The list of Dickon’s Diary Angels has begun to grow, and my gratitude to those who have already sent donations. I’ll put up a Page For The Angels on the site shortly. Like the ‘angels’ of showbusiness, ie the investors in a new production, I am keeping careful records and intend there to be a proportional return, whether taking the form of free or exclusively discounted copies of future DE products, or something special in the vein of those fan club-only records some bands do. Perhaps a Diary Angels Christmas card is in order.

I’m truly honoured by the response from these Patrons, most of whom are people I’ve never met. I could say that, like Blanche Dubois, I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers. But that would be enormously insulting to the long-suffering generosity also shown to me by my friends and family.

A couple of people have said setting up what is effectively a DE Fan Club is a “great wheeze”, that it made them laugh with its own sheer nerve, and that to do so was worth £10 alone. I like the idea of stretching that to an extreme elsewhere. An audience of U2 fans in a stadium, all of whom are there out of sarcasm. People queuing up to get the latest Harry Potter book purely because they think JK Rowling has such a nerve, writing those books and expecting anyone to pay for them. “We only buy them and read them in order to humour her, the tragic, self-deluding booby.”

In discussions about work, money and fun, an example I always drag out is the famous fence-painting scene from Tom Sawyer. Tom manages to get out of a day’s work whitewashing a fence by implying to a group of passing boys that it’s the most enjoyable fun in the world, and they’re missing out. Eventually, the other boys not only paint his fence for free, but pay him for the privilege of doing so. I like the double way of looking at this scenario – the idea that anything that seems exclusive and fun can’t be work and vice versa, and then turning that around to comic effect.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while — plenty of company — and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village. Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger- coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

I once brought up a similar line of thinking in a disastrous conversation with the owner of a certain Hoxton venue, where I was performing for free.

Me: A glass of wine please.
Bar Owner: (pours it) £4.50, please.
Me: Um, am I allowed it for free? I’m onstage tonight, I’m not getting paid, and I can’t afford a drink otherwise.
Bar Owner: No, you can’t. You have to pay for drinks. But anyway, you perform for fun, don’t you?
Me: Well, yes, but entertaining is what I do. And one should get paid for what one does. Even if it’s only in drink.
Bar Owner: Ah, but you enjoy it. This is work. I have to make a living. So I can’t give drinks out for free.
Me: Well, how do you expect performers to perform for free?
Bar Owner: They enjoy it. In fact, I’m thinking of asking them to pay me for performing in my bar.
Me: Well, I’m asking you to pay me for entertaining your patrons. If only in drink, which costs you less than money.
Bar Owner: But you ENJOY doing it! So you shouldn’t get paid.
Me: Do you hate running a bar so much, then?
Bar Owner: Well, no, that’s not the point! Running a bar is hard work. I do it because I need to do something, I’m my own boss, the money’s good, and I really enjoy it.
Me: Well then.

An awkward pause. The bar owner grabs my arm, and takes me through to a room behind the bar.

Bar Owner: (menacingly) Look, you can buy this drink, or you can f— off out of my bar and stop taking f—ing liberties. I don’t need this.

He tips the £4.50 glass of wine down the sink. I go onstage, perform with zero enjoyment, then quietly leave, never to return. On the long bus ride home, I start to think about my life.

(entry to be continued)