These places made me almost give up comedy.
Often the beds were unbelievably uncomfortable and the landlady was often untrusting of comedians who checked in late after the gig. It was like being a 15 year old under the watchful eye of a strict aunt.
One of the biggest inconveniences was having to collect the key before the gig. Often the shows were on Friday night in somewhere like Northumberland. It would take 7 hours of heavy traffic to get there. So the last thing I needed on arrival was being lectured about house rules: ‘no girls in the room and breakfast will be at 7.00am prompt’.
On one occasion I was touring with Stewart Lee. It was a university gig somewhere in the middle of nowhere and we were running very late.
We had performed the show and had not picked the keys prior to the gig. Oh dear. We dared to turn up on the doorstep past the 9pm curfew.
We were armed with a business card with the name of our landlady ‘Quality B and B Proprietors: Mr and Mrs Freach’.
We timidly knocked on the door Lights came on all over the house and the door was answered almost immediately.
“Hello?” we said apologetically “Mrs Freak?”
“It’s Freach!”
“What time do you call this? And we don’t allow musical instruments in here!”
The scene was reminiscent of an episode of League of Gentlemen.
I stayed in a succession of these places: on one occasion finding a porn magazine behind the headboard on which a travelling salesman had scrawled: ‘please replace after use’
I toured for years like this with my accompanist Gareth ‘Axe Man’ Rowan.
The low point came in Portsmouth where we shared a room and were kept awake all night by the flashing neon ‘Massage’ sign from the adjacent building that lit up the room every couple of seconds.
As my career progressed, the accommodation improved. I would get to relax in a suite at Clivdon Hall or The Savoy. The B&B years seemed long behind me.
So in 2004, I got booked to support Michael Bublé on his 13 date UK tour.
The deal in my contract with Clear Channel stated that my fee was all-inclusive. Out of my budget I was to provide my own accommodation.
The thought struck me.
To B or not to B and B?
Now, Michael Bublé had two large tour buses. One for him and his tour manager and one for the crew.
He probably had a recording studio in the back and double beds upstairs too.
I really wanted my own tour bus.
So …I hired a camper van.
It was like something your parents would rent for a weeks holiday in Aberrystwyth. There were pictures of wildlife and flowers adorning the side. The complete opposite of Bublé’s rock n roll monster.
I had my own personal tour manager too - my wife Laura who reluctantly agreed to join me.
The gigs we played were mainly in large venues like the Cardiff Arena and the Royal Albert Hall. Parking on site during the show was fine. The problem came when we had to park up overnight as unsurprisingly, campsites are never open in November.
We asked to park overnight at the arenas but the ‘jobsworths’ working there didn’t let us. We would try to find a place to stop in the quiet residential streets, but parking restrictions in the cities often made this near to impossible.
We found ourselves strangely homeless. We had a bed - just nowhere to sleep in it.
So, each day we would roll into the next city, slightly exhausted from hours spent the previous night looking for a place to park.
We would arrive two hours behind the Bublé mobile, whose inhabitants would look fresh and well rested.
One of the shows we did was at the Newcastle City Hall.
The gig was packed, and after a great performance everyone left on a high.
We returned to our ‘tour bus’ and set about finding somewhere to park up for the night.
A few miles out of the city we found a very pleasant rural parking area with beautiful views of the countryside.
It seemed perfect. Hardly any passing traffic and only a couple of other cars with which to share our idyll. We couldn’t believe our luck.
It wasn’t long before we noticed a torch starting to flash through the windows of our camper van.
We ignored this at first, but after a few minutes of repeated flashing light it became quite annoying, so we reached into the front of the van to switch on our headlights and see what the commotion was about.
At this point, one of the cars parked nearby flashed it’s headlights at us.
“What an idiot” we thought, and flashed our headlights back.
This was a mistake.
In the side mirrors of the van, we saw that we had become surrounded by people in a manner similar to a zombie attack.
But one or two of these zombies were masturbating.
One of the masturbating zombies suddenly appeared close to the window of the van, and excitedly shone a torch inside.
His excitement wasn’t diminished by seeing us fully clothed listening to ‘Book at Bedtime’ on Radio 4.
Thoroughly startled, we sped off in the van and the zombies scuttled back into the hedgerows.
We had unwittingly parked at a dogging site, where the flashing of headlights is the equivalent sign of a Masonic handshake in dogging world.
So, it was back to circling the residential streets of Newcastle looking for a parking space.
Perhaps we should have asked the doggers if they could recommend a nice bed and breakfast for the night.
