Monthly Archives: March 2007

You know how sometimes you just keep rolling along, a certain sense of momentum propelling you forward regardless of how you’re actually doing?  And you know how eventually, you find time to stop, sit down, take a rest and chill out – and then you discover just how exhaisted and run-down your body really is?

Well, that’s me.

I seem to have somehow bluffed and blundered my way through the last 6 days and now I’ve reached the weekend, I’ve taken two days out to rest and supposedly recouperate, and I find myself more exhausted now than I did when I went to bed on Friday night.

It’s good to know that my chest can be relied upon to perform to it’s best at the right times, although a bit of warning of a delayed-reaction strop would have been nice, if I’m honest.

I feel somewhat aggrieved that I’ve spent my weekend doing nothing to recover and my body feels like it’s been forced to to and Iron Man and a marathon back-to-back – but I suppose that running the backstage side of a comedy night and partying thill 2 in the morning, coupled with a “normal” working week including early mornings and evenings out is pretty much my body’s equivalent to the Iron Man-Marathon combo.

The important thing is to stay on top of the treatments, make sure I’m getting my physio and nebs done and keeping the flow of calories as high as possible to make sure that exhaustion doesn’t lead to any other nastiness.  If I can’t do much but the vital things this week, it’s not the end of the world – I need to make sure I’m not trying to carry on as normal and running myself into the ground – always a danger with me, I’m aware.

So it’s early nights, lots of rest, little to do during the day and plenty of food – when I can get my appetite to play ball.  The rest of the week will have to stay on stand-by until I know that my body’s ready to come back out of its shell.

Sometimes people really make life hard for themselves – and they don’t seem to realise how much they’re contributing to it themselves.

It struck me watching the BBC’s new Fame Academy thing for Comic Relief first off. Every night they all step up into the “circle of fear” to perform slightly out-of-tune, glorified karioke versions of wel-known songs to varying degrees of success (and even I’ll admit that Ray Stubbs had me smiling tonight with his version of “Lola”). But what kind of a mind-set does it get you in to call your performance space the “circle of fear”?

If you want to ward off your nerves and give of your best, you need to be feeling positive and confident when you step up to the mic. Telling yourself you’re stepping into the worst 12 feet of space in a building is hardly gearing yourself up for success, is it?

But that’s not the thing that’s lead me to this. What’s bothered me tonight is reading another blog of a lady who says she’s “not coping” with all the things in her life.

She lists all the many things going wrong with her – some unavoidable, some unbelievably sad and some which, to me, are a matter of pure perspective.

Some people – and this isn’t aimed merely in one direction – don’t seem to know how to let things go. They like to wallow in their failures, their mistakes, their foibles and to make sure everyone else knows how much they are suffering.

You know what? We all are. We all have our own daemons, our own battles to fight, our own mountains to climb. Bad things happen – that’s a part of life.

But the measure of a man – or a woman, or a child – is whether he can take the knocks on the chin and get right back up, look life in the eye and say, “Is that all you’ve got for me?” It’s not easy, but neither is it meant to be – nor should it be. Where is the joy in victory if you’ve not had to fight to get it?

Sometimes you fight and sometimes you lose, but there’s no good to come from dwelling on your losses. That’s not to say you can’t learn from them, but you’ve got to take your lesson and move right along. A rolling stone gathers no moss, it’s said, and why open yourself up to being over-taken by weeds when you can keep on moving and break free?

Blame is the hardest thing in the world to accept, yet some people choose to heap it on themselves. Why go through life carrying a burden that you’ve given yourself? Come on, life gives us enough to carry on our own, there’s no point adding to it. Blaming yourself for things you can’t change is a surefire way to get yourself into a vicious circle of personal degradation.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m belittling people’s problems, nor do I intend to suggest that I’m forever rosey and never have my dark days – anyone reading this blog over time will know how much I’ve struggled. I merely mean to suggest that sometimes, you need to offer yourself a fresh perpective on your situation – to look at it from a different angle and see if the insurmountable is actually just really f***ing hard.

“Fate doesn’t hang on a wrong or right choice,
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice.”

It’s been a bit of a weird week this week – I appear to have been either out of the house working or running errands, or asleep.  It’s a bit all-or-nothing.

After travelling home on Monday I was shattered, but ok with a bit of an afternoon nap, then I had Tuesday morning to laze around before being on Taxi duty for K (through choice not compulsion, I must add).

Then yesterday, K started her new job (yay!), which meant I was up at 8am to get her there (boo), and then found myself coming home and passing out on the bed again till the afternoon – not intentionally, but when your body’s bossing you around after a weekend like mine, you listen.

Then last night it was back to normality with my session at MKT with the Youth Theatre.

I say “normality”, but it’s not every week that I get to spend 20 minutes shooting part of a short film with Samantha Janus just after she’s come off stage in Guys and Dolls.  Even by my celeb-bumping-into standards, this was a bit on the surreal side, my friend Helen (who’s the dep wardrobe mistress on the show) having spoken to her and got her to agree to do us a favour and pop up in cameo in our opening film for the YT show.

She was lovely, and very accomodating, especially since we literally accosted her straight off stage, at a time when I would imagine most performers just want to be left alone to veg out – especially with another show starting in just over 2 hour’s time.  But she happily stood around and delivered her line of dialogue for us enough times for us to cover it and we left her to it.

The rehearsal itself was very good again.  I spent the first part working with the Chorus on the piece I’d written, which was good fun, although slightly odd to be blocking something I’ve had in my head.  It’s what I love about working with performers, though, because it really gives you a chance to work through things and see how they work -and if it’s your own script, you can chop it and change it as much as you like.

The second half of the session was back with my Hamlet trio, who again worked diligently and have formed a great little grouping.  They were struggling slightly to get to the meaning behind some of the Shakespearean waffle, but we worked through it and managed to get through to what lies underneath the flowery poetry and make it make a bit more sense.

Although the show’s not too far away now (and if they’re reading this, they really need to be learning their lines!!), I think this piece has the potential to really show how talented some of our young people are.  Combined with the piece that Suze is directing – called After Juliet, a modern take on the aftermath of the Romeo and Juliet story – it’s a chance for our older members to really show some flair for the dramatic, and we both know that they’ve got the range and the power to do it.

That’s not to say it’s not going to take a considerable amount of work on their part, and support for them on ours, but if the work goes into it, they could make it something really special.  Of course, if they don’t, there’s the worrying prospect of it coming out as a group of youngsters lost in a mire of misunderstood poetry.  But that’s the challenge.

I’m hoping that this weekend is going to provide a nice window of relaxation for me – a chance to stay in bed, or veg on the sofa and do as little as possible, whilst shoe-horning as many calories as possible down my throat to keep energy levels high and infections at bay.

It may have left me struggling for energy, but I’m determined that the weekend isn’t going to take me down!

Well… wow.

Over the course of the last 7 or 8 weeks since I first officially came on board the Laughter for Life project, I’ve sat down or laid in bed at night and thought about how it was going to go and ru all kinds of best-case/worst-case scenarios through my brain. But none of them came even close to last night.

It was, without doubt, one of the best nights of my life and one of my greatest achievements. I felt both proud and piviledge to be part of such a spectacular and succesful event and I can’t even begin to express my gratitude to all of those who were involved, helped out, donated or just encouraged us to do it.

Shattered now, yes, but boy was it worth it.

We didn’t have access to the space until 6 o’clock, so we turned up en masse at the venue around 5.30 to put our stuff down in our function room and lay out our battle plan. Emma, myself, Paula and Rose all took on various jobs without much discussion and everyone just seemed to fit in around what we were doing.

I don’t want this to be a stupidly prolonged thank you session, but I think it’s safe to say that without the assistance of the “significant others” – Brad, K and Julian – things would have been a lot more bumpy.

I left everyone to handle the front-of-house goings on and found my way to the auditorium and found Suze all ready and raring to go as our Stage Manager for the evening. I had no idea that she was going to be as busy as she was – having assured her it was just going to be a case of jogging each act with a 5 minute call before they were due on stage.

As it happened, she was completely invaluable, doing all the legwork that I couldn’t have done. I think our partnership for the night was rather like the proverbial swan, with me sitting serenly above the water looking calm and controlled and marshalling people here and there, whilst Suze paddled away furiously under the surface making sure everything I was marshalling was where it should be to be marshalled.

The acts all turned up in plenty of time (more of an achievement than you’d have thought, let me assure you) and were absolutely brilliant to a man. Kind, generous and fun to chat to, I managed to have a good giggle before we even got to the show itself.

I had Rob, my documentary cameraman, following me around getting all the madness on tape, so it’s going to be interesting to look back on it in a few month’s time and see just how calm I was (or wasn’t!) looking.

We had just over an hour to get everything set up, including rigging a follow spot, getting the band set up and sound-checked and giving the acts a chance to familiarise themselves with the space and the set-up.

They all wandered on stage from the green room just before we opened the house (let the audience in) and chatted with the band to arrange their walk-on music, which was great for them to be able to choose. The house band – Big Buzzard – were brilliant and added such a sheen of professionalism to the whole event.

They were something of a last-minute addition, having offered up their services at relatively short notice, but I’m so glad we took them up on their offer – they really added that extra dimension to the show.

The show itself was simply stunning. The entire bill was nothing short of hilarious and several times throughout the even I thought I was in danger of embarrassing myself with loss of bladder control. If I’d not be tied to an oxygen cylinder, I’d have been rolling in the aisles.

Bill Bailey strung the whole thing together perfectly – giving everyone perfectly distilled little pieces of his humour whilst linking between the acts.  Geoff Whiting, Glenn Wool and Rob Rouse tore through the first half and had me coughing with laughter the whole way.  After the break, I had managed to compose myself enough to be less of a distraction through Ian Stone and Dara O’Briain’s sets.

During the interval, I popped backstage to the Green Room to grab a fresh O2 cylinder – it being the nearest secure place to leave them through the show – and was planning on heading out front to catch up with all the various friends who’d made the effort to come along.

As it was, I ended up in a really long chat with Rob, Glenn, Dara and Ian about my O2 and then segued into CF and its various effects/characteristics.  They were all genuinely interested and keen to learn, and being the Ambassador I am, I’m never going to pass up an opportunity to educate people on CF!

After the show, I was keen to make sure everything got sorted backstage, but was hurriedly ushered off to make my presence at the after-show drinks reception felt.  Although I think what I actually ended up doing was making sure that Richard Madeley understood all of my gobbledigook on his crib sheet for the auction.

Emma stood up and started things off with a run of thank yous and talked for a bit about where the money we raised was going and what we were all here for.  I then followed up with a brief heartstring-plucker to get everyone in the mood to dig deep in their pockets for the auction itself.

I have to say I’d not done any prep for it apart from thinking about my opening line, and I was pretty impressed with what I came up with.  I knew I’d have to talk about some difficult stuff, but I think I’m so used to it now, it just rattles off without me having to think about it too much.

It seemed to set the tone well though, (“Thanks a f**king lot” was Richard’s response when he took the mic from me) and the auction went really well.  Considering all the lots we had were donated for nothing, everything we cleared was money straight in our boxes and we did a great run for 11 lots – over £1,800.

That figure will be swelled over the coming few days with cash from programme sales and the collecting buckets (somewhere in the region of £1,200), and individual donations (which is currently overr £1,000 and expected to rise) – all of which is to be added to our ticket sales, which is somewhere around £15,000.  All told, we’re looking pretty good to hit £20,000 for the whole night – an astounding and truly humbling amount of money.

If you’d like to donate, please please please do – you do it safe and securely (and anonymously, if you wish) at our Just Giving page here.

I think one of the biggest compliments of the night for me, though, was to hear today that there were people in the audience who had no idea they were at a charity gig at all – they had bought their tickets purely on the strength of the bill we presented (no pun intended) and when they realised it was for charity and learned about the cause, couldn’t wait to dig into their pockets and drop cash in our collecting buckets.

I said last week that this whole experience had taught me how wonderful people can be and to believe in the spirit of human nature and it’s only been reinforced over the last couple of days.

This whole event has been one of the greatest – and most rewarding – experiences of my life and I have to thank Emma and Emily not only for letting me be a part of the project they started, but for allowing me to feel so much a part of the team and the cause.

If you’re not already signed up to the organ donor register, you have time to do it now.  If you’ve just read through the whole of this blog entry, you clearly don’t have enough to do today, so you’ve got enough time to take out 2 minutes of your time to go to www.uktransplant.org.uk and sign up right now – it’s fast, it’s electronic and it could make a difference to up to 9 other people’s lives.

Don’t let your death be in vain, and don’t let the 400 people who died last year while waiting for a transplant have passed for nothing.  If there’s any message that should come from this weekend, it’s Live Life Then Give Life.

Amid all the hullabaloo (gotta love that word – never thought I’d use it here!) surrounding L4L, I have actually been looking after myself, too, you’ll be pleased to hear.

In fact, I was booked for a check-up at clinic today.  I popped along, with K in tow for waiting-room entertainment, and saw all the necessaaries, who all seemed to be buzzing about my appearance on Radio 4 and/or the upcoming gig.  It was almost like a taste of celebrity…

But most importantly, things went really well.  Off to a cracking start when I weighted in at 52.6kg – the heaviest I think I’ve ever been at clinic.  According to my notes I’ve put on a kilo and a half in a month – pretty good going!  Especially considering a week of that was spent in hospital, where eating enough calories in a day is more like a carefully managed game of skill than a diet-plan.

While I was up there, since I was due to start back on my TOBI neb (a nebulised form of the antibiotic Tobramycin), I asked them to do a check on my lung-function before and after, as the last couple of months I’ve had of TOBI (it’s taken on a month-on, month-off basis) I’ve noticed my chest getting tight after a dose and I wanted to check it out.

Sure enough, my before and after L-F showed a drop from 0.7/1.4 to 0.6/1.3, which doesn’t appear overly significant, until you work out that actually what shows up as a 0.1litre change on paper calculates to a 14% drop in the “real world”.  And I challenge anyone to lose nearly a 7th of thier lung capacity and not notice.

So after a quick conflab, the powers that be (that’s my CF nurse and Doc B) sent an order to pop me on a ventolin neb to see if it would relax my airways back from the TOBI.

I haven’t taken ventolin in years, and even then it was only as an inhalor, not nebulised, so I don’t have a great deal of experience with it and didn’t know what to expect.

What I didn’t expect – at all – was to find that after a single 2.5mg dose, my L-F jumped to an eye-watering 0.9/1.6 – a scale I’ve not reached in over a year!

To say I was happy is to do understatment a disservice – it’s unbelieveable that a quick 2 minute neb can make such a difference to my breathing.  But more than just the numbers on the page, I really noticed it in my freedom and ability to breathe and walk and just generally not feel breathless.

In  fact, there’s a good story that will show you how good it was.  When I got up to leave the ward after the trial, I switched from the hospital-plugged oxygen supply back to my walkabout tank and wandered up the corridor to Pharmacy, from where I then walked back to the car with K, had a 5 minute telephone conversation, walked back to pharmacy, returned to the car and then popped quickly back inside for a pit-stop before we left.

When I finally got back to the car and switched to my “driving cylinder” (long story), I discovered that I’d forgotten to turn my walkabout cylinder on when I left the ward.  So I’d spent the best part of 45 minutes walking up and down and all over without once noticing a shortness of breathe and questioning my oxygen supply.  What’s more, I actually remember noting to myself how I seemed to be walking faster than I normally would without noticing any adverse effects.

You don’t get much better than that.   Consider me not only well chuffed with my day’s activities, but on a personal high both physically and mentally.  Things have a way of turning themselves on their head – it only takes a bit of positivity and something to add a bit of meaning and purpose to your life.

Three days and counting and the pace is non-stop.  The great thing about the whole thing now, though, is that we really are just dotting I’s and crosssing T’s on the event itself, plus chasing what media coverage we can over the next few days.

I found myself staring out of the pages of MK News yesterday, in a beautifully placed story on page 5 – sadly, it was with an awful old photo of me from one of the stories they’d run previously when they sent their photographer round.  They also managed to make the simplest and yet most glaring of sub-editing errors by spelling my name wrong in the headline.  I don’t know how on earth you spell it correctly all the way through the piece itself and still manage to get it wrong in the headline, but there you go.

I’ve yet to see a copy of today’s MK Citizen, but I’m hoping I got my ugly mug in there, too.  I had a call from BBC 3 Counties Radio this afternoon to ask me onto their breakfast show with Martyn Coote tomorrow morning, which is great.  I’ve been in there three times before, so they know me and it’s a nice, friendly place to stick my head into.

For those who want to listen, I’ll be on around 9.40am on the MK breakfast show (as opposed to the Luton/Beds/Herts one) which is on 94.7, 98 or 104.5FM or, possibly, at <a href=”http://www.bbc.co.uk/threecounties/local_radio/”>http://www.bbc.co.uk/threecounties/local_radio/</a> – although I’m not sure if this will offer you the option of the MK breakfast show, or just play the other one.

Technically, the show is coming together nicely – we’ve got our follow spot, and our follow spot op.  We’ve got our Stage Manager for the night, as well as a stand-by team of MK techies to help out if need be.  They’re actually paying customers coming to see the show, but I’ve warned them I may need to collar them for a hand during our SUPER-quick get-in on the night.

We’ve sent info packs out to all the acts about the night, with the running order, information on the campaign and general goodies (a pin-badge, no less!).

Most excitingly – and this is the bit that had me doing the closest thing I can to jumping up and down – we’ve secured a 2 tickets to see Avenue Q, the puppet musical in the West End, along with an exclusive, private 30-minute workshop with a cast member to see the puppets up close and learn how they go about bringing them to life on stage.  It’s an unbelievable lot (in my humble opinion!) and I’m so excited about it.

That said, we’ve actually managed to come up with a generally awesome collection of things to auction off at the VIP party – we should not only raise some really good money with the things we’ve got, but also offer people some really exclusive stuff for the cash they’re parting with.

Among other things, we’ve got an original artwork by an artist whose life has been transformed by a double lung transplant, a facial at a top London beauty salon, tickets to no less than 4 West End shows, including super-special extras to go with them, and the ultimate war-fighting day with a company which promises to supercede paintball in both value and realism.

It’s amazing how things are coming together and I’m getting more and more excited by the minute.

It’s going to be an amazing weekend and I can’t wait for it to be here.  Three sleeps till Laughter for Life! And remember, if you can’t be there, but you want to support us, you can donate through our Just Giving page, here.