Friday, 7 June 2019
Reading time 1 minute 20 seconds
They say you should never meet your heroes – They
I’m not the type of person who typically gets star struck.
For example, in my youth I met Fergie, the Princess not the Black-Eyed Pea, and Lineker the football pundit not the Ibiza beach club mogul.
To me they were just people, nice ones at that. To be honest I thought being star struck was a myth until I met someone who I consider a star.
I’d recently had my hip replaced and was watching a documentary on TV which had Nina Conti, who is a comedian I very much admire, in it and her pain in the story touched my soul. Later that year I enrolled in a workshop and she was there. As in right there, right in front me. It was as if she was on my TV but was real.
I looked at her and I was in awe. She is so talented as a comic I’ve seen her many times and have always been amazed at her mastery of the craft I love.
During the first exercise we had to pair up with a random person and despite doing my best to avoid Nina I ended up with her.
The exercise was about establishing trust and consisted of walking your blindfolded partner around a large room to ensure they didn’t get hurt. Like a scratched record stuck on a loop my loopy mind was repeatedly telling me to act cool and to not blow it. However, having not long been clear of the drugs for the hip I wasn’t completely right in the head, so I did the decent thing and mentally collapsed.
I walked her straight into a wall. If you have ever accidentally smashed someone’s face into a wall you know how hard it is to get them to trust you again.
When it was then my turn to be blindfolded I assumed that Nina, who is an accomplished ventriloquist, would make look like a complete dummy. Luckily for me she didn’t but it did remind of the time I felt like a real dummy when I found out my proctologist was also a ventriloquist.
I thank you….