Episode 16. Perth
“And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space

‘Cos there’s bugger all down here in Perth.”

The line comes to me at the sound check and I can’t resist risking it in the show. Mercifully they roar with laughter. It shows they know the real line and appreciate the local change. The audiences in Perth are very smart and very quick. We have another lot in tonight and then we turn our backs on the Indian Ocean and fly East once more to our two final cities of Sydney and Melbourne and then just like that, for us Australia will be over. I have grown very fond of it over the forty years I have been coming and it is amazing to see how enormously the cities have changed even in the eight years since I was last here. There is a multi-cultural confidence now, gone are the knee-jerk inferiority complexes of the sixties and seventies. This is a big world, growing fast, that is a far cry from the old Okker world of RSL’s and old men in clubs settling things privately.

I wake up at 6 with a big cloud hanging over the horizon and a fringe of distant rain patterning the pale peach of dawn. I am faintly depressed. Maybe anxious is more close to it. The show could not have gone better last night. A crowd of 2,400 gave us standing ovations, and laughed throughout the show, but one of the things I have been doing recently is reading through the audience questions and I find them vaguely depressing. Hard to explain why. Then an unkind tweet gets to me, when somebody says that John Cleese is much funnier than I am. Well duh, I’ve known that for 53 years. It’s not a competition it’s a doubles match. What makes the show fun for both of us is that having a partner on stage removes the anxiety and stress of being alone. We cover for each other, pick up cues, interject new thoughts… It’s a surprisingly easy partnership and we get along very well. We also observe each other on stage and almost never disagree. Last night we did the Bookshop stretch better than we have ever done it. We were tight and spot on. And we both noticed.

For a start we were both very relaxed, having had two days off. In my case I had acupuncture for my torn tendon and spent hours in the pool working out my dodgy ankle, so that by the start of the show I am feeling much better. Then we had two great dinners together, one at Kailis Bros in Leederville, and the other at the beautiful Matilda Bay Restaurant, which overlooks the water, during which Jupiter rose huge and golden as we dined. I always find the Universe comforting when humanity seems frustrating. The world does seem to be at least choosing which handbag it wants to go to hell in, and here in Perth the brash Kardashian Trump world of brazen bullshit all seems so very far away. Australians, too, seem grateful for being miles away from the horrible headlines and safer from the crisis of Isis and the insane threats of the mad Korean with the silly haircut, and as we have observed before Australians are very funny and have a great sense of irony. So why am I feeling anxious?

Well Michael White died yesterday, and even though I haven’t seen much of him for many years that is the breaking of a thread which leads all the way back to the Sixties when he picked up the Cambridge Footlights revue and took it to London, which meant that I received an urgent telegram in Berlin, where I was hitch hiking round Germany to return urgently to Cambridge for rehearsals to fill in for John Cleese and co at The Edinburgh Festival in August 1963. A big break for me, singing and performing in a wonderful show, and a great chance to experience audiences, and even appear on TV for the first time. Michael White also helped put together Monty Python and The Holy Grail, though he balked when I took him The Life of Brian. He did however put on my play Pass The Butler, at the Globe Theatre in the West End, directed by Johnny Lynn, and kindly ran it for several months, despite critical abuse, until the Falklands War put an end to all of that enjoying yourself nonsense, and the country could grow grim with war.

So what do I do about the tweet I felt bad about? Do I simply rise above it all, send the Twatter a rude tweet or just ignore it? It’s difficult for me to turn the other cheek. Usually I turn the other cheeky and hand out abuse. The most sensible thing to do is to take Peter Cook’s advice from Beyond The Fringe: “Put on the kettle and have a nice hot cup of tea.”

One cup of Lapsang Chousong later.

That’s better. If I don’t look on the bright side who the hell should? I always say I’m an optimist in the morning and a pessimist at night. So:  Reasons to be cheerful Part Deux. 

Firstly it is my son’s birthday and maddeningly even though he lives in Australia I’m on the wrong side of the Continent for it. However he is going to come and visit me in May. So Happy Birthday son, you brought light and love into my life and I’m grateful to your Aussie mum for giving you an Australian heritage and the chance to live in Queensland, where she was born.

  Secondly my wife is arriving in Sydney on Saturday and she is always very sweet on the road, supportive, thoughtful and very lovely. It does seem amazing we have been together for 39 years and though John snorts contemptuously that it reeks of lack of ambition to be still with the same woman, I am grateful to be with the gal I fell in love with at first sight in January 1977, a startled young Chicagoan whom I told I would never leave, and then stuck to like glue. Thanks Tania for all those years. It would be an understatement to say I can be a difficult bastard, but the great thing about having a wife is you only get to disappoint one woman. And women on the whole are nicer and far more forgiving.

So finally I went back and re read the tweet that had upset me last night and guess what, there are three other tweets from the same guy saying how much he loved the show, how singing along to the Bright Side was a highlight of his life and how grateful he was for the show. So there. It was my mood. It’s odd what we look for. Insecurity is never very far from the performer. Show me a man on stage without some self doubt and I’ll show you an asshole. And I do mean Donald Trump.

So now if this rain cloud will also pass I can get in the pool and have my acupuncture and not forget to laugh and smile and dance and sing.

Comments are closed