Health, studio, filming, charity

That was a ludicrous week, last week. I would very much like a quieter week, next week, please. Thanks. It started well enough; nice festival with Fred's House, nice birthday celebration with my closest friends, and filmed series 2 of Emily & Michael with Izzy. Not being arrogant; but this second season is a cracker - it's like we've really found our feet with it now, it's probably the final series as it's a limited concept but I'm really proud of what we've achieved here.

The rest of the week was a bit crappy though, due to family illness. It would be weird to go into details on here, but it was serious, so serious, more than anything we've experienced before as a family and I'm so incredibly grateful that my father somehow got through this. Recovery time now, for both him and the rest of us who have been more than a bit distressed by the whole situation.

After a tough few days, I needed to hit those drums of mine and luckily I had a recording session with the Dowsing band on Friday night. Great to be back at Zoo Audio, haven't been there for years but it's a superb little studio and the recording, all part of a project for Tour de France, sounds fantastic. It was a sweaty session, we worked hard, but sometimes you have to work for these things I can't wait for it to go public. The choir added their vocals today, we rehearsed with them beforehand and they're in fine voice.

Last night I was in Holywell for a charity event for Magpas. I agreed to organise and host this show a while back, but what with all the family health stress I was slightly underprepared (indeed I wrote the murder mystery part of it at 2am on the day of the show). As well as hosting, I was in the murder mystery, played percussion for Flaming June, Trevor Jones and Kat Thorpe, and performed my short story, 'Gary from the Squash Club' which is still a personal favourite. We had a few issues - lost a couple acts but got a couple more in, lost a pianist (but I replaced him simply by pressing the 'demo' button on my Casio keyboard, seemed to do the trick). The other acts - Izzy, Jessica, Alexis, Hannah, Anne-Marie were all fantastic, and then my landlord's band, Simply Wed played in the main bar and I got very drunk with my mate Andy. A good night, a chance to let off steam, I really enjoyed hosting it, can see myself doing more of this sort of thing in the future.

Today, after Dowsing rehearsals, I filmed my solo scenes for the new sitcom, The Paul Richards Disasters. Basically, just me in the house, going nuts. No idea what the neighbours think of me, but they're probably used to this by now. Next week I'm filming scenes with Hind, Izzy and Marcus, a week later I'll be doing the scenes with Kimberly (who is also joining me for the Edinburgh run of the stage version of this show) and George, and then just a couple bits with Abi and it's all sorted. I think it works, bit difficult to judge at this stage though.

I took some time out last week to look after the family, when I returned to the real world a couple days later it occurred to me just how manic things are at the moment, had a lot of catching up to do. The band have even had to get a dep drummer in (hhmmm) as I'm away a lot over the summer. Maybe things do need to calm down a little. Last week stressed me out more than I've ever been stressed before, but things are gradually falling back into place now; my father is slowly on the mend, I'm being kept on at the day job (as much as I'm sad to see some really good friends have to leave, such is the nature of this industry), just need to write the second Edinburgh show, and learn it, then I think it's time to sleep...for a couple days or so.