Apparently giving lectures on Serial Killers in Lancaster is a profitable racket. I was slightly surprised that The Grand was packed out. According to one of the women who do this regularly there are a few lecturers who are on this circuit. I guess if it’s a podcast genre then why not have it as a live show?
I and Thé Live Rep headed for a catch up in the pub beforehand which was sorely needed to be honest. We both caught each other up on our mental health, I think I slightly win on who’s doing worse today. Yay me. What a win.
Then we got to The Grand – (I realised quite how techy and shiny going to see shows in London really is given that that’s what I’ve been doing this year) and settled in. Couldn’t resist sending Radio Phil a picture because hell it’s a gorgeous Georgian theatre. Even if it’s still at a tech level that I could operate – unlike the very fancy stuff for Cabaret and Les Mis.
I was surprised by how little new information I got from the show. I was also surprised by how many serial killers I can recognise from their pictures. However apparently this is entirely normal for round here as in the second part of the show when asking for audience participation the host commented that Lancaster were always good with the obscure answers. Apparently other parts of the country may find it harder to produce multiple answers to such challenges as name a serial killer who targeted men (seemed like the whole audience could name several), name a serial killer who isn’t white (to my shame I could only remember nicknames and areas), name a female serial killer.
I shouted out Aileen Wuornos (because of course I did) and then as we were leaving got feminist fangirled at by another member of the audience. Because, yeah it’s kinda difficult not to root for Aileen sometimes… except obviously she was, y’know, killing people…
So what were the two facts I learnt? That the Vampire of Düsseldorf’s mummified bisected head is in a museum in Ohio. That Pedro Rodriguez Filho killed his father whilst they were both in prison not in a prison visiting room – but to be fair he’s only recently corrected that one possibly on his YouTube channel which is what he’s doing now!
There were a lot of reasonably gruesome slides that we saw which I wasn’t expecting but I was ok with, she wasn’t great with warnings about what was coming up and a few people left seemingly because they weren’t coping with that sort of thing. I’m not sure I’d go see her again or at least not unless she was doing a more specialist part of the subject, but it wasn’t a bad night all things considered.