HUGHESDAY, 22ND DECEMBER 2020

 

 I used to love the idea we only ever use ten per cent of our brain or whatever it was. Like Odd John, or the pill that makes Bradley Cooper get his shit together in Limitless, it threw up superb fantasies of human potential, suggesting if we could only get that percentage higher, maybe we could read all of "War and Peace" in a single minute by just flicking through it without blinking, or blinking very quickly, or we could move objects with our mind, or walk through walls, or turn invisible...

 

 

 But then I learnt it wasn't really true. It was like saying "you only ever use ten per cent of your home." We just never use a hundred per cent at once, and human potential is actually, sadly, a lot more knowable and mapped than I'd hoped. We aren't all secretly Captain Marvel (D.C.'s or Marvel's, take your pick) sitting on untapped panoplies of super powers. 

  But then... 

 

 Oh, then I saw London Hughes perform "To Catch A D*ck" at the Soho Theatre and, reader, I saw a human operating at a hunded per cent. That show has since been turned into a Netflix Special, which dropped today in something like a hundred and ninety countries worldwide, as one of the many fruits of London's move to Los Angeles back in February, and I watched it this morning, keen but also wary, because it couldn't possibly have been as good as I remember, but no it was, and that's the thing about London: she promises everything, and then makes good on it. She gives it all, and not a quantum of it is wasted, because her aim, like everything else about London Dionne Mischa Stacey Stephanie Estina Knibbs-Hughes, is true... 

 

 Respect to Hannah Gadsby, but not all comedy relies on self-deprecation. And respect, too, to W. B Yeats, but the best don't all lack all conviction. How is it possible for a comedian to have the energy levels of the oustanding and beautiful Robin Williams without projecting a quantum of that man's desperation? I've no idea, but London manages it. Also, her material's better. And she didn't nick it. Banging on about her positivity risks missing how funny she is, from which I'm guessing all the rest of it springs, but she is one of the bravest people I know, because none of it is fake, and her courage is contagious, and the fact I met her while casting a character who's energy has to fling the protagonist of Time Spanner through Heaven in a circuit round the Universe remains one of the nicest things I know about being me.

 

(London in LA)

 

Frankly, world, this was long overdue. Hey, welcome to London!