It was when the kindly folk at the Theatre Royal Haymarket said ‘You’ll be in Paul Whitehouse’s dressing-room’ that it sunk in: the epic biting off of more than I could chew. But there was no going back. In a couple of hours, I would be on stage — and this time, I’d sing. Exploring Paul’s stuff didn’t do much to keep the stage fright at bay: comedy-friendly hats and break-a-leg cards were in massed array. Kindly messages from my friends featured the words ‘gosh’ and ‘brave’.
A couple of months ago, the stunt had seemed a bright idea. I have a new book to push, Wordy, one of those literary tapas samplers which despite its miscellany (or possibly because of it) readers seem to enjoy. There’s some strenuous stuff on memory and the Holocaust and the inevitable reflections on populism. But by and large the book is offered as entertainment. When it was suggested I do one of those tours where the writer does some light on- stage reading, or has an ‘in conversation with’, I thought: why not go the whole ham? I’d done stand-up Jewish jokes in Chicago and survived. How hard could this be? Let there be more jokes custom-made for our epoch of scoundrels and buffoons! Let there be pictures, let there be music!
The producers went for it. A pianist-singer signed on — Nick Barstow, a West-End arranger; then Jon Culshaw who does a Dead Ringer of both Schama and Donald Trump. ‘Strangely enough, it all turns out well,’ says Geoffrey Rush in Shakespeare in Love. ‘It’s a mystery.’ And once on stage, it does. They laugh at the jokes; they’re kind to the singing; they fall quiet when I talk about what it was like to be in New York on 9/11.
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