18/03/08
Never Gonna Gibbon You Up -
Categories: A couple of gigs away, in Bournemouth and Cardiff. I stayed over in Bournemouth, thinking well, they're both west. Must be close. Aren't. Plus it was a chance for a nice weekend away with MBH (my better half). Both gigs weren't exactly a walk in the park to be honest, due to faulty sound systems at each of them making it darned difficult to hear what you're saying, and even hearing if the audience were laughing, booing, talking amongst themselves or even still there.
At the first gig, a fella walked past the stage to go to the bar, asked to speak into the mic (I let him), and commented "I thought Rick Astley was dead." This is because I look a little like Rick Astley. We laughed and moved on. End of the night, I rushed off to another pub for a few drinks, cos I didn't want to hang around the gig which was ok but not a-rockin'. And in walking back to the taxi rank (near the gig), a gaggle of lads walked past, drunkenly singing some song. I'm thinking, "They've probably come from the venue where the gig was - hide in the shadows and they won't notice you." So I turn, pretend to look at a thing over there, and they walk past, singing louder and louder. "Just go!", I'm thinking, till I realise they're singing 'Never Gonna Give You Up' by... Rick Astley. So I turn, play along with their joke, and we all go our separate ways. But I'm feeling a little foolish that it looked like I just didn't get their joke (which I didn't), while in fact it was largely that I just wanted to hide away from drunken audients.
The next day was great - we went to Monkey World near Poole in Dorset. Go. It's great. There are chimps, orangutans, macawcques (sp? either way I thought that was a type of parrot), lemurs, gibbons... and all have their own name and plaque detailing their history (most are rescued from labs, or idiotic and ambitious pet-owners) and a little about their character. My favourite was Paul the gibbon, who was by far the loudest monkey in the park, who sounded like he was dipping his toe into a hot bath. He was hilarious, and I filmed him on my mobile. If I can work out how, I might post it up here. I'm also trying to work a way of getting this video clip into my Edinburgh show.
In the mean time, here (hopefully - don't fail me, technology) is a picture of my favourite orangutan from the day, called Joly. There are more pictures of Joly (and me looking through the window at him, or vice versa) on my Facebook photo album I have called Monkey World.
RSS Feed