Parallels (or: Who got the pain when they go "Bwooorp"?)

TOUR NEWS!!!!

 John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme did a tour! Yes, the radio show I'm in! It's over now though, sorry. 

 But I bought some great stuff at CEX. And the Finnemore gang were angels over those two months, only funnier, and John wrote an incredible show, obviously, and I prefer saying lines when I've memorised them anyway, which I did! Here we all are, peeking through a curtain at how good the show was and not believing our luck:

 Further details of John Finnemore's Flying Visit can be found over on my Instagram under the hashtag #Finnetour if you fancy some photos of lovely theatres, cities, wind turbines, and shopping. We played twenty-six shows in total, including the matinee in London, hence those second, artfully Cabin Pressure-inspired hashtags: #Anewcastle, #Bleeds, #Cnottingham... etc... #Treading – That one works!

 Yes, it was a good-looking show. Here's a thing though: There's a sketch in it where Patsy Straightwoman interviews Cabin Pressure's Arthur Shappey that made me realise a parallel between Martin Crieff and his far less irritating creator which had never occurred to me before in over a decade's acquaintance: Remember the finale of last year's Souvenir Programme? The one with the heist? Possibly the most impressive single episode of a sketch show ever written? Well, Arthur explains that Martin had to take a citizenship test in order to get married, but it's okay he continues, because you only have to get sixty per cent, but it's not okay, Arthur then clarifies, "because Martin does NOT want to get sixty per cent!"

 Now... that sounds very John.

 

Of course we had to do another series this year, but how do you follow something as perfect as the heist? Well, I have a theory about Series 8, and the series has been online for almost year now so you can go and check it out for yourself: The only way John could follow the Series 7 was by pretending he'd never written it, nor indeed any sketch show before ever, which is why, for example, the first two "Since You Ask Me"s of the new series (our name for the stories at the end) sound so much more like actual spoofs of M. R. James and Conan Doyle than anything that went before, and why there's no sense at all of what-have-I-not-yet-done about the material, but it's still so fresh... Because Series 8 was in fact, subliminally at least, not the Eighth Series at all, but the first series again from a Parallel Universe!  

 Now obviously, this theory is nonsense, or so I thought until... I happened to look back over John's own blog written when the show's very first episode aired back in 2011, and there – on the disused leg of a spider diagram illustrating how he'd come up with the idea for the sketch about the man who wants to make the noise for the Tardis – I was dumbfounded to find notes for a sketch that appears in Series 8's episode 3, about a princess who wants to become a police dog handler! Notes which John now claims to have no memory of writing!

Some things one just cannot unknow. 

 As for what ghastly deal John must have struck to be able to mine such pan-causal seams (because I honestly and absolutely believe John has never had the time to read through those old notebooks) or with whom he might have struck this deal... or what... that I shall leave unguessed. But note: even in that post from 2011, celebrating the realisation of "the one thing" the author claimed to have wanted more than any other, he provides in the Tardis sketch a clear warning against the sanity-extinguishing consequences of "following your dream", a warning made all the more stark by closer examination of the illustration chosen to accompany it: Pooh tied to a balloon trying to steal honey from some bees, or – to quote the show – "the reckless desperation of an addict!"   

 Series 9 records next year.

(John also drew both of the superb diagrams above, of course. More photos of the show can be found here, in lieu of me actually being able to find out who took them, although I know our excellent sound engineer Nick Burkinyoung took the one of our bums and shoes. Thanks entire to all who turned up as well. I loved that show. I still love it. I hope John never loses his addiction. And in other news, here's hoping your today has been, oh go on then, this:)