I am looking forward to Wimbledon, though. I have picked out my fantasy Wimbledon team which will hopefully not be as crap as last year’s. Although since I take no notice of the women my team mostly consists of the Williams sisters and cheap people who have interesting names. I have added the Wimbledon feed to my Twitter, so I can read all about what happened at Wimbledon six hours later when I get home.

Friday night I went to see the I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue stage show. It was so good my throat still hurt on Saturday from laughing. The new series starts tomorrow – it’ll be one thing I won’t be saving for after Wimbledon.

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The article doesn’t say, but the aorta is the main artery bringing blood from the heart and an aneurysm is where the walls have been weakened. When he died it would have been instant and he wouldn’t have known anything about it.

However, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue won’t be the same without him. The stage show in Bournemouth last Tuesday had Rob Brydon stepping in and The Guardian liked it, but didn’t say how well he did, except to say that he sang (and he’s very good at singing).

I do feel lucky that I’ve got to see Humph three times, at two recordings and the stage show. On two of those occasions he played too. Tomorrow at noon they’re going to repeat a classic episode (how classic, I don’t know) and there’ll be a tribute to him at 9am on Wednesday, I assume also on Radio 4.

Edit: The Guardian has more details and says that he was admitted to hospital on 16th, had surgery on Monday and died Friday night following complications. So we don’t know exactly what happened, and given he was 86 it could have been anything, but he probably didn’t know anything about it.

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Dear I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue Mailing List Member,

I was expecting to announce the venues and dates of recordings in the Spring series of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue”, but unfortunately I’ve had to put these plans on hold as Humphrey Lyttelton has been detained in hospital for an operation to repair an aortic aneurysm.

We are unclear precisely how long Humph’s recovery period will be, but it seems very likely that the Spring Series of “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue” will have to be postponed.

Humph is otherwise fine and in very good spirits. However, if you wish to write him a get well message, send him an email to this address with the subject ‘Get Well Humph’ and I’ll print it off for
him. I imagine it’ll be nice for him to have something to read in his hospital bed.

There’s no need to worry if you have tickets for our “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue” Tour Show at the Bournemouth Pavilion this Tuesday (22nd April). I’m delighted to say that ISIHAC favourite Rob Brydon
has kindly agreed to deputise for Humph.

With best wishes,

Jon Naismith
Producer, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue

I have the email address to send get well messages to if anyone wants it.

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I got completely lost trying to find the theatre even though I had instructions. They were misleading instructions though, as they told me the busy road to my left was Shaftesbury Avenue, when actually Shaftesbury Avenue wasn’t busy at all, not in comparison to Regent’s Street. And there were so many roads in so many directions, that when the instructions said to cross the road it was hard to work out which one they were talking about. Although on balance I think it was them not saying which direction to go in next that didn’t help.

I can’t actually talk that much about the recording because you’ll hear it in a month. John Naismith, the producer, did the same warm-up joke that he did at the stage show. It took two and a half hours (including the interval) to record. Part of that was due to the retakes. The setup was that the guests were sat on a row of chairs and they had to get up and go to the microphones at the front when they had lines to say. The first half went fine, but in the second there were many more pauses when they forgot it was them next.

The guests were: Humph, of course (who was introduced, again, as being ‘not dead’), and the regulars Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Barry Cryer. Also, Jeremy Hardy, Rob Brydon, Tony Hawks, Andy Hamilton, Jack Dee and Sandi Toksvig. They were all very funny, although sometimes their ad libs were funnier than the script.

I’m looking forward to listening to it (again) and it’ll be interesting to see how much they take out.

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Non-Brits, the rest of this post will not make any sense – ISIHAC being a very British comedy.

Since the tickets were £20.50 or £22.50 I went for the expensive ones and I’m very glad I did because they was more action than during normal recordings. I was a bit disappointed at the beginning when Humph’s intro to Oxford included the Tim Henman joke from when they last recorded in Oxford (Tim Henman was incidentally, in Waitrose this morning). But it was really funny.

For the singing rounds they had to pick their sheet of words up from Humph’s table and go to the front to sing. Jeremy Hardy claimed he had a cold, which was why his singing was bad. Tim Brooke-Taylor ‘danced’ to his.

They repeated the scene from The Importance of Being Earnest with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, although with added breathing from Graeme Garden before that line. And a cameo from R2D2 as Gwendoline. After that, though, Jeremy and Tim did that scene from When Harry Met Sally as Billy Crystal and a Clanger. The Clanger was played by Tim on the swanny whistle (now I know that that looks like!) and was playing Sally. You can guess the rest.

Graeme and Barry Cryer did prove they worked some of it out in advance when John Naismith, the producer, showed them the laser display board for Sound Charades and Barry said, “Oh, that’s a surprise.” Impressively, Jeremy and Tim did Dirty Harry in three lines:
“Potter!”
“Yes, miss.”
“Don’t do that again.”

The sat nav ‘helped’ them play Mornington Crescent. I particularly liked its direction of “Turn left where the cinema used to be,” and “Face it, you’re lost.”

They did a round at the end called Quiz of Quizzes which involved lots of well known ones. They all nominated Anne Robinson as the weakest link.

Everyone in the audience got a kazoo, so joined in with Swanny Kazoo, and played a well-known tune for the teams to fail to guess.

At the end Humph played the trumpet, which was really cool to see, even if he was a bit near the microphone. He was introduced as “still not dead”.

I bought a program, which was a good investment. It had a particularly good joke in it:
Premium-rate phone-in prize draw!
Phone lines are now closed. You will be charged for your call.

I ended up running for the bus and made it just before it left – otherwise I’d have had to wait an hour for the next one. As it was I didn’t get home till 11.20pm, so I was glad I had run, even though the cold didn’t do much for my throat or asthma. Or head.

I did really enjoy it. Let’s hope they’ll do another stage show tour in the future. Poole Arts Centre or the BIC would be good places…

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Tickets go on sale 10am Monday. Anyone want to come with me? It’s less than £10, even for the expensive tickets.

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Anyway, there was Colin and Justin. Now, of all the people you’d not want to plan your wedding they’ve got to be top of the list. But as usual really, they had loads of crises but it all came right in the end. And Justin threw a hissy fit over something small. But it’s not as good as their usual house designing thing because you don’t get them having arguments with Katy and Andy, and the narrator for this one wasn’t as funny. I’ll still be watching next week though.

Then I listened to The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents from Listen Again, and 1.30 Saturday on BBC7 wasn’t that convenient. And my non-Doctor Who night went awry because David Tennant was in it. I’d entirely forgotten the story though, so I really enjoyed it, just as I had reading it. I do like the little girl who makes her life a story and whose name I can’t remember how to spell.

The long DW fic is now up to nearly 14,000 words and ten cups of tea.

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I’m feeling virtuous about my writing, too. The Sheppard/Weir Thing is now on v4, complete with, shock horror, some description! And a couple of adjectives! I mean, really, what more could you ask for? I think there’s some action (ie a bit of movement) I could probably describe – I mean I know where they’re moving, what direction they’re facing etc, but it’s not all in there. I’m trying (note the important word here, trying) to get it to the stage of needing beta’ing by the end of the month. Hopefully that’ll be v5 or v6.

I had to remind dad that I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue started tonight (having previously reminded him last week when MiniMinder reminded me). He’d forgotten. I’d got a tape out ready to record it while I cooked/ate dinner. Sadly, though, I was washing up when I realised it was halfway through and it might have been a good idea to have actually pressed the record button. Hopefully it’ll be up after Shakespeare and I can listen to it in bed. I wish TV had listen again, it would be so useful for people like me – unless I set everything to record I forget to watch it! (although I have on occasion forgotten I’ve recorded something and accidentally taped over it)

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I went to see the next two episodes of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue recorded in Oxford last night. It was great to actually see what happens (although I already knew the truth about Samantha and the laser display board). The only complaint was that the theatre was really hot. Although in all fairness, it wasn’t that much cooler outside.

Each episode took over an hour to record, so even when they take out the bits that went wrong, there’s still quite a bit of that’s going to get taken out. It will be interesting to listen and find out what (if I can remember).

The guest was Harry Hill, who I wasn’t terribly impressed by until they did a science fiction segment and he did a wonderful Dalek impression without the aid of any props at all. Graeme Garden’s Darth Vader was also good but did involve a glass of water.

I won’t spoil the episodes but suffice to say they were up to their usual standard.

I found out, while I was there, that Art is coming to the New Theatre, and has Russell Boulter in it! So I will have to go back there to see that.

On my way I stopped off at Borders. Who were doing Doctor Who books at �1.99 and 4 for 3 but they only had two Doctor & Ace books and I’ve got them both. I was quite interested to discover there is a novelisation of Scream of the Shalka. There was also quite a good selection of Lois McMaster Bujold books, so if I get really stuck with finding them, that’s an option.

And onto tennis. I was quite disappointed to miss Greg Rusedski’s match yesterday, as it sounds as if it was quite exciting. Mind you, so was Tim Henman’s today. But Andy Murray is my little star. Not only did he win a match, but did it in straight sets, beating a seeded opponent, getting him lots of points. Annoyingly, I don’t quite have enough money to swap Henman for Roddick (assuming he won after BBC2 stopped at 8.30), so I might get Hewitt instead. Otherwise I only have one man left in! Suffice to say I’m doing quite badly in the fantasy league, but then I was this time last year as well.

I’m really looking forward to a weekend of doing nothing but watching tennis and Glastonbury, except for all those things I’ve been putting off till the weekend. Which will be good anyway because I’ll be bored on Sunday with no tennis to watch.

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I had a bit of a revelation today. I’ve been enjoying Atlantis recently and I’ve been trying to work out why – then it occurred to me. It’s because I’ve been watching it on it’s own and not straight after Stargate. The trouble is that I like all the characters in Stargate (except for the love to hate ones) and I’ve been watching it for a few years. Whereas on Atlantis I don’t like Teyla and I still can’t decide about Weir. In all fairness, I didn’t like Teal’c at first so that could change.

Also, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is back on Monday. Of course, my dad, the minute I tell him this tells me I have to remind him. He’d be stuffed if it wasn’t for Listen Again (mind you, so would I). I wish TV had the same system – once something had been shown, you can watch it any time within a week afterwards.

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The good news: Enterprise has been renewed (http://www.trektoday.com/news/200504_01.shtml
The bad news: Richard Biggs has died (http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17099)

I went away for 26 hours at the weekend and returned to find 198 e-mails, of which 144 were spam. I’ve been answering them while listening to “Six Characters in Search of an Answer” on BBC7′s Listen Again. Which is so useful because I never listen to anything on the radion on time. I only remembered to watch Have I Got News For You on Friday because the video came on (in my defence I’m usually out).

On the plus side this weekend I established that Hobbycraft still doesn’t have any rabbits I can cross stitch. I might have to go on a hunt on the internet, or end up doing cats. Which are nice, but not as nice as rabbits. I’ve still got a fair bit of The Librarian left to do so it’s not urgent yet.

I also made about 20 CDs and did all my backing up. At the same time I finally saw Miss Congeniality. I meant to go and see it when it was out at the cinema. I meant to get it out on video. I even meant to watch it on TV, but forgot. That’s a record, even for me.

I re-injured my toes tonight, exactly the same way as I did last week, so they hurt. What’s worse is that I had my glasses punched twice on the same side, so the floor now slopes. Which is not helpful.

I finally got round to doing these quizzes, this is from Selenay (I can’t quite bring myself to use the word gacked, to me it sounds like the cat’s about to be sick):

Good stuff, you are “Wedding? I love
weddings! Drinks all around.” You’re the
life of the party and nothing gets you down,
not even certain death at the hands of your
zombie nemesis or the Navy. Come to think of
it, realism isn’t your strong suit…

Which one of Captain Jack Sparrow’s bizarre sayings from Pirates of the Caribbean are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

How true!

This I first saw on fileg‘s journal:

Yep, that would be me

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