Puppetry, service stations & Ken Dodd

With the majority of OMTG packed up on Saturday there wasn’t a great deal left to be done on Monday, bar a few returns and a trip to workshop. So I started on ‘Shelly and the Ratman’ my next show, on Tuesday. Having spent a few days trying to understand what the show is and who’s doing what I have been given sound design for the show, which rather concerns me (how does sound work again?).

See what I mean, it just looks wrong!

Beyond the (slight) terror of sound design much of my week has been spent sorting things out for next weekend’s wander (spoilers). Matters at home meant I was back up north for a few days.  On our way back to Cardiff we stopped at a rather bazar service station which I still can’t quite get my head around, it seemed to be an eco-friendly services, but looked very European and even had a proper farm shop (see what I mean, it just felt wrong!)

Come Saturday I was off! This week I made it to Swindon (how exotic!). This week’s guests were the delightful Nick Joseph, Julian Seager (also in ‘The Light of September’) and Eddie Kidd (yes, the motorcyclist stuntman). I was only there very briefly, but it was a nice little event, with some interesting guests. From Swindon I dashed into London and met up with a friend from NYT who I’d not seen for a few years. We seemed to pick up from where we’d left off which was lovely.

From there I headed up north to Buxton to see the one, and only Ken Dodd. He has quite a reputation for his shows being quite long, but I was amazed that he was on stage for almost five hours, which was incredible! Throughout he was on fine form and great with the audience. As well as being on fine form I really enjoyed the fact that he was not offensive to any groups in society (possibly the tax man, but that’s it), he didn’t swear and didn’t go for cheap laughs, something which I think comedy lacks these days, with the whole evening seeming to be very natural and not stuck rigidly to a script as seems to be the case most of the time these days. After a rather brilliant evening, I met him at the stage door (he was in Doctor Who you know). Before he came out I had quite a chat with what seemed to be his fan club who have followed him for years and knew him very well. When Ken came out he stopped and chatted to them and myself for quite a while and was just as funny as he had been on stage and very personable (he even wandered over to the car to meet Mum). Both Mum and I agreed that we’d happily see him again.

Sunday was spent sorting a few things out at home, before heading back to Cardiff for another week of puppetry.