India!
\nWell not quite. The Indian Ocean anyway. The sun is rising golden across the Western desert shining all the way across Australia. We chased it all evening to the edges of the Indian Ocean emerging into a warm dark moonless night in Perth, with an unfamiliar bright star, which the driver assured me was Venus. I\u2019m so upside down here I have to take his word for it. Anyway it\u2019s very bright. And of course I know Venus is not a star, and I will check it out tonight with my little travel binos and my Starwalk app. Do you think I was born yesterday? No I didn\u2019t think you did. <\/p>\n
Now the sun is glinting off the lights of the WACA, which as anyone sensible knows is the Western Australian Cricket Ground. It\u2019s only six a.m.and it looks like it\u2019s going to be a hot one. The flags are flapping on their poles so I\u2019m wondering if the legendary Doctor is in town. This is the Fremantle Doctor, or Freo, a local summer wind off the Ocean which brings some relief in the afternoons.<\/p>\n
It’s a public holiday here and Simon, the God of Travel, with a fresh haircut, announces he and the crew ( Simon and Anthony) are going to go to Rockness Island for a day off.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s there?\u201d asks John.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Rock Ness Monster\u201d I suggest, and even the driver laughs.<\/p>\n
A pleasant four hour flight from Canberra, though these planes are not built for John. He can hardly get out of his seat he is so tall, and an upright posture in the loo is out of the question. He performs a series of stretches in the Galley to the secret delight of the Business Passengers.<\/p>\n
Qantas treat us nicely of course, and the lovely stewardess up the sharp end unfortunately manages somehow to spill hot water on her breasts. I ask if she has put ice on them, and she says yes, and I say that while I am not a doctor, if she needs any cream rubbed on them I am happy to help.<\/p>\n
Turns out laughter is not the best medicine, but she cracks a rye smile and goes off to feel better.<\/p>\n
John and I often observe that you don’t have to go very far in Australia without humour breaking out. We think it\u2019s because it\u2019s such a wonderful life here, and the people are happy and exercise and take weekends off. Unlike our dear cousins in America, who work all the time, have poor wages, almost no holidays and ugly billionaires yell at them for wanting health care. As I say on the show \u201cthe trouble with political jokes is occasionally they get elected.\u201d A joke I shamelessly stole from a tea towel in Caloundra market. I have a good one of my own which is on a hotel wall in, I think, San Jose.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot has been said about politics, some of it complimentary but most of it accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I said the other night, if Trump gets elected, the rest of the world may want to build a wall to keep him in.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Labour Day here. A public holiday but only in Western Australia, the other States have other days. It\u2019s a relief for us as it gives us a chance to catch up and deal with the accumulating laundry. A comedy army marches on its undies, (says The Napoleon of Mirth) and we have been moving so fast we are grateful for a couple of days to sort ourselves out.<\/p>\n
I’m limping like a one legged lemur, so I have acupuncture scheduled for tomorrow. This tendonitis is a big p in the a as it means I can\u2019t wander about and explore which is what I like to do in a new city. And Perth is virtually a new city. I haven\u2019t been here since December 20th 2007 when John Du Prez conducted the Western Australia Orchestra and the Cantillation Massed Choir in Not The Messiah our comic oratorio, based on the Life of Brian and Handel (with care). It went over big and as it was late December I remember John and I did an encore with a small electric keyboard and sang Fuck Christmas, which totally collapsed the orchestra, choir and audience equally.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m writing in bed lit by the sun. It\u2019s only 7 a.m. but I have to draw the curtains it\u2019s already so hot. I shall shortly explore the executive lounge for my executive breakfast. Executive is becoming a word with almost no meaning. I use the Executive Toilets, and dial the Executive telephone and do my Executive laundry. It simply seems to mean you have paid more.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pondering a trip to the Margaret Valley but I have so much catching up to do. A diarists job is never done, as I tell Michael Palin and I got a cheap laugh at his expense in Canberra, saying I have a very rare unsigned copy of a Michael Palin Book\u2026. Well he does go everywhere and sign the damn things. John and I discuss the new Gilliam book, which I say is surprisingly well written, and John wonders who wrote it and gets my laugh. I suspect his girls had a hand in it but it is a very nicely designed book and I am being encouraged to sign more copies of it surreptitiously as I did in Eumundi. Someone even sends me a picture of a shelf load of his and Michael\u2019s books in Sydney and suggests I sign them when I\u2019m there. I reply that I assume they have already sold out of all my books\u2026. And of course you can\u2019t sign my latest as it\u2019s only available electronically on Kindle etc. It\u2019s called The Writer\u2019s Cut and if you haven\u2019t downloaded it yet, shame on you. Are you expecting me to write for you forever for free\u2026?<\/p>\n
We had great audiences in Adelaide, one with the Pope and one with Cardinal Pell. (Sorry local joke.) More than two and a half thousand on Saturday and almost that number again on our second show who were very raucous for a Sunday night and who experienced our first heckler. A Brit of course, who yells out unintelligibly, so I ask him if he has had enough to drink? Of course no one can hear a word he says so I run off a few one liners about the rude Poms which goes over well, and since he still won\u2019t stop I remember something Robin Williams did to a persistent heckler the night I first met him in London in 1980. I got the entire audience to pray for the death of this unfortunate man. Thank you Robin. And it makes a nice change me taking your jokes\u2026 Oh alright bitter posthumous kidding and I never minded him using my material at all because he always took me on great holidays, and I had no other outlet for gags anyway back then.<\/p>\n
I remember saying to David Bowie once after a Robin show that I found it hilarious. \u201cYou should \u201d said David \u201cyou said most of it at dinner\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Well I was happy to be Whistler to Robin\u2019s Oscar. I just wish the fucker was still here. In fact both of the fuckers. Dammit.<\/p>\n
The heckler was ejected at half time, claiming that he had been going to Python shows since the 90\u2019s and part of Python shows is you heckle the act. He is clearly deluded since the last live Python show was in 1980 and we never had hecklers. They would have had to be insane to have six Pythons mad at them\u2026<\/p>\n
Perhaps because of his unwanted contribution the show killed and I have never heard so much volume of laughs on John\u2019s solo gags. I felt rather timid about following him with my little rude songs.<\/p>\n
On the plane from Canberra I wrote a joke for Wednesday\u2026<\/p>\n
Yesterday was the marriage of Australian Billionaire Rupert Murdoch to Jerry Hall. \u201cI am the luckiest man in the world\u201d said Mick Jagger.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll use it.
\n <\/p>\n
Our single show in Canberra pulled in 2,600 people to The Convention Centre and we showed pictures of our smashing stay at the Jamala Wildlife Resort, ending up with a photo of us both in the Python enclosure being fed a tin of Spam, which I am happy to say is being retweeted by Conservation groups, because the Cheetah, and indeed far too many species are in danger of being extinct in 15 years. Only 3,000 left in the wild. The white rhino has gone although we tickled three young ones at the Canberra zoo.<\/p>\n
I had an early gag for the tour I wanted to try:<\/p>\n
\u201cGood evening ladies and gentlemen, the white rhino has just become extinct, and I\u2019m not feeling too good myself\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
But I can\u2019t decide whether it\u2019s funny or too sad.<\/p>\n
Answers on a plain postcard to Perth. We\u2019re here Wednesday and Thursday if you\u2019re in the area.<\/p>\n
Happy Labour Day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India! Well not quite. The Indian Ocean anyway. The sun is rising golden across the Western desert shining all the way across Australia. We chased it all evening to the edges of the Indian Ocean emerging into a warm dark moonless night in Perth, with an unfamiliar bright star, which the driver assured me was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}