Actually. No. I'm not going to Melbourne.

Okey doke.

Well,

The short of it is that I’m not going to come (or go, depending on where you are) to Melbourne for the Comedy Festival.

The long of it, is that what’s happening around the world with Lurgy 2020 © is, undeniably at this stage, a full blown kerfuffle. A kerfuffle that I’m keen to help mitigate in whatever infinitesimal way that I can. Which oddly, in this instance, means, choosing not to fly to Australia and squish strangers into a little room, late at night, to watch me stumble through a story that is currently, quite patchy.  

I, like most of us, I imagine, have had a variety of conversations with people about Covid 19 over the last couple of weeks. Some of whom were a good deal more worried than me and I tried to offer some sense of perspective and vigilant calm, others were much less worried than me and I duly attempted to instil a heightened engagement with the situation, appealing to their sense of social and personal responsibility.

Now on reflection, that’s a pretty arrogant response to differing degrees of concern, assuming those more concerned than you are panicking plum duffs and those less concerned are negligent nincompoops – having said that though– I reckon I’m bob on the money, worry wise.

It’s a fine line and I’m dancing on it.

My point is that some of you will be irked by this announcement and think it an hysterical over reaction whereas some of you will feel that I should have cancelled earlier but this whole thing is a pretty uncharted situation and I think it befits us all to seek out the best advice currently available and where that advice is sometimes contradictory, weigh up all available information and make the most responsible decisions we can for ourselves and others and currently, traversing the globe armed with an unfinished* show, in order to have what amounts to a lovely little working holiday whilst receiving a daily dose of laughter and applause doesn’t feel hugely responsible to me.

It’s important to say that reaching this decision is easier for me than for others. Not only have I been social distancing for my entire adult life ** but my habitual self isolation (historically seen by some as a crippling flaw in my personality) makes this evolving quagmire less logistically tricky for me than a lot of people. Also, because I only actually booked the shows a couple of weeks ago and hadn’t yet officially announced the ticket details, only a handful of seats have currently sold***

All of which means that I’ve been quite lucky here.

Lucky enough to somehow sidestep the (very real) complications affecting other peoples decisions in this area and be left with a relatively straightforward, if still deeply saddening, decision to err on the side of caution.

If I was already in Melbourne either as an audience member or a performer I would not necessarily be cancelling shows at this stage, but I am not there, I am here.

So here we are.

I really am very sorry not to be making it over there and already talking to the Malthouse to see if we can jiggle some mutually amenable replacement dates in at a later, calmer, potentially more vaccinated, point in the not tooooo distant future.

Okay.

There it is.

On a lighter note, the entire time I’ve been writing this, there’s been a bright green parrot sat outside my window in a Horse Chestnut tree.

So that’s something.

GOODBYE FOREVER****

*Barely begun.

** Perspicacity

*** You can contact the venue about refunds.

****Come on, there was always going to be a point when this felt a bit on the nose.