Today has been obscene.
Got a lift back to Sheffield with enough time to buy a horrible sandwich and do a quick essay. We had to meet little gimpy Robin Ince, so started pre-gaming at half six in Bar One with Joe.
The gig kicked off at about half eight.
Before long, the MC Sully O’Sullivan had started abusing me from on stage. I pretended I was French. That made it worse, he really went for it.
To divert attention away from the anti-French mood that was growing in the club, I felt I had to bring up Robin’s history, ie. sitting on ham. He started shouting, and ran on stage to defend himself. He spent ten minutes spinning his way out of the ham story. Luckily I was around to mention the time he drank milk from a cows udder.
We bonded.
LOTS.
Look at his little face.
Quite a few people gathered round Robin, because they have the ridiculous idea that he’s important. I thought I’d ask him about the nuts at Christmas. He didn’t deny it. It’s the small victories that count.
Gig review: Robin was very funny. So was Sully O Sullivan, the compere. Spoke to him afterwards about his immigration status. Not sure how it came up. I think someone (me) probably made some remarks that were bordering on racist and we went from there.
We finally left Robin. He tried to make us stay by offering us sweets and saying he knew people in Hollywood. Luckily I know how to escape hangers-on:
He just would not fuck off.
I had a ticket for the bar crawl, but unfortunately the wristband exchange closed at half eleven and I got there too late. I also had a ticket for our Union halloween party, so I walked back and found some delicious friends.
At about half one I remembered I had promised to meet my bar crawl friends. I bid a tearful farewell to the union gang and headed to Embrace, the last club on the crawl. I didn’t have a ticket or a wristband. That turned out to be irrelevant, because when I got there the bouncers told me no one was allowed back in. Instead of walking away, I strolled over to another bouncer by the door. He looked mean. He shouted at me ‘Are you in or out!?’. I said ‘in’. And then I walked in. As soon as I was in the door, I literally ran away.
Then I found my bar crawl friends.
Just look at us.
There I am. And there IT is.
Really good night.
