 cm photograph of the one who wrote the music for Everyone’s a Fruit and Nutcase in an old, light wood frame and signed clearly “P. Tschaikovsky Moscou 19 Janvier 1885”.  This I had to have.  I had visions of it sitting on my piano.  Every visitor from now to eternity would be casually drawn to my front room to examine my SIGNED PORTRAIT OF TCHAIKOVSKY!  “Yes, the real Tchaikovsky.  The one who wrote the music to Everyone’s a Fruit and Nutcase”.  OK, granted there was the minor snag of the £4,000 - £5,000 guide price but, hell, what is money for?  It would be an investment.  It can’t go down in value - there aren’t going to be any more.

With this joyfully filling my mind I stumbled home to Mrs Hersch, my wife, to convert her to my new vision and do a bit more research about how to actually enter the auction (the next day) and bid.  And this, dear reader, is where my scheme started to fall to the ground.  It transpires that the hammer price is not the price you actually pay – on top there is something called, euphemistically, Buyer’s Premium which, for items from £1 - £10,000, is 25%.  25%!  Then there is the small question of VAT.  All this means that, where an item might sell for £4,000, you will actually end up paying….let me see….4,000 x ¼ x 175 ÷ 100 = Jesus! £5,875!.   All of a sudden, my signed picture of Tchaikovsky is not looking quite so attainable.  £4,000 is an investment; £6,000 is verging on madness.  I don’t know why but some sort of loony-thinking barrier has been crossed.

Still, by now I am committed to my dream.  Next day I return.  It’s the same room sans glass cases but now with chairs occupied by about 40 people and Sotheby’s staff manning the phones (just like the movies).  I sign up for a paddle (the device with a number on it which permits the auctioneer to distinguish a head scratch from £2000) and huddle at the back.  As the lots progress, a man next to me ticks them off in the catalogue while muttering “Jesus Christ” under his breath.

• Letter from Beethoven explaining “No Milk, Tuesday”: £17,300 – “Jesus Christ”.
• A signed picture of Mendelssohn: £60,000  – “Jesus Christ”.
• Haydn manuscript part from Symphony No.90: £66,500 - “Jesus Christ”.

And…

• Lot number 149, Signed portrait of Tchaikovsky: £10,625 - “Bollocks”.

Needless to say I did sort of pathetically stir my paddle at £3,500 (which was where the money started) but it was all to no avail.  The bidding soon outreached even my most deluded ambitions and I left with only a catalogue (donated by one of the old ladies from the day before from her big, unused pile).  The Mozart scrap went for a total of £110,900 to John Eliot Gardiner who was the only worthy I spotted amongst the crowd. 

Ahh well.  Fact is, to afford that sort of stuff you have to be rich which, with one or two exceptions, means being old.  They were all old in there – John Eliot Gardiner is a relatively sprightly 64 but he was an exception.  So my one consolation is that they will die soon and it will all come up again.  Well, let’s face it, if you were an executor sitting on a £110,000 piece of paper, what would you do?

Dammit! I’ve just got to get rich enough to have my ten years of ownership before that ink fades to nothing.

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27th November 2007 16.27

Up and down the motorway, improving the post mortal prospects of Victor Borge.  All done and dusted now with mixed feelings.  A great story and marvelous man but it takes energy, focus and a bit too much piano practice for my liking. That said, remarkable moments include:

A standing ovation at the Beck Theatre Hayes on an otherwise miserable, rainy, shitty Monday evening in October only attended by a core of diehards.  The theatre, in a gesture almost perfectly complementing the weather outside, managed to spell my name wrong on their big What’s On board (er…didn’t anybody look at the poster?).

Buxton Opera House.  In the audience twenty students from the Royal Northern College of Music who have (apparently) listened to my All Classical Music Explained CD until the groove was worn flat.  (Who am I kidding?  They burned copies and sold them round campus for a quid a time).

Aberdeen Arts Centre and the hospitality of Jane and Alan Franchi at their home.  After the show, we had one of those late dinner parties I have read about: a few interesting people gathered around a table to talk artily in a discreet baize-feel dining room.  Amongst our small number turns out to be the great Buff Hardie from Scotland the What?  I, in my Sassenach ignorance, wander into a conversation with him about touring during which, by casual reference to this big sold-out theatre run or that awarding of an MBE, it turns out he is an absolute bloody Scottish legend.  If William Wallace had been alive, I wouldn’t have got out of there without being daubed in blue paint and with a sporran stuffed up my arse. Sorry Buff - the honour was mine. Thank you Jane and Alan - that wine stain in the carpet is mine too.

Colchester Institute: More kids.  They are the future…of pizza delivery.  Only joking. It’s like a warm bath (see below).

The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre – two shows, both sold out.  I loved them – especially since the Yvonne Arnaud is what my mother would call a proper theatre by which she means one in which Penelope Keith has appeared.   After the first gig, I hung around to greet punters (actually, pitifully begging for compliments).   Instead, a  lady, possibly so ancient I think she actually mistook me for her son, came up and said “I hope you are going to go home now and someone will give you a good, hot meal”.  Do I look ill?

Rondo Theatre – and adios Borge after two continents and four months.  A lovely venue and well run.  This performance was probably most notable for that fact that nobody told them I needed a piano until about 30 minutes before the show.  “You’ll have to hire one” mumbled the production company in charge and whose balls-up it was.  Er…yeah.  It’s about Victor Borge, not David Copperfield.

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8th November 2007 16.07

It’s been a blur of stand-up an solo shows including, last week, a return to my old haunt – Swinbourne Hall at Colchester Institute (my sixth time in about eight years – four solo shows, twice with orchestra).  In addition to the mandatory ‘getting mildly pissed at the pub after the gig’ I contrived to sell seven CD’s without them actually being on sale (I had left them in a box backstage).  Mais naturellement, this is highly satisfactory from the point of view of providing some ready funds - all devoted to drinking as it turns out.  The Colchester students are brilliant - enthusiastic and friendly - but the best part is they are actually required to attend my concert as part of their coursework.  Hoorah.  What’s next? Compulsory cannabis cultivation?

Oddly, the educational vibe has overcome me also this year in that I have signed up for courses in composition and piano at a Thames Valley University  which has a campus round the corner.  I’ll be honest that, although this might sound grand, it this hasn’t yet involved a hell of a lot of work since TVU is so disorganized that at the time of writing they haven’t got the composition coursework out and I haven’t even seen my piano tutor.  But the process promises the opportunity to learn a few tricks and play pieces I have always wanted to play while surpressing the urge to turn round to the audience half way through and go “TARAAA!”.  You never know, I may even end up getting a gig out of it and so become part of my own homework.  Work that out.

All this reminds of a similar course I once did in Philosophy.  First essay: I disproved the existence of my tutor after which I never went again.

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18th October 2007 13.43

At last, a week with no gadding about required.  In its place - much walking with the pooch, piano playing and TV.  Also: movies on the home cinema.  This production is achieved by attaching my data projector to the DVD player while a mass of wires, hanging like mating Garter Snakes from an amplifier, send 5.1 surround sound to assorted speakers.  The picture shines massive on to the wall while Mrs Hersch (my wife) and I ensconce ourselves on the sofa with glasses of beer on one side and a massive bowl of popcorn on the other.  When I first got this arrangement together I thought ‘I am never going to the cinema ever again’ and so (except on tour) it has proved.

All this idling doesn’t stop my diary wallah from busying himself with schemes, however.  So, instead of relating the plots of the special-effect filled cobblers I have been gawping at like retarded seal pup, herewith some news:

News The First: Following my audacious sortie into Germany (see below) this week I have been invited back by assorted clubs and theatres for March 08.  Yes, really, invited as opposed to me crying down the phone. More fool them perhaps (didn’t they read my thing about how impossibly difficult it is?) but eleven shows in two weeks are not to be sneezed at.  Suffice to say that there will be nothing I don’t know about Braunschweig in Lower Saxony by the time I am done.

News The Second: Just heard this morning that my latest radio iron in the fire has been well and truly farted on by the Radio 4 Commissioning Editrix.  A Short History Of Jokes - it would have been great.  Cow.  It now joins the mass of other rejected radio proposals on the 200MB E drive of my computer (leaving approximately 3K of free space). However, I continue to spend odd moments on my programme about wacky instruments in classical music called (provisionally) Gershwin’s Taxi Horns – to be recorded and broadcast next year.

News The Third: (which makes News The First and News The Second look mildly embarrassing small potatoes) I am working on two orchestral concerts in March 09 in aid of Comic Relief – one in London (Festival Hall) and one in Manchester (Bridgewater Hall).  The idea is that two major orchestras and a smattering of famous soloists let their hair down to raise money for the needy - me in charge.  Hoorah! There is a hell of a lot still to be discussed but, if it does come off it would be fab.

You read it here first. 

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11th October 2007 12.48

A week in which I have continued my thrusting career in the Fatherland with a weekend of gigs at Quatsch Comedy Club in Berlin.  Oddly, the Fatherland is appropriate here since my Old Man was born in Berlin and I feel a certain circularity by going back.

Quatsch takes place in the small theatre of the Friedrichstadt Palast – a slightly industrial looking citadel of entertainment in former East Berlin [if you are not laughing, you vill be shot].  Here, then, English is about as much use as a chocolate teapot since, if anything, all the East Germans learned Russian.  After the club opened in 2002, many a Brit comic crashed and burned on its stage before the management ditched the idea of English and reverted only to German speakers.  Thus, I also am forced to do it all in German which is a slightly out of body experience.  I speak German fluently and well (I hope) but it is one thing talking the lingo and quite another getting inside their heads. 

For a start - translating jokes into German is not easy.  German grammar often requires verbs to pile up at the end of the sentence.  A phrase like “you should have seen how well I could drive” becomes “Ihr hättet sehen sollen, wie gut ich fahren konnte” = (literally) “You have seen should, how good I drive could”.  The essence of a punchline is keeping the salient bit right to the end, thus providing the punch.  But in German the punch is often half way through the sentence with still a bunch of past participles, infinitives and other assorted verbal detritus to wade through.  They say that Italian is a natural is the natural language of song, German is not the natural language of comedy (who would have guessed?).

Secondly – There are some joke forms which the German mind doesn’t recognise as jokes, no matter what.  “I am not gay, nothing against that, I am not Jewish and my hair isn’t permed.  Recently, I was talking about all of that with my partner Helmut…who’s a hairdresser from Tel Aviv”.  Nothing.  I came to the opinion that they simply didn’t connect the second part of this joke with the first part.  At its worst it can mean that the German audience will laugh at the set-up to a joke and not at the punchline.  What the hell is going on there?

All this doesn’t stop me wanting to take over Germany (going through Belgium, naturally).  Actually, it makes me even keener to try and solve the problems which are posed to me as someone who writes in English. Contrary to everything you may have heard there is also a big comedy scene there and it is growing.  In fact, Berlin is such a happenin’ place, yet still relatively cheap, that it even crossed my mind (for about a nanosecond) to move there.  Mrs Hersch, my wife, and I could quite easily rent out our palatial abode in leafy West London, rent a flat and live off the excess without ever again lifting a finger.  This would also make the circle complete: Hersch Senior leaves Germany, marries an English woman and moves to London; Hersch Junior leaves London, marries a German woman and moves to Berlin.  Spooky or what?
Was
Should
Have
Could
Is
Up.

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3rd October 2007 17.31

Farewell then Ned Sherrin who died on Monday.

I first did Loose Ends in November 1996 and stayed on it for seven years.  Over the last couple of days it seems to have almost become a cliché to say that Ned Sherrin was generous and kind - but so he was all the times I saw him.  Most of the people round the Loose Ends table were half his age but he was never patronising or dismissive.  For example, whoever you were, when you first appeared on the programme he would send you a note in his own hand to say thanks – he had no need to do it and many in his position would either get a secretary to p.p. some kind of generic letter or just not bother.

The one time his patience appeared to slip was at an outside broadcast in Cardiff in 2002 (I think).  We all schlepped up there because it was Cardiff International Festival of Musical Theatre or something (very Ned).  To mark the occasion I gave the one and only performance of the five-minute classic Sherrin! The Musical.  The pianist and I had researched his life, rehearsed hard and we did it, live, to the assembled Loose Ends audience and the nation.  It went well – actually I think the producer was rather taken aback at the amount of effort we had put in.  But afterwards in the bar when I asked Ned what he thought he said, slightly critically, “a minute too long”. 

A few days later one of his notes popped through my letterbox – in his own hand, as always, and sent from his flat in Chelsea.  After leaving the bar he felt he had been rather ungenerous, wanted to thank me for the musical and take back his mildly grumpy remark.  I think this was one of Ned's quirks - although he knew he inspired affection, he felt uncomfortable if any display became too ostentatious. The show was supposed to be an entertainment for the listening audience, not a private club.

So I’ll keep this one short. Goodbye Ned.

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24th September 2007 05.32 (I am still jetlagged)

And so back home to London after…
2 months
2 train journeys
2 ferries
7 flights
29 performances
24 standing o’s (really)
1 cancelled show (Vancouver 11.45pm – no one came.  If I hadn’t been in it, I wouldn’t have been there either)
1142 pages of War and Peace
…and more carbon guilt than can be worked off in a lifetime. 

That was my last big tour across Canada that was.  I have done it pretty consistently since 1994 and, although I may go back to do individual festivals, never again the big chunk of time away – I miss my comfy bed, Mrs Hersch (my wife) and the pooch scrabbling at the door.  However, the Canadian Fringe movement is the most amazing thing and I really feel privileged to have stumbled across it.  Mais naturellement, I love all the places I visited otherwise I wouldn’t have gone back.  But in the meantime:

Best Restaurant: Winnipeg – Sushi on Bannatyne Avenue.
Worst Restaurant: Edmonton – A Vietnamese where I found a small black beetle (dead) in the rice.  The rice was white, the beetle was black – it’s not like I wasn’t going to see it.  I pointed it out to the waitress who, without a word, took it away and came back with some more – clearly from the same beetle-infested batch – which I politely declined.
Best Piano: Vancouver – A Steinway Model B from Tom Lee Music.  Muchas Gracias Tom Lee.
Worst Piano: Victoria – In the middle of one show, a tragic bit, the F above middle C stuck and wouldn’t come up. The piano, however, came gratis from the theatre and I wasn’t going to complain.
Biggest Technical Balls-Up: Winnipeg - My slides starting changing of their own accord behind my back.  Actually, this happened more than once and was due to the fact that I had forgotten to switch off the virus checker in my laptop.  Or something.
Best Review: Edmonton – No really, I couldn’t.  Oh go on then.
Worst Review: Winnipeg – See below.  Something to do with the slides.
Biggest Shouting Match: Edmonton – With the Director, Technical Director and Artists’ Liaison Officer after my show overran by 10 minutes.  Oops!  But did it really need three people to tell me off in front of the (departing) audience?
Biggest Audience: Edmonton - 600 in two shows back to back on 23rd August
Smallest Audience: Vancouver - 2 on 7th September. Cancelled (see above). Wonder why I am not going back.
Most Scenic Pint of Beer: Victoria – looking out over the harbour, watching the seals and the sea-planes taking off (the sea-planes, not the seals).
Best Side Trip: Las Vegas! – filling in five free days between shows in Vancouver.  I saw six shows (including David “Christ I’m bored with this” Copperfield).  No gambling apart from three hours of the most innocuous poker one afternoon at the end of which I was precisely one dollar ahead (I gave the dollar to the dealer as a tip).

I have quoted this so often that I now think it must be true, though even apocryphal is probably unlikely: On their 25th anniversary Charlie Watts, drummer of the Rolling Stones, said that “Yeah…it had been 5 years’ playing and 20 years hanging around in airports”.   Oh yes, life on the road isn’t all beer and skittles. 

I’m sure you are in tears.

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8th September 2007 19.12

It is a pleasant part of what I might very loosely describe as being in the public eye that, from time to time, I get to meet old friends.  In some cases very old friends. 

It’s happened quite often: I’m in the green room relaxing after a show with a few busty women, a stiff glass of whiskey and a small plastic bag of Class A drugs (only joking, I can't stand whiskey - ho ho) when through the door comes someone I haven’t seen for yonks: a long forgotten school friend, old neighbours, my mother. Sometimes, instead of this personal visit, I have had notes left at the stage door saying things like: “Are you the Rainer Hersch who should now be about 40 years old, whose family used to live in Thames Ditton in Surrey, the UK: Father German, Mother English…?” (this once happened in Johannesburg).  Of course there is a bit of me that just wants to write back “No.” but, actually, I always respond.  It is nice to see old faces and find out what happened to them – it’s like having your own, personal Friends Reunited. 

Anyways, here in Vancouver it  happened again – Tim F, whom I haven’t seen since we were at Kingston Grammar School together, pushing thirty years ago.   He lives here now did me the honour of coming to see my tawdry play after which we spent a few hours gassing.  And, here’s the thing, despite all this time I recognised him immediately: not only his face but all his self-effacing mannerisms.  In some ways this is slightly scary – firstly: that, when it all comes down to it, we don’t change that much and secondly: how many faces and self-effacing mannerisms are we carrying around in our memories exactly.  Hundreds?  Thousands?  Every person we meet for any length of time? In this Tim has a slight advantage since I must have knocked around with him pretty continuously from ages 11-18.  But still. 

I enjoyed our chat.  My school days are a dim memory but, in the company of such an old acquaintance, it is also amazing how much can be jogged out.  In particular the behaviour and motives of school teachers who once held sway over every part of our daily lives.  With the experience of the years, it’s great to go through them one by one and realise that they were mostly arses of the first order who, if I met them now, I would ignore (I think).

Of course, if you were really famous, such occasional meetings might extend to seeing women who, in some earlier life, turned you down.  This is probably the main reason why some people want to become famous – I know it is mine.  And it is probably proof of how not famous I really am that, in fifteen years of professional comedy, not a single member of this (in my case) enormous sub-group has ever appeared backstage to say hello.

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28th August 2007 11.37

Another two weeks have passed in Canada with wonderful audiences and indifferent weather.  I wouldn’t trouble you with trivialities like the weather, dear reader, except that every email I receive from home mentions the continuing rain.  This is now not rain, it seems, but a flood (or should that be fludde).  What’s next?  Locusts?

Edmonton is a big city and appears to have shrugged off any implied association with its namesake in the UK – a nondescript suburb of North London.  This habit of North America for reusing names from the old country can throw up such anomalies.  The original settlers who (I suppose) decided on the names clearly wanted to leave their shitty lives behind but felt sentimental enough to remember their origins in the title of their new abode.  Thus: London Ontario, Paris Texas, Moscow Idaho….and so on.   But I wonder how many modern New Yorkers are aware that Old York is a rather grim industrial wasteland in the North of England for example.  Similarly, that Boston is a tiny village in Lincolnshire with no particular saving graces and that Frankfort (Kentucky) has been misspelled.

Then, of course, there are the places which have been named after worthies: discoverers, politicians, Indian chiefs – you name it.  This seems to me to be tempting fate - how many small German towns had to hastily take down their “The Village Of Himmler Welcomes You” signs after the war, I wonder?  Apparently chief Seattle originally objected to the use of his name on the grounds that his eternal sleep would be interrupted each time a mortal mentioned his name. The conflict was resolved by Seattle's levying a small tax on settlers as advance compensation for the disturbance.  Very American.

Now, I read somewhere once that Brazil was named after the nut and not the other way round.  I like this idea so much I don’t dare Google it to see if it is true.  Naming places after what you find there is a great rule but then a this would mean whole swathes of middle America called things like: Nuthin’ Nevada, Zip Iowa, Null Points Nebraska (and worse – don’t think they didn’t cross my mind).

The fact is it is just hard thinking up new names or just a bit pointless when you know you have stash of old European names up your sleeve.  So I shouldn’t be too critical.  At all events, from Edmonton (London suburb) on Sunday I caught the incredibly picturesque train through the Rockies to Vancouver (Captain George 1757-1798) to Victoria (1819–1901) British Columbia for round three of my tour.  Since Queen Victoria’s only memorable utterance was “we are not amused”, on a number of levels this doesn’t bode well…

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17th August 2007 18.20

Winnipeg Festival is now just a dim memory as is virtually every penny I made there – courtesy of a two week holiday in the Canadian Rockies with Mrs Hersch who flew to Calgary especially for the purpose:  The Banff Springs Hotel, Emerald Lake Lodge…no effort was spared to strip me of my ill gotten gains and force a return to Edmonton Fringe festival in attempt to earn some more - from where I am now posting this missive.  At this rate I will have nothing left to start up that gun-running business I have been saving for.

All Rockies (and Smoothies) were, naturellement, absolutely stunning.  The geology alone – massive mountain ranges heaved up from somewhere with twists and turns in the rock strata all visible from miles.  It all serves to remind a body that we are mere specks in the great wobbling enormity of it all.  Actually, not even specks but specks on specks: Look on, ye creationists and tremble. 

And, just to rub your nose in your complete insignificance, there is the Burgess Shale way up in Yoho National Park.  The hike to get there (which had to be specially booked and supervised) featured 20km of struggling up and down wooded paths to the accompaniment (on the day we went) of rain, hail and finally snow. Once there you can then spend a triumphant hour fossil hunting and touching the ancient remains of long dead (545 million years) soft bodied evolutionary dead-ends.   We returned, crippled, but with a strange feeling of achievement (even if is just to watch my David Attenborough Fossil DVD and shout “I’ve been there!” at the appropriate  moment).

Apart from this, my other great discovery was a gradually defined rule concerning the inverse relationship between the price of hotel and quality of service.  As our trip progressed, and – clearly – with nothing better to do, I started to get completely obsessed by this feature of our stay.  By the Fairmont Hotel, Beauvert Lake (near Jasper) I had even started to distract myself from my inner fury by actually timing the wait staff. Shit, I should get out more. The results for Wednesday 8th August in full:

15.10              Mrs H. and I arrive and sit down at a table in the afternoon tea area.
15.25              We are (finally) noticed by one of the wait staff who comes over to clean the table and tell us that our waitress will be ‘right along’.
15.30              The waitress comes 'right along'.  We order two soups and sandwiches and a pot of tea.
15.45              Tea arrives.
15.50              Soups and sandwiches arrive.

…in other words the time between our sitting down and actually getting our fangs into something edible was a full 40 mins.  Was this some kind of test?  If so, it was repeated more often than I was able to count.  After I have been greeted by The Greeter, seated by The Seater, had my order taken by the waitress and served by The Server I am starting to wonder if there are just too many links in the chain.  But then how else could they contrive to charge $23 for a soup and a sandwich? 

Thinking about these episodes later, I realised what really upset me was not so much the crappy service but the unfailing, enforced affability of it all.  These people are no longer your Greeter, Seater et al. but a collection of the best friends you never knew you had: “Hiiiiiyaaaa…how you guys doing this evening?”, “One soup…coming rrriiiight up” etc.  This probably says more than anything else about how the average stiff-lipped Brit feels about life: you can charge him through the nose, spit on his food, dawdle all day but, please, no first names.

Deep breath...look out of the window and admire the view....

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28th JULY 2007 15.10

I have just read the funniest review of any I have ever received.  I have rarely laughed out loud at any review but this is a classic. 

Uptown Magazine is “Winnipeg’s News and Entertainment Weekly” and  it calls itself a magazine despite the fact that it is clearly printed on newspaper (perhaps times got hard).  It is also free (quelle surprise).  The reviewer, one Grant Burr, clearly hates me and, apparently, regularly comes to my shows in Winnipeg to remind himself just how much.  But the best bit is, Grant also appears to be a bit of a computer man on the side - writing for a free magazine, I suppose, you’d have to be.  And I quote:

“Nothing spoils a good Powerpoint joke like a Powerpoint punchline that pops up too soon. Why people continue to enjoy Rainer Hersch's amateurish multimedia presentations is beyond me. Of course, it is music, not Powerpoint, that is his forte. So, either I would suggest more time spent at the keyboard or an upgraded version of Microsoft Office. It has some wonderful new templates and many performers are doing far more interesting things with a projector than white backgrounds and san serif fonts…"

Since we are being pernickety, doesn’t he mean “sans serif”? and isn’t it “PowerPoint”? – at least that’s what my spellchecker always insists.  Grant goes on to pay some grudging compliments but finishes with a flourish:

“…While it seems the piano man can do no wrong, this Uptown man is once-again unimpressed – GB”

With journalism of this order – who gives a toss what you think?  If this review had appeared in PowerPoint Presentation Monthly it would be spot on but this is the hallowed pages of Uptown Magazine – perhaps Grant didn’t spot the “News and Entertainment” tag. 

Now you may think I am just being bitter here so, just to show that it is not just me, here are two quick excerpts from different reviews of the exact same show.  The Winnipeg Sun:

“The hour-long show is a multi-media affair, and while a recent weekend performance was plagued by technical difficulties, Hersch was unfazed, nimbly righting wrongs without missing a beat”.

CBC:

“Supported by a keyboard, projector and period costume, Hersch incorporated some technical difficulties from his slides well, improvising in character and further endearing himself to the rapt audience. If you've caught Rainer Hersch's act before, this show doesn't stray from what has made Hersch a popular ticket in the past.”

…and these are just paragraphs taken from otherwise very positive reviews, not the focus of the entire friggin’ article.

Now, I really have had far too many reviews to be worried about what Uptown Magazine thinks or doesn’t think.  The general point is that all large festivals present the local media with a feast that they are completely unable to digest.  Edinburgh, for example, is a city far too small to cover the amount of activity presented to it in August/September from within the ranks of it’s regular journalists.  The result is that the Scotsman (Scotland’s heavyweight daily) starts fielding people like the gardening correspondent to cover performances of modern dance and tits like Grant Burr to do shows whose ilk they clearly dislike.  In Edinburgh this can blight the life of the creative artist who might well have laid out ten thousand pounds to be up there.  Across the Canadian fringe circuit it results in a quality of reviewing is patchy at best and, at worst, downright bizarre.

P.S. Grant, if you are reading this: Font: Georgia Times, Point Size: 12, Text Colour: #333333, Macromedia Dreamweaver 8.

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25th JULY 2007 17.20

CBC review Mozart and are encouraging . I realise there are some words I have got to stop using on this blog: hoorah and 'yes, really'. Yes, really.

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23rd JULY 2007 16.50

So that’s a week down at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and everything is happy after some struggles.  Herewith, the last seven days day by day…by day, day (in reverse order, which seems a little bizarre now but I can't be bothered to change it)..

Sunday 22nd
I have developed this idea for a new rule at fringe shows:  The audience can unilaterally declare the play over but just starting to applaud.  They can do this anywhere – even after five minutes – if enough of them can see that it is going to be rubbish and join together to signal that they want out.  The applause, by the way, shouldn’t be an ungracious, slow hand clap but completely enthusiastic – just as if the show had been the best thing they had seen.  Sometimes, I have sat watching things so bad that the only way I have been able to get through them is by creatively visualising the actor(s) taking their bow at the end.  My proposed new rule is, I think, my way of converting that into something practical.  OK, this does mean that we would occasionally clap off something great which just starts slow but I would rather risk that than be taken hostage for an hour.

Late show.  Too late: 11.45pm.  If I hadn’t been in it, even I wouldn’t have been there.  Nobody clapped half way through, so I did it to the end.  But don't think I'm not prepared.

Saturday 21st
More work and, for the first time I feel the show comes together.  Hoorah!  In particular I have now decided to get other fringe performers in at the end to do cameos in the sketch “How Mozart Did Die” .  This picks up the momentum at a crucial moment when it previously went on a bit of a holiday.  I go down to the King’s Head to celebrate by drinking one too many Fort Gary Dark Ales (one), banter and recruit assorted other turns to come and be cameos: Keir Cutler and TJ Dawe say ‘yes’.  I also determine to ask Kevin Prokosh if he’ll do it in the final show.  Drumroll.

Friday 20th
Jet lagged but now getting up at 5.30, rather than 4 – I work the whole day on the show: adding bits, taking things out, making new images for the slides.  Most things work and, during the performance, I go off on my own private festival of camping it up but the overall result is still not quite what I am after.  This is the performance that the Winnipeg Free Press attends (has there ever been a Winnipeg Press in Chains I wonder) and it turns out that my performance is not quite what the reviewer was after either.  The subsequent review begins with the words “Can it be that the great Rainer Hersch is treading water…” or something.  I don’t really mind what the reviewers say but there is a problem here:

Once you get any body of work behind you, people start to review your stuff not on its own terms but in comparison with everything else of yours they have seen.  “I liked this…but I liked the other one more”.  And, as with many things, the past is always a better place.  I comfort myself with a line from Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories in which a burned-out movie director, suddenly finds himself face-to-face with a descending spacecraft.  As the super-intelligent extraterrestrials greet the human race for the first time, the filmmaker says: "If nothing lasts, why am I bothering to make films, or do anything, for that matter?" "We like your films," say the aliens, "Particularly the early, funny ones."

Thursday 19th
The first show.  Sold out – hoorah.  It is fun and, I hope, everyone has a good time.  A few people stand up at the end, though I am unsure if this is an ovation or just a good, old fashioned scramble for the door.  This kind of thing is, of course, immensely cheering but doesn’t stop me going over every line in the script as soon as I have left the stage.  There bits which aren’t just working as well as I thought they would while sitting in my garret in leafy Ealing, West London.  Thus, a quick drink down the King's Head then back home to start fixing them (I clearly still think it is 10 in the morning).

Wednesday 18th
Fiddle with the script – typing it out so that the technicians can follow it (big boxes show which cues should happen where; ‘X’s in the text mark the exact moment).  I have learned how to do this much better since the Borge show (2004) when a director put my scribbles and other daubs into some kind of logical order.  Prior to that, tech rehearsals were a nightmare.  Down at the Warehouse, Randy and Mike (the technicians) cope manfully but cannot hide their slight "oh shit" when they realise that mine is a four-hour tech and that, yes, we have got time to go through the whole thing once more…and with feeling.

Tuesday 17th

Jet lagged.  Up at 4am (as is always the case coming this way across the Atlantic).  Read my book (War and Peace – a frigging brick and I may be dead before I have got to the end, in which case I will leave it to my executors to finish). Get up: eat a piece of pie; drink some tea and fall asleep again until 9.30am.  Then, down to the Fringe Office where people are friendly as always - must be the sun.  Visit my venue – The Warehouse (air conditioned – this one fact is enough to guarantee at least ten people a show) - and chat to the technicians. This is my seventh Winnipeg Fringe in 12 years. 

Monday 16th

Checking in at Gatwick Airport and flying to Winnipeg.  The new cheapo airline on the block, Zoom, offers travel straight to the prairies rather than first pirouetting round the luggage belts of either Toronto, Montreal or worse.  This is great for the Winnipegger in a hurry and, despite the fact that I live near Heathrow and Gatwick Airport is miles away,  I went for it also.  Service on board all very pleasant (if you paid the extra hundred quid for ‘Economy Ultra’ or whatever they call it). However, I do get into the, now, compulsory argument with the check in man about excess luggage.  Him: “I have checked five hundred people into this flight and you are the biggest pain in the arse”  Me: “listen my friend, if you got some decent qualifications together, you could get yourself a proper job.  Don’t take your minimum wage frustrations out on me!”  Clearly he hadn’t seen that I was an ‘Economy Ultra’ customer and wasn’t going to take any shit.  Net result: excess baggage £30 (actually, quite mild) but I still hate airports and anybody who insists on doing their job thus perverting my insistence that I have everything all my own way.

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15TH JULY 2007 21.24

Henley Festival July 14th conducing the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.  Probably the most prestigious group of grumpy musicians I have waved my hands at to date.  (The general weariness and cynicism of many orchestral musicians is, by the way, entirely understandable but that doesn't make me feel any less like slitting my wrists as I go through the introductory “Hi guys…what we are going to do is some comedy…” moment.  Here, I am down to do 12 minutes as part of a gala also including a young violinist some Carmen variations, a pianist (Warsaw concerto) another violinist (Meditation from Thais), Wayne Marshall improvising at the piano, Katherine Jenkins singing and assorted rousing orchestral classics...all introduced by that doyen of the continuity cock-up, Henry Kelly.  As say hello backstage, almost my first words to him are:

“It's ‘Ray-na Hursh’, not ‘Rie-na Here-sh’". 

It goes without saying that this turns out to be a futile gesture as am introduced as ‘Rie-na Here-sh’ just the same.   I don’t care and the rambling is, after all his style (is it a style?).  

Come my bit, I have it easy because, by the time I get on, the crowd warmed up but faintly inured to the spectacle and ripe for a kick in the arse.  Thus, I get a great response I am pleased to say - also from the musicians and other n’ere-do-wells performing that evening which leaves me feeling rather shell shocked.  Shell shocked that is until I catch the eye of Stewart, the festival director (who is also lurking backstage), looking edgy. My 12 minutes had migrated to 25 minutes and this overrun has resulted in the cutting of the last item – a spectacular involving army drummers and goodness knows what else in the Ravel Bolero.  (I can’t remember if the score of Bolero requires six drummers and goodness knows what else but, no matter).  Mild dissatisfaction in some areas therefore but tempered by the pragmatic consideration that the evening has, after all, been a success. I apologise - stage-hogging not intended. I clearly like the sound of my own voice far too much.

Afterwards  I retire to the Club Marquee Stage for a (very) late night bout of All Classical Music Explained finishing at 1.30am.  This, naturally, is way past my bed time and is equivalent to going on last at a Comedy Store late show which has somehow, mysteriously, become packed with women in skimpy frocks and men in DJ’s.  Despite this and the rain, the crowd rocks and, inspired by our new leader I "try my utmost".  Home nickedy-nacked at 3am.  Pooch distraught as he had been on his own since 6pm - poor poochly boy.

Canada now beckons.  By this time tomorrow I’ll be back on the plane to Winnpeg where, internet facilities permitting, I will be ruminating as usual and with slightly greater frequency than of late. Sorry for the interruption of your service while I bash assorted shows into shape. Until then. R x

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1ST JULY 2007 16.39

My latest activities on “Mozart: Ze Komplete Hystery” (Mozart: “22 operas, 41 symphonies and a hell of a lot of film music – just goes to show what a genius I was”) inspired me to go fly to Austria and spend a touristy weekend snooping round Salzburg.  So it was that last Friday week Mrs Hersch, my wife, and I shook off our sleepy heads at 3.45am (yes really) and drove out to London Stanstead, there to do battle with Ryanair and the masses.  Stanstead is, as any budget traveler will know, not in London at all but closer to Cambridge.  The cheap fares they offer are basically a scam since 1. If you book them as late as I always do they virtually the same price as a proper airline and 2. By the time you have driven all that way, paid for parking/food/drink/luggage (there is a charge for checking anything in) you have more than spent the money you have saved.  This is not to mention the minor business of being treated like cattle and having to mix with plebs.

Despite this, all went well and my fears of some trumped-up Ryanair excuse why we couldn’t fly (“Sorry Sir, wrong photo ID“; “We’ve clean run out of planes”; “Leaves on the runway”; “I couldn’t help noticing a cheeky smirk while you were queuing”) all turn out to be unfounded.  Thus, we arrived at 9.15am (including the one hour advanced time difference) and by 9.30am were sound asleep in out hotel room – snoozing until 11am  and thus wiping out all advantage of the gruesome early start.

This said, our subsequent three days turn out to be very nice and include visits to all the Mozart memorabilia; a performance of the Requiem at  the Collegiate Church (done twice a week for the benefit of the tourists but atmospheric and not bad for all that); Don Giovanni at the Marionette Theatre (my Mum would have cooed with glee) and a hell of a lot of cream cakes.  

The weather, indifferent on Friday and Saturday turned all blue skies on our last day.  Having previously observed that the house where Wolf Amadeus was born would only be in the sun early in the morning, I ventured out before breakfast to take some well lit photos.  Salzburg: deserted.  After clicking away for a good twenty minutes (the Mozart House from the front, the Mozart House from the side, the Mozart House from the back but you can just see the side), I looked round to find that I was not alone – a Japanese tourist was busy on the same mission.  Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I asked him (pointing and grunting) to take my picture.  After some reflection, he then pointed and grunted that I took his.  Then, more grunting, that I should supplement his record with a photo of me on his camera.  Him, then, on mine.  Anyway after two hours and a whole world of sign language later, it turns out that he traveled to Salzburg from Tokyo/Osaka on a company called “Wyanair” and is writing a show called “形容動詞ご飯が熱い。Mozart!”.

What are the chances?

(All true up to the bit about Tokyo/Osaka).

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18TH JUNE 2007 20.14

Saturday (wrote Mr Kipling) – (and that's Saturday a week ago) an extremely pleasant outing to Trent College in Nottinghamshire for a bout of All Classical Music Explained.  The audience was reassuring in the extreme - especially to me on finding that one or two readers of this column were among them.  Hell fire!  In praise and grateful remembrance I have had their names tattooed on to my knuckles (in full).  They had even braved the 60 mile round trip (from Leicester) and the public school setting to witness the event.  Tattooing actually seems inadequate.  Perhaps I will etch their initials into my DNA.

Sunday day: a double match at my local croquet club (yes really).  You may find this implausible, dear reader, given my unbelievable hip withitness but I am a fiend with the mallet, hold a number of trophies and am even, on occasion, summoned to represent the local team.  My first opponent (who I am pretty sure won’t read this) was an old fart with such a high handicap that giving him any greater number of free shots would have rendered the entire rules and tactics of the game redundant.  After more than two hours of watching him plod round the lawn, whacking my ball hither and yon with an ability clearly greater than that suggested by his massive advantage, I became struck with the bizarre notion that he was just too boring to lose to.  I determined to pull my finger out, which I did and won.  Hoorah.  Down with old farts.  (Won the second match also thus saving the team from disgrace.  I am the croquet king).

Sunday evening: a bath to wash off the sweat built up by whipping old men at croquet followed by a short drive to the Paul Lewis concert (see 3rd June, below).  The last three Beethoven piano sonatas movingly played - the man is a friggin’ genius.  Afterwards, by dint of the connection to Paul and his chums, Mrs Hersch and I mill around in the green room of Wigmore Hall making polite chitchat to the assembled and storing up their names to drop later…AHHHEM: Edward Fox, AHHHEM: Julia Somerville, AHHHEM: Roger Vignoles, AHHHEM: Imogen Cooper, AHHHEM: Alfred Brendel.  Quite what Edward Fox was doing there I never did find out.  Presumably researching his next film in which some upperclass toff character mills around the green room at Wigmore Hall (as opposed to his other film portrayals – The Day of the Jackle, for example, in which an upper class toff character attempts to assassinate De Gaulle or Edward and Mrs Simpson in which an upper class toff character can’t decide if he wants be king). 

High on croquet victory I chatted away – even summoning the courage to speak to Alfred Brendel whose son AHHHEM: Adrian Brendel, himself a top notch cellist, has graced the audience at a concert or two of mine in the past.  My ulterior motive was, of course, to get him involved in an orchestral performance of mine.  Here’s the plan: In the middle of a concert I announce that we are going to be joined on stage by the great Alfred Brendel.  Audience erupts.  Enter Brendel who seats himself at the piano.  He fiddles with the stool, prepares himself, nods that he is ready.  I conduct the opening of a piano concerto (two or three minutes).  The music….reaches a climax….and closes before Brendel has played a note!  Brendel gets up, padding his forehead with a handkerchief.  ME: Ladies and Gentlemen – ALFRED BRENDEL!  He bows, we shake hands and he leaves, never coming back.  The audience - incredulous: I DON’T BELIEVE IT! THEY HAD ALFRED BRENDEL AND THEY DIDN’T GET HIM TO PLAY!  Thus comedy.  In the green room of the Wigmore Hall I actually went as far as to suggest this to him and he liked it (really) parting with a subversive smile and “I look vorvard to our kollaboration”.   I, meanwhile, look forward to dining out the story (at McDonald’s probably).

All this reminds me of my other attempt to blag a legendary instrumentalist into participating in my schemes.  Years ago I interviewed AHHHEM: Yehudi Menuhin for Radio 3.  One anecdote I particularly wanted to extract concerned Arturo Toscanini.  Before the war Menuhin and Toscanini were apparently rehearsing the Beethoven Violin Concerto in a hotel in New York – Menuhin playing the violin of course and Toscanini at the joanna.  While they were playing, the telephone rang.  Toscanini ignored it.  A few minutes later, the telephone rang again and again Toscanini again ignored it.  The third time it rang, Toscanini got up from the piano, went over to the telephone – which in those days was a big box number attached to the wall – ripped it bodily from its fixings, threw it to the ground and returned to the piano as if nothing had happened.  This story was a favourite of YM and supposedly illustrated the nature of Toscanini’s temper and his absolute focus on his art.

Now this is where I wanted Menuhin to do a bit of comedy.  In fact I wanted to be Menuhin’s only ever comedy script writer.  My plan was for him to tell that story and at the end of it I would ask: “who it was that kept ringing?” and I wanted Menuhin to say: “it was the telephone engineers to say that they had got the line working again.” 

Sadly it was not to be – Menuhin was too pressed for time to get involved in my ridiculous sketch - and it was somehow forgotten about.  

But I did challenge him to a game of croquet and won by a mile.

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8TH JUNE 2007 11.11

An on-line review of my performance at the Red Hedgehog  appeared today. Naturally, I am cheered by the encouragement (especially after such a technically difficult, depressing gig) but also left in resigned agreement with the author’s analysis of who exactly I am doing such shows for.  

I have often classed ACME as a stand-up performance which just happens to be about classical music. Why the hell not do stand-up about a subject which fancies itself so deeply? In the process, I hope it proves that it is possible to be genuinely funny in front of a non-expert audience while still entertaining those people who (think they) know it all.  However, from the marketing point of view, classical music is deeply un-cool and overcoming that image is an uphill struggle, no matter how amusing you are. Quite who is responsible for this parlous state of affairs I don't know but, as soon as I find out, they will be shot - though finding enough people to make up the firing party might be difficult. Probably be quicker just to shoot myself.

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3RD JUNE 2007 19.46

Returned from the Elgiva Theatre in Chesham where a good time was had by all, I hope.  Two people should be mentioned in dispatches:

Master Matthew Appleby – a young gentleman, six years old, who lives in the area.  I evidently flogged a copy of the ACME CD to his parents a while back on a previous visit to the Comedy Festival there and they made the grave mistake of allowing him access to it. The result - he now listens to it every night as his going to bed CD (no, really).  Feeling touched and faintly privileged, I couldn’t resist the invitation to visit before the show – nominally for a quick cup of tea, actually to see what kind of twisted mind I had effected in one so young.

Back to the theatre for the gig, after which I am yet more amazed and touched to meet in the foyer none other than Paul Lewis – virtuoso pianist (and hobbit look-alike), protégé of Alfred Brendel and currently on the final leg of his complete Beethoven piano sonata series at the Wigmore Hall.  He is playing the final three sonatas there next weekend – twice, because one sitting is not enough to fit the audience that wants to see him do it (which, tragically, quite a lot more than can be said of my audience at the Elgiva).  He lives in Chesham and, clearly not having enough practice to do, decided to fritter away his Saturday evening watching me rundle on.  His monumental achievements make me feel like a bumbling charlatan (sorry, even more like a bumbling charlatan).  Despite my misgivings, he also bought a CD leaving me with the faint hope of visiting one of his kids with acute ACME syndrome in the years to come.

I will be there on Sunday to see him complete his marathon - at least the London leg of it. I have been to two complete Beethoven cycles in the past: Roger Woodward (Queen Elizabeth Hall, late 70's) and Bernard Roberts (Wigmore Hall, early 80's). Having sat through all 32 sonatas, those trills starting up in the last movement 0f op.111 are the most moving thing. It is moments like that which put comedy well and truly in its place.

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31ST MAY 2007 19.50

A very shitty, wet and cold weekend punctuated by sodden walks round the park with the pooch. Saturday evening light relief was intended by a visit to see The 39 Steps – a comic, live adaptation of the film of the book at the Criterion Theatre in ’eart of Lundun’s West End.   Having got the cheapest tickets at the last possible moment (my favourite) off we trudge, by tube as it turns out because the weather had filled the streets with cars.

The Criterion Theatre is an oddity.  It’s right on Piccadilly Circus and was home to the tedious, tedious Complete Works of Shakespeare – Abridged which staggered on for years despite the fact that the cast had clearly lost the will to live (noted weekly by a standing, appalling review in Time Out and others).  The venue itself - a subterranean gallery with faint sense of claustrophobia seating 600 – has an above ground entrance right opposite the statue of Eros providing the best billboard in London and key to the outward success of some of the tripe that appears there.  It was originally intended as a concert hall (apparently) and, as you descend, elaborate tile work includes the names of composers thought worthy of ceramic encapsulation in 1870 when the building went up (or…er…down). 

I like such features because there are the perfect example of the transcience of celebrity. As you make your way down the stairs you come across a series of names - some of them familiar, some you have decidedly never heard of:  Beethoven (OK, fine)….Purcell (yup)….Sullivan (as in Gilbert &…OK, I’ll go with that)…Mackenzie (who?).  Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie (1847-1935) "author of assorted oratorios, violin and piano pieces and works for the stage" as it turns out but I had to Google him to find this out. I recall there are similarly forgotten careers enshrined around the walls of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and even in oil paintings at the Great Hall at the Moscow Conservatory.  In the Amsterdam the list includes all the usual suspects as above...then: Alphons Diepenbrock (ooooh yes…I know his work), Cornelis Schuijt (try pronouncing that to his face without being punched) Jacobus Clemens non Papa (name probably the result of a paternity suit).   I’m not making these characters up - check out Concertgebouw for a full list of the unknowns there. How long before people say "Mozart...who?" I wonder? I don't want to be glib but the point is that, one moment you are deemed well known enough to be etched stone, the next (geologically speaking) you are nowhere.

Anyways, having descended into the depths of the Criterion, Mrs Hersch and I squeezed into our impossibly restricted view seats to (restrictedly) view the performance which turned out to be…well… a bit lame – not quite the rip roaring cavalcade of witty repartee and sight gags I had been led to expect (“I…laughed…it…was…good…” The Times etc).  The 39 Steps, rewritten, turns out to be four actors hamming it up with minimal staging standing in for assorted grand moments in the film, complete with chase along the Forth Bridge et al.  Perhaps our spirits were too depressed by the weather but I had a distinct feeling of having seen it all before.

The rest of theweek was onward and upward, mostly with Mozart:

MOZART [THICK GERMAN ACCENT]:  “People say that music cannot be described in words.  Yes it can: ‘long’ is a word that describes a lot of classical music very well...”

Then, killing time on the Internet, I come across an absolute bloody classic: Zhu Feng Bo – a Chinese traditional singer doing Schubert’s Die Forelle and The Lonely Goatherd from the Sound of Music, take your pick, in traditional Chinese fashion. Trust me, it's a must.  If you have iTunes, look her up on the iTunes Store where you can hear 30 seconds of the tracks gratis or buy the entire album for £8.69.  Yes, that's sixty minutes of unadulterated kitsch for less than the price of one cramped seat at the Criterion Theatre Piccadilly – enough to brighten the gloomiest weekend...

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25TH MAY 2007 18.18

A few things:

These pages are not, I discover, a blog (it’s certainly not literature – Ed).  I reached this conclusion having checked-up on the on-line rundlings of a friend - Clive Davis - journalist and, it turns out, serious blogger for the Spectator.  In his column today, May 25th, for example, there are 6 (that’s naught with a six after it) entries between 9.20am and 1.20pm.  Who has the time to do that kind of pissing about with computers? – has he no work?  After a rough tally , it comes out at nearly a thousand words in four hours.  I could never do that because, with such a massive volume you’d have to just post the first thing that popped into your head and that would quickly reveal what a twisted, illiterate bigot I really am.

On Monday night (late) BBC2 TV aired their tribute to Mstislav Rostropovich.  Not being a cellist, I never knew that much about him so I tuned in: Clearly, Mstislav was an intense, passionate man plus brilliant cellist but with such a thick Russian accent that, in the archive interview, I actually had to turn on the freeview subtitles to make out what the hell he was saying.  This was compounded by a rather lax attitude to English grammar: “I play…excellent…Shostokovich…ask the cello and I play” etc.  I’m paraphrasing, but not that much.  A noticeable sigh of relief ever