Tuesday 17th January 2017

It's always lovely to see a completed to-do list, but my to-do list for the last 2 days is well and truly nailed, and that includes finally working out the structure of the new show.

It feels messy still; as before the show is made up of bullet points. Last year's fringe show, which was only around 50 minutes in length, was made up of 16 points I needed to hit to make the story work. This one, for touring at least, is much longer - 90 minutes, in 2 x 45 minute halves, but currently has 27 points in each half. Basically, I'm aware that on tour I'll look at the audience and realise certain bits aren't gonna float their boat (or more to the point, I'll look at them and realise I just don't like them) so I can drop certain bits but still have enough of a show left. The previews - the 5 house shows starting next week on Alex's boat, will go on for bloody hours. Sorry if you're at one of those, but I need to test this stuff out.

Anyway, that was a good day - morning spent catching up on emails, emails from people who have only just picked my initial 'give me a show' message from December and are now getting back to me. Shows starting to come in for September/October now, so it's good to know I have life after the fringe.

Then off to a meeting at the venue in Bury for the murder mystery. Venue is massive, beautiful and run really well. The meeting was great, I can't wait to bring the show there but wow...a lot of pressure with this. As I walked away I was thinking though...I'm 35, I've been around long enough, these are the sort of venues I should be performing in these days. It's still a rarity, but there's five or six of these shows now confirmed. I've worked out if I had 80 of them a year I could live comfortably off those without doing anything else...

Then got back, did some more work on the new show (which is now more new bits than intended), sent out another 50 or so emails to venues, designed 'Box' posters for 3 different venues outside of the tour and sent those over and then re-did the tour poster to fit in the recently added Harrogate date.

If I can get the core of this show written this week, and the rest of the lyrics for the murder mystery (Marcel is chasing these up), then I'll be back on track, I reckon.