After a hectic weekend of theatre and an even more hectic afternoon of train cancellations and uncancellations, I eventually make it home to Bristol, dump my bag in the flat, and head back out again to Chops for a preview of Fern Brady’s new tour show.
I say preview - work in progress is more apt. This is - delightfully, wonderfully - scrappy. We’re very early in the work and it’s a lot of fun to watch it at this point. It’s also a lot of fun to watch it when I’m not either MCing or performing too, to be honest.
So many of these routines end with Fern realising she can either never say it out loud again or must really tell people (her brother, her niece, Phil Wang) that she’s talking about this stuff on stage. God knows what will survive of it.
She’s an excellent comedian (and very friendly before the show), and it’s always slightly jealousy-inducing to watch someone as good as her just stand up there on stage with minimal prepped stuff and just be naturally funny, compared to the work I have to put into scripting something even half funny.
She’s doing two back to back WIPs tonight, and this is the earlier of the two. I honestly don’t know what even survives to the second one an hour later.