Andy McH's blog

Gary Numan - Live in Sydney 2011

2012-02-10T09:59:00.000Z

So, Gary performed his Pleasure Principle shows and this one from Australia has just been released for free on Moshcam. Enjoy! This is a site I haven't heard of before but I think I'm going to spend quite some time exploring it. Lots of well filmed free gigs.

Watch Gary Numan and other great gigs on Moshcam.

The Death Of A Comedian

2012-02-07T09:22:00.000Z

I first heard about Andy Zaltzman (aka Zaltar The Magnificent, amongst many other aliases) through The Bugle podcast. If you don't know what that is, then first of all, shame on you, and second of all, its a weekly podcast (or audio newspaper for a visual world) brought to us every week by Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver (you know, the English guy from The Daily Show. No, not Louis Theroux. He's not even on The Daily Show. Yes, I know they're both English. Yes they are both quite polite but cheeky middle class boys. Yes they both have similar hair cuts. Yes, I know they both have glasses. But really, there is nothing remotely similar about them. They are totally different. Totally. Now shut up.)

I came late to Bugling, but am currently working my way through the back issues of what I would describe as a perfect combination of biting satire, 80s power ballads, bad puns, forced similes (no, not forced smiles: they come fairly natuarally!) and bullshit. The Bugle still runs as an independent podcast after times online cruelly sacked both our heroes a few weeks ago.

Armchair Revolutionary

If you take away the power ballads, then that is pretty much what you get when you see Zaltzman live. I met up with Sarah and Jack in the Soho Theatre bar and we were the first through the door. It was rather strange though as when the doors were opened, every one just stood around looking embarrassed. So, we got to the front row, where we settled down. We looked behind us and there didn't seem to be many people here. We did the same 10 minutes later and it was packed.

Andy gave a few fantastic lines pre-show back stage: "Ladies and gentlemen, the show will begin in approximately 6 minutes and 48 seconds, that's 6 minutes and 45 seconds", before we heard him give a theatre manager hell for not getting all his diva demands. He argued that he couldn't balance the fruit on his head before finding that the apple he was given was perfect for this role before the soon to be fatal accident occurred.

The end of Andy Zaltzman

Andy took to the stage with an arrow through his head, in a possible tribute to Steve Martin. He does have a unique look: Those of you who caught the BBC programme about the Late And Live comedy night in Edinburgh would have heard him abused as looking like Sideshow Bob, Mick Hucknall and many many others. But for me, I think of him as Charlie Chuck's son (If you don't know who he is then look him up).

He called NHS Direct and was eventually told that the arrow through his head would give him 66 minutes to live, so he decided it was best to crack on with the show. He had road tested some of the jokes in the most recent Bugle, so it looks like this show is constantly developing. He has an old fashioned looking radio which, he claims, will provide him with stories to satirise (he is fully qualified he tells us).

He hits the targets a Bugler would expect, but from an unusually silly angle. He even manages to speak on the current events in Syria and make us laugh, where an unqualified satirist may make us uncomfortable about such a terrible topic.

#savethebugle

Finally 66 minutes is up, and Andy slumps back into his chair before the lights go out and the theatre assistant covers his lifeless body (perhaps another reference back to his infamous Manchester gig) with a shroud. We all awkwardly file out, nodding our heads in respect to this great man who gave his life for bullshit. Well except for me. I took a picture.

Armchair Revolutionary: You have until Saturday to see this show and you had better do.

#SAVETHEBUGLE !

My Ideal Woman Is A Black Man

2012-02-01T10:20:00.002Z

Bridget Christie as Louise Mensch (feminist)

So said Zeus, as played by Tom Golding, along with his unlikely named co-god, Nathan (William Andrews). I shamefully couldn't remember their names, I mean, I could picture them, but after 16 amazing acts, it's difficult to remember names. Thanks to Tom for reminding me!

Rob & Alex Edelman

The Alternative Comedy Memorial Society had its final show night at The New Red Lion last night. The venue has been sold, which is a shame. It's had so many great acts and club nights on. Good news though. ACMS will be on next month in a big top in Dalston. Thanks so much to Thom Tuck and John Luke Roberts for putting this night on.

This night was utterly mad and brilliant. We didn't get any acts talking about their toasters only warming the bread or burning it black. We got, what I can only imagine is something as exciting as alternative comedy was like in the early 80s. I was to young and living too far away to experience it live, but I can imagine The Dangerous Brothers would not look out of place on this stage.

We had a man playing Guess Who with hammers and eggs, a woman trying to eat 4 eclairs in a minute, the country and western awards, an actor with his Northern unreconstructed wannabe-comedian father "Cock is for jokes, Penis is for examinations", Sara Pascoe, and a new nervous female comedian who just wanted to make friends, and an amazing trio of acts to end the show.

Isy Sutie

Alex Edelman from Wisconsin came on during the country and western awards and he dragged Rob on stage to suggest which jokes he did from a larger folder that he gave him. Of course, Rob enjoyed giving him the most awkward jokes possible.

I had seen Isy Sutie just a few nights previously at the Frank Skinner & Friends show (but due to toilet issues hadn't seen much of her act!). She came on and did a couple of songs including about her driving instructor, Sue. Isy is always adorable and I can't imagine anyone not falling in love with her. I had met her in the interval outside but assumed she was here as a punter rather than an act so it was a nice surprise.

Lou Sanders

Bridget Christie was on next as "Tory MP, Louise Wensch - I AM A FEMINIST!" with a hideous mask and Nazi helmet. Wow. She was astonishingly good as usual though I'm sure a few people didn't know how to take her. Why is she not more famous? I have been asking this for so long, as she is easily one of the top 5 standups in the country. I imagine it may be to do with the way she dresses?

Thom and John Luke cut through the backdrop for the next part with their Stanley knives before being reminded that Bridget was still changing behind it. As she heard it she bellowed through "I AM A FEMINIST!" one more time, before Lou Sanders was introduced.

I'm a big fan of Lou's and have seen her on a number of occasions. Tonight she had possibly had a few beers and slightly forgot what was going on. But again, like Isy, she is strangely adorable and she managed to get through her set in the end without too many casualties, even though she had attacked two of the tables with a big knife before throwing it into the stage.

ACMS is an astonishingly good night and I hope it thrives, and like alternative comedy in the 80s, I hope it can soon become the mainstream and displace the John Bishops and McIntyres and become the mainstream of tomorrow.

See you in Dalston!

Frank Skinner and Friends

2012-01-27T10:07:00.001Z

A few weeks ago my mate who took me to Dara O'Briain suggested we go to see Frank Skinner. He is doing a show with a different headliner every night as well as a cabaret act. I had a look at the list of who was on and chose Thursday to go as Richard Herring was headlining. Though, its a good line up. I would have been happy to see any of these bills.

We met up at Halfway To Heaven and had a couple of pints downstairs. Andrew's flat mate Marc joined us and we were having such a good time it got to 7:45 before we noticed the time and hot-footed it to the theatre.

We were in the balcony, but the second row from the front and near the aisle (where I like to be). Andrew faffed around for a bit getting his jacket off, etc etc and we sat down.

Frank came out told a seemingly random punchline to a joke. It seemed an unusual start, but he then explained that he likes to end the show on a cliff hanger and it was the punchline to the joke he had told last night. He started to chat to the crowd but the first guy he spoke to on the front row wasn't giving anything back, so Frank was forced to admit defeat and go elsewhere. He next found a lad who claimed to be a geography teacher who turned out to be an actor who had come with his mother. Frank suggested to the mother, Christine, that if she was easily offended she put cotton wool in her ears, and she played along with the joke brilliantly. He played a George Formby song for a little singalong, but all in all Frank was taking a while to warm himself up I think. He did point out 2 empty seats on the front row and commented on how annoying it was.

Joe Lycett was first on. His opening line was about how he farted non stop for 14 seconds, and he knew that because he was watching Countdown at the time! He read a great string of emails about someone taking offence to his character on Epic Win and he won over the audience fairly easily. He was followed by Isy Sutie (I almost feel contractually obliged to the write "Dobby from Peep Show") She is a very lovable performer but I was so distracted by the wee I needed to have that I couldn't pay enough attention!

I snuck out for my wee, and it was amazing. In the time between starting and finishing my wee, 2 other guys had come into the loos, done their wees, washed and dried their hands and left. It was astonishing. I got back just as Isy was ending and the first half had come to a close.

In the interval I chatted to the theatre manager and managed to wangle our way into those 2 front row seats. Of course Frank noticed and asked where we had come from, possibly hoping we were latecomers. I explained we had come from the balcony. Frank asked the balcony en masse if they were having a good time. Yes they replied. And are you glad these 2 lads have left you. YES came the response even louder!

Next up was the Jive Aces. They were a swing band in the style of Darts from the 70s, and they were truly joyful. All dressed completely in yellow they played 3 or 4 feel good songs including "Bring Me Sunshine". I was disappointed that they finished so soon.

Richard Herring came on to close the show and performed his fairly standard club set. I was delighted of course when Rich got to his "pity fuck" line and pointed straight at my mate. Added on to the end of the material that I know probably too well, was the soon to be classic Fererro Rocher routine. I'm not sure what happened write at the end, but there must have been some offence taken as Rich said he was glad that he could disgust a Frank Skinner audience!

The show came to a temporarily confusing end, where he started to tell and old school pub style joke. but of course, we never heard the punchline...

St Sanders

2012-01-25T23:39:00.000Z

So I haven't written anything for a while. I was going to write about the Godless show I saw in December but by the time Heather announced she had a free ticket going spare I was quite drunk and can't remember a lot of detail. I'mm off to see Frank Skinner tomorrow so hopefully will have something new to say then.

However i have been trawling my YouTube favourites and rediscovered this clip which makes me laugh more than almost any other clip on the internet. So I thought I would put it here.

Byeeeee !

My Name Is Gandhi

2011-11-30T12:16:00.001Z

I wasn't feeling well so I was planning a night in. I had even turned down Sarah's invitiation to Pappy's Flatshare Slamdown. But it was Fat Tuesday, which is just a short walk from my house. Paul Sinha and Tiffany Stevenson were on so it was pretty tempting, and then I got Facebook message to say that Greg Davies was going to appear too. My mind was made up!

I got there around 7:45 and got what is becoming my usual seat at the left side of the front row. A couple sat beside me, and spent the 20 minutes till show time snogging. I buried my face deeper into my Kindle!

Greg Davies

Nish Kumar is the new host of Fat Tuesday and he has reduced the capacity of the room, making it more comfortable, and less death trap like, however on the two visits I've made, the audiences have been smaller than in Tiernan's time. On a personal level however, this is right up my street. The smaller the better.

Joe Lycett

First up tonight was Joe Lycett, who I have never seen live, mainly because of his character in "Epic Win". He is younger looking in the flesh, and he spent some time talking about his experiences as a bisexual, as well as introducing the audience to Grindr. He asked if anyone had seen Epic Win, and it seems only two of us had. He spoke to me about it, and I felt quite horrible telling him that I hadn't seen him earlier because of this! Still, he did his Epic Win voice which was surprisingly loud (and butch) for such a slight man. He had already asked me to explain my "Who Is Virgilio Anderson" t-shirt, but I told him it would be quicker to ask Richard Herring as it is a rather long story. (He said that as Herring was rather highbrow, and that as his act was going to start with jokes about farting I had better leave.) He also spoke of the time he performed on the same bill as Jim Davidson and how he managed to make him realise that "Chink" is not an acceptable noun to use.

Tiff Stevenson

Old Rope's Tiff Stevenson was up next, though most people will know her as the runner up on "Show Me The Funny" (a series that started terribly, but got better as it went on. A sort of X Factor for professional comedians that was eventually won by Pat Monahan).
However I and other Precious Little "podophiles" know her for James' mum's bucket.

She told us of the expectations other people have of her as a woman in her thirties, such as having children, and shocked the nice middle aged couple in the 2nd row with a couple of well placed "C-bombs"

Hari Kondabolu

After the interval we had an Asian-American comedian called Hari Kondabolu who I hadn't heard of before. However he was excellent. He was just geeky enough for me. He did a joke about chess, which got a couple of sniggers, to which he respnded with "Ah. You're a draughts audience" (he had just changed the punchline from "Checkers"

The amazing Greg Davies came on to do 15 minutes of new material, though I'm sure I have seen some of it before. Poor Greg was suffering and didn't look well at all. He apologised to the audience if they came down with anything in the next few days. He was telling us of strange nicknames that people at his school had (eg "Baghdad" because he came to school with a bag bought by his dad!) and "Bad Back Brown" (who was a kid at school who hurt is back for just one day and the name stuck). He told us he had asked audiences what nicknames they had and a camp young man said he got called "Gandhi", simply because he was gay and his name was Andy. I may well adopt that.

Paul Sinha

Paul Sinha came to close the show. Paul always starts his shows by explaining that he is Asian, gay, a former doctor and 24th best quizzer in the country. He told us of his interviews on radio with controversial figures: one time with the deputy leader of the BNP (while in his bath) which I had heard before as well as a story where he was interviewed about Islam (which is odd as he is a Hindu) alongside Anjem Choudary, as well as the time Jim Davidson came to see his show.

A double Davidson night!

After apologising to Joe for being mean, I had a chat with Paul and Nish after the show and accompanied them towards Angel station. They are two very lovely guys as well.

I'm glad I have "rediscovered" Fat Tuesday. I used to go almost every show back in 2009 but haven't been since. I'll be back more regularly in future though.

Dara O'Briain & Friends - Benefit for the Irish Cultural Centre

2011-11-22T09:48:00.000Z

My friend and I had a deal. A couple of years ago I wanted to go and see The Jesus Lizard but had no one to go with. No one had heard of them. no one wanted to go. So I bought my mate a ticket on the understanding that if he wanted to go to a gig in the future but needed someone to go with then i would go to it, whatever it was.

Last week he bought 2 tickets to Dara O'Briain at The Palace Theatre, and as it had almost sold out we got our own box. This was much different to the usual spit and sawdust comedy nights I usually go to.

We got there, and ordered our incredibly expensive drinks as well as pre-ordering our interval drinks and headed to our lovely little box. The evening started off with some fiddle-dee-dee music from "Four Men And A Dog" and continued with some Riverdancing types with lights on their shoes (who I have to admit were excellent!)

Dara, our compere came on, and did a cracking set to warm up the crowd for what was to come. He spent a lot of time on a story about how he had saved 2 people's lives and asked the audience if they had done the same, which resulted in some great banter. Jason Byrne was up next. I had only seen him on TV before (in fact that goes with everyone on the bill) and hadn't paid him that much attention but he did a cracking show. We had a little more fiddle-dee-dee and then it was the interval.

Dara came on to apologise for the late start of the second half but apparently there was a "fracas" at the bar, and he sarcastically thanked the largely Irish crowd for reinforcing national stereotypes. Andrew Maxwell was up next and, again, I hadn't paid him too much attention before, but he is certainly someone I would see again. I was very excited that the "secret special guest" was Tommy Tiernan. I have seen him on TV a few times and have been wanting to see him live for ages!

He came on to the stage, punctuating his punchlines with kung fu kicks. His material addressed his own problems with his own mental illness and had a very touching story about his younger brother with cerebral palsy and his dad's reaction when discovering a possibly mentally ill baboon in a safari park. Brilliant stuff. Strangely there was a shouting man on our floor (luckily we were safe in our box). I'm not sure what he was angry about. Could he have misinterpreted Tommy's jokes and got offended? Or (more than likely) could he have been the man causing the fracas in the bar earlier? Either way Tommy cracked on, and possibly didn't even notice this commotion.

The show ended with a little more hip hop riverdancing and fiddle-dee-dee followed by a an informal chat between the 4 comedians. What surprised me more was that the very end of the show had Jason Byrne in just trousers and vest riverdancing round the stage solo and very competently too. I got my video fired up for this, but the bloomin' file got corrupted. Damn.

Dara tweeted later that had been threatened after the gig by someone who wanted to punch him. Either this was a surprisingly violent crowd who just don't like jokes, or the fracas / shouting man had struck again!

It was a nice close to my week of gigs, and I skipped all the way home.

Stewart Lee - Carpet Remnant World

2011-11-20T12:24:00.000Z

I wonder if I go to Leicester Square Theatre too much. The manager today queried my choice of seat. "R14? That's not like you". R14 is the seat right at the back of the theatre which no one would generally choose, but as I just needed one ticket decided it would be fine.

Stew hovered at the top of the stairs while his intro music played and strode down the aisle once there was enough dry ice on the stage. He explained near the beginning that he had no real narrative, but he had to choose a title, and that 2 minutes from the end of the show he would mention the title while some sad music played. So it was good to know what to expect.

Stew started with a great opening line asking who remembers where they were during 9/11. You know, the bolting horse? (Spoiler / punchline not included!) He touches on travellers, and has a decent stab at a few Muslim jokes. His usual technique of gesturing at a large swathe of the audience and casting them as the new fans who only know him from his Comedy Vehicle series (who he hates) and the old fans (who again all happen to be sitting in the same general area of the theatre). He reminisces about the jungle canyon rope bridges from the 80s and the fact that they are all broken. This turns into a routine about Thatcher and Scooby Doo, after which Stew reveals that he and Richard Herring wrote a list of 10 topics they would never cover as they were too cliched: 2 of them being Thatcher and Scooby Doo.

Seat R14 was actually awful. If it wasn't the staff wandering around in front of me it was the audience getting up and down to go to the toilet. I moved to prop up the bar for the second half.

In this half he touches again on comedy and that being a dad and also constantly travelling from provincial theatre to provincial theatre means that he hasn't done anything. The modern comedians all go on adventures. Richard Herring even grew a moustache and that was funny. He calls Dave Gorman the Mr Benn of comedy (but as is often the case when talking about his contemporaries, it's just harmless ribbing! The back of the stage are various rolls of carpet remnant of various colours and lengths, which transfer into a gorgeous city skyline at the end of the show.

I quickly spoke to Stew on my way out and told him how much I enjoyed both this show and Bridget Christie's sitcom and scuttled off into the night. From his brief reply it looks like something will happen with it but I don't know whether it's destined for radio or TV. I don't know why but I feel so intimidated interacting with him. Anyway, go and see the show. He's only on here till February!

Richard Herring - What Is Love Anyway?

2011-11-19T09:47:00.000Z

After sorting out racism and religion in his previous tours, this year Richard sets out to destroy love. He explains that he hopes he isn't successful, as his girlfriend may not approve. This is a much sweeter show than previous ones, and he explores love from different angles. Are children capable of love? Richard thinks not. Is is impressive when a father tells people how much he loves his kids? Again, Richard thinks not.

I got to the Soho Theatre around 945 giving me just enough time to get a beer before going upstairs to the venue. I've never been here before and it's quite a nice room. Steep seats, and it's a surprise to find that the room holds 150 people. It feels much more intimate than that. I got a second row seat and we awaited Richard's arrival. There was of course a love theme to the pre-show music, and of course Howard Jones signalled the start of the show.

A very unusual heckle came right after Richard's logically twisted routine about doubling the amount of Ferrero Rochers he has to buy his girlfriend each year, resulting in a new slave trade in order to build the eventual full size pyramid. "You should have thought about that earlier" came the shout, before Richard mentioned that that was indeed the whole point of the routine.

The end of the show was beautiful, discussing his 100 year old grandmother who has Alzheimer's disease, over a soundtrack of Debussy's Clair De Lune. This was emotional without being mawkish, and gave the show a real punch with the audience laughing one minute, then being close to tears the next and back again. Richard said on Twitter yesterday that audiences seem to like this, but the critics see it differently. Personally I think it wraps the show up gorgeously, and like most Herring shows, gives us something to think about.

I overheard someone in the loos after say to his friend that it was like a lecture with some jokes, which i thought was a little harsh, though I imagine he was hoping for a one-liner merchant like Tim Vine or Jimmy Carr. A slight annoyance for me was the man sitting directly behind me who kept muttering the punchlines, sometimes before they were even said by Richard. I don't know if he thought he was impressing his mate, but he wasn't impressing me!

I'm seeing Stewart Lee next, and to beat this show he will have to be on top form !

I haven't mentioned my favourite phrase of the whole show. In case you are wondering though, it is "Vaginal Frubes".

Fun Haus

2011-11-17T09:07:00.001Z

I had bought a ticket to this some time ago, but yesterday Sir Bob mentioned he wanted to go. I told him it was sold out but that I would look for a spare ticket on Twitter. With Martin White's help I discovered that Peter couldn't go and both myself and Andy T managed to nab his spare tickets. Andy and I texted backwards and forwards for a bit and he seemed like a nice guy, even though I hadn't met him. It took a while to work out the logistics of picking up the tickets but we worked out a plan. Peter also suggested putting the money to charity which was rather nice of him, so we decided to choose SCOPE.

I met Sir Bob at a pub in Kings Cross and we headed up the extremely long Caledonian Road. Inside the Pleasance we saw the lovely Rob Sedgebeer which is always a delight! (even though he is always mean to me!) and located Andy. Tickets were swapped and we headed upstairs. Things seemed to be running late. I thought I should nip to the loo but was told that if I did I couldn't come back till the interval as things were about to start. I decided I could wait, and soon Danielle Ward took to the stage for some "speed compering" as time was short.

Danielle explained the format of the show and about the loo situation to which Sir Bob let out an "Oh fuck..." Danielle, possibly thinking it was me, gave me special dispensation to go, so Bob and I hared down the stairs and we were back within 2 minutes after meeting Thom Tuck who seemed worried in case the second act was about to start.

The first show was a sitcom written by Bridget Christie based on The Mitford Sisters (cleverly disguised as The Flapper Sisters). What a cast. We had Margaret Cabourn Smith, Sue Perkins, Peter Serafinowitz and Colin Hoult. as well as others. This was set sometime in the past, but at a non-specific time (like Downton Abbey) so the characters were unsure if it was the 30s or the 40s. After lots of talk about tinctures, which appear to turn Unity Flapper into a fat Nazi, Bridget Christie arrived as "Coughing Mrs Broadwoodwidger" which was definitely the highlight for me.

Next up was a spy comedy written by the Penny Dreadfuls where the cast were joined by Tony Gardener (who know, that guy from Lead Balloon and Fresh Meat). This was written by The Penny Dreadfuls and contains all the little word twists you would expect of them. Colin Hoult was back, as was Sue Perkins. Colin's role as the Russian was all the better for occasionally lapsing into French.

After the interval was the musical half of the evening. Colin Hoult and Margaret Cabourn Smith sang 2 or 3 songs from Psister Psycho, a musical I have never heard yet but you can download free from iTunes. It's been sitting on my phone for some time so really must get round to it this week. The scene they played was one where the lead character (a shy virgin) discovers a boy trapped in a cupboard and of course, they fall in love. If you have only seen Gutted (also free to download on iTunes) then you'll love this too.

Tony Gardener was back next singing a new song from Ward and White. He seemed nervous, but did a great job as you would expect, one song being about being an angry bitter old man, where he pretended to be offended at being cast in this role, being only in his late 40s. Margaret came on next to do a hateful duet with Ruth Bratt , a song about 2 women in love with the same man, which was a much naughtier version of "I Know Him So Well".

Martin and Tony try to fix the accordion (photo stolen from Ruth Bratt)

The show ended with a Martin and the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra presenting a few songs from his new project "Mr Flea" about a flea circus. However ... disaster! Martin's accordion broke, and would only play one note as the button wouldn't come out! After borrowing various items from members of the audience, pens, tweezers etc, Martin retired backstage to try and fix it and Danielle took to the stage to tell us a few stories. Then, something magical happened. Danielle asked Jeremy Limb (on keyboards) if he could play "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret, which Danielle smouldered into, before being joined by Margaret, where things turned a little more raucous. Although unplanned, this may have been my highlight of the entire evening.

Martin came back, defeated, accordionless, but the show must go on, and luckily Martin found an accordion found on his keyboard. Colin Hoult, Thom Tuck were joined by Gus Brown to sings a few songs from Mr Flea. Gus played the evil flea tamer perfectly, and the show ended with The Flea National Anthem "One Nation On A Dog". I recorded a few of the Mr Flea songs at Union Chapel a few weeks ago which I will add below.

Ward & White's Fun Haus is a delight. Tickets also go fast - both nights so far have sold out - so when the date of the next one is announced, get that ticket immediately!

The Wisdom Of Animals

The Flea National Anthem

Return to Fat Tuesday

2011-11-16T08:48:00.000Z

There have been a few changes at this long running local comedy club. First of all, no Tiernan Douieb, which is obviously a shame. They have also spaced the chairs out for a bit more safety and comfort, turning a packed 70ish capacity room into a much more relaxed 40 seat place. Much more less of a fire trap.

It's been over a year since I've been here. I don't know why it's taken me so long as I've always had a good time. Up until 750, there were only 6 of us in, but between 8pm and 820 another 25 people arrived. I'm not sure why they were so late as the gig was meant to start at 8pm.

The compere was Ed Gamble who did a pretty good job getting the room on side and picking on poor Connor for his poor clapping skills. As is normal in comedy clubs he asked the front row what they did for a living and where they came from and i wasn't spared this. It's always fun yet slightly embarrassing explaining to comedians what I do (and if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you) and Ed wasn't sure if I was making it up or not.

I was chosen as the designated clapper to bring on the first act, Matthew Crosby. He's the bearded one from Pappy's, whose Flatshare Slamdown (download it from that link for free) I am a huge fan of. He was trying a lot of new material and had to refer to his notes a lot but was rather funny, teaching us about the awkwardness of introductions when you only know one person's name, his hypochondria and lying.

Daniel Simenson

Next up was Daniel Simenson, quite a cute young Norwegian guy. He spoke quite slowly, thinking about each line, leaving a lot of room for the lines to breathe. The audience left quite a few silences too, but mostly laughed. His squirrel impression was a bit too derivative of Izzard for me, but I did like the end of the gig when he went back over the ideas that didn't work, and questioned why he thought they were funny in he first place.

Chris Stokes

After the break Chris Stokes came on. He's not from London! Shocking. He's a short skinny cross between Bernard Butler and Professor Brian Cox, and mainly spoke about his geekiness (which a lot of people do in comedy these days) but the highlight (for us, not him) was telling us about getting sexually harassed by a tramp the last time he visited London.

Finally Simon Munnery arrived to do his "Hats Off To The 101ers" show. I would definitely put him down as one of the top 3 comedians working today. He has influenced my other favourites (Lee & Herring) and is absolutely mesmerising. He played a few songs ("Sainsburys", "Stop The War") and decided to rip apart the lyrics to John Lennon's "Imagine". There were a few people here tonight who clearly didn't know who he was and I could only imagine what they thought when the Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall-alike took to the stage (well, floor) but everyone was won over quickly apart from the one audience member who walked out fairly sharpish.

And this is just the start of my comedy week. I still have Fun Haus, Richard Herring, Stewart Lee and Dara O'Briain to go...

Ricky Gervais: An apology?

2011-10-21T20:22:00.002+01:00

Imagine my surprise on my way home from work, idly checking Twitter when I saw this exchange of emails between Ricky Gervais and Nicky Clark (the disability campaigner who was interviewed on this BBC show yesterday)

Nicky Clark

Ricky Gervais: A very public thank you for your kind, rational and understanding words in private.

Nicky Clark: Thank you for getting in touch. Do you mind if I ask you a couple of things? Nik

RG: Ask away

NC: I now understand that you didn't and wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone. Do you understand why people got upset by it ?

RG: I do now. Never dreamed that idiots still use that word aimed at people with Down's Syndrome. Still find it hard to believe

NC: How has the response to your use of it online and in the press made you feel ?

RG: A mixture of confusion, anger, terror and disappointment. But mostly naive. Never meant the word like that and never word.

NC: Some of your followers have attacked people like me for criticising you over this do you condone this behaviour?

RG: Definitely not - reason I contacted you to be honest. The hate mail I had was psychotic and wouldn't wish that on anyone.

RG: What do you think of how the press have portrayed me, out of interest?

NC: I think that had I not spoken to you,I would have believed that you were a bully.The tweets seemed out of step with your work.

RG: Cheers. Understandable Using that word to mean DS WOULD be bullying. I'm glad people now realise I'm an idiot instead. Ha ha

NC: many people have been confused by your tweets to anyone who has been hurt by them what would you say?

RG: Well all I can do is apologise and hope they don't confuse those people's views with mine. ( meeting now back in an hour)

NC: okey dokey.

NC: Thank you for that. It's certainly not how I expected today to turn out.

RG: This is better than Frost and Nixon by the way. Speak later

I actually felt a little tinge of emotion, a slight teariness (but I held it back) and I tweeted excited screen shots of this as well as a message of kudos to Ricky for seeing sense, however couldn't believe the self-absorption of the man as he asks what Nicky thinks about how he has been portrayed in the press!

I received a couple of messages from followers who had a mush more cynical outlook than myself, seeing it as "pathetic, now he's got the publicity for his TV programme to pretend he didn't realise for days and days." I may well be naive. And to be honest, this discussion between Gervais and Mrs Clark is all very well, but will his behaviour change. After all, actions do speak louder than words.

I was prepared to see this as a genuine apology and move on, but always keeping an eye on his next move. (I know it sounds a bit school maam-ish!)

Francesca Martinez

Francesa Martinez had a little more to say on the matter. She said to Mrs Clark "I'm so glad Ricky Gervais understood your point". I asked pointed out on Twitter that I was less gleeful and getting more cynical, but that Francesca was happy with the apology to which she replied "It's better than none!". Is that damning with faint praise? I don't know.

Robin Ince

The best response to today's kerfuffle was from Robin Ince who is a very intelligent and well-read comedian who back in the day was Ricky's proto-Karl, having supported Ricky on two tours and being the butt of many of Ricky's jokes. You can read this blog here in full (I recommend you do). Robin had not said anything about this issue up until now and had obviously thought long and hard before wading in. Even Ricky promoted this in his Twitter stream. In it, Robin explains that the more famous and rich someone gets, the less empathy they can have. Yes, Ricky has the right to say whatever he likes, but questions why he feels the need to. According to Robin, Ricky truly did not know that "mong" was still actively used against disabled people and thought he was just making a silly playground taunt. Ricky Gervais is the man that says shocking things. He was living up to his reputation.

Robin did then decide he was going to rewrite his blog as it had given some people the impression that he thought that Ricky was not aware that "mong" had been used as a Downs Syndrome slur.

After Ricky's meeting (with his publicist perhaps?) the conversation continued:

Ricky Gervais: And we're back. (Sweaty, but raring to go)

Nicky Clark: hello again.Aside from the words you were using you also posted photo's pulling faces.Was that supposed to be someone disabled

RG: No. The point is to look as hideous as possible without the use of props. Not a great art form I'll admit. Ha ha

RG: Interestingly chat shows and newspapers have shown them many times. but comedy is about timing I guess. Whoops.

NC: You have adopted a new word in place of your old one people might worry that it's similar to mongol.How do you respond?

RG: Yes it seems even a brand new made up word with no history can cause offence. I wanted to show that a word needs intent.

NC: I've seen the youtube clips of your character Derek Noakes. Is he supposed to be a man with a learning disability?

RG: Hello sorry. Long bath watching "Pointless" Can I answer this question on email then you can post it? I don't know how. Ha

RG: Can't do it in 140 characters. Writing now

NC: Thats great thank you. I'll DM my email shall I? I'll put it on my blog. Very best wishes Nik x

RG: I don't know what that means. Ha ha Useless

NC: I realised as soon as I sent that.

RG: I put my lack of social networking skills down to me being a genius. You should have my answer now by the way.

NC: I have and thank you. best Nik x

Ricky's email arrived which Nicky published on Twitter

RG I've never thought of Derek as disabled per se. Definitely nothing specific. Not Down's Syndrome, Autistic or someone with mental health problems.
He's certainly "different". But when does a bit weird become an official disability? it's ambiguous and he's certainly an outsider. He's based on some of the strange people that collect autographs or train spot (Oh dear now I'm really in trouble) but not in a sneery way. I love Derek. He's funny, happy, empowered and absolutely charming. I guess I've crossed a nerd with a child.
i think in the present climate people will assume this has to be cruel because he's not the "smartest tool in the box" but it's not at all. We could go back and question many comedy characters. What's Mr Bean for christ sake? DP Gumby? Everyone in The League of Gentleman? They're "weird" sure but "weird" people can't help who they are any more than any one with any form of learning disabilities.

I imagine it's also Ricky's lack of social networking skills that means he doesn't realise why "twong" can still be seen as offensive. Twitter has a long and silly tradition of making portmanteau words starting with the letters "tw". So "Goodnight people" and sometimes be seen as "Goodnight tweeple", and "Let's have a tweetup" etc etc.

Here is Ricky performing as Derek Noakes:

All in all I would like to remain is cynicism free as possible about this and will take it at face value for now. There were a couple of questions Ricky disappointingly didn't answer, and it would have been good if Ricky explicitly told his followers that their conduct was equally as unacceptable. (Even as I write this, looking at the @rickygervais column, it is still populated with "mong" tweets)

Richard Herring

An honourable mention should go to Richard Herring: the only "famous" comedian to make a stand about this a number of days ago. Richard has however pointed out that his SCOPE fundraising site has received many more donations. We have found out this week that language is very powerful, but this shows that the power is not always negative, and a lot of good can come of it.

Donate to Richard's SCOPE fundraising page here

Ricky Gervais: What's the problem?

2011-10-20T18:17:00.002+01:00

So Ricky Gervais said "mong" on Twitter and people got upset? Big deal. He told us he didn't mean Down's Syndrome. He says the modern meaning is just "dopey". Ah that's fine then.

Except it's not.

Firstly he posted these pictures (an almost obsessive amount of them - there may even be more that I've missed)

Secondly, "Mong" is still used as an insult to disabled people.

Richard Herring, a long standing supporter of disabled rights and no stranger to offensive comedy wrote a couple of blogs about this which you can read in full here and here. It was a proud couple of days to be a Richard Herring fan, as he turned out to be the only "name" comedian who publicly stood up against Gervais' rather cavalier use of language.

Herring stated " I found the anger towards me quite surprising and largely amusing, but was also getting a lot of support from people who was glad I had made a mini stand. Ricky Gervais is a powerful figure in the industry and I know it is hard for a lot of people to say anything negative about him for fear of what might happen to their own standing. Funnily enough it's because I don't care about the repercussions or publicity that I am in a position to say that I don't think it's a brilliant thing that he's done."

It was also very interesting to compare the mainly considered tweets from Herring's fans to Gervais with the mainly abusive ones from Ricky's fans. The abuse from his fans was even directed towards the mother of a disabled daughter who was interviewed on the Jeremy Vine show on the BBC.

The "debate" seemed to take a turn and gervais fans were soon talking about offensive comedy, and why shouldn't Ricky be offensive. Some fans accused Herring of being too scared to offend anyone. Others said that the Hitler Moustache could be offensive. This was a (and yes, I'm really going to say this. Let me clear my throat...) red herring.

I kept reminding people that Gervais kept stating that "mong" doesn't mean Down's Syndrome

<-- Look back at these lovely pictures. Remember them? Someone on Twitter asked me why I thought these were mocking the disabled, as if the offense was all in my head. It stacks up. The phrases, the pictures, and of course the clip from Science where he says "Even mongs can say it (mong). That's part of the beauty of the word. They don't see it as a perk I'm sure"

(Video that was here previously removed due to me not realising it was a spoof. Because I'm a twat.)

Ex comic, Christina Martin wrote a great blog where she talks about her experiences with people's reactions to her brain damaged brother and gave us quite an insight into Gervais's character:

"So, I did some stand-up at the Bloomsbury Theatre a few Christmases ago. I was really excited about it as I was on the same bill as Stewart Lee, Richard Herring, Mark Thomas, Josie Long, Chris Addison, loads of really good people. Gervais was also on the bill.

We had a massive green room, full of food and stuff that we were autographing for auction. As it was Christmas there was a lovely festive feel and everyone was having fun backstage.

I was waiting for Gervais to turn up but he never did. After a while it was explained to us by the organiser that he refused to share a green room with anyone, in case we bothered him. Can you imagine Stewart Lee going all fan boy over Ricky Gervais? Please!

They'd had to make him up an impromptu dressing room out of one of the spare rooms backstage. Food and drink was removed from our room for him, and the stuff to be autographed was collected and taken to him when we were all done signing it.

When the show started we all stood in the wings, cheering each other on and watching each others' sets. Then the organiser informed us that Gervais didn't want anyone standing in the wings when he was on, and that we were all to go back to the basement dressing rooms before and during his performance. Twenty performers, many of them top names, being bossed about by this diva-ish man. "

Francesca Martinez (a very funny comedian with Cerebral Palsy) who has worked with Gervais in Extras where they did some amazing satirical work on the issue of disability. This is what's disappointing me. There is no sature here at all. It's just him pulling "mong" faces and saying "mong". There doesn't seem to be any purpose other than to upset people. He denies "mong" is anything to do with disability, but... THAT IS BULLSHIT.

Talking of Francesca, she has made her feelings pretty clear on the matter.

She followed this up with:

Now, I'm a fan of Gervais's TV work and The Office and Extras were both amazing pieces of work. And yes, I'll still watch his new show with Warwick Davis; "Life's Too Short". But I don't hold him remotely as highly as I did. I feel let down.

Anyway, before I go, let me leave you with this excellent blog that you must read. Incidentally, all of the blogs I have quoted are worth reading. Every one is much more considered and articulate than this addled mess.

Wow - this blog just looks really horrible. I don't know how to change the colour of the cut n paste text. I think I know but when I actually do it it looks even worse. But hey ho.

Comedysale.com

2011-10-15T11:55:00.000+01:00

It's mad right? A comedian no one has really ever heard of, booking an 850 seat room, and not allowing the audience to buy tickets at the box office, online or over the phone? Where the only way to buy tickets was to meet him personally? Which meant he had to stand for days with a ludicrously large "Comedy Sale" sign all over London flogging tickets to passers by? Where he even made home visits to delver his tickets?

Well, this is what Sanderson Jones has done. I have written about him before where I first heard of this idea. Sanderson's logic is that as he is one of the few, or possibly only, comedian to sell all his tickets to his smaller Edinburgh Fringe shows by himself, why not book one big show?

Here is Sanderson's introduction:

Sanderson also arranged a few meet ups at his local pub for the audience to get to know each other. Well after all, it's a bit unfair if he has met every single one of us, and we haven't. There will be no strangers at this gig.

Now I tend to go to smaller gigs. It's just the way I like them. Looking back over the gigs I've attended the biggest would probably be a sold out gig at The Leicester Square Theatre. This means that the Comedysale.com gig was the biggest comedy gig I have seen since I saw Billy Connolly back in the 90s.

Sanderson sells tickets to "chuggers":

New Londoner, Sarah had come along to these meet ups. As a big comedy fan she had seen Sanderson flogging his tickets in Edinburgh but hadn't seen him. I also met a couple of fun people at the pub meets and we arranged, along with Sir Bob to meet up at the White Swan near Highbury Corner for drinks beforehand. I made the surprisingly clever decision to eat at the pub which made the rest of the night much less embarrassing.

Why is my camera showing the wrong date?

The Union Chapel is covered in scaffolding but inside is a great space. The downside being that due to it being a church they don't let you bring booze into the venue (A-boooo!)

They do sell it though which is nice. We queued up for a short time before passing Sanderson on the steps, still flogging tickets.

Am enormous screen was showing #comedysale twitter updates. I've always enjoyed live broadcast twitter feeds before and naturally writing rude words to them so mentioned casually on twitter this was happening. And bless them, they sent them in thick and fast, but unfortunately the feed had to be manually refreshed so most of them got lost which was a shame.

The show started with a slide show of all the tickets he had sold to each punter. This made us feel integral to the show if we didn't already. Sanderson came on and seemed genuinely blown away by the turn out. One man, selling 750 tickets was no mean feat!

He had done his research and the first part of the show was peppered throughout with rather embarrassing Facebook and Twitter updates from the audience. A comedy critic had not shown up, so Sanderson decided that in return he went onto Amazon there and then and left a terrible review of his last book. He reviewed the critic more than the book! I think it started with a C and ended with a T.

There was a section where Sanderson put a backdrop behind a lady in the front row and signed into Chat Roulette, finally dropping the sheet to reveal the entire cheering audience as soon as he saw an erect cock (or, as this was in a church, a man in pants - we still saw cock though!)

There was video footage of "sexy" 7 year olds dancing - (Totes Inappropes!), as well as the story of Sanderson's love lost, won, and lost again when he was in Australia. Sanderson spoke about his failures and lack of concentration, all backed up with this amazing multimedia presentation.

The show ended with fire eating, juggling, sexy
nurses (that he had chased round the room Benny Hill style earlier) and the biggest round of applause I've heard for a comedy event in a long long time. There was even an unforced standing ovation.

It's really not 2008!

What an astounding show! At the end of the show, Sanderson told us of the after show party at The Garage, so we hit the bar at The Union, then headed straight there but found it was closed till 11pm. Not to worry, we headed to The Famous Cock (no sniggering please) and went back over. For people in their 40s like me, it was great music and everyone seemed to be having a lot of drunken fun. Sanderson certainly was !

I think I may have even took my top off and may have grinded against a guys bag as he was doing the same from the other side. I think that may have caused a little bit of bafflement and confusion.

I did bump into the lovely Martin White in the Union Chapel bar who reminded me that his Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra is playing at the same venue today (ie Saturday) so think I should wrap this blog up now and get ready for MFMO !

Here's a little snippet of what you missed:

Curse Sir Walter Raleigh

2011-10-02T16:50:00.007+01:00

I had an awful cold and had been suffering bravely and silently. I considered staying in but decided to risk it. After all was is the last ever Curse Sir Walter Raleigh show.

Michael Legge took his first ever solo show to the Edinburgh Fringe last month and decided to finish things off by playing 3 nights in the Lounge of the Leicester Square Theatre. I have seen Michael do a few of these previews - and to Michael, they are all previews - before, and have always had a brilliant time. I actually came along on Tuesday as well, which ended up with Michael, myself and quite a number of the audience sprint-walking to The Phoenix for the Do The Right Thing podcast.

There was less of a rush this time, and after meeting up with Misha, Woolhouse, Jack, Neal, Paul, Simon, Rob and Michael at The Imperial and having a long discussion about the "Smooth Groove", we headed up to the venue where there were some lovely front row seats waiting for us, with a conspicuous 2 seat gap right in the middle.

Michael came on, and immediately noticed the gaps, telling us that they were his least favourite seats. A couple turned up really late (I mean really late, probably about 20 minutes after the start of the show) and Michael made sure they sat there and gave them a lot of attention!

Paul, Jack, Misha, Me and Simon

'Curse Sir Walter Raleigh' is a show about manners and Michael's obsession with them. You might read his blog and think he is a shouty angry man, but that is only in response to the rudeness of strangers. The show starts with a story about whn he and Colin Hoult were "rescued" by Hunter from Gladiators - "a man that doesn't even exist!"

It then moves on to Michael's obsession with Sir Walter Raleigh based upon a lie his father told him when he was 3. He loves him. He hates him. Whatever it is, Sir Walter is an important man in Michael's life. We then move on to where most of the stories from his blogs happen - the train.

taken by Claire Haigh at the Cambridge Comedy Festival

Michael usually works with other people in sketch shows, or tends to compere. I was so surprised to find out this was his first full length solo show. Hopefully there will be more to come. And hopefully there will be other chances for you to see this one.

Michael ended the show by inviting us all (yes, everyone in the theatre) to The Blue Posts in Newman Street, and, at a guess, around 15 of us took him up on the offer. The pub was being painted downstairs so we were herded into a bar upstairs. It was quite a squeeze, but our good time was continuing.

There was a long discussion with Simon and Paul, mainly about cocks and blow jobs, Paul Litchfield turned up and some how it ended up with an arm wrestling competition: Bear (Neal) vs Lion (Paul JL) vs Bird (Simon). Unsurprisingly, Bear won.

Gary Numan - Dead Son Rising

2011-09-17T16:41:00.010+01:00

Gary Numan's career has taken an unusual path. Starting as a fully fledged number 1 single selling pop star in the late 70s, he had a string of top 10 hits for the next 3 years, before gradually losing his commercial appeal. As this happened, he lost his artistic way quite spectacularly.

It took until 1994 for him to start to crawl his way back. He ditched the session musicians, and produced and recorded the "Sacrifice" album himself. This gave Numan his voice back, and although the sound itself was a little muddy, it was a step he needed to take. 1997's "Exile" improved on this further, but it wasn't till 2000 where he discovered his true sound. Influenced by the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode, he released the super heavy "Pure". A few years later "Jagged" was released. Both these albums were epic heavy masterpieces with anthem piling up against anthem.

Now, in 2011 it's time for "Dead Son Rising", a collection of reworkings of songs that he had originally shelved, but after speaking with producer Ade Fenton, decided to rewrite and record these all from scratch, breathing new life into them. Numan doesn't see this as canon, and sees the forthcoming "Splinter" album as the natural follow up to Jagged, however it fills the role extremely well.

The album starts with 'Resurrection'. Within the first few seconds you know you're listening to a Numan album. The atmosphere builds; strange noises make you uneasy, before the first huge booming synth chords hit. Numan wears his influences on his sleeve, and this has a real Nine Inch Nails feel to it, reminiscent of 'Hyperpower' from the Year Zero album. It takes an interesting twist, with sampled vocals giving it an exotic edge. The track builds and we're getting ready for the first song proper.

"Resurrection" (and Down In The Park)

'Big Noise Transmission' (it's title having being changed form the original Captured Underground Noise Transmission, possibly to avoid an unfortunate acronym - I think that's a shame...) is up next, with a sample that is reminiscent of 'Crazier'. This song sounds like it's borrowed a lot from Numan's own 'Dead Heaven' in the verse, but has huge crashing guitars before hitting the chorus which banishes the previous association from your mind. I've seen this song live and it's a big one.

"Big Noise Transmission"

The (almost) title track 'Dead Sun Rising' is a melancholic, hypnotic minimalist anthem. It has a singalong quality to it. It drifts through your mind: "I've watched gods bleeding. I've watched worlds burn. I've watched stars falling and I've watched a dead sun rising". It's one that will float inside your head for quite some time.

"Dead Sun Rising"

'When The Sky Bleeds He Will Come" starts with a mournful worried vocal line over a bed of experimental sounds before moving into a Jagged like rock out chorus which is surprisingly catchy. This is another track that mentions "the sky bleeding" and "oceans burning" and could well be a natural follow up from the last song.

"When The Sky Bleeds He Will Come"

'For The Rest Of My Life' is a mid-tempo track that sits nicely at this point in the album. It's a bass guitar and synth fuelled beautiful, melodic love song. This is probably the nearest Gary comes to pop in this album.

"For The Rest Of My Life"

The album moves down another gear with 'Not The Love We Dream Of'. Starting with Numan accompanied by a solo piano, this track is the vulnerable Gary, stripped down to the basics; this nicely sets up the killer track on the album which comes next.

'The Fall' has been one of Gary's live standards for a couple of years now and it's great to hear the final version. It's another anthemic monster, again with NIN style breakdowns. If there is one thing Gary knows how to write, it's a massive anthem!

"The Fall"

Massive drums along with a sharp saw-like synth line introduce the startling 'We Are The Lost'. Numan's drum sounds can sometimes be seen as a little predictable, but this takes us by surprise. An unusual vocal line comes in, leaving us unsure where this is going to go. Unfortunately the vocal melody gets lost a little along the way. The drums keep pounding, leaving us hypnotised again, and it ends with a nice saxophone solo (maybe it's a synth, I don't know) that wouldn't be out of place on Dance. I like to think of it as a subtle tribute to Mick Karn.

"We Are The Lost"

'For The Rest Of My Life' is then reprised, with the synth and bass stripped away, leaving us with piano and acousitc guitar. This is a mainly instrumental track with Gary singing the chorus towards the end and would have been a perfect way to end this album.

"For The Rest Of My Life"

The album does end, for me, with two rather disappointing fillers. All in all however, a really great album that starts Numan's second decade of top form. The album itself is on a par with as Pure or Jagged, but some of the individual songs outperform any songs from those two albums, especially 'The Fall' and 'Big Noise Transmission', but with the album as a whole let down by the two closing tracks.

Now the next thing Gary has to work on is his productivity. Hopefully we will get more than two albums this decade. Remember, you're not Kate Bush.

To finish, although it is nothing to do with this album, here's a great video of 'My Machines' by Battles, with Numan

'My Machines'- Battles

'Cars' - Bill Bailey

Do The Right Thing

2011-09-09T10:06:00.003+01:00

It was so good to be back at The Phoenix after the traditional August drought. I met up with Sarah, Jack, Neal, and Simon beforehand and we waited patiently for the doors to open. Simon is moving to Birmingham on Saturday, so it was nice to see him before he abandons us.

I went to the first Do The Right Thing back in April which was a blast. DTRT! {dtrt} (that will never catch on) is a podcasted panel show with team captains Michael Legge and Margaret Cabourn-Smith and hosted by Danielle Ward. Each team has a guest, and in the first recording we had TV's Emma Kennedy and Rich Fulcher.

Michael Legge & Rich Fulcher

I've always been a fan of Emma. She has done some great work with Richard Herring in the past and I am currently reading her book "The Tent, The Bucket & Me" which is a very funny read. I've only recently discovered Rich Fulcher, and speaking as a non-Mighty Boosh fan, wasn't expecting much when I first saw him, but he is truly hilarious and his "Tiny Acts Of Rebellion" show was one of my favourites this year.

The point of the show is to give the panel some situations and have them tell us what the right thing to do is. Emma remained unconvinced that sex with animals was actually illegal and pulled out some lovely gruesome stories, leaving the panel wondering if this was a comedy panel show or a horror panel show.

We had an interval where I bid Emma farewell and she and Rich were replaced by Thom Tuck (introduced as Fosters Comedy Award Loser) and Danielle's fellow Dave Gorman sidekick and co-writer of "Gutted", Martin White.

Michael, Thom, Danielle & Margaret

In this show, we mainly learned that Martin is not gay, even though I did clearly hear him use the phrase "Your arse - my head". Anyway, moving on, this is a great little podcast, and if you enjoy a non-topical panel show such as "Would I Lie To You?" you should get downloading these as soon as they are released which will be sometime this Autumn. There is another recording on the 27th, so why not come along?

You can listen to the pilot episode here or get it on iTunes.

Margaret Cabourn-Smith & Martin White

Talking of the 27th, Michael Legge starts 3 nights at The Leicester Square Theatre. It may be the last chance you'll get to see the extremely funny "Curse Sir Walter Raleigh", unless of course, he decides to do some more. I have tickets to the 29th but may well go on the 27th as well before haring it to Oxford Circus in time for Do The Right Thing. See you there!

ComedySale.com - Beer Pong & Board Games

2011-09-05T09:18:00.000+01:00

Those of you who follow me on twitter have probably heard me speak about ComedySale.com. This is a mad project where Sanderson Jones has decided to book a ludicrously big venue and try to sell every ticket himself personally. After all, he has done this to smaller venues in Edinburgh; what's going to be so hard about selling one big one?

Mikey and Sarah

By the time of the gig (14th October) Sanderson will have personally met his entire audience and will be able to tailor the show to the crowd. He thought it wasn't fair that he will have met everyone but the audience won't know each other so he arranged a beer pong and board games afternoon in his local pub in Clapham.

I arrived fairly early and got straight into the beer pong. We were all fairly useless but I got a couple of amazing shots in. It was also my first chance to meet podophile chum, "Wet Sarah" (as Michael Legge has christened her) as she has just moved to London from Canada.

Action Shot!

After beer pong we played Calcozone (or something - I can't remember the title) which was a tile based board game where you had to conquer cities and rob farmers etc. It was all very geeky int he most funnest way, and I met some fun people too, though of course I can't remember their names - There was Alex, and Sarah of course, and the astonishingly flamboyant beer pong player and games organiser Mikey. There was also the sci-fi loving girl in a star wars t-shirt who has just moved to London and has so much to discover about the London comedy scene. I ended up ordering her to go to so many things!

I was looking forward to this show before, but now I'm looking forward to it even more. Sanderson is planning some more meet ups before the gig too. The next month could be a lot of fun!

Trap X

2011-08-27T13:03:00.000+01:00

"Scientists estimate the 10th planet in the solar system will be called Bikini". A collection of facts like these, alongside some jaunty music started the Trap's new show

It's been a long month. All my favourite comedians seem to have gigs in Edinburgh, all booked at the same time which seems a bit weird. So, I headed to Camden where all the cool kids are hanging out to see The Trap. It was also a good chance to meet comedy twitter people such as William Tennant and Hitch, as well as regular comedy mates, Neal and Richard.

I saw The Trap last year doing Bad Musical and you have probably seen me write about them quite a bit as they are 75% of Los Quattros Cvnts. They are comprised of 2 must-follow tweeters, Paul Litchfield and Jeremy Limb, along with just as funny, but less tweety Dan Mersh.

They times this gig rather badly as it clashes with the final of "Show Me The Funny" which is an ITV comedy talent series that started terribly, but has got better as it has gone along. Anyway my funny is on Tiff, but will I manage to avoid the result before I get home?* Anyway that concludes my little intro. I guess i should write the rest after I've seen the show. (* avoided the result, but Pat Monaghan deservedly won)

The Trap did point out that the title of their show is not because it contains any pornography, but that X was the Roman numeral for 10, representing their 10 years together. However Camden council had insisted that some should be included. So we had a saucy sound effect to look forward to.

Starting with their first ever gig, where they were so nervous they were all going to the toilet, being sick and having heart attacks, we worked out way through The Trap's alternative history.

We moved on to a job interview sketch, where the candidate had applied to be a job interviewer, leading to an extremely confusing conversation about 4 levels deep, which Dan and Jeremy got through perfectly. Although there are 3 of them, this sketch shows perfectly why I see The Trap as the new Two Ronnies.

I really enjoyed a sketch by 2 new fathers who decided they didn't want to mollycoddle their babies led to a rather extreme and shocking conclusion.

We had some failed audience interaction with the most famous man in the world, and also some excellent interaction between Paul and William, both encased in a box for a reprise of Paul's one man show.

The promise of the stupidest song in the world certainly didn't disappoint. Jeremy performed "What A Wonderful World" very straight with the baffling addition of "Crème. Crème. Crème. Crème Egg"

At the end, the boys asked for various audience members to be in a sketch with them, reprising all the characters that were in the show which made for quite a unique way to finish.

We ended up in the beer garden chatting with Paul who was entertaining as always, and discussed the fantastic new video format "Diamond DVD". - that will only make sense if you were sitting round the table. To be honest, I've forgotten the entire context. But boy, did we laugh.

We headed on to our tube train and Hitch agreed to come with me to Angel where we found almost every pub closed. Luckily, The Old Queens Head was open, where I impressed Hitch by telling him it was where Herring's Mars Bar routine was performed. He didn't look impressed but I could tell he was, then ending the evening at The Mucky Pup. At some point he must have pushed me over as I have woken up with a massive head bump. Obviously it would be Hitch's fault and not mine. You have another three chances to see them. Please make sure you do.

Bourke & Hawks (weren't they graverobbers?)

2011-08-02T18:44:00.002+01:00

Most comedians have arrived in Edinburgh already but there was still time for one final Fortnight Club before it shuts its doors until the Fringe is over and done with. I was looking forward to this gig more than most as it promised extended sets from Mary Bourke (who I love) as well as the legend that is Tony Hawks (from Morris Minor and The Majors no less - remember? Oh.). He is probably best known for travelling round Ireland with a fridge. I guess he could be described as the original Dave Gorman in that he decides to do a completely ludicrous thing, and writes a very funny show and book out of it.

Tonight I met up with Rob, Richard, Sir Bob and fellow Collins & Herring jingle writer, Rose, and we got our usual front row seats, though Rose slightly hid in the row behind as she was a little anxious about being picked on. This was, as we shall see later, a wise move.

Tony Hawks

We still had the usual Fortnight Club tradition of a few more established comics trying new material which took up the first half. It was a shame that usual compere Ronnie Rigsby (aka Logan Murray) wasn't available, but this role was filled by the very likable, Dave Thompson (aka Tinky Winky from Teletubbies. No, really!)

Now I can't remember all the names of the acts in the first half, but there was a really good Australian comic who, too look at reminded me a little of Sarah Millican, but who had an acid tongue. She liked younger men and pointed at Rob, asking if he was straight. When the answer came back negatively, she asked him how old he was, and when Rob told her he was 26, she dismissed him for being too old. There was also an Asian guy who was very good, as well as a northern female comedian too. I would definitely like to see all of these acts do their regular set some time. If someone can fill me in with the names it would be great.

There was another northern comedian armed with a guitar, Stevie Gray, who liked the look of Richard. This is where Rose's hiding in the second row all came good, as Stevie demanded Richard join him on stage. As a compulsive show off, Richard needed no persuasion and bounded on stage and was given a pirate costume. Now I didn't quite understand the point of the song, or why it was funny, however it did involve Richard shouting "Aaaar" and hopping. But, as I said, I'm not quite sure why.

Tony Cowards

Tony Cowards was on after the interval. He's a one line gag merchant in the style of Milton Jones, Gary Delaney and Tim Vine and at a guess he must have gone through about 50 jokes in his 10 minutes on stage. Well worth following on Twitter too.

All through the performances there was a group near the back who were constantly chattering. They probably didn't realise how distracting it was for the audience and the friends I was with had commented on it too. I told them not to worry as Mary wouldn't stand for it and was soon proven right.

Mary Bourke

Mary Bourke was on next. She is a favourite of mine at The Fortnight Club and this was, I imagine, her last preview before hitting Edinburgh. I had seen a lot of this show before but it didn't matter. Her stories of being banned from Mumsnet, her lessons in "mum-cussing" for teenage boys on the bus, and her "tweet or delete" sections all went down really really well. Out of my friends, only Richard had seen Mary before and the other 3 all really enjoyed her. She has a very depressing and deeply cynical view of life, but this doesn't stop the laughs coming. She takes us to very dark places indeed. And as for the chatterers in the audience, she gave them hell.

Mary is good value on Facebook, but would be a fantastic asset to twitter. Come on Mary - join us!

I had been looking forward to seeing Tony Hawks for some time. I remember him from back in the day and have read a few of his books. He started out by explaining that he wasn't Tony Hawk, the Jackass star and skateboarder, which is something he must get a lot, as there was a long routine in his show about emails that have been sent to him by mistake and how he has replied to them. There is even a special section on his website dedicated to this. I wonder if Tony Hawk gets requests for signed copies of Stutter Rap?

The heat was so stifling in the venue even with both doors open that Tony was struggling to keep his guitar in tune, but we didn't mind. Some of his routines, such as the one about self-checkouts in supermarket and the voice that says "unexpected item in the bagging area" could be seen as a little obvious, but this show is in its early days yet and he will be touring it extensively round the country from September.

Richard doing his pirate dance!

I had a quick chat with Tony after, where he enquired about my "Who Is Virgilio Anderson" t-shirt. When I wear it anywhere other than where there are a lot of Richard Herring fans, it does tend to provoke a few questions. I tried to explain as best as I could. A lot of people do ask, so here is the first part of the story from Richard Herring which continues here. There's even a Virgilio Anderson song involving Richard's furious podcast rant!

So, enjoy Edinburgh. I shan't be there but shall be living it via Twitter and podcasts. If you're there, make sure you see:

Michael Legge & Robin Ince (double act as well as their solo shows)
Mary Bourke
Lou Sanders
Richard Herring (he's also doing a live daily podcast as well as his actual show!)
Joel Dommett
Bennett Arron
Sanderson Jones (and while you're their buy a ticket directly from him for his Comedy Sale project)
Catie Wilkins
Eric Lampaert
Rich Fulcher
Tara Flynn
Thom Tuck

Other comedians and shows are available.

Ta-ra Tara!

2011-07-25T10:42:00.003+01:00

Rich and Yen

A friend and I had a joint birthday barbecue on Saturday and I didn't get home till about midday on Sunday. As soon as I got home it was time to go out again, to see some Edinburgh previews from Rich Fulcher and Michael Legge. I have seen both these shows before, but as Edinburgh approaches it's great to see them taking shape and getting very close to the final show.

Michael's show in particular has really progressed. It seems completely ready to go, and more importantly is very very funny indeed. Curse Sir Walter Raleigh is about his obsession with good manners as well as his obsession with the titular Sir Walter, who he learned about from his dad. Apparently Sir Walter was the only man that could hit a church's plastic drainpipe with a stone and when Michael, at 3, managed it, his dad told him how special he was. As well as being funny, it's also rather touching in places.

Rich Fulcher's Tiny Acts Of Rebellion has changed too, with the addition of his director to the show, who plays his simpering but rebellious assistant. Both Yen, Carl and Neal ended up on stage at one point, and Carl got one of the biggest laughs of the night describing crisps at the focus group as being sexually arousing and salty.

Rich and Neal

After the show it was Tara and Carl's leaving drinks as they are heading across the water to Ireland. This part of the day lasted a lot longer than I expected, but it was great to see so many of my favourite people in the one place. Spent some time chatting with Michael, Rich, Tara, Carl, Yen, Neal, Simon (x2), Paul Litchfield, who was strangely obsessed with docking. Even Christian Reilly turned up and decided to also discuss docking.

In the morning I was in two minds whether to come to the gig or not as I was feeling so terrible. I had decided I would go, but only have one quick drink with Tara. Naturally that plan went wrong and 8 hours later I was still in the pub.

If you're going to Edinburgh this year I would make both Michael and Rich's shows ones to see. And to quote Michael, "if you don't come I will kill you in the penis"

The Angry Show & Jigsaw

2011-07-22T09:43:00.000+01:00

I met up with Richard at The Albany, and we went downstairs, eventually to be joined by Bob, Laura, and Simon. We got downstairs fairly soon. Luckily we had beers as it turns out the Albany don't open their downstairs bar till the last minute which was rather annoying.

The first act were a double act. Well, they weren't and they were very keen to point that out. I imagine they are booking shows together to save costs in Edinburgh. Anyway, the guy was an impressionist and the girl did musical comedy. I have, unfortunately completely forgotten their names. Do people still do impressions these days? I guess they must do. Apart from a pretty good Michael McIntyre, a lot of his stuff was pretty dated. I mean, is Roy Walker cutting edge? I wasn't a huge fan. The female half of the non-double act came on and did some pretty funny songs. Not to the standard of Tara Flynn of course (If you're going to see one piece of musical comedy at The Fringe this year, make it Tara's!), and it ended with both of them together doing a song involving Jeremy Kyle, which was actually pretty funny.

Next up was an extremely long interval. It must have been close to half an hour as we waited for Jigsaw to arrive. Jigsaw are a 3 piece sketch act featuring Dan Antopolski, Tom Craine and Nat Luurtsema. They had another gig in Camden earlier and arrived very late. I wasn't aware of the other two, but have seen Dan a few times and he is always very very good. (You know, he did the "hedgehog" joke... )

The sketches were fast paced, with very few of them lasting more than 30 seconds or so, which meant the laughs were pretty continuous. So, Jigsaw are an act I would definitely advise any Fringe attendees to go to.

There was a short break (thankfully) and next we were shown a film by The Segue Sisters. Well, I didn't really get it. 3 women, singing rock songs in a "Sheila's Wheels" style. That was about it really. Al Murray was in the video, but I'm not sure why. Maybe if you see them perform it'll all make sense?

The compere came back on to introduce Robin and Michael's "Pointless Anger: Righteous Ire" show and was immediately terrified by Michael pushing a piano through the curtains. If you're ever in a room that contains Michael Legge and a piano, or any other form of keyboard instrument you are pretty much guaranteed a game attempt at "Just Can't Get Enough" and if you're lucky, the Eastenders theme, both of which we got tonight, when Robin demanded that Michael play him a song.

Robin with "Brian Cox"

Michael had had words with the impressionist before Robin arrived and got him on stage before walking off leaving him to speak to Robin as sexy scientist, Brian Cox. Did it work? I'm not sure, but it definitely happened.

The show was fairly short tonight and there was only time to get one issue resolved which was people with allergies. I think we all decided we hated people with allergies.

Robin also berated Jigsaw for their late arrival and about Dan forming a sketch group with much younger cooler comedians.

The show ended with Michael playing a song for Robin, before Robin left the stage, abandoning Michael, and shouting at him to play it better. Michael persuaded the girl from earlier to come up and play, which she rather nervously did, before, of course, Michael abandoning her too, leaving her on stage tinkling her ivories (not a euphemism)

She finally stopped before being told very loudly from Michael and Robin to keep going, and the compere was pretty confused too as he couldn't tell if the show had ended. An unusual end to the show and left us all feeling as if we were going over a humpback bridge in a car. Which I'm sure you'll agree is a lovely feeling.

After the show Simon and I went upstairs where he swooned over the compere (which I didn't understand at all!) and I swooned, and indeed made inappropriate remarks to his rather dishy friend. I think all gigs should end like this.

And it turns out that if I had some coke, he would have.

Mummy's funny but Daddy just talks.

2011-07-07T01:16:00.003+01:00

Japanese Knotweed

Wow. It's been quite a few days for me. After a day at Gay Pride on Saturday I ended up at a free comedy night in Angel where i saw Jay Foreman. I know this because I have a scrap of paper with his website written on it. I obviously thought he was very good, therefore asked for more information. So, even though I can't remember much (any) of his act, I recommend him.

The next day I saw Robin Ince and Michael Legge in Brighton. Another fantastic and entertaining day. The day after I was not well and spent most of the day trying to eat something and keep it down and feeling very sorry for myself (I would rather not go into the details) but by the evening was feeling a little better and decided to pop down to The Fortnight Club just round the corner from my house. There I saw a number of comedians: Bennett Arron compering, as well as Sean Brightman, Tony Cowards, Juliet Meyers and others. After the gig (also attended by Richard and Simon) I met Michael Legge (again) and had a little chit chat with him, Bennett and Sean before heading home.

Jesus and Bridget Christie

Today was the long-awaited Edinburgh preview with Michael Legge and Bridget Christie. I had seen Bridget's show last year, when she performed at LQC as "A Ant" (in an elaborate ant costume) and was keen to see more. I met up with Neal, Bob and Simon at The Olde Explorer for some grub beforehand. I was horrified to see that my favourite Field Mushroom and Shropshire Blue sandwich had been taken off the menu, so tried a Grilled Halloumi instead. It was ace.

We got to The Phoenix and I wondered where Alex / Mr Pineapple Band was (we eventually found him after Michael's set and before Bridget's). It was pretty stuffy inside so we moved outside (and now it's nearly a month since I stopped smoking, I'm amazed I still had no compulsion to have a fag!) By 7:45 we were summoned downstairs. We found a nice table, but no one seemed to want to sit at the front, so in the absence of volunteers we moved into the empty seats.

Simon & Bridget

Andrew Collins was compering for the evening, coming out of retirement to say funny things on stage. He asked us about a Sun headline about a new species of lizard in the Philippines that had 2 penises and asked us to think of a better headline than "Busy Lizzie" which, he argues, is the worst thing in tabloid journalism today - not the voicemail hacking, but the lack of good headline puns.

Michael came on to do an almost finished version of his "Curse Sir Walter Raleigh" which has certainly moved on a lot since I saw the last "full" preview. OK granted that was 12 months ago, but it was really shaping up. He starts by telling us why the Edinburgh Fringe is shit, as well as the time he and Colin Hoult were rescued by a 90s superstar (no spoilers!), as well as coming to the main point of the show - his obsession with Sir Walter Raleigh and good manners, including an obvious lie told to him by his father about Sir Walter's ability to hit a plastic drainpipe with a stone. The show ends with some stories of Michael's encounters with rudeness on trains. For full details, see his blog.

After the interval, Andrew was back, introducing Bridget Christie's "warm up act" (it's actually her in a costume, but ssshhh, don't tell anyone), Japanese Knotweed. The music plays. And plays. And plays. We wondered if this was truly avant-garde comedy and she wasn't going to set foot on the stage. We weren't sure if we should applaud when the first song ended. I didn't. Others did. Turns out it was just a cock up and Bridget was still getting changed into her rather elaborate costume.

Bridget / Nick Clegg

Andrew came back on to reintroduce her and she arrived (see picture above) with a tambourine and ukulele round her neck as well as a hula hoop tied round her waist and coconut shells on her feet. She eventually managed to take the costume off but it did take some time. She isn't sure if she'll do this again, but I think we'd all like to see it.

She told us she goes to church every week and was a Catholic. Now this is not the done thing theses days in comedy (and I remember telling Robin Ince on the tube on Sunday that I was personally getting bored with atheism in comedy - a brave move I tink you'll agree) and the freshness of it really worked. Although I imagine most of the crowd were atheists, we were all still on her side. Words cannot describe her Jesus puppet. They can, but I'm not sure which words to choose. Just look at the picture.

She told us that she was married to a comic who is an atheist, and I won't say any more about that but she told us that her babysitter asked her kids what mummy and daddy did. She said "Well... mummy's funny, but daddy just talks...) - I immediately thought it was a great title for this blog, especially when you know who "daddy" is !

Andrew came back on to thank us for coming and decided to out me by pointing at me and saying "you're gay..." - There was some sort of reason for this - oh yeah about another weak Sun pun that was about Daniel Radcliffe being straight - "Potter's not a Botter". I was chosen as a representative of the gay community, in fact the Scottish gay community to agree that "Botter" is not any sort of gay slang.

What a great show. Completely silly, not an apologist for the Catholic church, but not being ashamed of her beliefs. Forget religion. Your beliefs are irrelevant. You will LOVE Bridget Christie.

We had a couple of drinks after. Hey Collings & Herrin fans - I was told by a reliable source that he is pretty sure there will be more podcasts. So nerds - stop worrying. Once Edinburgh is over, all bets are off... anything could happen.

I had a nice chat with Bridget after too, and she is extremely sweet. She doesn't seem half as confident off-stage than on it, and both Simon and I had to really tell her how much we enjoyed it - and I'm still not sure she believed us!

Anyway, Michael has 2 more previews here on Sunday afternoons. I will be there to see Michael anyway (honest!) but on the 17th, the other guest is Thom Tuck, and on the 24th it is Rich Fulcher from The Mighty Boosh - so come to both of these ! See you there!

Pointless Anger: Righteous Ire

2011-07-04T00:29:00.001+01:00

Michael Legge

I went on holidays today. It was less than a day, but surely any time anyone goes to Brighton it's a proper holiday? I haven't been to Brighton in years and realised my geography wasn't as good as it was. I went for a quick booze at The Bulldog; a pub I used to go to quite frequently in about 1988, but it took me ages to find it, and when I did realised it was much smaller than I remember it.

Robin Ince

I met with Neal at the Caroline Of Brunswick (or The Kaz, as someone told me when asking directions). We had a rather disappointing but enormous Sunday roast, and moved upstairs to the L-shaped venue. We got front row seats. No one ever likes to sit there, but Neal and I are total attention seekers and grabbed them. We were soon joined by Vicky and her friend.

It was an odd start to the show. Traditionally the audience face an empty stage and the act is introduced, before bounding on and basking in the applause. Not so today. Robin and Michael were on "stage" just chatting as the audience filed in. Eventually the show began and the two boys moved off stage. We thought that was so they could come on again to applause, but all they did was pull the curtain closed on the other side of the L-shape, leaving almost half the audience behind it.

Pissed dog

They ranted for a while about nothing in particular, and although this is what we come for, they have a section in the show where they ask the audience what has made them angry and the audience vote to see if it is pointless anger, or righteous ire. My hand went up first and I regaled them with a story about being at Gay Pride yesterday and being threatened with being hit quite hard simply because I told a man he was a "fucking cunt" for buying his dog a beer,. Thats right, he didnt just give his dog the remnants of his own pint or give it water and pretend to us it was beer. He actually went to the bar and bought a beer and poured it into a bowl for the dog. The dog was hot. He was panting and would have drank anything. I'm getting angry again just typing this Anyway, let's look at the dog cos he is nice and it will make me calm down -->

Other topics included a man who was angry about a "try it before you buy it" religion course, (resulting in controversial comments from Michael, leading Robin into an awkward silence) and someone being furious about the price of booze at a festival (duh!) Michael finished the gig by reading one of his blogs - in fact this one here - which was much funnier being read out than reading it of the page.

The evening ended with a lovely song from Michael, like all good shows should. We had a beer or 2 afterwards outside, and headed home. I shared a train with Michael and Robin which was lovely if disappointingly devoid of arguments. I did, however, learn lots of comedy gossip as well as the fun that can be had with Wikipedia - I'm also amazed the blog I wrote about that journey has managed to get more words of comment than there are of blog already, and had a lovely chat about the atheism in comedy with Robin on the tube on the way back to Angel.

This is a show that will never have a script or even a plan. Basically, the show will change every time you see it, depending on Michael and Robin's particular moods, or what they have seen recently. I imagine in Edinburgh they will be much much angrier ! Anyway, if you are going to Edinbugh go and see it !

Train

2011-07-03T23:09:00.002+01:00

I shared a train journey with Michael Legge. Nothing untoward happened.

AIOTM 6/6 - The last one EVER.

2011-06-21T16:51:00.000+01:00

This tremendously sad, yet gloriously tremendous evening started at The Montague Pyke, where I met up with Jack and Hitch for some pre-AIOTM grub. I had the most underwhelming fishcakes ever. When Jack and I went the bar to order them, out table was joined buy a man who seemed to enjoy swearing loudly at his friend on his phone. It got slightly worse as when he got off the phone he decided to join in our conversation. When I declared my complete lack of interest in sport, he just couldn't quite comprehend it.

Richard, Emma & Christian

Jack ran his "it occurred to me" story involving possibly seeing Paul Whitehouse and also walking past a motorcycle clothing shop. I advised against it. Did he listen to me? You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out. (Or just read further down the blog - alright - I'll save you the time. No he did not listen to me.)

Anyway, we got to the Leicester Square theatre, and I took my A14 seat for the last time. I will miss that seat. Rich came on to do his customary stand up, and the crowd were rather boisterous. There was a definite end of term feel to it, slightly spoiled by an overenthusiastic heckler that started to get a little boring. As he promised to me a couple of weeks ago, Rich did his old, truly blasphemous, "wanked off by the stigmata of Jesus" routine. He hadn't learned it, so read a lot of it fro notes, so it lacked the punch it had originally, but it seemed an appropriate set for an AIOTM crowd.

Christian

After the customary visit to Burger King in the break, I bumped into Robin, who I had met at the DVD record. He's another big fan and writes his own blog here which is always worth a read. I also met a man with the best "Attitudeless Badger" t-shirt I have ever seen. I also said a brief hello to Andrew Collins who pointed out that I had already had two mentions to his one, although I did tell him I was getting sick of it

AIOTM itself started, and Rich came on to the longest round of applause I've heard for a long time. It felt it was never going to end and I think the crowd were up for seeing how long they could make it go on for. We met Pippa Middleton's Disembodied Anus (PMDA) one last time before she finally passed on. It was a tragic story and some sort of metaphor. The crowd gave their stories to Richard about what has occurred to him including Jack's story about the motorcycle clothing shop (much to Richard's dismay). Andrew Collins contributed from the audience with what was possibly the longest story in AIOTM history. The audience were tricked in the moral maze, falling into Richard's trap, and Christian sang a beautiful ode to AIOTM, accompanied by Richard on the trumpet. (I got told off by a grumpy theatre lady for taking a video of the trumpeting.)

Dan

Edinburgh Previews: Legge, Aaron, Fulcher, Ward & Herring

2011-06-20T08:38:00.001+01:00

Michael Legge & Rich Fulcher

There's nothing I like more than a gig near to my house. Well there is one thing. A free gig near to my house. So today I headed to The Wilmington Arms. This was the venue for my first comedy gig a couple of years ago (apart from a Billy Connolly gig in the 90s and Rik Mayall and Ben Elton in 1985). Well, the first gig I attended before becoming a comedy regular. I'm sure you get the point.

That time it was Richard Herring compering a group of geeky students and lecturers who were of mixed abilities. Still, it was a fun day out. Today it was Edinburgh previews from Bennett Arron, Michael Legge and The Mighty Boosh's Rich Fulcher.

Before the gig I met up with Jack, who pointed out that the pub smelled of piss. He wasn't wrong. The pub did smell a bit pissy. Anyway, joining us later were Sir Bob (the birthday boy), Richard, and Marco. I also bumped into fellow Collins & Herring jingle writer Rose. We didn't get much of a chance to chat but hopefully will see more of her at tomorrow's AIOTM.

The gig started with Bennett Aaron. His gentle (not gentile) Jewish / Welsh humour went down nicely, but not being Welsh or Jewish had no real reference point other than what I've heard from Joan Rivers and Jackie Mason (and Max Boyce). It was a lot of fun, but I think some of the jokes may have gone over my head.

Michael Legge was on next. "Curse Sir Walter Raleigh" is his first solo show that he will be performing at the Fringe. I had seen a preview of this last year when he played at the Hen & Chickens with Andrew Collins (doing his Secret Dancing show). He didn't manage to take it to Edinburgh then, but has managed to book the venue this time. It's a show all about the importance of manners. Michael is a very well-mannered man. Unless you are rude, in which case all bets are off. As usual I enjoyed myself and enjoyed his contradictory stories about whether to get "involved" or not. We really enjoyed his story of being rescued by Hunter from Gladiators, as well as explaining to a lad in the front row why you should never get involved if someone drops their Ventolin inhaler. This is a set that will be fantastic once it is tightened up and the loose ends are dispensed with. There was no mention of Sir Walter Raleigh at all.

Rich Fulcher was on at the end and he was previewing his "Tiny Acts Of Rebellion". In fact - watch this clip from the Craig Ferguson Show. Most of the set was him reading from his book, and about various tiny ways to stick it to "the man"

After the show, Richard wimped out and Sir Bob, Jack and I headed to The New Red Lion Theatre and saw, first of all, the guy from Stand Up Hero who I thought was great - an accountant who was really up for anything. he looks like an accountant, he sounds like an accountant, but he is absolutely brilliant! Next was Danielle Ward. I saw her at The Comedy Crawl but know her best from her contributions to the Dave Gorman shows on Absolute Radio. She has quite a unique voice that does sound rather sarcastic by default, and quite a twisted dark sense of humour.

Richard Herring

After this was a comedian who, (how can I put this kindly), perhaps wasn't to my taste. Let's not hang around... Let's not say anymore. She probably thought she was avant-garde. But we all agreed that we weren't huge fans. Bob thinks I am being too kind however. He thinks "the naive arrogance of performing ill-prepared drivel was in itself almost entertaining."

Richard Herring was on to close the night and did some new material about "What Is Love Anyway" (WILA) It was a lot of fun and the show is coming together nicely. There were a couple sitting beside me who had equal confusion about the previous act and who had never heard of Herring. As time went on, I could see that they were really enjoying themselves. It's always nice to see new people at gigs seeing things for the first time and the effect it has on them. Much more so than through my tired, jaded eyes. Just for me (I like to think) he included my new favourite routine - "Give Me Head Till I'm Dead"

It was a fun Sunday. It's now Monday morning and I half to be at AIOTM in 12 hours. My eyes are sleepy, my head hurts a bit, but I'll see you all there!

Jog on

2011-06-15T13:02:00.000+01:00

So I stopped smoking a week ago. This morning at about 730 in the morning I went for a run. I've never done any exercise in my life since I was at school, but it was a deal I made with myself that I would start running when I stopped smoking. You know, I quite enjoyed it. I got one of those iPhone apps that maps my route, gives me my maximum and minimum pace, and tells me how far I have ran etc.

As a statistics geek, this really makes it fun for me. I also run another app that tells me when to walk and when to run. The plan I am following promises me that I'll be able to run 5km non stop within 8 weeks. This seems pretty impossible right now, but by increasing the amount of running each day and decreasing the amount of walking I may well get there.

Today I had no particular route in mind, but I headed up towards the New North Road, turned on to Essex Road, over to Upper Street and down to Islington Green where I found the Regents Canal. I should have remembered about the canal before. This is where I shall do most of my running I think. It's quite a nice place, with no cars to avoid or roads to cross and I can nod in solidarity with all the other runners I pass. I was astonished to find that this morning I had covered 2 miles!

I have been advised to run 3 times a week. I want to go back out tomorrow, but I will be sensible about it. Who knows how long this will last? But without trying to sicken you, I felt pretty good after today's run, and i can see why people say that exercise can be addictive. I'll try not to write about every single run I do, but will update you on the milestones!

AIOTM 5/6

2011-06-13T23:59:00.003+01:00

Sanderson Jones

Sanderson Jones has an interesting project. Yes I know you clicked here to find out about Pippa Middleton's disembodied anus, but you'll have to hear about ComedySale first. Sanderson has booked a gig at the Union Chapel in Islington on the 14th October - 500 seats - and you cannot buy tickets on the day, on the door, at the box office, on the Internet... in fact the only way to get a ticket is to meet with him personally and buy a ticket there and then. I bought my ticket today. Now, I must try and make sure I can get that day off work!

I had met at The Toucan with a chap from Twitter. After seeing Sanderson, we moved on to De Hems, The Admiral Duncan, Molly Moggs, then The Porcupine. After that I was slightly pissed and the chap was rather hammered. He had been out many hours more than me !

Dan Tetsell

We got to the venue and I met Rob Sedgebeer (as usual). I took my seat and found the lady beside me embroidering. I thought that was kind of cute. I have had a number of replies after putting the picture online (with permission of course). Now the chap who I had been out with before had a great story to tell Richard at AIOTM but along the way, as I returned from a strategic early toilet visit, Rich spoke to me and I mentioned that I had been led astray. My new friend, unwisely, mentioned that he was responsible, and Rich pointed out that he was a lot worse for wear than I was... He warned him off telling him the story in the main podcast!

Sanderson Jones

The podcast contained what you might expect: A video of Herring bathing in flour and water apologising to Diana Dors for counterfeiting his semen, Emma Kennedy playing a prepubescent Herring, we had the return of Attitudeless Badger, and a truly terrifying punishment for the final AIOTM of the series (perhaps ever!). I don't want to give too much away, but it involves cumpkins, and Richard's head.

After the gig we met up again with the 14-17 year old boy from last week who had indeed taken the magazine. Richard and the team did try to sign it to the best of their abilities but it was still wet from last week.

Hopefully by next week it will be dry. Also I hope all the male members of the audience (at a guess I would say 300 people) will be able to fill that cumpkin, and I will not be led astray again!

Simon Munnery at Angel Comedy

2011-06-11T23:25:00.002+01:00

Simon Munnery

You know that feeling when you've been working all night and finished at 7am and you have a couple of cans in the morning to celebrate the end of your run of night shifts, and you haven't smoked for 4 days, and you get home and you check Twitter, and Catie Wilkins says there is a free gig at a pub just round the corner from where you live and you don't know any of the comics apart from Simon Munnery, but you really want to see Simon Munnery and you can't get anyone to go with you?

Well, that happened to me tonight.

There were lots of acts on, but I want to skip past most of them. The compere was not too bad. He did remind me of a slim Justin Lee Collins, and at times it was so bad I even wished the actual JLC was compering. But he was OK. A few good lines, but in general mainly hack stuff, as indeed, most of the acts on tonight had.

This was the venue that used to host the Fortnight Club, and it was absolutely packed. Still, the bar staff still had no idea what was going on or how much it was or when anything started. Nothing changes!

Ben Target

I'll skip past the shit/average acts (I don't want to be unkind) and soon Ben Target was on stage. I hadn't heard of him, and his introduction of being "left field" instantly made me not want to like him. However as the show went on I found him funnier and funnier. The joke about the tiny cake and huge candle worked so well! And the crowd surfing at the end was a surprise!

Simon Munnery was on at the end. Now I had lots of beer and stuff so I can't quite tell you too much, but wow. He was fucking hilarious. The last time I saw him was at Club Duckie at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern when he was the League Of Tedium and I was amazed then too.

If you cross Stewart Lee with Robin Ince, then you get Simon Munnery. I can't underestimate the importance of seeing him if you haven't done before. Angel Comedy runs every Saturday and it's free free free!

36 hours in...

2011-06-09T16:59:00.000+01:00

It's a day and a half since my last fag. It's going well and it's quite exciting too. It's a lot of fun when I get an "I fancy a cigarette" feeling in my head, to tell it to fuck off, and then celebrate having done that. It reminds me that these withdrawal symptoms are nothing to be concerned about. It's all about being positive, and seeing everything about quitting as a good thing.

I tend to get small withdrawals when I leave the house, when I get to a bus stop or get off a bus, or when I get to the door outside work. Not so much when I'm in one place. How odd. When I'm at home or at work I barely think about smoking. I thought I would miss the 3 or 4 little breaks I would get at work more than breaking up the journey that gets me there. And all withdrawals are is the feeling that I fancy a cigarette. It's not a big deal.

Anyway, that's that so far. I may bore you all with another update soon.

I Quit!

2011-06-08T02:52:00.000+01:00

About 10 minutes ago I had my final cigarette.

I had stopped for 3 years previously, and it was ridiculously easy until just over a year ago when I just had one cigarette. After this my intake increased more and more, until a few months ago, when it dawned on me that I was a chain smoker yet again.

I'm sick of the coughing, the nausea, the rolling of 4 roll ups for my journey into work, leaving my friends during intervals at gigs to stand alone outside, the panic when I'm nearly at the end of my packet, the money, the fact that virtually none of my friends smoke, the stains on my fingers and my teeth, the smell of tobacco on my hands, the embarrassment of hanging out my window when I'm too lazy to go outside, and the lack of sleep due to my coughing

The last time when I stopped smoking I had used Allen Carr's method, which relies on completely changing the way you think about smoking, celebrating the withdrawal period as well as not using substitutes. He wrote a few different books, all of which, by and large, are versions of the same book. The one I bought 4 years ago was "The Only Way To Stop Smoking Permanently" (OK, so I didn't stop smoking permanently, but that's not important right now) and this time I used a much shorter book called "I Quit" which has all the salient points in one short read.

So I finished it at work (it has been a slow night) and announced to my colleague that I was going down to have my final cigarette (a ritual that Carr recommends). She didn't seem convinced, and I'm sure you guys probably aren't either, but it really doesn't matter what other people think about this. Yes it's easy to delude myself and triumphantly write this blog 10 minutes after having a fag, but I am absolutely determined. It was easy that time, why shouldn't it be so easy this time?

It's probably harder quitting after a previous failed attempt, because as well as stopping smoking, you also have that fear that if it happened last time, then it would be easy to fail again. For me though, I have to learn the lesson. There can never be "just one". And having "just one" is also completely pointless.

The thing is that I really don't want to smoke. I hate having to do it, and I hate the fact that it controls me. So, from now on, I'm a non smoker. The small physical withdrawal lasts around 3 days, and every time I feel that I want a cigarette I will recognise that what is causing it isn't quitting smoking, but it's the fact that I started smoking in the first place.

I was going to make a statement and soak my tobacco in water before binning it, but my colleague was insistent I should give it to her. Shame, cause it has ruined my final dramatic flourish.

AIOTM 4/6

2011-06-07T10:10:00.000+01:00

Last week, the result of The Moral Maze made Richard to a terrible thing this week. He had promised to wank over ever page of a porn made and give it to a 14-17 year old boy (that could prove their age).

Anyway, I started the evening off by meeting up with Michael Legge and his friend Dotes in a little pub off Oxford Street. Dotes is a childhood friend of Michael's, who I have been chatting to on Twitter quite a bit. Michael and Dotes regaled me with stories of drinking pints of vomit, defecation, bloody semen, and other such lovely things. Luckily Neal, Tara Flynn and her gorgeous hubby Carl arrived to provide a bit of class to the conversation.

I headed off to visit AIOTM to find what was in store. Rich started the show as usual with a 40 minute chat to the audience and a routine that was one of the first stand up sets he had written. He asked myself and Rob Sedgebeer if he had done a particular routine at AIOTM before and Rob told him he had. We have been promised the routine of fucking Jesus in the stigmata before the end of the series, which will be something to look forward to. Rich finished this part by trying some psychic readings on the audience. I think he's been reading the amazing Paranormaility book by Richard Wiseman!

AIOTM itself began, beginning with Richard brandishing a rather imposing bin with its contents hidden. However this was worrying. We all knew what was in there. Pippa Middleton's Disembodied Anus made a welcome reappearance, and for the AIOTM nerds, a brief appearance by Tiny Andrew Collins. Could he be testing the waters to see if he can make a full come back? For the full show you'd better just listen to it, but as Rich himself says, its better to listen to a few earlier ones so you have some sort of idea what's going on.

A slight balls up by Emma Kennedy was remedied by an emergency "Turn Back Time" segment, which is one way of getting out of editing!

And the result of this week's Moral Maze. Well, it's a good one. And when Richard says he will do something, you know he will !

Great night as ever. Only 2 more shows left (possibly ever!) so get your tickets booked now.

The FINAL EVER Los Quattros Cvnts (this series)

2011-06-02T18:32:00.001+01:00

So after realising that Craig at work went to see Bad Musical, I invited him to LQC, and he seemed quite keen. We met up with Rob at the main bar of The Phoenix, soon to be joined by Neal. We got downstairs and found we had a lovely table thanks to Muki, and awaited the show.

Dan Tetsell, Jeremy Limb, Michael Legge

I've spoken about LQC on a number of blogs, but tonight, even though, by their own admission, they were under-rehearsed, they pulled a blinder. One of the regular Cvnts, Dan Mersh was unavailable due to some actual paid work, so AIOTM's Dan Tetsell stepped in at (almost literally) the last minute, though you wouldn't have noticed. He looked like he was part of the team from day one.

The toddlers were back, as was the erotic poet Sean Goldsworthy, and of course the O'Flaherty Brothers (and Billy Sunday) who we have missed the last few shows. A highlight for me was the Daniel O'Donnell interview, played by Michael Legge and I do hope that he comes back when the Cvnts return in the Autumn.

I spoke to Paul after the show and it looks like The Trap have quite a show lined up for the Camden Fringe. You heard it here first. I'll be booking my tickets as soon as I can.

MushyBees was up next. He is the guy who plays Pam Ayers in the Precious Little podcast and has quite a unique act, combining his caricatures with bizarre short poetry. I was rather disappointed he didn't "tranny up" for the evening, but hey, you can't have everything.

FIVE FUCKING QUID!!?!?

Yet again, Richard Herring was on, making his second appearance at LQC. He started with some Christ On A Bike material which he had incorporated into the show after receiving some rather odd email from Christians who thought the show was blasphemous. He moved into some new material from his next show "What Is Love Anyway". I've seen him do a few of these before in the last couple of weeks, but whether it was the tiredness kicking in, or perhaps he just wanted to start getting things word perfect, with the correct delivery, he used a lot of notes tonight. Having said that, he was his usual high standard, and slightly scared Craig by asking him a question about eggs.

After the gig, Rob, Craig and I went to Village Soho to meet our friend Richard where I ended up paying £5 for a rather regular bottle of cider. I know drinks are getting expensive, but five fucking quid??? DO NOT GO TO THIS BAR EVER!

Glad I got that off my chest.

So farewell Cvnts. Don't forget about us while you're away, and come back in the Autumn bigger, stronger, and more shambolic than ever!

AIOTM 3/6

2011-05-31T00:34:00.001+01:00

So Richard Herring's AIOTM enters its third week. It was quite a dreary day, but still decided to walk into town. I'm getting quite used to it now and the health benefits must offset the AIOTM cider that I get through. A few days ago Richard was trying to work out how many rows there would be in a pyramid of 4,000,000 Ferrero Rochers (for his new show). After some hard maths, I decided to cheat and ran an Excel spreadsheet which I emailed to Rich. Unfortunately he couldn't open it, so I printed it out to bring with me tonight. It's fun being a voluntary comedy researcher!

Dan Tetsell

Anyway, after a brief drink at The Admiral Duncan (God, it's gone downhill since I worked there, and it wasn't exactly top of the range when I was there) I met Paul and Simon at the venue.

Rich came on and did some more new stuff for his new show. This time about a visit to the dry cleaners and the "We {heart} our customers" messages left on the cellophane over his suit, and questioning the nature of this, so called, love. He then went on to do his "Give me head till I'm dead" routine that he resurrected last week at The New Red Lion. He mentioned that I had seen it already and I made a lame joke about "Well, I'll go to the toilet then". It was funny inside my brain.

The show itself was quite something else. References to "minted cumpkins", Pippa Middleton's disembodied anus being eaten on "I'm A Celeb" complete with some unusual Geordie accents from Dan Tetsell playing both Ant and Dec, and talking of unusual accents, the Canadian ones that Emma and Dan chose for the story about the child (it's a boy) being raised by its (his) parents without telling anyone what its (his) sex was were fantastic (if indecipherable).

Richard Herring ( and Christian Reilly)

Emma had told a story about her visit to East Kilbride which I had seen on Twitter last week, and my only thought was that I had lived there. That was that. Today she revealed that she had visited 24 Inch Keith, and the double entendre was hard to miss. How had I also lived in Inch Keith for so long in my early teens without realising that it was fucking hilarious!? So, when Rich asked the ausdience what had occurred to them that week I couldn't resist telling Emma about this rather odd (and sexy) coincidence.

The moral maze tonight featured bin porn, but this time I really had to go to the toilet ! Christian's song this week was very self-reverential with the hook line "He just wants to be on the telly" and talking about the many issues that have been raised in AIOTM before about Rich's life.

After the show I gave Rich my fabulous spreadsheet, and it seems he is as in love with numbers and tables as much as I am. I don't know how much a voluntary comedy researcher gets paid, but hopefully I'll get the going rate.

Edinburgh previews begin!

2011-05-25T00:11:00.005+01:00

Have I over-Herringed myself? This was my 4th gig in 8 days. Still, this was a triple bill with 2 other fantastic comedians: Catie Wilkins and Lou Sanders. I had just seen Catie a couple of weeks ago at the Hen & Chickens and was looking forward to seeing her again. Lou does an occasional podcast with Catie and I had seen her on the same bill as her back in September but unfortunately it was a spur of the moment decision after I had been out in the afternoon and I was stupidly drunk. I do remember really enjoying it though (and I'm quite sure I would have done sober!) On reflection I should have gone home.

Anyway...

"Is that the menu?" - @tfb62

The Edinburgh preview season in June and July is my favourite time of year. As a bit of a nerd, I really enjoy seeing comedians trying out new material, some of which may work, some of which may bomb, and seeing the show change until it is in a fit state to take up to the festival. I'm actually less interested in the final set than watching it all slowly come together over the course of a few gigs. Richard had given us a short preview of the new show "What Is Love Anyway" at AIOTM last night and from the little material there was looks like this who could develop nicely.

I had arranged to meet Richard, Simon and Rob at The New Red Lion around 7:45 for the show to start at 8:00. Poor Rob had fallen asleep after a hard day of traffic reporting so we had to carry on without him.

Catie Wilkins

Catie performed for 40 minutes or so, slightly overrunning, but we can easily forgive her for that! Check my last blog for my blurb about her show in detail, but I still love the 'over bearing mother' joke. She ended the set by saying "Let's leave you with something fun" before checking her paper and saying "...errrm... no" which really tickled us! At the start of the set there was a rather annoying woman chatting at the bar which irritated me and probably most of the audience and certainly Catie. I don't know if she shut up or was asked to leave but either way it was sorted out eventually.

The dramatic Lou Sanders start

Lou Sanders was astonishingly good. It's only a matter of time surely till she is a household name (if there's any justice) She explained there wasn't much tech but to experience the opening of her Edinburgh show we should shut our eyes (as there was no way to plunge the venue into darkness) before galloping round the stage and having a huge party popper to open when the lights went up. The audience member she decided to speak to before the "Wheel of destiny" was Simon, who when he revealed he was a youth worker, Lou took great points to let us all know that he wasn't a paedophile (even though she told us that she takes the piss out of comedians who do paedophile jokes!) Simon was also the star of her "This is your life" segment. This show is going to be great. It's unpredictable, slightly mental and absolutely hilarious!

Lou Sanders

Richard Herring was soon up to close the show. There wasn't mush new since the last time I had seen the preview of "What Is Love Anyway", but considering that was yesterday, it's not surprising. It looks like this show could be quite a different show from his recent ones, and the stories of his childhood loves brought a few "Awww"s from the audience. Due to his rather high work rate (touring his last show, "Christ On A Bike", writing a BBC script, AIOTM, and the Collings & Herrin podcast) there hasn't been a huge amount of progress on this yet, but the potential is there for a great show. The story of his first romance as a 10 year old and not being sure what to do, as well as the crush he had on an older girl from the safety of a bus is both lovely and funny and it will be very interesting to see how this show progresses.

Richard Herring

The new material was probably around 20 minutes or so, so he decided to do some old routines and started with his "I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire" routine. After this, he declared that he would try an older routine that he wasn't sure if he would remember. So this was the first time I had seen the "Give me head until I'm dead" routine (from 'Someone Likes Yoghurt'?) live, and was particularly good as he addressed a lot of it directly to my mate Richard, after asking him if he had ever experienced a blow job.

As I was leaving I said a brief goodbye to Catie & Richard (Lou had left a while ago) and said that it was good that he was putting different material into his "club" set. As I was walking home I thought this may have been misinterpreted and sent a message to Rich explaining what I meant. I was glad to find a reply on Twitter from Rich saying that it was what he thought I meant anyway. It's always good to end a gig with some slight awkwardness!

AIOTM 2/6

2011-05-24T00:56:00.003+01:00

Richard Herring has thrown caution to the wind. Like last week, he wrote tonight's show on the Monday. Even this was too early, as the Ryan Giggs "scandal" became public between the writing and the performance. As he told us, next week he may have to start writing it at 5pm.

I got into Soho fairly early and went for a drink at The Admiral Duncan. I met up with Simon, Paul, and someone I had sold my 2 AIOTM series 1 scripts to for a £10 donation to SCOPE. So big up to Alan Hines. We took out seats for the first half where Richard mainly improvises and chats to the crowd.

"Are you in showbusiness?" said TV's Emma Kennedy to a rather sweet looking girl n the front row. "No? Well get your fucking drinks off the stage", followed by Herring somehow calling her a prostitute. I didn't quite follow the logic, but it wasn't quite as brutal as it sounded! Meg and her boyfriend (Beardo) arrived a little late and sat in the front row. Rich obviously talked to them and seemed amazed that a 23 year old could grow such a manly beard. He had a grade 2 and Rich asked me what length my newly shorn hair was. I didn't use any guard on mine. That's how manly I am. Rich tried to warn people off me. "Watch out girls", before correcting himself: "Boys.. look out". I was glad this correction had been made! He talked about the DVD record last week where I had been given a CD of the Warwick show where he had been heckled by a crazy Christian dude. I was going to give him this later but decided to pass him it there and then.

Rich gave us what little he had written for What Is Love Anyway which looks (even at this early stage) to be quite a different show to the last few.

Anyway, after the now traditional visit to the Burger King toilets, (no matter how many times Rich tells people about this little secret, it still is the best place to visit) the show began. Dan Tetsell was back, and although Ben Moor filled his shoes amply last week, it's nice to have the "proper" team in place. No poo stories from Ms Kennedy unfortunately, but to make up for it, Pippa Middleton's disembodied anus made a return appearance, as well as a guest appearance by Ryan Giggs, and a rather questionable Michael J Fox joke! Hey - there was even a call back to the Motorcycle clothing shop sketch, AND a rather dubious (possibly racist?) Barack Obama impression.

The moral maze was back, featuring Richard's borrowed cagoule. I would vote immoral to any of these, simply based on Richard's question. To ask the question implies that he has some doubts, and as people's morals come from within, then to me, this implies improper behaviour, otherwise the question would not be asked.

After the show I lost Alan. Turns out he had had a long day and had to go home. I spend some time chatting with the marvellous Rob Sedgebeer, Simon and Paul before flitting off and discussing Kindles, Twitter trolls, and the new show with Richard. Talking of the new show, I shall be at The New Red Lion theatre in Angel tomorrow night to see Richard, Catie Wilkins and Lou Sanders tomorrow night. Make sure you come down if you can.

Christ On A Bike (DVD) & The Collings & Herrin Podcast

2011-05-19T02:17:00.010+01:00

It's a long Herring run for me with five more AIOTMs, and one 'What Is Love Anyway' kind of preview and on top of that I got tickets to see his next DVD being recorded at The Leicester Square Theatre (in my usual AIOTM seat of course - A14 in case you're interested).

I have never been to Edinburgh Festival, but I do love the period from around May to August when there are a lot of cheap and intimate preview gigs happening, and last year I caught quite a few previews of COAB before he took it to Edinburgh and I saw the finished show at the same theatre in January. As a bit of a comedy nerd I really enjoy seeing shows slowly come together, seeing a bit of improv that makes it into the final show, seeing bits that don't quite work. I even had the cheek to email Richard about a possible improvement he could have made. He did respond very politely, but pointed out the reasons why that particular part of the show was done the way it is and declined my brilliant idea. (After I hit 'send' on that email, I thought I might have made the biggest mistake of my life, but I think I got away with it.)

Anyway since I last saw it, the show has travelled round the country, with more additions and changes as time has gone on, so it will be nice to see the final finished version. What with the various protests, crazy emails (not my one!), threats and heckles that he has received I'm was really looking forward to this. Here is a clip of some people in Glasgow who were offended by a show they had never seen.

There were two shows tonight. First the DVD record of the show, followed by a live and filmed version of the Collings & Herrin podcast. C&H is one of the longest running independent podcasts around. There is usually one released every week, generally recorded in Richard's attic and put out unedited which leads to them being of varying quality. Some are close to genius, others border on tedium, but most of them are a very funny (and free!) way to pass an hour, which is quite handy if, like me, your journey to work takes an hour. Andrew Collins is a supersub DJ on 6 Music as well as the film editor for the Radio Times and a writer. Their styles complement each other well: Collings is the woolly liberal. He doesn't like cloning, or interfering with nature, and generally likes to be nice and sees the best in people. Herrin is the monster: ready to push Collings' buttons at the drop of a hat, say the unsayable, wind people up and get furious. I think Collings is pretty much identical to the real Andrew Collins, whereas Herrin is a very much exaggerated version of Herring himself, who just has to be as mean as possible.

Richard Herring - picture by Kip Hakes

So again, I decided to make the walk into town and had arranged to meet Jack at De Hems for a beer before hand. I realised this was a mistake when I was 20 minutes into my walk and I started to smell like a damp dog as it had begun to rain. I came up with a genius idea and got on a bus. We had a quick beer and decided to head off around 715 or so. We got to the theatre just in time for the start of the show and took our seats and Andrew came out to introduce the show. The premise is that as an atheist, Richard still thinks about and talks about Jesus a lot which is underlined by a recording of his mother saying exactly the same thing. He ponders various ideas. How many Roman Catholic masses should you attend before you've eaten an entire Jesus, what happened to the gold, frankincense and myrrh, and why was the Star of Bethlehem not more widely reported, as the star would have to be ten feet off the ground to point to an entire building. He deconstructs the Ten Commandments for their literary clumsiness, if not their morals, well, apart from the condoning of slavery.

After this there was a bit of a mini-break for tapes to be changed, I took the opportunity to nip to the local burger chain for a wee (I do wish on AIOTM that Rich would stop telling people to go there to save on queues because all it does is move part of the queue to the burger restaurant.) I won't tell you which particular one it is. It's definitely not Burger King though.

In the break, Rich took some time to read through some odd emails he had received, and he got to one which was all about a drunk driver taking a girl with him which involved God being in the trunk and when the car inevitable crashes, only the trunk was intact. Anyway we never got to hear that as the printed out email had been lost, but I remembered it from Monday's AIOTM. Maybe he'll put a recording of that on instead? Andrew came out with the clapperboard to start the rest of the show, tripped over the microphone cable and asked what the strange thing was on the stage that had distracted him. Richard tried to shush him, as it was his pyro that he was gong to use in the next half that was going to be a surprise. I still jumped anyway!

The second half steps up a gear and explores the dream Richard had of the bicycle race that gives the show its name as well as the fantastic memory feat of the genealogy of Jesus.

The show ends on a high point with Richard realising that there are good sides to religion and that if he could live like his Christian father he would be a much better person. There are sections of this show that Christians could find offensive, but the overall message is one of positivity towards Jesus and Christians (well, some of them!) and it's quite a feel good conclusion.

After the show ended there was a 20 minute break till Collings & Herrin

The two boys - picture by Kip Hakes

They came on stage, and although Richard was tired, he looked relieved he could just relax and talk bollocks for a while Andrew had 3 pre-planned ideas in case they ran out of things to talk about and used them up in about 20 minutes. They took questions from the audience. I came up with an idea (actually, a very clever satire I had spent ages planning) which related the COAB protests to his new unseen (and unperformed and unwritten) show about Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw. Another question by Kip Hakes was about what the rudest thing was that anyone had said to them. They gave us a few ideas, but when he told us that his wife made him switch Secret Dancing off half way through, Andrew found his answer !

I don't want to go into too much detail as I don't want to spoil the surprise, and I also can't remember it all.

Afterwards I chatted with Rob and Catie, and was approached by a man asking if I was AndyMcH! It turns out he was MrPineappleBand - my C&H musical nemesis! (Collings stated in one podcast that I hated him, but I would like to point out that this was untrue in every way!)

I wanted to get a Secret Dancing DVD from Andrew and spotted his rather unmissable shirt at the opposite bar. I chatted to him for a while and was introduced to another musical nemesis, Rose, who did all the good jingles for the Collins & Herring 6Music show, as opposed to my under rehearsed, poorly recorded, half-arsed attempts. Richard was chatting and looked busy so it was nice of Andrew to save him the bother of writing "This Is Shit" on my DVD by writing it himself. He also gave me a variety of signatures on his books for varying reasons.

Just as we were beginning to have fun (not that the shows weren't fun, but you know what I mean) the bar closed. This was a very good thing. It stopped me getting drunk, and I can be extremely confident (hubristic even?) that I didn't make a tit of myself. Possibly the best result I could have hoped for.Roll on the DVD release and roll on next Monday's AIOTM ! <aiotm>

Here's another account of the night by Robin Blamires.

Note: Was given a CD containing the infamous "Falls Road" heckler from the show in Warwick a few nights before. Richard is happy with me putting it on youtube, and here it is:

AIOTM 1/6

2011-05-17T01:18:00.005+01:00

So, here we are again. After my poor attendance at the last series of AIOTM, my rota for the next 6 weeks means that I can attend all the shows. The idea behind this is that Richard Herring writes the show on the Sunday, performs it to a paying audience on the Monday and releases it unedited for free on the internet on the Tuesday. I explain a little more about it in this blog here.

Ben Moor & Richard Herring

Tonight, Dan Tetsell couldn't make it as he has "real" work to do, so for one night only, Richard was joined by Ben Moor as well as the other 2 regulars, Emma Kennedy and Christian Reilly.

Around 2pm it was reported that the police had received a coded IRA bomb threat. We knew that one day we would have to sacrifice ourselves for AIOTM , and it looked like that day had finally come..

Rich does a mainly improvised stand up set before the main show and asks the usual question of what people do for a living. Michael was sitting front centre and told him he did woodwork and metal work which was unusual for a geeky Herring crowd. But when he told us he had made a model of Terry Pratchett's Discworld we all breathed a sigh of relief and realised he was one of us. (I have never read Discworld or any other Terry Pratchett books). I particularly enjoyed a lady to my left bellowing "HIGH BACKED ARMCHAIR", scaring Rich after a few other requests for catchphrases from a very enthusiastic man in the crowd.

After the break, AIOTM <aiotm> started and I won't give away too much (and to be honest, by the time this blog goes up, you can download the full show.) But let's just say Rich tells us who the actor is who loves dildos up his arse but has taken out a superinjunction, and as well as that, the star of the show, and hopefully for many others to come, was Pippa Middleton's disembodied anus. Another mention has to go to the Lembit Opik / Lady Gaga inspired song "Wonky Face". (See Lee Isserow's video at the end of this blog which he managed to create in under a week!)

Great to have a (hopefully) new running gag. No Tiny Andrew Collings, no cumpkins, no Tam Dalyell.. tonight seemed like a fresh start, and all the better for it. Though I would love Tiny AC to return. But he won't.

Due to the guest appearance by Ben Moor they recreated the 23 year old sketch that Ceith Allen had famously interrupted at the Oxford Revue by taking away Ben's crash mats as he had to jump to his death, before walking out and punching the manager. It was nice to be part of history, but to be honest, some things are better in the imagination!

One show down, 5 to go!

By the way, thanks to Alex for the picture! By the way. We weren't blown up. Not even close. So Real IRA, or whoever you are.. (Stewart Lee for all I know) - you didn't win. If you really want to publicise your case (and coincedentally AIOTM) bring it on next week.. if you dare!

Oooh - here is the Discworld model ! It's much better than I expected.

Christian Reilly - Wonky Face from Doctor Captain Lee Isserow on Vimeo.

Catie Wilkins - Chip Off The Odd Block

2011-05-15T16:46:00.005+01:00

I had seen Catie perform an early version of this show last year when it was called "Inheritance Tax". I mentioned to her shortly after that the one and only criticism was the title, as, if I didn't know who she was, the title wouldn't make me pay for a ticket. Anyway, after a lot of tweeting and suggestions from her followers, she has the much improved title of "Chip Off The Odd Block". The show is about her fears that she may be turning into her parents, and relies a lot on anecdotes and stories about them. Her father being logical, cold and robotic and her mother being rather hot-headed. I feel both guilty and proud that my suggestion made her change the title, as this one is better by far.

So, on Friday I had arranged to meet Rob and Simon at The Hen & Chickens (a great little theatre space in Highbury) and we had a beer before we were summoned upstairs. It was quite a "selective" audience and we took our seats at the far end of the front row.

On stage, Catie is very likeable. She has a vulnerable, shy side which you instantly warm to, and she is an intriguing mix of prettiness and geekiness. This was a preview so she referred to notes in the places that she wasn't too sure about that were rather new, reading a story she had written as a child and telling us about her parents and her fears that she may become them.

The reading of her father's Christmas circular is fantastic, as is her mother's catchphrase ("How dare you come here and say that"). One of the new lines in the show that I hadn't heard before was the story of when her brother came out as gay. "His psychologist said it may be because our mother was overbearing. We didn't tell her. She was overbearing"

The show ended and unlike most acts who would leave the stage and go backstage, Catie got her notes together and started packing up, leaving the audience unsure of what to do next. An awkward moment as we all filed out past her.

Also attending the show was Suzi Ruffell who is a very funny comedian in her own right and was seeing a full hour long show by Catie for the first time.

By the time Edinburgh comes, the rough edges will be off, and if you are going to the Fringe, this is one show you should definitely make time for!

On the way home I saw what I thought might by a "Banksy". Looking at it closer I realise it's not, but great to see this art work of Frank Sidebottom in Islington. (It's on the corner of Cross Street and Essex Road in case you're interested)

Stewart Lee tackles social networking

2011-05-07T00:36:00.003+01:00

Stewart Lee is not known for his social networking. In fact, he's quite the Luddite. However, here he is discussing web strategies with BBC marketing.

The Comedy Crawl - Day 2

2011-05-02T11:08:00.006+01:00

Danielle Ward

I shook off my hangover around 2ish and headed back to Camden. My basic plan was to stick around Belushi's and head to Improv in the evening. At Belushi's I caught the last half of Tim Fitzhigham. I had never seen him before but he was delighting the crowd with his tales of naval exploits and zebra crossings.

Thom Tuck

I found Neal, Nicola and Rob at the front for the next act and managed to get a seat on the comfy sofa just before Sarah Kendall came on. She's an Australian comic. She has an amazing head of red hair which led her to tell us about the fact that English people are either repulsed by it, or turns into a weird fetish. She also told us of her worst heckle when an audience member said he was going to basically sexually assault her. It was slightly uncomfortable to listen to but she managed to make it funny. Her idea for a hip hop video with loads of hot gay guys gangbanging was hilarious too especially when she said that she hadn't written the song yet but she expected it would be about how great she is.

Thom Tuck was on next. I won't go into details as you can read about his show here. He was soon followed by Danielle Ward who was fantastically filthy. Her voice sounds like a mixture of innocence and sarcasm, and when telling us a story about her first sexual experience wanking a man into a bin, she heard a child in the audience and got visibly worried. When told the child was only 3 and wouldn't understand a huge cheer erupted from the crowd. It turned out later that the child was Shappi Khorsandi's!

I decided to follow the other 3 to The Camden Head. I got a pint and went towards the stairs only to be told it was full. Typical. I was now in a noisy pub i didn't really like with a pint I didn't really want. Anyway I decided best course of action was to down it as quickly as I could and head back to Belushi's.

Shappi Khorsandi

I got there just in time to catch the end of a set by an Australian comic who was a bit shouty and aggressive for my liking, but Shappi followed next. I had only seen her live once before which was at All day Edinburgh which was rather shambolic, but today she was on top form. She heard a girl in the audience laugh and pointed out it was the cutest laugh she had ever heard. She invited her up on stage to have a chat and the girl told her that her mum was a huge fan of hers. Is that a good thing to hear? I'm not sure! Later when asked what she did for a living she said that she didn't want to say "in case I have to help someone who is unwell". Obviously she was a doctor and Shappi questioned the sincerity of the Hippocratic oath that she took. She brought her little boy on to stage at the end of her show which was a rather cute moment, though Shappi told us that it was so nice it was even making herself sick.

John, Michael & Brendan

After a quick refuel at Costa Coffee we headed to Theatro Technis to catch The London Comedy Improv. They perform at the Phoenix on the last Wednesday of every month and are well worth a visit. Like all improv shows they rely on suggestions from the audience to base their sketches around, so I started thinking. Tonight the cast was Brendan Dempsey, Tara Flynn, Michael Legge, Kirsty Newton, Rufus Hound, John Voce and Tiernan Douieb.

Among the sketches we got were a day in the life of Jacob (one of the audience members) who had told us what he did, his aspirations and where he worked, as well as John doing a song about dinosaurs in a Nigerian accent which not many would be brave enough to do. Michael's face during this was a picture.

Michael, Tara, Rufus & Kirsty

John, Michael, Kirsty, Tiernan, Brendan & Tara

We stayed for the 2nd show and when it started there were only 8 in the audience. Luckily as the show went on more people joined us. My suggestion of "Ridicule is nothing to be scared of" brought on a good sketch, though it ended with Michael telling us he hated Adam Ant.

The sketch that brought the house down involved John being shouted at for around 5 minutes by Michael, as Michael "apologised" for all the awful things he had done to him, ending with a line about cum. A few people left at this point, and Tara asked them "Was it the cum?" However I don't think it was a genuine walkout. I think they were just moving on to another venue, but for the purposes of this blog lets say they stormed out disgusted (They didn't)

After the show, myself, Nicola and Neal went for a beer in a local pub (with no music or comedy) with Tara, Michael, John and Carl (aka Mr Flynn) and it was a lovely way to round off the evening. I headed home stopping by Belushi's to try and catch some of Rich Hall but it was so busy I was stuck behind a pillar and couldn't see a thing, and made the correct decision to wander back to Camden Town tube.

Top Acts: All of London Comedy Improv, Shappi Khorsandi, Sarah Kendall, Danielle Ward and Thom Tuck.

The Comedy Crawl - Day 1

2011-05-01T11:28:00.004+01:00

The Comedy Crawl is an offshoot of the Camden Crawl, and it's spread over two evenings, with over 100 acts booked. I had been looking forward to this for some time. Let's get the disappointment out of the way first though:

There was no schedule released until the day of the gigs. This schedule seemed rather ambitious to say the least. I know that last minute changes get made and some people cancel, and others may be added, but all it takes is a little update to the website so we can access the most up to date information. I know the thrill of an event like this is that you can stumble across new talent for the first time, but I would also like the option of knowing when and where a particular act will be performing.

We queued up to get our wristbands at 5pm, and we went to the Black Cap for a bite to eat and a couple of acts before the shows started at 7pm. However unbeknown to us, the comedy actually started at 2pm, and we had no access to it. It's pretty poor considering we had paid £35 for a weekend ticket and were not being allowed to see 25% of the acts. After a few moans about this via Twitter, the organisers graciously have allowed us in for the Sunday afternoon.

That's most of the moaning over, and none of it is directed at the acts or the individual promoters, as they all seemed to do a sterling job under varying conditions

At The Black Cap, Neal and I started preparing our plan. Some of the acts we agreed we wanted to see and some we would go our separate ways. The first act was up at The Canalside Bar, and it was Adam Bloom. He's someone I've never seen before but Neal spoke highly of. We got there before 7 and got a good seat. I decided to go to the loo and to my horror they had a toilet attendant. Does anyone ever think that's a good idea? I went to the cubicle (as I usually do) and had a wee. I also thought I'd blow my nose but there was no loo roll. Luckily this wasn't a huge disaster for me, but it could be for the next occupant. The man squirted a tiny bit of soap on me, I washed my hands and he gave me a tiny bit of blue roll which instantly became soaked. I had to ask for another bit. And one more. And another to blow my nose on. I told the man there was no loo roll, and he held out the blue roll, saying "I have it". That's top service having every sheet of loo roll (and itchy blue stuff at that) delivered over the top of the cubicle door. I'm really hoping this was just a misunderstanding, but I doubt it, considering it was still empty when I went back at 1030.

Time moved on and by 730 I grew weary of no acts on stage and decided to show my loyalty to Fat Tuesday by visiting Belushi's. i just managed to catch the awkward and funny ending of Dan Antopolski. Tom Craine was up next, but probably not my cup of tea who was soon followed by a rather camp boy with a big hat and long socks. I think he was Joey Page. He had a few microphone problems but did most of the gig off mic, which was fine from where I was sitting, but probably not so good for the people at the back.

I decided to visit the Wheelbarrow as that was where Nicola and Rob were. The venue was very busy, and it was rather long and narrow. I only stayed a couple of minutes, as all I could hear was terrible Turkish style singing. I went back to Fat Tuesday and caught the next comedian. Again, not my cup of tea. He was a bit shouty and making poor cock jokes, with a slight undercurrent of ironic racism, which to some ears may not have seemed ironic at all. It turns out this was Adam Bloom, so was pretty glad I missed the show at The Canalside Bar. Chris Cox was on next; a comedy mindreader who could be good if he either did less comedy or less magic. For a comedian who does magic I'd stick to Pete Firman, and for a funny magician, Derren Brown.

So far I hadn't seen anyone who had really made me laugh (Tiernan excepted, whose MCing was its usual high standard. It must be a hard job keeping up the energy for such a long time, especially with people leaving and arriving after (and during) each act.

Joel Dommett

I went to "Ready To Eat" (RTE) to catch Joel Dommett and saw the end of Amadeus Martin. not a name I knew, but definitely someone I would see again. Full of charisma and a very funny guy. I just wish I had seen more of him. Again, people were wrriving and leaving and the compere asked me if I was leaving too. I told him it depended who the next act was. By this time I realised the schedules were not close to accurate so I had no idea who to expect. he introduced another comedy magician to the stage and I headed out for a cigarette. I was speaking to the MC (damn - can't remember his name but he was very very good) and explained I was looking for Joel Dommett. He told me he was on next and lo and behold he turned up to the venue.

Canalside Bar, hoping to see Sean Hughes and Abandoman.

This venue by now was so busy. I quickly located Neal and Nicola and stood beside them. Tiff Stevenson was on and from what I could hear of her she was excellent. Unfortunately there was so much babbling from people all around me, and especially from the people further back who clearly weren't here for the comedy: I guess they just allowed people with Camden Crawl (the music festival that was happening alongside it) tickets in to the venue. This is never a great idea for comedy. Top marks for Tiff for getting through this rather tough gig.

Neal and Nicola decided to move on by this point and I thought I'd stick around to see who was on next. It was Luke Benson, but I had seen him a number of times before at The Fortnight Club, and as it was busy and hot I decided to nip out for a cigarette. I got chatting to the promoter of the venue and she couldn't believe we were not allowed into the comedy events during the day. I spent some time chatting with her, and she was lovely. I just wish I could remember her name. Matt Kirshen came on next. I had a brief chat with him before and he seemed a little unhappy by the talkative crowd. I didn't see him, but I imagine he was no less than excellent, as I've never seen him be anything other than that.

Me and Brendon Burns

I suddenly heard about 100 people with one voice shout "Shut the fuck up" and it seemed the compere Brendon Burns had decided to deal with this lot once and for all. He came back outside and I spoke to him briefly. I asked him for a picture for this blog and he said it was fine and seemed surprised that I didn't want to be in it myself. It was embarrassing, so now you know why I have a picture of me in it. Please forgive me.

Abandoman closed the show. I have seen them once before and they were stunning. Again, tonight was more of the same. A fantastic Irish improvised hip-hop act that you have to see.

I joined Rob, Nicola and Neal back at Belushi's for a farewell drink before we do this all again on Sunday.

In summary:

Poor organisation
Great promoters
Top acts: Amadeus Martin, Joel Dommett, Tiff Stevenson, and Abandoman

Do The Right Thing

2011-04-27T08:53:00.004+01:00

Originally rather cheekily billed as coming from the "creators of AIOTM" (soon changed to "production team - ie : bloke that presses record), this pilot podcast is the brainchild of comedian, musician, and Dave Gorman sidekick, Danielle Ward.

Now, I'm not sure what a pilot podcast is. Perhaps it has to go through some sort of podcast authority these days. That's political correctness gone mad! Anyway, as it is a pilot, I'm not sure whether this is going to be released or not. I would assume it will, because all in all it was a rather fun night.

I met up with Simon and Paul at the venue (The Phoenix - surprised?) where they had ordered two huge plates of cheese. We were soon joined by Neal and said hello to comedy stalwarts Rob and Kate. (At their table there was a lady whose trousers were so low when she leaned forward that we could see most of her flowery pants. Unfortunately I was told by my more sensible tablemates that it would be inappropriate to take a picture of this for my blog.

Thom Tuck

Opening tonight was Thom Tuck; one of The Penny Dreadfuls. They are a sketch troupe that I don't know very much about. They had headlined at All Day Edinburgh but it was a long day and I didn't get to see them. Anyway, he performed a preview of his new Edinburgh show for around 40 minutes or so, and was an absolute joy. I do love seeing an act for the first time and being completely blown away by them. His show revolved around his obsession with Disney straight to DVD movies and the fact that virtually no one in the audience had seen them didn't make it any less funny. There were also occasions when he told us of when he had his heart broken... by a girl, as well as a fantastic 3D joke, involving Paul, some special glasses and a lightly tossed ball of paper at his face. Thom was rather surprised later when it turns out Paul had seen as many Lilo and Stitch movies as him.

Michael, Jim Bob, Danielle, Margaret & Dan

After a short break, Danielle introduced the panellists for the podcast. Michael Legge, Jim Bob, (from the fantastic Carter USM), TV Burp writer Dan Maier, and Margaret Cabourn-Smith. The format was similar to many panel shows, this time the questions were (as you probably guessed from the title) about what the right thing to do is for a given situation. What's the right thing to do when plummeting in a lift? What to do if you get chased by a bear? Audience members contributed their own problems at the start of the show which the panel gave very funny, if slightly unwise advice for, as well as trawling through the problem pages of the tabloids.

Michael, was his usual shouty self, which of course we all like. We know Jim Bob writes extremely witty and pun laden lyrics, and in a live comedy situation he was very very funny indeed. Dan reminded me a little of Andy Hamilton. He didn't say much, but whenever he opened his mouth a fantastic line came out of it.

The show was occasionally interrupted by the occasional shout of "libel!" from Ben, and perhaps too much good natured heckling from the man in the front row who thought I was Kevin Eldon (???) but other than that it all ran rather smoothly shambolic.

This was a fun night. In order to ensure a good audience the price was an astonishing £2.50, but I think most people would be willing to pay twice as much in order for the team to at least cover their costs. Danielle had mentioned this would be unedited, but with a little editing this could be tightened up nicely.

Oh, I had a little chat with Thom afterwards and he is playing at The New Red Lion in Angel on Tuesday 3rd April. I'm planning to be there. Come along.

Fortnight Club

2011-04-26T08:28:00.003+01:00

Ronnie Rigsby

Since it's move to The New Red Lion, The Fortnight Club seems to have gone from strength to strength. Gone seem to be the days of gigs being cancelled at The Camden Head and now, every 2 weeks, there always seems to be a healthy crowd.

I had arranged to meet Bob at The King Eddie for a beer first, and we headed down to the venue around 8 and were joined by Rob and Richard. Ronnie Rigsby as ever was our host, celebrating 58 years in show business. Ronnie is an old music hall entertainer who has worked with all the greats, and contains just the right amount of charm and bitterness to be one of the best comperes I have seen on the circuit. His creator, Logan Murray used to work with Jerry Sadowitz, and it really shows. Logan now runs a well respected comedy course that some comedians that were on tonight had attended, which he said later makes him feel rather proud. For me, I don't really mind what acts are on. I'd happily watch Ronnie rant and tell us tales of Princess Margaret and the grinning head of death all night.

Paddy Lennox came on first and was a good opening act. There was a slightly hack routine about the difference between cats and dogs (cats are bastards - dogs are stupid), but this was rescued by the observation that cats like to show their arseholes, and dogs will do anything to hide it.

I noticed on Twitter that Wendy Wason is playing with Tara Flynn tonight (Tuesday) but hadn't heard her name before. Well, she was up next and she was Richard's favourite act of the night. I thought she was pretty excellent too. Definitely someone I'll see again.

Fortnight Club regular Tony Cowards came on next. He is best described as a west country version of Milton Jones or Gary Delaney, and as you can imagine, someone that relies on that many one liners has to write a hell of a lot of them, and on a new material night there's no guarantee they'll all work. They didn't. But when a run of one liners fall flat, that's funny in itself!

We had an interval. A good interval. A solid 3 stars.

Nathan Caton

In the second half we had Nathan Caton opening. I have seen him before, and he has a particular charm that makes him extremely likeable. He tried out a new routine about his West Indian grandmother coming to school to tell his teacher off in front of his class for giving the lactose-intolerant Nathan milk. All good stuff and I'd definitely recommend you see him.

Mark Swan

Irish comedian Mark Swan was on next. This was also his first ever UK gig. He had spoken to Bob during the interval and asked if he minded being used in his act as his old headmaster. Bob had already attracted the attention of all the previous comedians so one more wasn't going to hurt. So he pointed out his surprise that his old headmaster had turned up and that he was thrilled to see him. There were no other headmaster references till right at the end, and eventually the gag paid off. Oh, he did also show us that if you look at a map of Ireland on it's side that it looks like a little dog.

Finally it was tonight's headline act - Steve Hall. I had seen him a couple of times before. Once, I think as Fat Tuesday and once more recently at Sunday Hullabaloo at The Wilmington Arms. He's a funny guy. His gag about telling people he was in a very low rated show on BBC3 went down well, as the lack of response or recognition of it had proved his point. I think there were about three We Are Klang fans who quietly whooped at that point. Anyway Steve is an excellent comedian and would definitely be worth the admission price alone.

Steve Hall

Unusually for The Fortnight Club, it seemed very male tonight. Usually the performers are pretty evenly split between the sexes, and I think we like it like that. A slight disappointment at the lack of the advertised Holly Walsh, though I think the nature of new material nights mean that the line up can be rather fluid. People can drop out, and of course people can play unannounced. Ronnie mentioned that Lenny Henry had played before, but "never again - his autocue was terrible" - yes this is a true story. Lenny Henry has indeed done little gigs with autocues and a team of writers in attendance.

I'm sidetracked now. Oh yes, the lack of ladies. Mary Bourke wasn't on tonight - another disappointment, but she has been bragging on Facebook that she is working in Bali so we'll forgive her for that. So yes - more female comics next time please if you can please chaps.

Perhaps they've entered so many Funny Women competitions that they can't afford the bus fare.

The most disgusting thing I've ever seen

2011-04-07T12:04:00.006+01:00

Stephen Merchant

These were the words of Lost Quattros Cvnts' first ever walk out! Michael announced this to the packed out venue with a certain matter of pride towards the end of the show. To be honest, I've seen worse. I thought the Cvnts were relatively mild. And in any case, what did that lady expect to see. There's a clue in the title. And the quote will look good on the next poster.

So another month has arrived, and it was time to head down to Cvnts once more. Could it top last month's awesome gig here by Al Murray? This month we had the legendary Stephen Merchant to look forward to. I had seen him once before a year or two at The Old Queen's Head (handily situated less than 5 minutes walk from my house) as he was a secret guest at the Comedy Gold night which also featured Richard Herring and he was astounding. Michael Legge has said he was the best comedian he has ever seen when he did the circuit in the days before "The Office".

Also on the bill was Tara Flynn, who I have usually seen as one of the core performers of The London Comedy Improv, but more recently has had some success with her "Big Noise" show. OK, so Michael had announced that it would be Catie Wilkins, but there had been a terrible admin error, and Tara bravely stepped in at the last minute. We have however been promised Catie in May.

My friend Marco had to organise his works night out and asked me for some suggestions. After discounting London Comedy Improv (as it was 2 days before pay day) I told him about this, and he seemed keen. Anyway, he was running late but texted me a description of his workmates for me to say hello to. I think he underestimated the amount of people, as well as my willingness to speak to strangers.

I decided to walk to the venue. It was such a nice day and i had an hour to kill. I remember walking to town a lot last summer and will probably do this more. It gives me the illusion that I'm being healthy. Outside I met Rob, Bob, 2 of Rob's friends, Jack, and we headed downstairs. The queue took a long time to move but once we were in, I found that the always lovely Muki had organised a table for four of us right at the front. Unfortunately (logistically) 2 more people had turned up so we couldn't all fit together. I was trying to work out how to fill these seats the best I could and there was a slight awkwardness as people saw 2 empty seats at the front and kept trying to sit in them, so I decided to grab Jack and Misha from the bar and plonk them beside us.

The gig was sold out tonight. I'm quite sure this is the first time this has happened and they had to turn 40 people away. So a quick tip; if you're coming to LQC, especially when a name comedian is on, get to the venue for 7pm.

LQC came on with air flutes, passing it from one to another as the song went on. It was finally passed to a front row audience member who, judging by the sound of it, clearly had no idea how to play the air flute. Silly person. They then explained that they hadn't written any sketches (which I think turned out to be true!), but decided to plow ahead anyway. Paul and Jeremy's baby characters were both cute and funny as ever, with Jeremy's occasional ear piercing shriek taking Paul by surprise. We were also promised Elizabeth Taylor's "last ever sketch". When this arrived, the Cvnts quickly decided which roles they should play, and as they had never seen it before, excitedly launched into it. However we soon found out that Liz wasn't the Michael Jackson hugging, gay-loving superstar we thought she was, unleashing a torrent of foul language and homophobic abuse, much to The Cvnts embarrassment. I think it was as this point the "digusted" lady left. We got Sean Goldsworthy again, this time reading his classic "homoeroticker", which was equally hilarious and arousing, no matter what your sexual orientation.

Tara Flynn was the first guest, and as usual, her charm shone through. She played four songs: Bjork Song, The Fog From The Film The Fog, Custard, and a fantastic (thought slightly shambolic) Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue parody, backed by Precious Little's James Hingley on guitar, and joined by Michael on vocals. As Michael said later when I asked about this video, it was something "you had to be there" for, but I think it's worth preserving this in people's memories. By the way, sorry about the enormous glass but it was a hot night!

Landfill Hill

Custard

The interval was next. To be honest, I've had better. I felt I didn't make the most of it, and will definitely try harder next month.

It was time to announce the special guest. It wasn't a huge secret so hardly a surprise, but Stephen Merchant got a huge round of applause. He started by talking about when he first became famous, and the various articles he had appeared on, showing us his first ever picture in a national newspaper (he had disappeared out of the top of the frame) and his first interview, where he was called Stephen Mitchell. He also told us about an article after he had been spotted dancing. Unfortunately this was rather spoiled by someone shouting out "albatross". If you're going to heckle, make it funny. Don't just say the punchline to the joke! Twat.

He explained that the purpose of his upcoming tour was to find a wife, and told us all about the difficulties he has in his sex life at the moment, mainly related to his height.

A super night out indeed. Michael gave us clues at the end who the special guest for next month is. I won't repeat them here, mainly because Paul doesn't seem as confident that they'll get him. (Damn - that's a clue - he's a man. Or is he?) Suffice to say that if they manage it, for me, this will be the bext special guest they have ever had (bear in mind they've already had Jason Manford, Al Murray, Richard Herring and now Stephen Merchant)

Buy Tara Flynn's album, and to finish, here is her video clip of "The Fog From The Film The Fog"

Gary Numan - Back To The Phuture

2011-04-04T13:57:00.007+01:00

I think I might become a Buddhist. Karma is real. I found this out after giving my Rock Band drum kit to my old pal Matt. He offered me cash, but I honourably declined. He said he would buy me a pint next time I saw him, but he only went and won a competition for 2 guest list tickets to see Gary Numan at The Troxy and gave one to me.

Now Matt likes to get a good spot as he has filmed some great live footage in the past. He said he would be there around 3pm. Doors didn't open till 6pm and Gary wasn't due on till 10:30. Now I don't trust myself in that situation and would have probably got drunk and leg cramps if I had gone that early. No one else on the bill really interested me, although I wouldn't have minded seeing John Foxx.

As I've said before I've been a big fan of Gary Numan for many years. "Are 'Friends' Electric?" came out in 1979 and I've followed him ever since, seeing him live on a number of occasions. I managed to meet Gary a couple of times: once outside the STV studios in Glasgow when he was there to do an interview and again at the launch party for the "Random" tribute album. He's a nice guy, and remarkably approachable. I met him again at Reading Festival a few years later. I was there with my ex, who had banned me from playing his music when he was round, but at the time he had a local radio show and wanted me to get an interview. I had a chat with his wife who introduced Greg to Gary and they had a lovely little chat, while I sat on the side lines with the wife, seething with jealousy.

Anyway, after a dreadful journey on the Hammersmith & City line I got to the venue. It was a brilliant venue. Much nicer than the likes of the Shepherds Bush Empire that I've seen him more often than any others. My mate and also my flat mate had been to see Morrissey there last year and both of them said the same.

Matt was right down the front so there was no hope of seeing him, but he texted me to say that a couple of people I haven't seen for many years, possibly the 90s were in attendance. I sent Jon a message and managed to meet up with him and Karen and we managed to get a fairly good vantage point front right.

Gary opened with an epic version of Down In The Park, which was the single before AFE that has since been covered by the likes of Foo Fighters and Marilyn Manson. The stage looked amazing with huge LED screens that showed some pretty awesome images, but best appreciated towards the end of the gig when i had moved to the back of the room. A few other older tracks were played, such as That's Too Bad and Zero Bars, and of course AFE.

Some new songs from the upcoming Splinter album were played, such as Captured Underground Noise Transmission and The Fall, and he even through in a new song that he had only written on Monday (Everything Comes Down To This?), which was a brave move. Out of the new songs, this one was probably the weakest and could do with a little more work, although Gary did tell us in advance it was going to be rough!

Gary was energetic as usual, banging his head, thumping the stage with his mic stand and throwing some shapes. He seemed to be having a great time too. Anyway, my hangover from the morning was really catching up with me, and I felt sad to be leaving early, but I was exhausted. All in all, a great night out and even though he has been performing now for 33 years still as fresh as ever.

There was a documentary on Sky Arts about Gary that I couldn't see because I was at the gig. And I don't have Sky, but hopefully I'll be able to track it down somewhere. Any ideas?

Incidentally, Gary is now on Twitter - @numanofficial

I recorded a few videos on my phone which were not too bad, but they suffer from rather poor sound quality. I have put a couple of them after Matt's much better quality movies. Thanks to him for putting these up, and thanks again for the ticket!

1. Crash

2. Films

3. Haunted

4. Everything Comes Down To This

5. Zero Bars (Mr Smith)

6. Pure

7. Halo

8. Down In The Park (poor phone camera quality)

9. Captured Underground Noise Transmission (poor phone camera quality)

A couple more tracks - this time from supilangweilig on youtube:

10. I Die: You Die

11. Are "Friends" Electric?

Update: Thanks to AK on the comments below I have found the Re:Invention documentary. OK, it's recorded off the telly and there are Danish subtitles, but if you want to check it out, it's here

You know the rules sweetheart

2011-03-03T10:05:00.002Z

The Pub Landlord

Los Quattros Cvnts is one of my favourite comedy nights on the first Wednesday of the month at The Phoenix in central London. I've written about it before here and here. Fun, silly, and extremely friendly. I brought along Cvnts virgins Ken, my big brother, and Priscilla who I work with as well as meeting up with a couple of Cvnts stalwarts - Sir Bob, Graham, Neal and Rob.

After a now traditional bit of grub in the Old Explorer opposite, we headed into the extremely busy Phoenix and lurked by the door. We were called downstairs at 7:15, which was remarkably early, although we soon realised this was so we could stand on the stairs. This was actually lovely as it was a lot cooler and less noisy here.

Thanks to the ever lovely Muki, we got seats right at the front. This worried my brother and I reassured him that it was safe and he wouldn't be picked on! Although having watched an Al Murray DVD earlier in the day, he didn't believe me.

The Cvnts opened with a sketch about the film Inception, but having never seen the film, it went a little over my head. Michael had said before the gig that he was exhausted from his travel to the far east but luckily had to drink a can of Red Bull in this sketch. What a stroke of luck. It's almost like he wrote that in deliberately! The moved on to a job interview sketch where the job being interviewed for was job interviewer. This was pretty intricate involving Dan and Jeremy playing three characters at once. I think I mentioned before about some of The Trap's sketches reminding me of The Two Ronnies, and this was another great ronniesque sketch.

Paul and Jeremy's jaded babies were back, and then it was the turn of the extremely erotic Sean Goldsworthy, with another attempt at "choose your own" erotica where he asked a member of the audience to pick from the options he had written. When I saw Paul do this last month I had assumed he had scripted it so it would always be the same, but he has in fact written pages of it, and his "jump to page 44" instructions are totally genuine.

Jo Neary closed the first half with some character based comedy, my favourite of which was the new comedian who had just finished a comedy course.

Interval time next, and it was so good I can't figure out words to describe it. But quite possibly the best interval ever. Then again, there was that interval in the late '90s I remember so clearly, so scratch that. The interval was alright I guess though.

During the interval, Paul had mentioned it was a shame they didn't have time to do one of the sketches, but luckily they managed to fit it in for the second half. Dan was reading us a story from Fiesta to let us know the literary merit of such porn stories, while Paul was revising his London A-Z. This was a lot of fun with Tourettes style interjections of "Cockfosters" and "Mudchute". Very very silly, and a lot of fun.

Finally it was time for Al Murray to perform. I think everyone in the room was very excited. Usually at LQC the headline act will be someone known in the comedy scene, but it's rare they get a household name. I guess the only person as big as Al that's been on there would be Jason Manford quite a long time ago (He was superb by the way)

Al confirmed to us that he's one of the best comedians around to riff off the audience and the first 40 minutes or so was just him talking to us and obviously giving us some cheeky abuse. He noticed Priscilla's pint, asked her what it is, and told her that it was unacceptable. He picked it up, and to Priscilla's astonishment, downed it! He also cnofiscated a glass of white wine from a lad in the second row. He sent a young lad with emo type hair that he had already nicknamed "Crowboy" to the bar with a tenner out of his own pocket to get a replacement and came back with a white wine for Priscilla, although I ended up sneakily drinking it when Al wasn't looking. After abusing people for their lack of "proper" jobs (such as marketing, publishing, and writing for Torchwood - or Touchcloth as Al named it) he went on to ask us to name any country in the world and he would explain why Britain was better which he managed to do with an impressive knowledge of history!

After the gig we had a brief chat with Mr Murray at the bar, who by now had changed out of his landlord's uniform and was now sporting a rather dapper hat, and I mentioned to him that Priscilla was unaware of "the rules" and he told us that for the landlord, there are no exceptions. Very funny man and a true gent.

Next month the special guest will be a rather tall man who works with "extras" in movies and used to have an "office job. You'd be totally mental not to come. See you there!

Fortnight Club - Relaunched!

2011-03-01T00:28:00.002Z

The Fortnight Club has been running for around 20 years in various venues near Angel, Islington. It was set up by such comedians as Lee Hurst and Alan Davies in order to try out new material, and is the longest running new material night in London. Until recently, it was situated at The Camden Head in Angel (not Camden). I had visited there a number of times and was always struck by the venues disinterest in the club. There were never any posters, or even an arrow pointing up the stairs, and the staff never seemed to know when the show started or even if there was one.

The first time I came here, the show didn't go ahead as there just wasn't anyone there. Another time, Milton Jones and Tony Law amongst others performed to just two of us. Anyway, a month or two ago, it was announced that The Camden Head were no longer going to do entertainment, so The Fortnight Club were on the move. This, I thought had to be a good thing. I was not keen on that particular pub as either a bar or a venue, and recently a new comedy club in Angel, The New Red Lion Theatre has opened, which to me seemed like an ideal venue.

This was announced on Facebook and I managed to win a couple of free tickets. I took my friend Richard, who had been to this venue before to see Richard Herring, probably because it's less than 20 seconds walk from his house.

Announced on the bill tonight were Fortnight Club stalwarts Mary Bourke, Tony Law and around 7 others. The compere was the fantastic Ronnie Rigsby (aka Logan Murray). As it turned out I was disappointed that there was no Tony Law, and poor Logan was ill, however that was made up for later.

I had two awkward moments before the gig. The first was when I wanted to visit the loo. The only signs to tell me which was which was a picture of a lion on one door, and a panther on the other. I looked from one to the other before confidently striding into the panther door. I quickly left! (Richard pointed out to me later that the panther was probably a lioness.)

Outside I met Nick Helm outside having a cigarette: "It's Nick isn't it?"
"Andy" he said
"Good to see you again Nick"
"No, I'm Andy"

It was getting confusing.

I said "Sorry I thought you were Nick Helm"
"Who's he?"
"A comedian"
"I'm a comedian called Andy Onions"

Well that was the second awkward moment of the evening. I said hello to Mary as she walked in and she mentioned that there was something in her set inspired by me. This was worrying and I wondered which of my idiotic Facebook updates she had seen!

Simon Clayton took over as compere for the evening and introduced our first act, Dylan Bray. I had seen Dylan before and enjoyed his set, especially the joke where he said that he didn't mind if his unborn child was a boy or a girl "just as long as it was straight". He explained that this joke went badly yesterday and made two girls cry and spent some time explaining the thought processes behind it.

Simon introduced a comedian by the name of "Adam Tempest" - I whispered to Richard that he sounded like a superhero. He was a rather tall skinny lad in glasses that didn't quite fit the name but he was rather funny.

Sanderson Jones (and Richard)

Jo Romero was up next but I couldn't take my eyes off her boots. I really don't want to be unkind but I did whisper (very quietly) to Richard that it looked like she had forgotten to take the back half of a pantomime horse off. However, her material soon distracted my attention from the boots! Luke Benson closed the first half with what I think was a very funny set. Unfortunately his Geordie accent was so incredibly strong that I probably only understood about 3 minutes out of the 10 he was on stage for! I have no problems with Sarah Millican or even Ross Noble, but I found that I really had to concentrate hard.

After the rather uneventful break things moved up a notch with Tony Cowards. Not someone I'd seen before, but he rattled off a host of one liners that Milton Jones or Gary Delaney would be proud of.

Ivor Dembina. Not a name I was familiar with, but certainly an unusual performance. Not many words were spoken at first, but he looked round the back of each side of the curtain, before slowly coming back to the microphone and declaring "Well I don't know where Maddie is.", then putting comedy to one side and lecturing the audience about how Live At The Apollo is filmed and why comedy audiences were stupid to go to DVD recordings and pay for the privilege. An interesting, if one sided discussion punctuated by one man standing up, muttering "Fucking shit" and walking out.

Mary Bourke was up next and had come up with some "mum cusses" as she didn't think the ones that the teenage boys on the bus told were good enough, mentioning one that she had heard where one boy claimed his friend's mum had "wooden legs and real feet". At a previous gig she had applauded the wit of the boy, but since I had pointed out on Facebook to her that it was an old Steven Wright joke, derided him for his plagiarism.

Marian Pashley was the penultimate act and she certainly tickled Richard with a quip about her retort to mothers with pushchairs ramming them into the back of her ankles: "Do that again and I'll punch your child in the face."

The Fortnight Club, and I'm sure other new material nights, are great places to see comedians that you haven't seen, or even heard of before, trying out new material. Yes, some of it isn't polished; some of it might not work. but it's a chance to discover people that you'd willingly go to see again. So far at this club I've stumbled across both Tony Law and Mary Bourke and tonight I have found another great comic to add to my list. Sanderson Jones.

Sanderson Jones

He was our headliner tonight and as soon as he came on had the audience in stiches. He remarked on his remarkable resemblance to Jesus and even got Richard to be his lectern (for no apparent reason) to hold his notes. We spoke to him after and in October he is planning a big gig in October at Union Chapel with no tickets advertised in the press, no tickets available on the phone, no tickets available on the internet. The only way to buy a ticket is through him directly as he will be flyering his own show. Now I don't know if I've broken a rule of comedy by telling you this or not, but I didn't sign any contract.

Now, on an unrelated note, if you've read this before Wednesday 2nd March you have no excuse not to go to Los Quattros Cvnts at The Phoenix, Cavendish Square at 8pm to see LQC (The Trap + Michael Legge) with special guests Joanna Neary and AL MURRAY ! For only £7. And they even give you £2 off if you say "Bum" at them on the door!

And go and see Sanderson Jones some time.

Music is really awful

2011-02-16T11:12:00.002Z

I thought I'd write a blog today about music. Not musical comedy. In fact, nothing to do with comedy at all (though you may think different when I mention some of the bands I like)

I started going to comedy gigs around 2 years ago when I looked at the bands playing my local venue (Islington O2) and realised I hadn't heard of any of them. Most of my favourite bands didn't exist any more and I had no gigs to go to. I'm still rather out of touch with contemporary music now. I followed The Brits a little on Twitter last night and saw Mumford & Sons being slagged off, and I couldn't even join in because I have no idea who they are. The Kings Of Leon, Kasabian, The Killers.. I mean, I've HEARD of them all but wouldn't recognise them walking down the street. I have probably heard their songs and would know the song when I heard it on the radio, but I can't possibly match it to the band.

I think this must be a general thing that happens to 40-somethings. Pop music is not for us. But all the same, pop music today is SO BORING. Where are the current Sex Pistols, the new Nirvana, the contemporary Beastie Boys? The closest we can come to NWA seems to by Tiny Tempah (can't be bothered to check if I've spelled that right) - and he's a hip-hop guy that your mum would like.

Music is extremely important to me, and whenever I'm on a the move. I'm constantly plugged in and if I've run out of podcasts to listen to I have my iPhone set to shuffle on my carefully considered playlist. (I used to have whole albums on my phone but now I only have songs that I'm not tempted to skip)

Until I was 11 I wasn't that bothered about music. I remember liking Space Oddity and Long Haired Lover From Liverpool when I was about 5 and I would hear my big brother playing his Queen and Status Quo, and my step sister playing her ELO and Elton John and quite liked it, but never took much of an interest. I was too young to remember punk. In fact I don't think punk happened in the little Scottish seaside town where I grew up.

I can probably break down my musical education into specific sections, and there are certain people who have shaped this.

Gary Numan

1. The Numan years

This all changed in May 1979 when I saw Gary Numan (then performing under the name of Tubeway Army) performing "Are 'Friends' Electric?" on Top Of The Pops. (See, I even got the punctuation right!). He was so different to what I'd ever seen. He looked nervous, cold, he barely moved, and the music was unlike anything I'd ever heard with it's booming synths. Me and my friend Leslie were instantly hooked and would run home at lunchtime every Tuesday to see where he was in the charts. This was when a song would usually enter the charts at number 30 or so, then next week might get to 20, and it would take 4 or 5 weeks to get to number 1.

I became obsessed with Numan, but wasn't allowed to buy his records (or any records). This changed when I was 15 and spent a few months in a children's home - another story - where I bought 3 Gary Numan albums for £2 each from another boy. I played them constantly, analysing the lyrics, writing my own Numanesque songs.

Gary Numan - Are 'Friends' Electric? - Top of The Pops

2. New Wave

Bowie

A boy at school called Spencer saw the latest Numan LP (Warriors) in a slightly see through John Menzies bag and wanted to become my friend. He lived about a 20 minute bus ride from me and I would go round his house a lot and listen to his records. He had a lot more than me, and rather more diverse. He told me that Gary Numan wasn't the best, and played me albums by David Bowie, Japan and Talking Heads. He told me that Numan was trying to copy Bowie which meant Bowie was better. OK, technically Bowie IS better than Numan, and although I liked him, I still preferred Gary. However my musical taste was beginning to broaden.

3. Thrash!

Slayer

I was round at "Spenny"'s house another time (I guess 1987 when I was 18) and he told me he had to play me something really funny. t was Slayer's "Reign In Blood". We laughed so much - it was ridiculous - it was so fast, the guitar solos seemed completely random, and they were singing about Satan. For a Christian boy like me, it seemed so dangerous! I asked Spenny to tape it for me, and I would play a great joke on my cousin (I was sharing a room with him at the time as I was living with my Aunt and Uncle). When I got home I would play it really loud and pretend to him I liked it. Haha - this was gonna be great! I listened to it on the bus... and I actually started to like it! I was a thrasher! A few weeks later I was at Spenny's again and he let me hear Master Of Puppets by Metallica and Into The Pandemonium by Celtic Frost and the deal was complete.

Tom G Warrior - Celtic Frost

When I moved to England in 1987 I saw a poster advertising a thrash band called Dross (with an amusing Bros style logo) who were playing in a pub nearby. Now I had no idea that you could see bands in pubs, so I went along and loved it. They changed their name to Killing Faith and never got famous, but it was then that I realised that you didn't have to be famous to be in a band, or that you could happily be in a band without getting famous. I still have their demo tapes at home and still play them.

4. Punk Rock - Nirvana & Husker Du

In 1988 I had started my first job, working for the Meteorological Office, and I shared an office (yes in those days we didn't have open plan - it was amazing) with a younger lad called Simon Osborne. He was pretty geeky with a big mop of curly hair, but sort of awkwardly cute, and he knew SO much about music. He played guitar - jazz guitar mind, and thought nothing of spending nearly £1000 on a Paul Reed Smith. He also talked a lot about American punk rock. Now, this eventually became to be known as grunge, but I didn't and still don't like that term, so I'm gonna stick with punk.

Nirvana

He mocked me for my devotion to thrash metal. I would play him an AMAZING Megadeth guitar solo and he would look non-plussed. He would ask me where the emotion was, he would explain that there were no dynamics in the music and eventually he made me a mix tape. This mix tape would change my musical life again.

I wish I could remember exactly what was on it, but it certainly contained Negative Creep by Nirvana, some Mudhoney, Jesus Lizard, Sugar, Nomeansno as well as others. I would play this over and over again but couldn't find any of these band's records anywhere. They were the first group of bands I got into that just weren't famous enough for Our Price to stock their records. Simon told me of an independent record shop in Camberley (where I lived) called Rock Box that I visited, where I bought an album from my favourite band on the tape - "Bleach" by Nirvana. I wore this record out, and when I found they were about to release "Nevermind" I pre-ordered it and became a HUGE Nirvana fan. They soon became huge, and I would visit Camden Market looking for the latest bootlegs of their gigs that you could buy on cassettes of varying quality from stallholders there - this was in the years before YouTube, or even the Internet.

Simon asked what I thought of Sugar and I told him I wasn't that keen because the singer's voice reminded me of Phil Collins. Looking back I can't see that any more, but he persisted and told me that if it wasn't for Bob Mould's previous band Husker Du, then Nirvana would never have existed. He taped me the whole Husker Du back catalogue and for over a year Husker Du were my favourite band of all time.

Husker Du - Live 1981

5. Industrial and Alternative

For a few years I was seeing this lad called Greg and he would ban me from playing my beloved Gary Numan or Nirvana whenever he was round. At the time he would play Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Meat Beat Manifesto, Nitzer Ebb and other bands I considered a racket. Again though, my musical tastes started to expand as I appreciated what NIN were doing.

Trent Reznor - NIN

I think I was converted to industrial music when, as a birthday treat, I bought Greg tickets to see Consolidated at a venue somewhere in London. I fully expected to be bored by this, because as well as being industrial-based, they also incorporated hip hop and dance.

Fuck - I loved it!

Again through Greg and his friends I discovered bands such as Faith No More and Alice Donut. A whole world of bands were opening up - Primus, Green Day, Rage Against The Machine, Revolting Cocks, and Sheep On Drugs, leading me to rediscover the greatest and funniest Canadian punk band ever - Nomeansno.

Nomeansno - It's Catching Up - live

The Jesus Lizard - Puss (live)

Now through all this time, I still loved all the other music I had discovered. I hadn't cast it aside, though I put thrash metal on the back burner until about 3 years ago. I formed my own band, Mouthfull and we played together for around 5 years. We were a "queercore" band, which was a scene which had splintered from the Riot Grrrl movement and we played with bands such as Sister George, Pansy Division, and even Tom Robinson. We almost had a residency at the only gay alternative club in the UK at the time, Club V - again remember this was way before clubs such as Popstarz, and before it became acceptable for gay lads to be into any sort of indie music.

Mouthfull - No Limit (live)

I discovered a plethora (good word!) of little bands that no one had ever heard of, and probably never will. - Sleater Kinney, Team Dresch, Gertrude...When that band ended in 1999 I started losing touch with the music scene, and didn't see my band friends as much as I used to.

These days I'm stuck in the 90s. I'm happy with this. I have a great combination of New wave, industrial, thrash, alternative and punk on my phone, and don't HAVE to listen, know about or even acknowledge the dreary dreary dreary mum loving music that passes for pop today. Big thanks to Spencer, Simon, and Greg!

Finally, a little Spotify playlist for you all so you know what the hell I'm on about !

Gutted: A Revenger's Musical

2011-02-01T11:54:00.008Z

Gutted was the talk of the Edinburgh Fringe. Having never been to Edinburgh I had missed it, and my long-running fear of musicals meant that I didn't go to see the previews at The Riverside Studios beforehand.

Gutted was written by Martin White and Danielle Ward (Dave Gorman's sidekicks on his Absolute Radio show, as well as the creators of Karaoke Circus), and stars Colin Hoult and (for tonight after only 2 rehearsals) Isy Sutie: better known as Dobby from Peep Show.

The story is one of joyful revenge. Sorrow (Sutie) saw her parents killed by her husband-to-be (Hoult) and spends the next hour and a half of the show murdering his entire family. The show had been described as Glee meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with jazz hands as well as inappropriate violence and was an absolute joy.

Photo stolen from Edward Moore's Facebook page.

I met up with Hitch, Misha, Jack Binoculars (if that IS his real name), and Simon at The Montague Pyke. I think Jack may have chosen this as a "Precious Little" pilgrimage as it is now a sacred site where one of the first "pubcasts" were recorded. We treated it with the reverence it deserved and drank beer.

We got to Leicester Square Theatre (seems that all the bigger gigs I go to seem to take place here) and joined a rather odd queue. No one was moving. No one seemed to really be queuing so Hitch and I just went to the front and picked up his ticket and ended up being first to the bar. If we hadn't, the whole night could have been ruined.

Now I have a 6 week residency in seat A14 for the next run of AIOTM so was naturally upset to see someone else sitting in "my" seat. However I was in A11 so it wasn't too bad. I could still keep an eye on it.

"Gutted" has an extremely talented cast. I would happily pay the same money to see any one of them, so seeing so much talent on stage was a treat: As well as the aforementioned Ward, White, Sutie and Hoult (who played the entire Bewlay family) we also had The Penny Dreadfuls (David Reed, Humphrey Ker, & Thom Tuck), Michael Legge, Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Sara Pascoe, Doc Brown, Lizzie Roper, and for all you 90s indie kids out there, Jim Bob from Carter USM.

As this was a concert performance, I think the only reason I could have enjoyed it more would be to see the full play with sets, costumes etc as I did get a little confused as to who was who and may have got lost a little along the way. The original play was backed by a rock band. This time Martin had written a full score with his Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra which must have been a massive amount of work.

Thanks to Martin for allowing me to post this clip of "Pretty Amazing Guy" (sorry for cutting Humphrey's head off but he IS too tall.)

There was a Q&A session after the performance, hosted by Robin Ince, so Hitch and I took some nice comfy seats at the side. Unfortunately I must have relaxed too much, swallowed my cider the wrong way and coughed uncontrollably, soaking my jeans and any unfortunate passers by. Luckily there weren't any. I hurriedly left the main room in a cloud of tears and shame and spent a lovely 10 minutes coughing and choking to death in the toilet. And to my amazement, Hitch actually found this funny.

Jim Bob (Thanks to Edward Moore again)

Colin Hoult and Isy Sutie
(Stolen from Edward Moore)

After the show I met back up with Hitch, Jack and Simon. Unfortunately Hitch had to go and get his train and we spent a little time chatting with Jim Bob. After JB let us into some unrepeatable showbiz secrets, I told one of my own involving Elastica. I'm not sure how this happened, but lets just say "Elastica" prompted Jack to tell us a story about his ex-girlfriend's vagina. At this point I went to the loo and Jim Bob quickly made his excuses and went to talk to someone/anyone else.

I hope Gutted will be back and if you don't like musicals, go and see it. It will cure your phobia as it seems to have done with mine. Also, make a note that The Trap's "Bad Musical" shall be doing a run at The Soho Theatre soon. That's one you won't want to miss!

Comedy Vehicle

2011-01-13T20:13:00.002Z

Most of my "real" friends have never heard of Stewart Lee. Or Comedy Vehicle. But my friends in the comedy scene look upon it with great reverence. And rightly so. When it was announced that the BBC had commissioned a second series, we couldn't contain our excitement. Well, we pretended we could so as not to embarrass ourselves by looking like excited girls in front of all the other "cool" comedy geeks, but we were all really wanted to whoop and dance with glee. And squeal a bit.

If you haven't seen it before, here is a great clip from the first series.

I was at a Soho pub waiting for my (then) iPhone hating friend - (oh it's all changed now since I wore him down and he finally got one. I shall forever cherish one of his texts to me: "I'm sorry I ever doubted you") - when the news came through on Twitter that tickets were available. I immediately applied which was quite frustrating with a really crappy Internet connection and texted my friend Rob to do the same. A few days later, both of us had 4 tickets.

Tuesday:

So on the Tuesday I had arranged to meet Rob, Richard and Sir Bob at the venue. It's a great little working men's club in Newington Green called The Mildmay Club. (Is that patronising? I think it may be. But it's not meant to be.) We met a good hour before the doors opened and I ended up only 6 from the front. There was a bit of a worry when Rob Sedgebeer explained that SRO Audiences often give out a large amount of priority tickets so I had almost assumed we wouldn't get in and had thought of seeing Mark Steel at the nearby Hen & Chickens.

But the doors opened. We were in. All the people who couldn't be bothered to get to a previous SRO recording on time had their special pink wristbands, but we, the true fans, had the scummy green ones. We were directed by a lovely and incredibly camp man to the bar with a free drink ticket each. Luckily we were so close to the front as the queue for the bar soon became enormous, but I got a bottle of cider and we grabbed a table. There was a TV set up in the bar which was showing a live feed from the main room so I presume that the people who couldn't get in had the option of watching it here.

The barmaid was very efficient at collecting empty bottles. She approached my bottle and I explained there was some in there and went to rescue it. She decided to help out by filling up my glass and pouring the rest of it all over my iPhone. That's a new method of customer service I hadn't seen before. Anyway no damage done, and the priority people were called in. Soon afterwards the green wristband scum people (us) were called in and again, we needn't have worried as 60 of us were allowed in. (We were numbers 7-10)

Well I'm not going to put any spoilers in here, but Stew came straight on to do 2 x hour long sets with a break in between. There was no warm up act which was quite an unusual move for TV comedy, and it did mean that the audience were a little quiet for the first 10 minutes or so. Topics included his grandad's obsession with crisps, commenting at length on Adrian Chiles and Russell Howard's efforts to raise money for charity, moving to the countryside, visible otters (including a 15 minute one way conversation with an estate agent about how the show was going), a rant against emigrants (massive prawns!), and Mock The Week.

Stew, as in the first series, used an off stage cameraman to directly address the TV audience at home, the assumption being that they were hating the show and having to explain any difficult material to them. This worked a treat on the first series and there was a point where the cameraman was shaking with suppressed laughter which has to be a good sign. No warm ups, no retakes, just a great 2 hours of comedy with none of the usual faffing that is often the case with TV recordings.

We went to a pub the other side of Newington Green afterwards to wind down and headed off home. Now Rob had never seen Stewart Lee before and is coming again tomorrow. I'm going to tweet that I have spare tickets and if you are free and have any sense you will come along too.

Wednesday:

Bob and Richard couldn't make the Wednesday show, so I had two tickets to get rid of. I never thought it would be so hard to offer people free tickets to see Stew, but it was a bit of a trial. My brother was going to come but since his mobile phone stopped working it's been difficult to get hold of him, so eventually I managed to give my spare ticket to my friend Marco. he did tell me that he didn't "get" a lot of comedy so I was slightly worried as Stew isn't really an "entry level" comedian. I needn't have worried though because within 10 minutes of the show I was worried that at any moment he would accidentally spit a mouthful of beer over the person in front of him. (Incidentally I ended up sitting behind Sideshow Bob which I found rather typical and irritating.

So I got there again with plenty time to spare and was again right at the front of the queue. I had decided to wear my Richard Herring "Virgilio Anderson" t-shirt as some sort of subversive act. Marco and Rob joined me and we got into the bar rather quickly. Now, as I said, they have a TV set up in the bar so that anyone who can't get into the live recording has the option of watching it, but they had set out the seats in rows already which, bearing in mind how packed the bar was yesterday seemed like a mistake. However the bar seemed much quieter which was weird. However within 15 minutes it was heaving. They had been letting people into the venue much slower this time which certainly helped the congestion at the bar.

We got seats in the third row; the same row as yesterday, but this time towards the left and much more face on to where Stew was standing. This time, the camera he would address the viewer was stage front rather that stage left which was just in front of where we were sitting. The first part of the first set was a routine we saw yesterday about moving to the countryside, and this time his imaginary conversation with the estate agent took a rather different direction. Next was a discussion about how comedy today is different to comedy in the '80s: "In the '80s all the comedians hated the Tories, now they hate their electrical appliances", as well as a great routine about Al Qaeda, and how he finds them rude - "I can't bear them."

This set was enlivened by 3 walkouts. Now I've since seen it reported on Twitter that people had stormed out, but in reality I think they were simply desperate for a wee. Stew however had a lot of fun with this with a very bemused response about having never, in all his days, seen people walk out of a TV recording. One was bad enough, but by the time the third guy tried to sneak out in a rather optimistic hunched way, the audience erupted with laughter. Stew later told us that he would try to include this in the final edit, as it would make a change form the usual Live At The Apollo cutaways where you see Lulu pissing herself! He finished this set with a song I wrote about in my last Stew blog about hack lines used by lazy comedians.

The interval came and went. Rather uneventful. Nothing to report.

The first half of the second set was his long story about his grandad and his love of crisps again. Stew seemed distracted and we could see the odd smile and smirk on his face. He stopped the routine for a few minutes and picked up an empty bag of crisps from the front row of the audience and said he had to move it as whenever he saw it he had to stop himself laughing. The end of the night saw a long story about how he thought he was friends with David Cameron when he was a student and how he organised pop groups for parties held by himself and other Bullingdon club members. This was a lower key set with fewer laughs and more poignancy but when they did come it was really worth the wait.

In fact you need patience when you see Stewart Lee. He delights in his silences, and pauses far longer than any "normal" comedian. This of course, as well as the anticipation of the punchline is often funnier than the punchlines themselves!

At the end of the show someone in the front row (not sure it was the same person with the crisps) dropped their glass, which smashed on the floor. Stew asked for it not to be cleared up so they could get a close up and asked the person to stay in their seats at the end to get a close up of their feet.

A very funny, unusual, odd and satisfying night.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle will be broadcast at some point in the future. I'm guessing spring time. Watch it!

Mick Karn 1958 - 2011

2011-01-05T09:18:00.002Z

Mick Karn was "the best bass player in the world". Well, so I said when I was a teenager and had a best guitarist, drummer etc. Now I know these things can't be measured quite so simply, but to the grown up me, Mick was still the best bass player in the world.

The sound he made with the fretless bass was so unique, you could always tell when Mick was playing on a track. From Japan to Gary Numan to Kate Bush and his solo work, his technique made it sound although the song was melting through your speakers and it was very rare to hear Mick play anything obvious, The keys he chose were so unusual, so odd that instead of focusing on the singer, I would always listen to the bass lines, and there aren't many artists who would have that effect. I mean, who listens to the bass player more closely than anyone else in the band? (Apart from bass players.)

I never saw Mick live, but I was turned on to Japan via through my best mate Spencer at school, who moulded my musical tastes for years to come. Japan were often dismissed as Duran Duran wannabes, mainly because of their looks, but they were so much more than that. They were often criticised for copying Roxy Music, mainly due to David Sylvian's remarkable Ferry-like voice, but, to me, again, they were so much more. Japan never achieved the commercial success they deserved, splitting up after one hit single, just as Duran and Spandau were about to make it big.

It was announced in the middle of 2010 that Mick was suffering from advanced stages of cancer. I guess I assumed they would be able to make him better, and my hopes were lifted when reading that Pete Murphy and Karn were planning a new Dali's Car album any time soon.

Unfortunately this wasn't to be, and Mick died yesterday surrounded by his family. Not since Kurt Cobain in 1994 have I felt so affected by someone I never knew dying, and to finish this off, here is a Spotify song list featuring what I think is some of his best work.

Christ On A Bike

2011-01-04T12:38:00.001Z

2010 was a good year for Richard Herring. A successful tour of "Hitler Moustache", with a DVD in the shops, a run of 10 live Collings & Herrin podcasts at Edinburgh Festival, the release of his book "How Not To Grow Up" as well as continuing with the As It Occurs To Me (AIOTM) podcasts and becoming a regular on 6 Music every Saturday morning with Andrew Collins. To cap it all , his almost record breaking score in Celebrity Mastermind. What will 2011 bring?

Well it's bringing us "Christ On A Bike - The Second Coming" which is currently running for 5 weeks at The Leicester Square Theatre before Rich takes it round the country till the middle of May.

COAB is a reworking of a show he did 10 years ago which features Herring's fascination with Jesus, although he is a confirmed atheist. I don't know how much has changed since then but it's a good opportunity for Herring to get the show on to DVD at last!

Rich has possibly booked the worst time of year to start a 5 week run in the West End. Christmas week, although good for Jesus, isn't so great for audiences, and the first week in January isn't ideal either as we've all spent our money. However I was hoping to go with a couple of mates tonight who ended up not being able to make it, so I went to the theatre by myself and just paid on the door.It also doesn't help sharing a week of the run with Stewart Lee, who I will be seeing on Wednesday. If Lee & Herring fans are going to go to one of the shows, then for Lee would be the obvious choice (with him being on telly and all that..), but I urge you to think again (You've had weeks to see Stew!)

Rich has mentioned on his blog that the audiences are not as large as he had hoped and this was confirmed tonight. There were 60 people in, and although that's a fine audience for a small comedy club, it's not ideal when in a 400 seat theatre.

The show started and Rich certainly didn't show any lack of confidence but did state at the start that sometimes when a show goes really well he would love to thank every member of the audience personally, and that tonight he probably could! The audience, to me, seemed rather quiet, although everyone did seem to be enjoying themselves. I imagine that some people, in a small audience in a big room may feel too self-conscious to let themselves go.


Rich On A Bike

The show is not as serious or hard hitting as Hitler Moustache, but the poster and the title would lead you to expect an offensive anti-religious rant, however this isn't the case. COAB is a light hearted and playful look at the Bible as well as comparisons between Jesus and Richard: "I'm not saying I'm the new Jesus. That is for other people to say". God's clumsy writing technique is criticised in a passage about the 10 Commandments, and Richard reads out his genuine application to become Pope (addressed to The Popefinder General, Vatican City). It hinges around a dream where Herring has a Tortoise and Hare style bicycle race with Jesus (I won't give any spoilers as to who wins but I'm sure you can guess.

A tape of his mum's voice echoes round the theatre "If you don't believe in Jesus then why do you spend all your time thinking and talking about him?" Just the thought of Rich asking his mum to record these words is extremely funny in itself!

After the break, Rich launched into his extremely impressive and hilarious genealogy of Jesus, all from memory, along the way asking searching questions about some "Boaz of Rahab" and others. He lets us into the trick of how he memorised these 40 or so generations and the secret is the most unusual noise I've heard coming from anyone on stage. It would make a very confusing ring tone.

The audience had certainly perked up by this point and seemed to be committed to a great night out. The show came to an end, though I could have happily listened to more. Grudgingly I had even agreed with Brian Logan about one supposedly weak line in the show, however what Logan failed to spot was that "Jesus" told Herring off for it towards the end.

By the time I left I had drank maybe one or two drinks more than I should have done and went on some rather lengthy twitter conversations which i was highly embarrassed about the next day, but I guess that's what happens when you go out in the afternoon then decide to go the the west end on the spur of the moment to see a show.

Christ On A Bike is a great night out. You could even bring your granny or your vicar. Londoners, get your tickets before he hits the road and come to The Leicester Square Theatre before the 22nd January or if you're one of those provincial types, check Herring's gig guide for details of venues. I don't give 'stars' and stuff in my little write ups, but if i did I would give the full amount of them (minus one as I don't like comedians to be too cocky!)

See you on Wednesday for Stewart Lee! Why not see Herring beforehand at the same venue and make it a Fist Of Fun special!