Madame Galina's Doings Diary

Three Chairs In The Dressing Room Revisited

Apologies to anyone that had a ticket for my show tonight in Oxfordshire. As only nine of you did, the promoter cancelled.

“I am sorry”, said Margaret, ringing to explain, “but I thought it was best for you and for the people there. I get the impression your show needs a bit of audience whoomph.”

“It does. Though very occasionally it doesn’t get it, numbers wise.”

(See Three Chairs In The Dressing Room, March 26th 2007)

Margaret said “I need to ring Arts At Large, who we booked you through and discuss the financial arrangements; you getting your costs. Maybe you should ring them, too.”

“As you’re cancelling at such short notice, the financial arrangements are that I get paid in full."

“Are they? Oh. I see. I haven’t read the bit of paper they sent out for a while. That's... But you see: it’s not as cut and dried as that, I don’t think. I can pin-point the reason for the lack of ticket uptake to negative vibes due to you cancelling in November to go to Afghanistan, you see.”

If the cancellation were my fault, I would lose the fee and be liable for admin costs.

“I didn’t cancel. I postponed”, I said.

“Yes, but that’s not quite how people see it here, I don’t think…”

“I postponed three shows for Essex On Tour and I’ve just done the rematches for them; at the two Saturday ones there were people were standing.”

Margaret said nothing for a few seconds, then, “Maybe it’s because the shop where the tickets are sold in the village has just been taken over by an Indian man and he swore blind to people that there weren’t any tickets and I only just found this out as I’ve been away and when I went in on Wednesday there were the tickets bold as brass under the counter where they’d been all along...”

“Bloody hell, Margaret”, I said. “Bit of shysterics you were trying on there."

And people thought it was greedy divadom when Adelina Patti stipulated that her fee had to be paid by two o’clock on the day of a performance, or that she had a parrot trained to scream “Cash! Cash!” at promoter Henry Mapleson…

James And The Killer's Peach

Sorry…sorry…sorry I haven’t written for such a long time. I’ve been in Aldeburgh with bronchitis and stomach bug working with genius James Fisher, aka Rupert’s Little Brother, on his radio show.

See the resemblance?

In each weekly show James chooses something to rant about. Last week, it was the Aldeburgh post mistress getting above herself.

“It’s this bigger stamp business”, James explained. “I go in there with fifteen job applications to post, and she says I haven’t folded the bit of A4 paper neatly enough inside the envelopes so they’re puffed-up and won’t fit in the cheap slot. And as she’s trying each one in the wannabe Postman Pat mock-up, giving me pitying looks through the glass every time, she actually does the sucking her breath in shit. I want to remind her that she’s a post mistress and not a car mechanic about to give an estimate. Then she says she was sorry but due to how messily I’ve stuffed them, all the envelopes need the bigger more expensive stamp.”

“What did you do?”

“I took them all back off her, put them on the floor, and stood on them. That flattened them enough.”

This week’s rant was about a customer at the restaurant where James waits tables.

“He asks me if we had any Peach Sorbet. I know for a fact we don’t, as I’d made the sorbets that afternoon. But I don’t give the guy in question that bit of extra information because I don’t like him to begin with. He asks am I sure there’s no peach. I say I am. Then when I’ve walked off to take someone else’s order, I see him call the manager over and ask him about the peach. I’ve said I’m not serving him in the future.”

“Who was this?”

He told me.

“Ah, you mean The Killer", I said.

Galina Goes Shopping

I told Thomas Whitehead that the plot for my next play involved euthanasia. He said he was sure I could work in lots of local colour writing about young people in countries such as India.

Ay Di Me.

Still, at least he didn't do something that is anathema to a comic - try to out-funny me.

Early doors with Madame Galina Anne Stone from Rapido TV rang me to ask if I would take part in a set-up audition for a ballet company. I said I wouldn’t. And please would she do her research more thoroughly? Ballet companies have schools feeding them talent. Otherwise dancers apply for contracts or the company director will go find. There are no open auditions.

However, I said, Madame Galina would do a set-up audition for something like...something like... something like...a ha! For selllng stuff on the Shopping Channel!

So, off I was soon going with camera and sound Dan and Huss to have breakfast in a greasy spoon off the Kentish Town Road en route to a business park in Peterborough.