When I was writing comic cuts two weeks ago we were heading off to see Stewart Lee's 'Room With a Stew' tour. Believe me when I say this was the one time I was worried about the audience. Would we live up to Lee's expectations. Would pockets of the audience grasp what Lee was doing in the name of comedy while other areas sat, looking on blankly, misunderstanding or not comprehending the jokes.
When Lee reviews the Colchester audience, hopefully he won't have found us wanting.
I have rarely queued up for a signature. My earliest experiences with people I thought were famous were with science fiction writers. If you've been to a science fiction convention, you'll know that its difficult to tell the difference between the writers and fans as both tend to wander around freely or hang out at the bar. The only difference is probably the quality of lunches and dinners, especially if publishers are paying.
Getting an autograph seemed secondary to actually conversing, albeit briefly in some cases, with these people and I carried that forward into comics—comic strip-style comics—where I must have met most people who attended a UKCAC in the 1980s or 1990s.
It seems a little odd, therefore, to be getting excited about visiting comedians and getting things signed. Maybe its because I've never come across anything like a comedy convention, so this is a rare chance to actually meet (for a few seconds) people whose careers I've followed for years.
I've actually appeared alongside Stewart Lee in a magazine. Remember Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic? I wrote a couple of articles for it including one on T. Lobsang Rampa, the fake Tibetan lama who wrote The Third Eye. The article shared space with pieces by three of my favourite comedians: Stewart Lee, Robin Ince and Josie Long. I met Ince, briefly, after one of his appearances at Colchester Art's Centre, and now I've met Lee briefly after his appearance at the Mercury.
However, rather than just getting a signature, I have plans to get the old team of Lee & Herring signing my Fist of Fun DVDs with one of their catchphrases. All I've got to do is get Richard Herring to sign "Aaaah" and I'll have it. (Sorry, to understand this you need to have watched Fist of Fun and to have a long memory.)
Firstsite lost £484,000 in 2012 and £400,000 in 2013. It currently has no exhibition on because apparently it takes two months (10 January to 14 March) to "help finance a new business plan".
I wonder if this is the time I should bring up my idea for a Comic Art Museum? It can't be a worse idea that what we've got at the moment and I've always thought we could do with a museum dedicated to comics. We have an amazing history of comic art and so much worth celebrating and Colchester is on a direct line out of London and a popular tourist destination due to its Roman remains and Norman castle. We have the university and language schools that bring in plenty of students. I'm almost convinced that it's worth putting together a pitch.
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