Recap: 2020
CRUISING
2020 began in the middle of the ocean, finishing up a 3-month contract as a featured entertainer for a cruise line. Let’s leave the company unnamed, but not because working for them was bad – they’re actually a long-term and much-appreciated employer of mine. No, I just want to feel like I can be a bit more frank here about the day-to-day experience, because living on a ship is really the best and worst of times.
Best of times:
Water, sea, air, sun, vitamin D and a state-of-the-art gym with an ocean view
Buffet – 3 times a day, no policing of portion number and size
Tips – dollar bills flooding the piano lid, signalling the workplace of a musical prostitute
Fee – someone told me my job commanded a higher salary than the executive chef, which I can’t prove but am holding on to
Worst of times:
It’s prison, honey – you never knew when they were going to announce over the tannoy “Looks like Jamaica’s border patrol are saying crew members can’t get off today [sound of metal bars clanging], so no walking on land for you, good luck keeping sane for the next 6 sea days in a row, byeee”
Woman with haircut that’s soft waterfall in front and knives in back: “PLAY SWEET CAROLINE!!! But we only want to do the BAH BAH BAH and the SO GOOD SO GOOD SO GOOD and we apparently find it INCREDIBLY TEDIOUS waiting through the boring verse but we STILL ASK FOR IT EVERY SINGLE DAY!” (It’s my life’s mission to convince people that Sweet Caroline, Piano Man and Great Balls of Fire are actually not good singalongs…)
There. Is. No. Free. WiFi. Onboard.
It’s $3.99 an hour
WiFi
$3.99
AN HOUR
It feels completely appropriate to have been on at least one ship, especially since my comedy partner Frisky and I once satirised the opinion that performers who do cabaret or cruises are second-rate, or, as we phrased it, “bumface cringe failures,” in a viral 2012 skit with the following refrain:
Cabaret,
Don’t give in to cabaret
Don’t wear something that suggests you’re gay
You want the public to like you
Say no to cabaret
Keep away from that cruise buffet
Put the feathers down and walk away
This is Gary’s decree [referring, of course, to Gary Barlow]
Anyway I came back to the UK in late February 2020, with a second-rate suitcase full of money, saying as I stepped off the plane “Well, I’m so glad I’m back on land for a bit to socialise and interact and walk around freely and feel the intimacy of human connection again…”
HIBERNATING
Then Ms Rona put paid to that plan, in a matter of weeks. She did let me just slip a quick birthday gathering in, to be fair to her. But what I cannot forgive her for, is the following list of things that she ruined:
A Super Happy Story was to have its long-awaited New York première at 59E59 for Brits Off-Broadway that spring; we had our visas, we had our accommodation, we were on sale – then POOF
Frisky & Mannish: PopLab had been announced for two nights at the West End’s Ambassadors Theatre with Sonia Friedman Productions, playing the late slot after this little thing called Baby Reindeer – BIG POOF
People’s general spatial awareness and the wearing of headphones on trains – LARGE HOMOSEXUAL
But then it was as we all remember. My strange lockdown obsessions and comfort blankets were as follows:
I finally had time to properly commit to my then-secret ambition of becoming a certified genealogist, and booked a place on IHGS’s Higher Certificate correspondence course. Lectures, research, assignments, etc. – exactly what I needed, something structural. The average student apparently takes around 2-3 years to complete the 24-module course. It’s now nearly 6 years since I signed up and I’m on module 14. (My excuse is that I had to juggle it with writing a West End musical, CLANG.)
I drew a load of birth charts for my friends’ babies, and then my friends, and then some friends of friends. This was not something I took up in 2020 – I’ve known how to make charts since I asked my parents for a subscription to a monthly astrology magazine for Christmas 1995 I think? But in my lockdown return to the art form, I did develop a geometric design of my own, and set up an Instagram which exists to this day, so if you want one let me know!
And a few professionally creative things still happened. Frisky & I released the second series of the chart-topping Frisky & Mannish Podcast and live-streamed the festive extravaganza A Very Frisky & Mannish Christmas from a living room in Wandsworth, thanks to the crowdfunding support of our loyal base.
I workshopped a load of different things, some of it never to see the light of day ever, some of it to see some light of day for a brief amount of time, and one…
…well, …
…one thing that would see a load more light on a load more days than we could have anticipated. Yes, 2020 was the year that Jon Brittain first said something along the lines of “maybe Karen and Cilla’s Murder Podcast?” and a jingly tune jumped into my head in a matter of seconds. More on that in recaps to come…
