"Don't Play it Again, Sam."


Any regulars at Mostly Comedy tomorrow will be pleased to learn that after seven years, I’ve finally got around to changing the house music.

We haven’t really played the same tracklist at every gig, though it isn’t far off. The reason it’s taken so long to switch things around is it’s not as simple as choosing a different CD or putting our MP3 player on shuffle. For ease of running on the night, all of our technical queues – be it music, video or pictures – are built into a slideshow, which I control from the stage by remote. This was originally done to simplify things, as everything comes from one source (which was useful when we did our shows in Edinburgh and ran Mostly Comedy in London, as we didn’t have a technician) – but it’s also because I’m a control freak. If I had my way, I’d be King of the World; like King of the Hill, only less cartoonlike.

It’s not that we didn’t want to change it - we’ve had the best intentions – but when there’s a lot to do in little time, it’s always the first job we sacrifice. There’s also a sense of tradition; we wouldn’t want to play just any old thing; well, Glyn might, but he bought the single ‘Teletubbies Say “Eh-oh’ for non-ironic reasons.

Tomorrow, there’ll be no ‘Best of David Bowie 1969 / 1974’ and ‘Very Best of Elvis Costello’ (Declan's 'Best' is clearly slightly better than Ziggy). But what will there be? You’ll have to come down to find out. One thing’s for certain: we’ll close the show with The Beatles’ Hey Bulldog. If we didn’t, the planet would collapse in on itself.

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