I was really proud of series 1 of
Modern Life Is Goodish. It did a rare thing in telly terms: its audience grew. And Dave (the channel) have been brilliant with the way they've got behind it - and showed real faith in us by commissioning two more series. And not just two more... where series 1 was 6 episodes, series 2 and 3 are eight episodes apiece.
And right now, we're half way through series 2 and I've just been told that episode 4 of series 2 is the best performing episode of both series, so far. Which is fantastic news. And makes me feel very grateful to everyone who's tuned in. If you're one of them: thanks.
When the show's on air, I normally try to be around so that I can reply to tweets and so on. But that's not really been possible since the tour started. When episode four was going out for the first time last Tuesday I was onstage doing a preview show in Wolverhampton. But when I came off stage and looked at my tweets I found myself chuckling. There were lots of tweets like this
and this...
Often they were in pairs, with one expressing outrage at the apparent purchase of a lawnmower and another a few minutes later, basically saying, "Okay... you got me."
I don't think we expected quite so many people to actually have (or get) a QR code reader on their phone and to go through with it. I expected most people to watch it passively, and thought that they'd find the knowledge that someone, somewhere
must have done it, abstractly amusing. But for so many people to have interacted with the joke feels really special. And odd. Because we played a practical joke on people in the future.
I haven't replied to that many of those tweets because I didn't want to leave any spoilers lying around the internet for people who were yet to watch it on one of the week's repeat screenings. But as the last of those went out last night - and the latest episode will be on the box tonight (10pm, thanks for asking) I figure now's as good a time as any to mention it. But, whether I replied or not, please know that the lawnmower-tweets have been making me giggle all week. Thanks.
I've just sent an email to my mailing list with a competition question that relates to episode five. (10pm, tonight, thanks for asking). As there wasn't really a souvenir from episode 4 that I could give away, I'm going to give away a couple of books. My latest book,
Too Much Information and the
Found Poetry book. (Which is more of a booklet, truth be told).
I'll try and do the same for each of the remaining four episodes this series. If there's something from the show to give away, I will... if not, I'll make it a book or two. I do it via my mailing list for several reasons. I kind of dislike those, "retweet to enter" competitions because they seem like a way of artificially boosting some measure of twitter activity. They also exclude the people who don't use Twitter but are on Facebook or what have you. If I ran one on Facebook that would exclude people on Twitter too.
By running it for my mailing list it keeps it out of the way of people who simply aren't that interested.
And of course, I hope it encourages a few people to sign up. Because nobody sees every tweet or every facebook post... but an email lands in your inbox and so it seems like a far more reliable way of staying in touch with folks.
You can subscribe - and if it comes to it, you can unsubscribe - right here.
