Time to fall over.

We recorded the Genius Christmas Special last night... in what turned out to be a marathon recording.

I think we ran nearly an hour longer than our normal shows... and I'm aware that my energy levels were dropping by the end of the night.

I thought it was a more rambunctious show than normal but all of the punters were great, as was our special guest, Lee Mack... and the diversity of the ideas was lovely too. It should definitely make for a fine show... but I wouldn't fancy being the one who has to cut it down to thirty minutes. You can judge for yourself when the show airs on Radio 4 at 6.30 on December 22. (It's repeated on the Sunday after Christmas too.)

I've spent the last two or three weeks trying to shake off an annoyingly persistent cold. I tend to get better as the day goes on... but then wake up each morning feeling like I'm back to square one. My normal reaction to a cold is to exercise. I like to tell my body that I'm here and I'm fighting... so I've been cycling to Genius HQ each morning. Someone who seems to know what they're talking about has recently told me that it's the wrong thing to do and that it lowers the immune system... but by the end of a five mile bike ride I feel so much better than I do after cooping myself up on the tube so I keep doing it.

There was one day last week when I did a morning in the office, an afternoon at home, a gig (yes, my experiment with unadvertised, short notice, short sets of stand up is ongoing) at the Albany on Great Portland Street, another gig at The Kings Head in Crouch End, returned to the Albany to see a few friends and then returned home. I reckon that added up to something like 25 to 30 miles of cycling although the hills around Crouch End made it feel like more.

By the end of the day I was feeling the full smugness of a cyclist. Not only had I done my travelling in about the same time as the tubes and buses would have reasonably got me from A to B (to A to C to D to C to A) but the exercise left me feeling really healthy. I felt like I'd conquered my cold. My lungs were full of oxygen instead of the radioactive phlegm I'd been growing accustomed to... I really thought I'd won.

Boy did I feel shit the next morning. Wiped out. You can't win. The only thing that makes me feel better in the short term is some exercise. But the next day it seems to have made things worse. So I get on the bike once more... and feel better. Only to be worse still the next day.*

Anyway... last night's show was my last work for the year. I've been trying to fight the illness for long enough to get that out of the way. Today I feel completely wiped out so I think it might be time to give in to the cold and let it take me down. I'll emerge on the other side. Hopefully before Christmas.











*You have no idea how hard it was to resist the obvious, "it's a vicious cycle" pun.

Last Night's News... and Christmas Genius

Cor, last night was exciting wasn't it? The world feels like a different place already. It's obvious the man's a born leader.

No doubt about it... not everyone could have slotted home that 95th minute penalty, salvaging a draw and leaving Liverpool top of the group. Now... I ought to check the news and see what happened in those elections they were having in Americaland. I hope that Obama chap won. The Palin lass scares me.

Now... Christmas.

Retro Christmas, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

I know it's only early November... but these things need to be planned.

We're going to make a Genius Christmas Special for Radio 4 soon... and it would be fabbo if the show was jam packed with seasonal ideas. So if you think you might be a genius and you have an idea that relates to the festive season - whether it's Christmas, Hanukah or simply something that'll make the New Year go with a swing - then get in touch by e-mailing the show on Genius@bbc.co.uk.

If you fancy being in the audience... well, as I type this, free tickets are still available here.

The show will record on the evening of December 10th... see you there, yeah? Yeah? Great.

A Non-Broadcast. And A Broadcast.

On Tuesday night we ran a kind of workshop performance of Genius with a small audience at the Drill Hall in central London. The point of the show was to try out some new things and solving some of the problems that are thrown up now that we have to think about filming the show instead of just taking the sound.

We're pretty confident that we know how to best handle the heart of the show - the ideas sent to us by potential geniuses - it's the stuff around it that we needed to experiment with. But there's no way of just trying out that stuff... we obviously needed to run a proper show as well. If you were planning to build a wall and you knew what bricks you were going to use but had yet to make your mind up on the mortar... you wouldn't be able to test the mortar without using a few bricks as well.

I'm very grateful to the people who came down to pitch their ideas - especially to a couple of people who stepped in at short notice after two of our intended idea-pitching-potential-geniuses had to pull out.

We videoed proceedings so that Team Genius could review it later and see what things looked like from number of different angles. But because we were recording it we had no choice but to turn the noisy air conditioning unit off. Rarely have I performed in as uncomfortably hot space... which isn't me complaining... indeed it's the audience I felt sorry for. It's can't be easy sitting in a sauna and watching a third variation for an ending to the show you've already seen reach a satisfying conclusion. But they stuck with it and continued to give us some really valuable feedback right to the end. They really couldn't have been much nicer. (With the possible exception of one person who seemed very happy but really wanted me to be performing something he'd already seen me do 8 or 9 years ago... sigh.)

Still, it was a very satisfying night on the whole. If you came along: thanks for the feedback and sorry for the almost unbearable heat.

Team Genius spent Wednesday deconstructing what had happened. To be honest it wasn't too hard to work out which bits were going to survive and which weren't. Laughter is unequivocal like that.

Aerials, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

On Thursday I was just round the corner from the Drill Hall at the BBC Radio Theatre for a recording of Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive. I've done the show a couple of times before and it's always been a pleasure but this time I turned up feeling a bit underprepared.

Because I'm in production on something like Genius it starts to occupy my every waking thought. I'm in the office five days a week - and because of Tuesday's workshop I worked through the weekend too, getting the ideas straight in my head, tweaking scripts and so on. But I needn't have worried... it's such a self-assured show and the best things to come up always emerge out of the conversation anyway. In the end it didn't feel like work at all.

And the theatre was pleasantly cool too. Which was a relief.
It goes out today (Friday) at 6.30pm.

Un-bloggy news...

Gull, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

1: I'm a guest on an episode of Heresy (Radio 4) that records tomorrow (Friday 16th) night at the Drill Hall in central London. (Tickets)

2: I'm the weak link in a comedian's team that are playing in Soccer 6 event on Sunday. (Gates open at midday, tickets are £12 in advance or £15 on the day and all money raised goes to support The Samaritans... which is probably a bit of an unfashionable charity but no less worthy - or indeed necessary - for that.) Omid Djalili, Russell Howard, Lee Mack and Noel Fielding are all meant to be playing and they all possess silky skills that put me to shame.

3: May 24 to 28: I'm going to be in Hay on Wye for the Hay Festival where I'll be taking part in recordings of What The Dickens for Sky Arts.

Book Readings... and the Tellyboxing of Genius

I fly to Galway tomorrow for the start of another week of book-readings. As well as Galway I'll be visiting Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee. The details/venues/etc are here. Hopefully I'll see some of you at some of them.

In the meantime... here's some rather jolly news. We made a one-off tellybox episode of Genius last year and it's no longer going to be a one-off. We're going to make a series of the show for BBC2 (as well as making more for Radio 4)

Of course, when we're going to make a new series we always need to have a fresh injection of potentially genius ideas... so get your thinking caps on and send them along. Don't post them here though and don't send them to me - I'm sure I'm the least organised member of Team Genius and I can't be trusted with important things like that. No, e-mail Team Genius at genius@bbc.co.uk (including your name and telephone number) or visit the Genius website.

Travels, Books, Stuff...

This is going to be a slightly unfocused entry... I'm playing catch-up with life at the minute.

My trip to the States was fun - largely because the people I was working with were fun. If they hadn't been it would have been pretty awful because it was all work, flights and long drives. I flew London to LA on Friday, went to work on Saturday morning and then flew from LA to Phoenix, Arizona and then Kansas City. On Sunday morning we drove a couple of hours out of the city and had another long day of work. On Monday we flew from Kansas City to Indianapolis. We worked all Tuesday before making a dash for the airport and flying to Dallas. (Tip, don't let a man called Tom programme your GPS... Toms think they know all about Tom Toms and you can end up driving an hour in the wrong direction and not getting to bed until 1am as a result.) We started early on Wednesday with a five hour drive from Dallas to Lubbock and then spent the rest of the day working. Thursday was one of the longest days of my life. I got up at 5am and left the hotel at 5.30. Another five hour drive saw me in Dallas where I boarded a plane bound for Boston where I scooted across the airport just in time to board another flight... this one to London. We landed at 5.20am on Friday. It feels like I went from 5am one day to 5am the next without experiencing a night time. Odd. And discombobulating. And you can see how liking the company of the people you're with - and the work that you're doing - becomes important in such circumstances.

I'll tell you more about the work another time. And I'll be visiting climatecare.org to carbon neutralise the trip some time this week. (I know, I know... it probably does more good for my conscience than the world but...)

I wasn't in any time zone for long so I never really acclimatised to the situation but I've still been a bit wobbly on the other side of it. I've been getting a bit yawny at around 4pm each day and managed to fall asleep bolt upright at my desk yesterday - albeit for only 10 minutes.

Having had only the weekend to recover I was straight back to work on Monday with the book event at Foyles. I'm really glad we did this event this way. It was done to create some video-podcasts about the America Unchained book for the Guardian website. The original idea was just to film me doing a sit-down interview with someone but I think those things can come across as quite dry and formal. Doing it with an audience - and taking their questions (instead of the questions dreamed up by your own publicist) made it more exciting for me and more fun all round. Given how tired I was during the afternoon it was good to have an audience to kick me out of it and give me the much needed adrenaline rush. The idea had been to assemble an audience of around 70 people. Normally when you do a free event there's a relatively large number of no-shows where people take tickets and don't use them... which almost never happens when they've shelled out actual money for them. With that in mind they oversubscribed it a little and gave away 100 tickets. I think three people didn't make it. Anyway, it was really enjoyable for me and a nice way to warm up for the impending book tour that starts soon. I'll let you know as soon as the videos from the night are put online...

The book isn't published until April 3 (but can be pre-ordered now, natch) and so I took a copy of my last A4 manuscript version with me to read from. But as it goes the publishers had rushed a hot-off-the-presses version to the shop so that the real thing was there. Seeing a printed book for the first time is always an exciting moment. Until then you don't really know how thick it's going to be, how it will feel in people's hands and so on. It's the moment at which all of the hard graft or writing is translated into something real. I'm very happy with it. It feels cared for and the colour photos lend it a richness that isn't common these days. Hurrah.

And then on Tuesday I saw rather more of them. A thousand of them as it goes. I went out to a depot in Essex to sign them for various book shops who've ordered some signed stock. It's events like this that destroy one's signature. Try writing the same thing - anything - over and over a thousand times...

Tonight I'll be recording an episode of Clive Anderson's Chat Room for Radio 4. It's about the week's news... I feel woefully under-prepared. I haven't really engaged with the real world this week - there hasn't been time. I'm sure some stuff happened involving a person and some other people and some stuff. Oh dear.


EDITED: To remove the gobbledygook random code that somehow made it's way in mid-word and also to say that Clive Anderson's Chat Room is actually on Radio 2 not 4 (I wasn't the only person who made this mistake, the audience's tickets all said Radio 4 too.) It goes out tonight (Thursday 20th) at 11pm and is repeated on Saturday also.

Banter

I took part in a recording of Radio 4's Banter last night. It was recorded at The Drill Hall in London which anyone who has been will tell you is every bit as glamorous and exciting as New York's Radio City Music Hall.

I think it was the first thing of its ilk that I'd done in ages. I must have done far less other shows in 2007 than I normally do. I have to if I'm writing a book.

Normally when I'm writing I start each day by re-writing the stuff I wrote the day before. I find it helps to keep the tone consistent, gets me back into the right frame of mind by the time I start writing new words and helps me to pick up a few silly mistakes made through tiredness the day before.

But if I take a day off I have to go further back and instead of spending the morning picking through the last day's work I end up spending a day revising the last couple of days. If I'm forced to take a week off I virtually have to go back to the beginning. I end up getting far more done in five uninterrupted days than I do in ten days spread over, say, a month.

Which is why I said no to almost everything else last year - including lots of things I'd normally say yes to. I reckon with Annually Retentive, the editing of America Unchained, Genius on the wireless and the one-off tellybox episode I had more than enough distractions from the writing as it was.

Once Genius was out of the way in November I basically went into hibernation and committed every day to writing full time. I was amazed by how productive I got. It was strangely manic and exciting to do but also strangely debilitating at the same time. In six weeks I don't think I travelled more than half a mile from my front door which is just odd. So now I feel like a pit-pony blinking as it emerges into sunlight for the first time in ages as I try to remember how the world works when it isn't just me, a computer and the sound of typing.

With the film going out last Tuesday and the DVD being released today I eased my way back in by promoting the film hither and thither but Banter was the first show that I was doing purely for its own sake. It's hosted by Andrew Collins and last night's panellists were Richard Herring, Russel Howard, Dillie Keane and myself. I was feeling rusty beforehand and was slightly regretting saying yes to something where I thought I might be found out as the underprepared fool that I was but when it came to it the show was great fun and far more to do with conversation than with prepared material. Which is as it should be given the name, Banter.

They probably record about 90 minutes worth of material during each show with an hour of it being far too scurrilous (or downright rude) for broadcast. They're recording four more shows and I'd recommend it as a cheap (free) night out if you're down London way. You can get tickets from the inappropriately named tvrecordings.com who should have thought about the fact that it wasn't just TV when they started.


In other news, I saw a finished book cover today. Always an exciting moment and it's a nice way to be reminded that the hard graft involved in writing 120,000 words isn't in vain. It's real and in April it'll be out there... looking like this.

Genius

Genius. Radio 4. Tonight. 6.30.

Episode 1.

Guest: Rob Newman.

Charm Offensive

Another crack in my "sorry, I'm not available, I'm writing a book" armour has been found. I was a guest on Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive yesterday. The show will be broadcast on Radio 4 at 6.30 this afternoon and then in its special 18-hours-less-topical format, it will be repeated tomorrow at 12.30.

The other guests were Jo Brand and Will Smith which makes for about as polite and civilised a bunch of comics as you could really hope for. It was one of those lovely recordings where it didn't feel like work at all, just an evening spent in good company being silly.

At one point I found myself ranting about daytime telly, making mention of the Car Booty episode I discussed here a few days ago and the use of music in Homes Under The Hammer too. Thoughts that were only crystallised because I'd written about them here basically. Which is an interesting side effect to blogging that I hadn't foreseen. Whether it will make the edit or not I don't know. Nor does it really matter... it's just interesting (to me) to discover that thoughts that would previously have floated through my brain unchecked were instead digested and turned into something vaguely useful because of this outlet. Who knew?

Enjoyable Torture

If the point of Just A Minute was to make a 30 minute programme and then work out at the end which of the four panellists had contributed just a minute then I might well turn out to be the victor.

Sadly that isn't the point and I might well turn out to be the lowest scoring contributor ever. It really is devilishly difficult to even get on the microphone so quick are the others at spotting a repetition. I spent the whole of the evening pressing my buzzer and discovering that someone else had managed to press a split second sooner. The live audience were aware that I was pressing and not getting in on time and they enjoyed my playful frustration but of course the listening audience won't be aware of any of that.

It was definitely a jolly evening and I was getting laughs from the audience for acknowledging my own ineptitude but those are the kind of laughs that inevitably hit the cutting room floor... quite right too as they do sort of sit outside the show. Which leaves me concerned about quite how scant my contribution to the shows will be. Especially the first of the two.

I was very glad there was a second show because I'd already improved a little bit and knowing that the audience were onside I felt more able to be bold about making challenges. I think I managed to talk for a good 45 seconds on one of the subjects before grinding to a halt. Sadly it wasn't long enough for me to reach Gertrude's whistle and so I didn't get a point out of it.

The comic challenges people make - usually for deviation, where you know they will be given the subject back but also that it will raise a laugh - have to be judged right. I think until the audience trusts you it can feel as though you're spoiling someone else's flow rather than adding to the comedy. I think I got those right - and certainly the audience seemed to go with them - but they also seemed to be dismissed with speed while others seemed to be dwelt on. But that might just be my imagination.

All in all it was an enjoyable form of torture and it's interesting to see how closely my own experience tallies with Michael Palin's from 1975. Of course he only published his diaries recently - which is a very slow and non interactive form of blogging. Here I have the advantage because by the time I got home someone from the audience had left a nice comment on my previous entry. I'm sure Michael Palin would have felt similarly lifted if someone had scribbled a nice message like that in his diary at the time. So long as it could have been done without breaking into his house and finding his diary. Isn't the internet great?

Genius 5/6

In the second series of Genius there were a couple of nights where the guests weren't exactly cooperative and I had to work hard to keep the ball in the air. It's always been a fun show to make but those nights are more exhausting because my focus has to be more intense and I end up feeling like I've done a job of work. When it's easier and the conversation just flows I don't have to think too hard and I get carried along by the show's energy. Or something.

If there was one show this series that I was trepid about it in advance it was the one we recorded last night. The guest was Germaine Greer who I confess to being a little scared of in advance. (Does that say more about me or her?) Would she enter into the ridiculousness of the show? It's not like we have many ideas in the series that would actually work. This is one of the things that I like about the show... that everyone maintains this strange internal logic and takes these ridiculous proposals "seriously." Of course if you take them seriously (as opposed to "seriously") it can fall apart because it's unlikely that you'll discover any actual genius there. (Whereas if you take them "seriously" you might well find "genius") (Obviously, it's all about the "")

We had a brief chat before the show and I still couldn't get a read on how playful she would be with the ideas. But when the show started she turned out to be just about the perfect guest. I think it's the atmosphere created by the audience that does it... there's more of them than anyone else in the room and they seem so tuned in to the show's tone these days that I think they create an irresistible force. She's such a strong personality and has a great (and funny) way with words so maybe I shouldn't have been worried about it in the first place... she was always going to be great.

Niceness

We had another great recording last night with the fabulous Gyles Brandreth in the guest's chair. The last time I met Gyles he called me a c*nt - but only because the writers on Annually Retentive thought it would be funny to subvert his nice guy image and have him play an absolute ogre instead. In the end I don't think the scene made it into the final cut because, no matter how much venom Gyles invested in the word, nobody ever watched it back and found it believable. His niceness just can't be scrubbed away with a mean stare and a very rude word... he really is just too nice.

And he was nice again last night. You add into the mix another bunch of supremely confident punters - including one who brought a scale model of his idea along with him - and it makes for a very enjoyable night all round. Although how Gyles and I ended up wrapped in a duvet together is another story. A memorable night for sure.

Photo: A man, a smile, a scale model of his "genius" idea and a scale model of the Genius trophy. (1:1 scale)

It can't be dirty, it's been vacuumed.

Maybe we've been blessed with particularly good guests, maybe the contributors have just been especially confident in pitching their ideas or maybe the show has just grown in confidence as an entity... I'm not sure what the reasons are behind it but Genius is definitely proving to be a delight to make this series. There were certainly times in the last series where the recordings were hard work but, so far this series, I feel like I spend a great deal of my time on stage laughing and enjoying the ride. Which is great.

Simon Munnery was excellent last night... he has a fabulous way of drip-feeding information to an audience, saying something, pausing to see how intuitive the audience are and then only adding another bit if it seems necessary. It makes him very concise and leaves you with just the right words to make any point. Brilliant.

We have a small break from the recordings now and then the final three will be done at the start of July. We'll still be in the office a bit with some decisions still to be made as to which ideas will be discussed but mainly I need to bury myself in writing again... there's a book to write and I really need to pick up the pace.

By the way, the picture is of a jacket used to illustrate one of the ideas in the show. It's made out of the detritus from several hoover bags. Hmmm.

Don't use it to clean a blackboard...

The Genius recordings are coming thick and fast at the minute - two down and another on Monday - so I'm glad they're proving to be so relaxed and enjoyable. Rob Newman made for a brilliant guest last night and it was obvious that he's listened to the show in the past. That and another full compliment of relaxed and funny pitchers made my job easy. On nights like that it really doesn't feel like work at all. I got to exercise my prop-making abilities before the show last night (creating a scrubbing brush made with human fingernails) and I do like a bit of arts and crafts.

Belated Toe Update: I should have said this before but I was very quickly walking without the crutch and presently feel no pain and have a toe showing no external signs of injury. Hurrah for that. I can walk around just fine... but every now and then, as I kneel down say, too much weight goes on the fractured tootsie and I suddenly get a painful reminder of the damage. Can't run, can't kick a ball - some would say I never could - but apparently it should be okay in 6 to 8 weeks.

Series Three

Genius has always been a really enjoyable show to do and it was great to get the first recording of the new series underway last night. Matthew Wright was a great guest and really got into the spirit of the show and tried to engage with all the ideas and all of the contributors enjoyed themselves too.

As the show grows I think we get more confident about the kind of ideas we have on (In series 1, for example, I'm pretty sure we would have rejected an idea like Tetris: The Movie but it was a real highlight of series 2.) I reckon the people pitching their ideas are getting more confident too. Which is great.

I guess during the first series nobody who sent in an idea had heard the show so maybe they sent their idea in without knowing we'd ask them to take part in person and nowadays they're a bit more knowledgable in advance. Indeed last night we even had a returning Genius who'd won the trophy during one episode of series 2 and come back for another go.

Genius

The recording dates for the next series of Genius have been sorted which means that tickets are now available. We'll record three episodes in June (11th, 14th & 18th) and another three in July (2nd, 6th & 11th) and they'll all be in central London. You can find the details and get tickets - which are free - here, although if you're on my mailing list you'll already know that.

Half genius

I couldn't be happier with the way the Genius recordings have gone so far. It really doesn't feel like work but instead each one has been an enjoyable night out in a theatre. Everyone involved - the people who pitch their ideas, the guests and the audience - seem to enter into spirit of things straight away and hopefully the fun we're all having with it will come across in the recordings. Three more to go.