My first ever...

I made my first ever jack o'lantern. I'm very happy with it. Happy Halloween.

Jack O'Lantern, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Fish

Fish 2, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Ah... so you do read it

I sometimes wonder if anyone reads this page or whether I bother typing in this nonsense and adding the pictures for no reason. And then I post something that sparks a number of e-mails and I realise that there are a few people out there reading this. My last entry was one of those.

It prompted three types of e-mail. The first came from angry residents of Fort Lauderdale and Miami, telling me that the hurricane wasn't going to strike until after the shows and accusing me of using the hurricane as an excuse to cancel shows because I had a sore throat. Believe me, if I was sneaky enough to do that, I also think I'd be clever enough to not mention the sore throat in the first place. It's like saying the dog ate my homework... which incidentally, I hadn't done.

The decision to cancel the shows was made on Wednesday before I'd done the final two shows in Gainesville - so I was in full voice at the time - and the decision wasn't taken by me. On Wednesday the media were predicting that Wilma would be in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday or Sunday. The venue and the show's producers couldn't really send us there knowing that a hurricane was predicted because they would have to be responsible for us being safely evacuated had it been necessary so they decided not to send us in there.

The second type of response also came from people in that area asking me if the shows were going to be rescheduled. The answer is that I don't know... but I doubt it. If it was in the UK - I'm sure it would be, because I live there, can work there whenever and can travel to wherever in a matter of hours. My time in the US is limited, my work-visa is limited and the costs of coming back to Florida just to stage three or four shows is probably prohibitive. If it can be rearranged while I'm here then I'd love it to be... Fort Lauderdale sounds like a great place and I'm sorry not to be spending some time there.

The third type of response I got was from people telling me about the naming of hurricanes and answering my question about what happened between Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Thanks for that.

As it happened the hurricane slowed down and lost a lot of strength - alhough it still did a lot of damage. It didn't hit the Fort Lauderdale area until Sunday night/Monday morning so the shows would have been unaffected but our travel out of the area would have been and I don't know how many people would have wanted to come and see the show when they had a weather channel to watch on the TV and then outside their window. Heigh ho.

In the meantime the tour is now on Plan B (or maybe it's C or D) and we've been put up in Chicago for a while. It's a great city but having spent the last chunk of time in Arizona and briefly Florida, the cold is definitely a shock to the system.

Meanwhile, Genius, the Radio 4 show that I recorded earlier this year, starts its run on Thursday... the guest in episode one is Paul Daniels. It feels a bit weird being out of the country while it happens although I'm not sure why. Anyway... I hope you can listen to it and I hope you enjoy it.

Listings

In the UK it would be impossible for one of my shows to be arranged between a venue and a producer without me knowing about it and agreeing to it. You'd think that would be obvious wouldn't you ... after all, it's me that actually has to do it. Unfortunately that lesson has taken my American producers some time to learn.

Before this tour started I discovered that they had sold 8 shows a week to venues. It's nice to know that the demand was there but it's also not possible for me to perform this particular show that often. If you haven't seen it, it probably sounds like I'm moaning because, surely, it's just talking right? But it isn't really. It's a really physical show, it feels like going to the gym every night, and there are several sustained rants of blood, guts and fury that tear my throat apart each night.

I spend a lot of time between shows taking medicines to help my voice recover from the damage the last show did before then repeating, and worsening, the damage that night. For this reason I've never relished doing the show twice in one day and would want to avoid it whenever possible. Sadly my American producers had sold two-show-days several times to venues without bothering to ask me if it was okay. It must be tempting as a salesman to sell as much as you can to people... especially if you're not the person who's actually going to have to do it.

Most of these situations were resolved before the tour started but there were a few places where that wasn't really an option and Gainesville was one of those. Most of the venues on this tour are taking the show for a week or two which offers some flexibility... but Gainesville had booked 3 shows in 2 days. I did a 7.30 show on Tuesday while on Wednesday there was a 7.30 and a 10pm show... which gave me a 30 minute break before starting again. Twenty minutes in I was in pain and this morning I can't really talk much. If I had a show tonight I think I'd be forced to cancel it... but I haven't, more on that later.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that I don't think the late show should have gone ahead at all. I looked in the local listings papers and none of them mentioned that the late show even existed. The 7.30 show was there but not the 10pm. If one paper hadn't listed it, it would look like an error on their part but when all three of the local papers haven't listed a show it seems more likely that the venue haven't sent them the correct information. And it was reflected in the ticket sales.

On Tuesday we'd sold 4 tickets for the late show on Wednesday. By Wednesday that had doubled. Woo hoo. By show time it was around 18 people. It's as if a wealthy fool had booked that late show especially for him and his friends and insisted that information about its existence shouldn't leak out into the public domain.

Amazingly, it went well... although not as well as either of the two early shows had gone. But this morning I'm in pain, I can't talk and it hurts when I swallow and I have to wonder whether or not it was worth it. Of course the audience who turned up deserved a show... but shouldn't the venue have some responsibility in this situation also? Why buy a show into your venue and then not try to sell it to the public?

This afternoon I was supposed to be flying to Fort Lauderdale for shows tonight through Sunday but as Hurricane Wilma is also thinking of heading there this weekend, the venue and the producers have decided in their wisdom that it's unwise for us to go there and the shows have been cancelled. I've never had a show cancelled because of a hurricane before. How exciting. I hope it doesn't wreak too much havoc, mind.

Incidentally, if they name these things alphabetically, how did we get so quickly from Katrina, via Rita, to Wilma wihout hearing much about hurricanes L, M, N, O, P, Q, S, T, U and V?

We're staying put in Gainesville for another day while we work out a Plan B. I'll spend today being silent and sampling the various lozenges available in the various pharmacies in the hope that one of them can work magical restorative powers for my voice.

Pebble Balance

Pebble Balance, originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Branding

Yet again I was surprised by how responsive the audience were for the Sunday matinee show. In most of the cities we visit on this tour the run ends with a Sunday matinee which I expected to be a bit a damp squib but instead it is turning out to be a really enjoyable way to bid farewell to each venue.

Smirnoff make vodka don't they? When I see the Smirnoff brand on a bottle I think it's reasonable to assume that it probably contains vodka. I mean, that's what they do. I'm not much of an alcopop consumer but I was pretty sure that I knew that Smirnoff Ice was some kind of vodka drink because, well, because it has Smirnoff on the label.

Not in America it's not.

A friend had a bottle the other day and on tasting it remarked, "that's odd... it doesn't taste the same as it does in England." They took another swig, pulled a face and took a look at the label where they were surprised to see some small print declaring it to be a 'flavored beer drink.' We were slightly aghast at this... it made no mention of vodka being in there... in fact it didn't appear to contain anything that it should have done. Not even the 'u' in flavour.

If you don't believe me, check out their own F.A.Q. where, amongst the self serving questions, you'll discover that vodka isn't in Smirnoff Ice because it was "created as a beer alternative" ... unless you're buying it in Canada, Brazil, Ireland, South Africa or of course England when yes, it does actually contain vodka.

There's probably some law preventing Smirnoff (and other alcopop makers) from selling them with spirits in here in America but is it reasonable to sell two identical looking - but radically different - products in two different countries. It's like picking up a tube of Pringles and then discovering that, in America, they don't actually contain any potato. Or buying a jar of Marmite and discovering that, heaven forfend, it isn't a yeast extract.

It is better to have no Marmite here at all than it is to have some phoney not-Marmite-in-a-Marmite-jar confusing innocent consumers and it would surely be better to not have this weird non-vodka-Smirnoff drink too.

Signs

One of the questions I hear regularly from people after the show - especially here in America - is "How many words do you actually say?" or "How can you say so much so fast?" I don't know the answer because there isn't a script - the words aren't on paper anywhere and so there's no way of counting them but I do know that it's a relatively long show and that I get through a lot of words-per-minute.

I mention this because yesterday I wasn't alone onstage as the show was being signed for the hard of hearing also. I should think this is one of the hardest shows going to sign for. Not only are there a lot of words happening very quickly but there are also several words for which there isn't a specific sign. There isn't really time for the signer to spell coelacanth and while a synonym might do for bamboozled, say, a synonym isn't quite right because it is the arcane nature of the words involved that made them googlewhacks.

The signer - a really nice woman called Patti - was great and we spoke before the show about the best way of doing it as she'd been to see the show the day before. Fortunately there's a lot of visual information in the show as well, so in the brief interludes when the pace of the show really gets going the best way of Patti following the show was to just indicate towards the screen and let it speak for itself.

I'll be sorry to leave Scottsdale. It's been the most enjoyable stop on the tour so far and the audiences have been great - especially this last Friday. It's been like being on holiday with much more to occuppy a traveller than in our previous stops.

One more show to go and then a horrible overnight flight to Florida.