Arsenal Adventures.


Tonight, I caught the train to Finsbury Park to talk to a pubful of people about Noel Edmonds and gloryholes - which are one and the same thing - before catching the train home again, to sit on a sofa with a cat on my lap and write this.

The gig was fun; one of the most enjoyable I’ve had so far this year. There was a sense of finally getting back on the horse after what’s been a slow and uncertain start to 2017 as regards confidence and direction; finally, I’m beginning to find faith again, and am enjoying talking to an audience about something new; the fact the content is starting to be well-received gives me the push to work on more.

Before I forge too far ahead, I've still got my last performance of Mostly David Ephgrave to go, at the Leicester Comedy Festival on Saturday. I’m looking forward to this too; it will be nice to give it a final airing and then draw a line under it for a while; I’m going to treat it like the last day of term and have fun with it.

I'll do my best not to overcook it before then. I did a run on Sunday and a run today, then I’ll do a couple on Thursday and then leave it until the day. It’s a fine line between reminding yourself of how it goes and going through the motions. I don’t want to be searching to remember the content, nor do I want to be saying the words without connecting to them. Either way, it’s nice when - like today - it’s pretty much all in my head and feels slick. That’s the benefit of having done it so many times in Edinburgh; you can’t beat having that many gigs in quick succession for making you feel match fit. I’m looking forward to when I feel the same about the next show...though this is likely to be some way off.

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Image
Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera
Read more

Stevenage: A (Tiny) River Runs Through it.

If ever a river was mis-sold, it’s the Roaring Meg in Stevenage. I just walked past it on my way to the retail park that has taken its name. They’re similarly uninspiring. The river is less of a roar and more of a dribble; cystitis sufferers produce greater flow. The retail park is soulless. What was once a thriving enterprise is nearly devoid of atmosphere, save an underlying essence of emptiness and despair. With a Toys R Us. When it was first built I was excited. Back then, the thought of a bowling alley, an ice rink, a Harvester and a Blockbuster Video within a small surface area was enticing. I celebrated many birthdays on site. There was an indoor cricket pitch there for a while where I once had a joint party with a friend. Why someone with an almost pathological fear of sport would agree to such a venture is beyond me, but I did it. Now, there’s very little at the Roaring Meg of note. The river would be a metaphor for the shopping ce
Read more

Hoo-ray and up She Rises.

So much has happened since my last post in March that this blog risks sounding like an itinerary. The main news is that Hitchin Mostly Comedy will return in the summer at a new venue, the Queen Mother Theatre . The road to this decision was convoluted, though enough fell into place en route to leave me optimistic about this new start. The catalyst was a survey I ran via our mailing list a few months back, in which I asked, "If the club returned in the current climate, with tickets still around £15 (and with similar line-ups), would you still attend?"; the response to which, in simple terms, was a resounding yes. Nearly 250 mailing list subscribers responded in a single week, with around a hundred also taking the option to leave some feedback. And only two people were abusive, which counts as a win when you consider they posted their comments online anonymously. Imagine how many more insults we would have received if the comedy club was a woman. Particularly if she was Diane
Read more