The Duke's Travels

I've been on and off the road since 1994, first as a comedian, then as an actor and now as a singer.  I've probably had every kind of experience in that time that one would normally associate with my profession.  When I'm performing, there is perhaps no greater buzz imaginable; it is, quite simply, the best job in the world.  But it is a job and I'm under no illusion that it's anything other.   I suppose I have a somewhat pragmatic approach to what David Gilmour once referred to as "this dangerous but irresistible pastime".  I don't hang around schmoozing after gigs, chasing tail and praise.  When the last note has been sung, I'm out of my tux and into my scruffs and I'm loading the gear into the car, ready to hit the road and go home. Because home is where I live.  Home is where the heart is. Counting those long white lines Truly, the greatest post-gig thrill is hearing the dulcet voice of my sat-nav as she tells me: "At the roundabout, t...

When I was a boy, my mum used to recount an old Yorkshire saying: Hear all, see all, say nowt Eat all, drink all, pay nowt And if you ever do owt for nowt, do it for yourself. I've never forgotten the wisdom of those words.  And while I can't profess to sticking to the second line too often and I may have slipped up from time to time with regards to the opening sentence, I have almost certainly followed the closing line to the letter.   The tradition of the open mic spot is something of which I've been aware since I started performing back in the mid-nineties.  It should really be called the "ripping off the artist spot" or the "do something for nothing spot".  Working for fuck all only ever seems to happen in the performing world.  You'd never get an electrician or a plumber agreeing to do a job for free, just for the "experience"; indeed, tradesmen's fees seem totally arbitrary and yet we cough up the readies without question, suckers...