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Sunday 5th April 2009

... and wow

Well I'm back... Actually I've been back since Wednesday evening, but immediately upon my return I had to throw myself into Now Show songwriting duties (our return flight was delayed by four hours; thought I'd get the whole evening to work but in the event I didn't get in until knocking on for 10pm); then Thursday itself (the bit I was awake for) was devoted in its entirety to recording The Now Show; then Friday, being the first real day "back in reality", was spent trying to nail back down the various bits of hell that had broken loose in our absence, and ascertaining just how much financial chaos you can actually plunge yourself into by disappearing for five days (surprising amounts, it turns out) before going to Cranleigh Arts Centre for a restoringly good gig, then on Saturday we persuaded the in-laws to come over and babysit while we ran round performing some very overdue errands, of a kind that simply can't be performed with two little girls in tow, pausing only to make an offer on a house we liked the look of, then hurrying (rather too quickly, according to a member of Her Majesty's Constabulary - oh well, it's just money... and points) to a gig at Soho Ho, which was nearly cancelled as a result of a restaurant a few doors down Frith Street bursting into flames shortly before showtime.

This is why it's taken me three days to get round to blogging.  But here I am.

If the tone of this blog thus far has been surprisingly chipper given that content-wise it's been something of a catalogue of hassles, that may be because I still haven't stopped grinning since I got back from Méribel.   I wasn't sure what to expect from this trip at all, but I know I didn't exepct to have quite the best time I've had in years, if not ever.  From the moment we arrived we were spoilt rotten; we had our own little hotel apartment ( a real boon if you have kiddies - we were in a "family room" in Malta about 18 months ago, which is fine in theory but as soon as you've put the kids to bed you're stuck in there with them in darkness and silence), we were on permanent freebies at "Evolution", one of the best restaurants in town, we had free ski passes for every day of our stay and Greta and I had free private ski classes.

I'm not sure which will seem less probable to you; little three year old Greta learning to ski or enormous thirty-nine year old me, but we both did, and by our third and final day of classes we were doing proper skiing down a proper mountain and everything.  Really.  There are photos.

Better still, Clara - who learned to ski as a kid - got some decent skiing done in the afternoons (being chummed down the slopes by various comedy pals of ours), while I looked after the girls. I was so glad of this; I had a horrid vision of Clara - the only one of us who could already ski - going all the way to Méribel and being stuck minding the kids all day while Captain Incompetent here hurtled about injuring himself and others. 

I'm still a bit annoyed that I didn't have the gumption to take the week off from The Now Show and spend the whole week in Méribel - the Altitude festival was, if anything, just really kicking into its stride when I left. 

The festival itself is a gloriously freewheeling affair; I found myself doing kids' shows, shows in French (more or less) and live games of Just A Minute (as part of the wonderfully oxymoronic "Stars Of Radio 4" evening).  Tuesday night saw what was by any objective measure the "big deal" gig of the festival; a full set from KT Tunstall and her band, for the finale of which she got all the comedians there present - including Marcus, Andew Maxwell, Andre Vincent, Nick Doody and myself - to join her on stage for Suddenly I See.  It was my first gig as a back-up dancer and while I can't even begin to imagine how it looked from the audience's point of view, there were a lot of cameras and phones in the audience so I wouldn't be surprised if it turned up on YouTube in the near future.

Earlier that evening I got a quick interview with KT which I'll incorporate into my next podcast. She was extraordinarily friendly and voluble, considering she was the only genuinely famous one among us. 

In fact, one of the most enjoyable features of the whole stay was the evident rigour with which the Arsehole Filter had been applied; at any sizeable gathering of comedians there's always at least one who can be relied upon to make an utter tit of himself and ruin the mood, or go off on some cocaine-and-ego fuelled rant against some fellow comic (often in the room at the time) or something along those lines, but on this occasion everyone there was one of my favourite people on the circuit. Over the course of the festival more and more people I was genuinely pleased to see turned up, and no-one with so much as a hint of uh-oh about them appeared.  In fact the person I was most surprised to find in such universally respected company was me. 

While my mind has nothing but fond recollections of my stay, my body's not so sure. Skiing has a way of exacting its revenge upon you in a slow and stealthy manner; just down off the mountain, you're buzzing and exhilarated and very alive.  The next morning, you notice bruises you don't remember incurring and bits of you have started to seize up; the only cure is to get back up the mountain.  As soon as you head for home, thus depriving yourself of daily mountain therapy, your body starts to go into a steady decline...  since we returned, every morning I've been slightly stiffer and achier than the last.  It's wearing off a bit now, but I find I still have Skiers' Arse - alarmingly steely buttocks which could crush a man's skull but which are quite incapable of climbing stairs.

In any event, I've promised Marcus I'll do whatever I can to help him bring attention to next year's Altitude. This year already saw (I'm told) a marked improvement attendance-wise on last year, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the festival gets the audience it deserves.  It's immense fun in a heartbreakingly beautiful place, which is not a bad combination.

 

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