DIGI LIVE WEEKEND: A DEBRIEF

That was the weekend that was. And it was glorious. Worth every bit of effort.

Some of you have been worried we might’ve made a loss, but I think we did make a profit. Certainly, your enthusiasm for the merch helped on that front, but also… ticket sales were fine, basically. We’ll know in a couple of weeks when Harrow Arts pays us. But it was worth us doing it (as well as it being extremely good for the soul)

The two nights, as I’d hoped, felt very different to one another. At least, they did to those of us on stage.

Friday would’ve overrun if we hadn’t dropped Show & Tell. I feel bad for all of you who brought stuff for us to look at, but in all honesty it had always been there at the end of the show as a potential sacrificial lamb, if The Trial – which, as you know, I had very little prior knowledge of – went longer than expected.

In the end, it was my rambling Digi history intro that went longer than expected. So, sorry again to all of you who brought tat. Lots of you gave me stuff over the weekend, and we’re going to look at it all in a video.

And yet... I REALLY loved doing that opening section on Friday, with just me and Sanja. It was the closest we’ve ever gotten on stage to BYAMPOD or one of our chattier desk videos, and it was – I felt – the perfect way to set up two nights of Digi larks. I’d love to do more live stuff like that.

I did get a bit self-conscious at points that Friday could become rather too self-glorifying (which is why I decided to run with that notion, and declare myself king – taking my egomania to its ultimate conclusion). At the same time… it was really quite emotional seeing all those faces from my past (plus my lovely mum), even if they were all being horrible to me. Chris Bell pulled out all the stops to put it together, and I was pretty much lost for words during most of it.

We had the big, bonkers, Coronation bit in the middle of the show, but Friday seemed relatively streamlined compared with the unwieldy behemoth of Saturday night.

SATS

We had significantly less time before Saturday’s show to get ready – and were selling merch and talking to people until about an hour before doors. We also had a lot of costume changes during the show, which made everything more manic backstage. And we realised we’d somehow lost a very vital prop – Beanus’s Father, no less – with just minutes to go.

That was going to be my favourite part of the entire show, and not having the prop in there sort of threw me off at the start of the Beanus section, as it would’ve been (bean) the centrepiece around which the whole of The Golden Bean revolved. Lovely Ash Frith picked up on my anxiety and wanted to help find it, bless him.

Consequently, relevant slides had to be hastily deleted, and for me The Golden Bean was missing something this time around. I mean, literally. OF COURSE… Sanja found it today. Next time.

We’d also made the decision to drop an entire planned round for time, so instead of having a big finale, it kind of just petered out. I dunno. There was still plenty of gold, it was an ADHD fever dream as planned, and I absolutely lost it on at least two occasions, but I never really felt like Beanus hit his stride this time.

That said… we watched some of it back earlier, and it still seems very funny. Certain guests appeared a bit shellshocked – which is, of course, what we were going for. Hopefully, they’ll still talk to me.

I also was probably a bit too acutely aware of how I can lose track of time – after Friday’s 15-minute intro bloomed into 45 minutes – and was determined not to let it happen twice.

Unfortunately, that meant that my focus and attention was split, which left me feeling a little out of sorts as the show wore on. 

I’d also, if I’m honest, been thrown off by some apparent actual drunkeness during Piccalilli Willy’s Piccalilli Pub, which threw off my rhythm not only during that section, but for the rest of the evening. We do  love the person in question, but we weren’t too impressed, as it did somewhat disrupt some big stuff that was meant to happen between Piccalilli Willy and Boozy Beremy. In the end I just rushed through it to get it over with. Bit of a shame really.

BUT?

But! Don’t think this means I didn’t enjoy Saturday night. The longer Beanus went on, the more the entire section seemed to feel like we were trapped in some hazy hallucination. I mean, I feel bad that the front few rows got the full stench of sausages and poo, but I also love that it became a fully immersive, nightmarish, experience for the audience.

When Beanus kicked the dog poo bag into the front row – with slightly more force than intended – it was extremely naughty, but also felt like we’d broken the final barrier between us and the audience. 

When I got home on Saturday, I remembered it happening, and had full-on hysterics at about 1am. In fact, I don’t think any Digi Lives have ever made me laugh as much as this one did. I mean, I know we’re not the ones who are there to be entertained, but it also feels like some sort of victory that we were – and that we absolutely nailed what I love about doing Digi.

Plus, the entire Doctor Who-into-Ufonference-into-Action Man bit was probably my favourite thing we’ve ever done live. For some reason, I find it very hard staying straight-faced whenever I’m Action Man, and Saturday was no exception. Again, another after-the-fact fit of hysterics I had came from remembering Eli, Sanja and I discussing an alien’s “smelly chuff”.

Also, I enjoyed basically doing nothing during Braben The Musical, and just getting to watch. The entire thing was built around one simple idea: give Ash Frith a really weird experience. We’d told him NOTHING, but he was SO brilliant. As were all the performers; Ash, Ethan, Stuart, Sooz… they’re the best bunch. And, of course, Paul and Eli were amazing throughout, as always.

ONE PART

However, we always knew that the shows themselves were only a part of the weekend. Aside from Chunky Fringe – which sounds like it was a great success – you all had your own unique experiences. The entire idea behind doing two nights was to give everyone more chance to socialise, to give it more of a festival atmosphere. Judging from all your messages this aspect was a massive hit.

I’d been a bit emotional on Friday afternoon before the show. Just the knowledge that so many people were helping to make these shows happen – from all the guest voices on the animations, to our brilliant crew, to our kids, to our guests, to the Happy Anniversary messages (I was properly touched by the one from Dominik Diamond) - and that all of you were traveling so far to be there, in spite of a tricky transportation scenario. 

Far more of you traveled from different countries than I’d expected. It blew us away to hear so many different accents after the shows.

A few of you seemed stunned that Sanja and I hung around for hours afterwards, but it’s so important to us that we take the time to meet you. You’ve made an effort to come and see us, so it’s the least we can do. Plus, we love putting faces to names.

Really though, the biggest takeaway for me, and the thing that warmed my heart the most, was seeing how LOVED Sanja is. Obviously, I understand it 100%, but it was beautiful to witness her hearing it in person from so many of you. It took a bit of effort to convince her to be in as much of the show as she was, but I was determined because she’s as much Digi in 2023 as I am, and I knew already that so many of you have taken to her.

And yes, we WILL do more chatty videos.

SO…

Anyway. It’s because of that – because of all of you, seeing your photos, reading your experiences etc. – we’re already talking about the next one. Or next thing. Or whatever it ends up being. Going into this I really wasn't sure, with the sluggish ticket sales, the transport stress, and the sheer number of moving parts, but we know how much it means to you.

It probably won’t be next year – though we don’t rule out doing *something* live in 2024 – but if we can still make it affordable, and not lose money, then we’ll do it.

It’ll be different. It won’t be the exact same thing again. I can’t promise it’ll be an entire weekend. But it might be. We don’t know yet. I can’t entertain the thought of thinking about another one for a good long while.

As you know, the shows were months in the planning. We’ve not really had a day off since March. As chaotic as the nights were, I hope that hard work came across. Today ended up not being a day off either – emptying the van, dropping the van back, trip to the GP with my mum, six hours up A&E with my mum (to be told she’s basically fine, just old)…

It’s 7pm as I write this, and I’m already in bed. Everything still hurts. My arthritic toes have flared up. My head is swimming. Tomorrow I intend to do nothing. Finally. 

At the same time, I’m desperate to do a video for you just going over the weekend. I’m happy. We did it!

I've got a few videos we had to drop for time, which I'll share with you over the coming days.  And the video footage is definitely good enough to release in some form, so those of you who weren't there will get to see at least some of it. I might do that as edited highlights.

A few random highlights:

• The applause at the end of Saturday when I said “And that was 30 years of Digitiser”. For some reason, I hadn’t expected it.
• Balloons!
• The UTTERLY unexpected applause when I emerged into the carpark after the show.
• Meeting everyone, and seeing how what we do means so much to people.
• Sanja’s legion of fans!
• Getting to see some of Chunky Fringe for the first time in person.
• All of The Trial, even though I spent most of it lost for words. Chris Bell knocked it out of the park.
• My mum’s on-screen message, which came very close to reducing me to tears.
• Being Action Man on stage – and it working. He’s my favourite character, but his videos always do worse than others, so to have him get so many laughs was big for me.
• Paul’s song.
• Feeding Num-Num his “mother’s milk”.
• The reaction to the first news report on Friday. And the reaction when the arch-bishop stood up.
• The reaction to Sponsored By Bovril on Saturday.
• Ash and Ethan veering between horror, confusion, and hysterics during The Golden Bean.
• The dog poo bag going into the audience. I’m sorry. It was just such a terrible, wrong, thing to do to your audience, but it was so, so funny.
• Monty’s Mum getting laughs. I hadn’t been sure about it, but it sounded like it went down well.
• Oh yeah. And Action Man's spectacular entrance. So to speak...