Hal Cruttenden - Stand Up, Writer, Actor

I’m writing this now rather than doing my spinning class at the gym. I feel terribly guilty. I’ve been forcing myself to go down to David Lloyd’s three times a week for the last month and now I feel the rot has set in. You know how it goes: one class missed; then a week off; then years of sitting in front of the mirror crying at the size of my belly. Having said that, the spinning class doesn’t seem to have reduced my belly by much, it’s just made it more solid and less flabby. I’m one of those fit fat men now. Whatever I do, I seem to be doomed to always have a fat face. I was called Potato Face at school and I wasn’t even fat then. I’ve just always had a big, round face - if there’s one part of me that I want to be bigger than the average, it’s certainly not my face.

It’s not just the gym I’m falling back on. This blog is becoming increasingly infrequent. I just have so much on now that Edinburgh is less than two months away. The stand up show, ‘Climb Every Molehill’, is looking fine but not yet ‘fantastic’. The play, ‘Coming Up For Air’ has now been adapted to just about the right length by Dominic Cavendish so some serious learning has to begin. We start rehearsals in under a week. I’ve never actually done a one man play before so I’m really looking forward to it while also missing the camaraderie of being with a cast. Having said that, I’m a very difficult sod when I’m under pressure and now so used to working by myself as a stand up, that I might not make the best team player when it comes to rubbing along with a cast for several months. Ho Hum.

I know I’m too busy because when I have a night off I fall asleep in front of the telly like my dad used to. Started watching a DVD caled ‘Hoax’ last night’. The first half hour was great and the credits were a soothing way to wake up.

I don’t understand why finding a title for my Edinburgh show is so hard. I was settled on ‘Tiny Rage Tour’ and then my manager, Ian, had reservations about it and then everybody else started explaining that they’d had reservations about it all along. It’s been a month of going slowly mad trying to sort out what would be the best way to sum up my show, which is not even finished yet, and also excite the imaginaton of the punters.

Daniel Kitson is at present touring a show called ‘The Impotent Fury of the Privileged’, which so beautifully sums up what I want to say - it would have been perfect if, when he’d thought of it, he’d told me about it then changed his mind and allowed me to use it instead.

At present my title looks like it’s going to be ‘Climb Every Molehill’. I know it’s extremely camp but it rather nicely sums up my way of making life a series of great triumphs over very minor issues. So many of what I consider great traumas and problems are ridiculed by others, specially my wife. I had a last minute wobble over using ‘Paper Bag Fighter’, which I think is brilliant but wife doesn’t think sums up my show well enough. I’m blaming her when no one comes.

Sorry about the huge gap since I last blogged. I really have been snowed under. I’ve got lots of writing to do for Omid’s next show in addition to my Edinburgh preparation and I’ve been doing gigs virtually every night! I am shattered and my kids are becoming strangers. The last few days involved a lot of preparation for a stand up slot I did for the Comedy Store TV show on Monday. Fifteen minutes is not exactly a stretch for a comic who’s been going as long as me, yet finding the right fifteen minutes to put on TV and then making sure you’re not repeating material from other shows tends to blow my ageing mind. In the event it was a great gig. I was on first, which is usually a nightmare in front of a self-conscious TV crowd, but Mick Ferry compered beautifully and they were realy buzzing by the time I got on. So I had a good show and was home in time to finish a really good row with Dawn. A row I lost 1-0…again. My row form is awful at the moment. Maybe I should do more training with the children or strangers in the street.