This morning got off to a very early start. At 6am we carefully squeezed the entire set for Backstage in Biscuit Land into a cab and headed for Gatwick. We’re off to Vårscenefest in Tromsø, Norway for our first ever international performance.

As you’d expect, my vocal tics are a big part of the show and because they draw on absolutely anything I’ve ever hear, known, or experienced, they tend to be quite culturally specific. For example, B-List British celebrities, 1980’s children’s TV shows, branded foodstuffs and English market towns all feature prominently.

In an attempt to prepare us for a Nordic audience my co-performer Chopin has spent the last few weeks peppering our conversations with facts about Norway. This means I now know:

Norwegians are the biggest consumers of frozen pizzas in the world.
They consume an average of five cups of coffee per day.
They invented skiing.

Chopin’s also been translating some of my most common tics into Norwegian. While tics are quite suggestible, the results of trying to programme them in are unpredictable. So far only one of Chopin’s translations seems to have stuck – “Pinnsvin!”

Pinnsvin is Norwegian for hedgehog.

We’ve got our first performance tomorrow, and while most of the show will be in English, at least the hedgehogs will be bi-lingual.