Wednesday 10th June 2009, 18:04
The Race to Roxette
Meant to add this to the end of the blog about honeymooning, but a key difference from most honeymoons and ours was that the plane ride back didn't signify the end of the excitement. For we had tickets to the first and only UK date in 15 years of one-half of Roxette... Oh yes, Per Gessle chose the one London date on his tour to be the same day that two of the biggest Roxette fans came back from holiday. Flight due to land at 5:30pm at Gatwick, show due to start at 7pm in Islington. A tricky commute.
We landed a little late (5:45pm) - due to be later still, but I had a quick word with the captain while we were both queuing for the toilet on the plane (you'd have thought the captain doesn't have to queue, but he does. Then again, you'd have thought he'd have a plastic bottle or tube or something to save having to get up...) - and he offered to fly it a bit faster just so we could get to the concert. Very good of him.
Met at the airport by my parents, who took our luggage and pointed us in the direction of the Gatwick Express to Victoria. Raced onto the first train, annoying holidaymakers on busy escalators in the process. Phoned best man for his final wedding duties - using the internet to confirm where the venue actually was. Phew, there's a support band, we discover. Mr Roxette due on stage at 8ish. Buys us some time. Taxi from Victoria, raced into the venue at 8:20pm... And there we were, for the first time in our lives, in a room with fellow Roxette fans. Felt a bit Alcoholics Anonymousish, only with a better backing track (debatable - but we like it).
And so yes, brilliant show he put on. Lots of Roxette songs and not the indulgence of recent solo stuff that acts often do if they've had albums since their heyday. Turns out we missed 5 songs, and were still there to catch 2 more hours, including all the biggies - It Must Have Been Love, Listen To Your Heart, Joyride, etc etc etc, ending on the lovely Queen of Rain. He even ended with the line "Dream about the sun", which is exactly what we were doing about the honeymoon. Aw. And then the exit music was The Hills Are Alive from The Sound of Music - especially appropriate if you saw the spoof video we put together and posted here a while ago. So it went full circle.
Now that's how to end a honeymoon...
Monday 8th June 2009, 17:27
On the (warm-)up
Done a TV warm-up last week, for a new studio audience sitcom. Well obviously a studio audience, otherwise it's just me warming up the crew, and obviously a sitcom, because TV dramas don't have a laughter track. Maybe an 'ooh' and 'aah' track, but not just yet.
What was nice was that although I turned up not knowing anyone involved in it, when I arrived I realised I knew quite a few...
- Sitting behind me in the dress rehearsal was Andrew Collins, of Not Going Out and top podcasting fame.
- The production manager it turns out I worked with on a previous show too.
- The director has his kids tutored by the fella I'm writing a sitcom with.
- One of the main parts in the sitcom is filled by Jarred Christmas from off of from the comedy circuit.
- Two of the other main parts are filled by Iain Lee and Adam Buxton, who I don't know (apart from gigging once with Adam), but whose podcasts I listen to. In fact if a bomb went off in that TV studio, 99% of British podcasting would be out the window - and I include my own Movie Banter, of course...
- And the producer is the same chap who, 17 years ago, when I was a wee schoolboy, responded to some comedy sketches that me and three schoolchums wrote and sent to the BBC, with a letter saying basically, "Thanks but no thanks - you really can't justify words like 'pantcacking' and 'felching' on Radio 4 except in very special circumstances." He did pick out one sketch he liked, which I'm happy to say was written by the 13 year-old me. And now, years later, I've done some writing work for him last year and I'm in a TV studio with him, me warming up an audience and he overseeing the show.
Warm-up is one thing of course, but naturally as a writer I'm looking at the sitcom being recorded with a touch of envy. Must work harder, must write harder. Bumping into the various people mentioned above suddenly makes you realise how close this world is. And yet I lack a recordable sitcom right now. So to work. I shall stop this blog-post and go and write my very own magnum opus. If I spent as much time sitcom-writing as I did blogging and podcasting... well let's just say that technology has given procrastination an acceptable face. But I love it.
Saturday 30th May 2009, 12:56
My first honeymoon
Okay, probably only honeymoon. But it was so nice it might just be worth getting married again just to have another. After most nice holidays you come back disappointed it's over - after this one we came back determined to get back to work quickly to earn enough to go straight back there again...
Anyway, after a lovely post-wedding day lunch and beer drinky with Zoe's parents in the villagette of Peaslake, we were driven by a lovely chap from the hotel called Peter to Gatwick. Didn't even need a taxi. Bless his cottons. Then we flew from Gatwick to Meeru in the Maldives. And yes, a bit of honeymoon upgradage went on - in fact our seats were 1A and 1B. You can't get nearer the front without flying the plane.
A long flight, through the night, made more interesting by one fella a few seats behind having a nightmare - he woke up, stood up and shouted, "Watch out! Watch out!" Which trust me - you don't want to hear on a plane in the middle of the night (or any time). What was laughable (after we'd all calmed down) was that a full minute later, the front curtain went back and a stewardess appeared, asking, "Everything alright?" in a very cheery manner. That's how they train them to respond in the event of a possible terrorist attack on an international flight: finish your conversation with the other stewardess, have a sip of tea, then vaguely query that the supposed terrorist is alright back there.
Meeru itself was lovely, if a tad equatorial for my skin-tone, but hey, factor 50 was invented for a reason. That reason is me. We got the exact room we were after - and I don't want to make you sick here, so let's just get this out of the way... a jacuzzi water villa on stilts with a balcony, steps into the ocean and a sunset view over the sea. There. If it's any consolation... no, I can't think of anything bad about it. Alright, the TV didn't have Comedy Central. I really had to reach for that as a bad point.
The island is one entire resort - you can walk around it in 30 minutes, or a few hours if you stop at all five bars. Yay to the all-inclusive cocktail of the day, but no no no to their tendency to be 90% creme de menthe. The food was marvellous - waffles and noodles being particularly worthy of mention. Had a couple of nice meals at the 'Asian Wok' too - Teppanyaki, where the chef juggles food as he cooks it in front of you, and a Chinese Steamboat Fondue, which is the complete opposite, ie. no chef - you cook it yourself, at your table, with a big bowl of boiling water and some raw ingredients. Nice. And potentially dangerous thanks to the raw chicken, but we lived.
People wonder if you can get bored on a small island like this, but there's a bunch of excursions - a snorkelling lesson (I failed - I insisted on wearing my glasses, which lets in a lot of water it turns out), some kayaking round the island, a bit of dolphin-watching (they leapt and everything), some night-fishing (I caught four fish, including one 18-inch jack-fish, which we ate an hour later. We called him Bob. I felt like a proper hunter-gatherer, catching dinner for my wife. Grr.)
Also a trip to neighbouring island Diffushi - quite a stark comparison when you see how real Maldivians live. Most sleep outside cos it's too hot inside without the luxury of aircon that we had. Lovely little wise guru man who was about three foot tall but you could tell spoke in phrases like "Ah, the idiot cook raw chicken in boiling water. Feel bad next three days."
Other things of note:
- I did notice the loo-rolls are split into much smaller segments than UK loo-rolls. I think cos Maldivians are smaller people, so have smaller bottoms.
- Plenty of Brits we met over there, especially Bernadette and John from Leeds who somehow knew everyone on the island. It's the cheery northern thing.
- Three times we saw jumping fish - about 10 or so leap out of the water three or four times in a row. Very cool, but never caught it on camera of course. Either they were being chased by sharks, or just wanted a bit of sun.
- Oh yes, the sharks, or more importantly, the stingrays. we did get a little spooked by these, especially when Bernadette and John from Leeds kept pointing at where we'd just been swimming and saying, "Ooh look, a manta ray - that's the one that killed Steve Irwin." We didn't do much swimming after that.
- Our waiter was a lovely chap called Ali, and there was a very cool little man who served us drinks in the bar all the time. Weirdly, as their all Muslim (by law, in the Maldives), they're all serving drinks they've never tasted (yeah, right).
- Did a treasure hunt one day for Zoe around the island. That was nice (and to be honest an excuse to go into the five bars again).
- Read a bunch of books: Stephen King's Cell, The Year of Living Biblically, and Zoe read The Kite Runner. So zombies, the Bible and gritty Afghanistan. Put those three together, you get an amazing book.
- A lot of fellas suddenly walking into the bar in speedos. Aka banana hammocks. Aka something you all notice but no one likes to talk about. It's the elephant in the room. Sometimes literally.
Scuse the lengthy post (another word for speedos) - had to log (another word for speedos) it for posterity. Home now. Less exotic blog posts will resume, probably about Hull or Runcorn or Milton Keynes, or wherever else occurs in the life of a travelling comic. Please please please will someone set up a gig on the Maldives. I'll gladly be resident compere.
Friday 22nd May 2009, 10:39
The Reception, part 2
After the inappropriate comments, submitted by my own mother, on the facebook version of this blog (shudder), I'm finish off the tale of the reception, picking up from us playing in that video I mentioned and linked to (it's on www.paulandzoe.com - thanks, best man Jon, for setting that up. Bless 'im.)
I should add that no one knew about the video - we tried to make it a wedding day of surprises, from The Lion Sleeps Tonight as the recessional music at the service (well done those who deciphered Leo Hac Nocte Dormit to get that) to Zoe receiving a signed photo of Colin Firth, to the best man's key bit mentioned in the last post, to the video, to the first dance...
We'd been taking a dance lessons - not necessarily perfecting us as dancers, but choreographing a little something to the soundtrack of folk singer Nancy Wallace's version of You're The First, The Last, My Everything (with a bit of Barry White thrown in for good measure). If you don't know Nancy wallace, and you probably won't - do go give her a try on itunes now. Her cover versions are very sweet.
After the first dance is the first time you really get to relax at your own wedding, so then we hit the bar, or when there were just too many people between us and the bar, had a sip of brandy from my hipflask. Lots of catching up with old friends and family, the odd drinkie or two, a cigar, and ultimately some proper Cornish pasties dished out, shipped up from a genuine Cornish pastyerie. Yum. Cornish flags, Cornish tartan napkins and very sweet Cornish mice (toy versions of) completed the Kernow influence. All this to the soundtrack of Charlie Baker and his swing band, who were brilliant all night, with a slight dip when I stupidly took the mic to do a wrongkeyed version of Mack The Knife. And everything was going so well...
The night ended with the customary dances with our parents and parents-in-law, and the customary dragging-up of an elderly relative by a young booze-laden friend to boogie to Baby Got Back. All kinds of wrong.
Anyways, a fine day, with only lip-service paid to it here, but then try as you do to relive it (we've got videos of most of the above events from 3 different angles, and have seen all at least twice), one's wedding day best lives in on in the memory, and it certainly shall. Before the wedding loads of people said to us, "Just remember that in all your planning, something will go wrong. Probably something little, but something will." Well nothing did. All went to plan - it was perfect, and we wouldn't have changed a thing. Apart from the key to Mack The Knife, maybe.
One more nuptial indulgence blog post will follow (the honeymoon - edited highlights thereof, you'll be pleased to know), and after that I promise normal non-wedding-based blog service will resume...
Monday 18th May 2009, 11:56
The Reception, part 1
I did promise - over a week ago now - to finish logging weddingness with the reception. So excuse a bit more nuptial indulgence while I put some words down here for posterity about it...
One thing I meant to add to the previous church-based post was that during photos after the ceremony we patented the 'slow pan' - all and sundry were in a semi-circle taking photos, so by us slowly shuffling around to look at everyone, they could get ready and get a nice picture of us all in turn. Only problem is, cos of the feet-shuffling, in most of the photos I've got turned-in feet, so I do look a tad like I just got off a sunshine coach, but hey ho.
The reception venue was a good hour from the church - longer than ideal, but actually it gave my blushing bride and I a brilliant chance to catch up before rushing around for the rest of the day. And drink brandy from my hipflask. Lots of wonderful beep-beeps from the wedding guests as they overtook us, the occasional beep-beep from random unknown cars, and the occasional sour-faced humourless driver who clocked eyes with us when we turned around to try and place a beep-beep but got the car wrong.
At the venue - a very sweet country barn - the sun shone for our photos, and during the mingling time we had a fine string quartet, two of whom were friends attending the wedding anyway, and another of whom it turned out was a fella from my year at school. What are the chances? Well, high, given that I knew the other half of the string quartet through school too, but for a second it seemed coincidental. The quartet was great, playing a nice mix of Mozart and the Back To The Future theme. Heck yeah.
Our mums prepared a lovely photo album of the two of us ageing through the years for people to browse while we roamed the grounds having photos taken of us in a variety of romantic wedding poses. And speaking of photos, when we sat down to dinner, a lovely wedding gift awaited. A gift-wrapped pressie, and we undid it to find a photo-frame containing a photo of us outside the church, post-ceremony, from just a couple of hours previous. One thoughtful couple had raced from the church to Boots, got the photos printed up, framed one, wrapped it, and raced back to the reception venue, so that when we went on honeymoon we'd have a lovely photographic reminder that it was all real. It does happen a lot that honeymooning couples feel it was all a dream because they don't see a photo of the day until they get back two weeks' later, so sure enough it was indeed a welcome and lovely gift that served to remind us of it. Well done, Kate and Al, and bless 'em - it meant that they were the only people missing from the group wedding photo, so thank you guys and we'll have to copy and paste you in. They sacrificed their photo moment so that others may have a photo. What good eggs.
After a lovely dinner came the speeches (48 minutes of them, for those that like to know - and well done Kate for winning the speech-length sweepstake...), which were a perfect mix of heartfeltedness, gratitude and a few laughs. Slightly more laughs than planned, but I did mean it seriously - if the guests took my comments as a 'joke', then whoops. I typically waffled on for 25min (no one gave me a red light so I didn't know when to leave), and speech highlights include my best man asking "any women who may have a key to my house to return it now", causing half the women at the reception to approach my table and plonk a key in front of me. The implication was that I was some kind of womaniser, although when my pal Tim then got up too, that proves that I'm not just all about the ladies. When the bride's mum got up to return a key too - well I feel it was all a little too revelatory. Quote of the day was also from my best man: "Zoe is a psychologist, a nurse, and now a loving wife, and Paul badly needs all three."
A little more on the reception will follow, but for now here's a video we played into the reception, charting our lives, relationship and some old 'cute' photos...
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=188362055194&ref=mf
OR
http://www.paulandzoe.com/video.php
What can I say - we love Roxette.