Blog: Leicester: The Opening Night

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I headed off to Leicester after work on Friday for the opening night of our run of Dinosaur Planet at The Leicester Comedy Festival. I was due to meet Mr S Hewitt up on the platform so bought my ticket from the machine and set off, counting my tickets as I went.

"Strange", i thought "there doesn't seem to be a return ticket. And why does it say 'SINGLE'? ARGH!" I'd only done gone and bought a SINGLE by mistake! I queued up for 10 minutes and BEGGED the Nice Man to change it for me. How could i have been so STUPID? "Don't worry", he said. "I've done it myself on Fridays - a single is exactly the same price as a return." Ah. So that's how - it wasn't ME being stupid after all!

I thanked him PROFUSELY and ran up to HOP on the train, where there was no double seat available for us. This was a bit of a drag as we'd planned to have a read through of the DRAFT script for our TWO MAN version of Dinosaur Planet. Luckily there was a couple of Dicky Seats in The Lobby further up, so we were able to make our first step on the road to BROADWAY. It sounded pretty good - Steve suggested a couple of ways I could swap lines/remove characters to make it FLOW more easily, and also seemed to enjoy my Bold Decision to cast SEAN CONNERY as Grandad. I think it's all going to be all right!

We got to Leicester and popped over to the Ibis to get me checked in. I took Steve up to my hotel room where i IMMEDIATELY took off my clothes and started taking DRUGS. All right, I was just putting my gig shirt on and having another Vitamin C And Zinc Lozenge (apparently it's the best way to ward off a cold, and it did seem to work) but still - LIFE ON THE ROAD!

With all that done we headed to the Criterion for a couple of beers and a) MASSIVE b) DELICIOUS pizza, after which I realised I had probably best be careful and have an ORANGE JUICE. So i DID - in The CRITERION for heaven's sake, i am NOTHING if not The Complete Professional! We also met our door team, who were GRATE. Like last year we had a team of students working for us, as part of their Arts Management course, and like last year they did a GRATE job. Obviously I'm going to think well of ANYBODY who hands me an envelope stuffed with CA$H at the end of the gig, but they did EVERYTHING, leaving me and Steve to LOLL AROUND like ROCK STARS. Rock Stars drinking Ale and saying "Thank you" all the time, but still ROCK STARS.

Soon people arrived, including my pals The LAwsons and The Sutcliffes (NOT two little known C86 bands, however much they sound like it) and we NEARLY, tho not quite, Sold Out again. There was loads of people who i didn't know who they were, it was STRANGE to me, but also THRILLING, as I did the show comprising of all THESE songs:

(theme from) Dinosaur Planet

Don't, Darren, Don't

(theme from) Dinosaur Planet

A Little Bit

The Theory Of A Dinosaur Planet

Here Come The Dinosaurs

My Grandad Is Nuts

The Battle Of Peterborough

My Theory Of A Dinosaur Planet

We Are The Giant Robots

Dinosaurs Talk Like Pirates

We Are The Dinosaurs

Literature Search

Strangely Attractive

Please Don't Eat Us

For The Fate Of The Earth

A Little Bit More

(theme from) Dinosaur Planet

That's a LOT of songs - it's like The Dinosaur Planet Ultimate Edition! I did EVERYTHING from Edinburgh (except the It Isn't Nice To Eat Your Friends, which has been SUPERCEDED) PLUS the new songs PLUS some Brand New GAGS which I've thought up over the past couple of weeks, and it all seemed to go down pretty well. It definitely speeds up once The Giant Robots arrive, as it always HAS done, but it didn't feel like it took an HOUR.

Well, except for one man - as with last year, I had a group of people down the front who'd been sat in the room already and didn't want to have to move, so paid to stay. Most of them seemed to really enjoy it, but he seemed very annoyed at the overrun, and cleared off early. He will never know how the earth was saved!

Everyone else seemed to enjoy it though, including ME, and I settled in for a VERY VERY enjoyable post-gig hour of CHAT and BEER which featured rather a LOT of us going "aah, do you remember when..?" and saying "Of course, that pub's been knocked down now."

Steve, being the PARTY ANIMAL that he is, went on to ANOTHER pub afterwards, and then ANOTHER after that. I went home to BED though - I had a busy day ahead of me!

posted 15/2/2010 by MJ Hibbett

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