Mummy's funny but Daddy just talks.

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!

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

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:

Law, Lee, & Legge - Collins, Jones, Douieb.

Show Time !!

I'm proud of that title. It kind of rhymes you see. And scans quite well.

On Monday to Wednesday I went to 3 gigs in a row. I enjoyed all of them in different ways. The first comprised of my second visit to The Camden Head in Angel. My first visit wasn't great when I went to (attempt to) see Catie Wilkins. I wrote about it here

Anyway it looked like I was in for more of the same. The Fortnight Club has been running for 2 decades and is a place where professional comedians can try out new material. A number of weeks ago after London Improv, Tiernan Douieb had recommended that I see Tony Law. I had checked him out on YouTube and found him good. I guess you could descibe him as Eddie Izzard in cowboy boots.

I got to the venue at opening time and went upstairs to find the tech guy sitting forlornly. He explained that not only was there no audience but none of the performers had turned up! I went down for another pint. I tweeted my situation and someone suggested I could do a set of Keith Chegwin's recent stolen material. I'm glad I was sober or I may well have suggested it! I popped up again to find that all the comedians had arrived as well as another audience member. The acts actually thought they had 3 in the audience until it turned out the 3rd person was a barmaid collecting glasses. I made a little small talk, fully expecting the gig to be pulled, but Tony Law insisted on doing it. Two of the comedians wimped out (but who can blame them?) and the gig began.

Tony Law

The compere found it odd to compere considering we had all been sitting and chatting for the past 15 miuntes but he did a good job. Tony Law was up next and he did remarkably well in front of 2 of us (plus 2 of the performers) I found myself subconciously laughing louder than I should have, and I do hope it didn't come across as sarcastic.

I can't remember the name of the next comedian, but she was reasonably good, going through a lot of one liners and getting us to judge if she should "Tweet or Delete" them. Though because I don't know her name I don't follow her so can't see if she did or not...

Milton Jones

In the middle of Tony's act, Milton Jones had arrived and sat at the back. MJ is one of the better performers on Mock The Week and I was very glad when he decided to try out some of his new stuff as well. The other half of the audience was an American guy, so was quite fun to see Milton explaining some of his jokes as he went along for his benefit!

The next night was my long awaited Stewart Lee gig at Fat Tuesday. I have never seen him before other than a quick 10 minute set at a benefit at Hackney Empire and think he is probably the best stand up performing today. Tonight just confirmed it. I had also met up with @Misswiz and we managed to get good seats at the front.

Tiernan Douieb opened with a preview of his new show. It was rather odd as Fat Tuesday is Tiernan's club, and he usually comperes, but he got the chance to perform his full show tonight. He was a little worried at first as originally Stewart Lee was scheduled to open the gig, and I don't think many comedians would want to go on afterwards, but luckily for everyone, the running order was changed. Tiernan put in a sterling performance and if you do go to Edinburgh please make time to see his show.

Stewart Lee came on and the crowd roared their approval. He told a long-winded story about being in the same school as David Cameron, very similar to last year's story about Richard Hammond. I'm sure it won't spoil it for you by telling you that he confesses at the end that this story is not true. He also managed to speak for around 20 minutes about crisps.

Surprisingly, he ended the set with a lovely acoustic ballad all about The Bullingdon Club. I wish i could say more about this gig, but I was looking forward to it so much that it vanished from my mind in all the excitement. I had a couple of quick words with Stew after the gig and wasn't told to fuck off, which was a nice susprise. I was much more nervous than usual and determined not to make a dick of myself. I think I JUST got away with it! He was less grumpy than I expected.

On Wednesday it was another return to my comedy temple, The Phoenix, to see Andrew Collins completed "Secret Dancing" show. I have already blogged about a previous show here. I met up with my mate who I occasionally bully into coming to comedy clubs if no one else is available. Though it was his birthday the next day and somehow my treat to him was to buy a beer and a comedy ticket for him. It was almost a present to me.

I also met my new comedy plaything, Richard who I used to work with and basically lost touch but have now been in contact with a lot more as he has enjoyed seeing Legge and Ince, as well as Richard Herring.

Other people I arranged to meet were Yan, aka @MightyBlackout as well as the legendary Reverend Peter Organ (the legend beginning during Herring's warm up one time befiore an AIOTM (or was it a Collings & Herrin live podcast?)  when he pointed at Peter and told everyone he looked like a comedy vicar. Peter tweeted back to say that indeed, he was a vicar!)

Anyway, it was lovely to meet Muki as always, even if she was hungrily devouring a fish finger sandwich (the BEST sandwich as I hope we all know.)

Michael came on and did around 20 minutes of material, bantering with the audience as usual. He read out his Quinola blog again. Now I've heard him read this before, but it works very well in a live situation. Both times, michael has found it hard to stifle a laugh when ever the phrase "Then, something worse than Lion-rape happened" arrives. It's a phrase I want to weave seemelssly into conversation but haven't managed yet.

An inspired comment went down a storm when he apologised to a man for calling his wife a bizarre love triangle. Yes I know it doesn't sound that funny reading it out but it's all in the context! Michael pointed out Andrew Collins' wife in the audience to us and we felt special. She has always been a nebulous figure; never spoken about, but I can confirm she does exist. Now let's say no more about it.

Andrew's act has moved on since the last time I saw it. It seems more structured and starts with ACTUAL dancing, then Andrew talks about the concept of a journey, and the fact that journeys are not what we see on Masterchef or reality TV shows, but comprise of actual movement from A to B. He discusses his wishes to be kissed (voluntarily) by a duck and his experience of walking next to a pigeon and hoping onlookers thought they were mates, as well as discussing the mystery of the asterisk without explanation on a bottle of Plax. He demonstrated Secret Dancing and got a rather drunk volunteer up on stage who seemed a little over confident and talkative for a Secret Dancer. He certainly had nothing on the Precious Little takeover at the Hen & Chickens show !

All three evenings were very different but all were fun in their own way. Tony Law and Milton Jones on Monday was totally bizarre, Tuesday with Tiernan Douieb and Stewart Lee was completely awesome, and Wednesday with Collins & Legge was ... well, Wednesday was confortable. If I have to choose between totally bizarre, completely awesome, and comfortable, I'd probably go for comfort.

(Actually I only wrote that in case Michael Legge reads this blog. Of course Stewart Lee was the best !)

Thankfully, I managed to finally get rid of that chocolate oat milk! Enjoy Andrew.

Collins & Legge - Live!

So I went to the Hen & Chickens to see these two perform extracts from their new shows. Met up with @Neal55, @Misswiz, @Kateweb and "Sir Bob" (or Bob as I call him). It was only 10 minutes walk from my house which was very handy.

The Hen & Chickens is quite a well known comedy venue, and very intimate though this was my first visit here. I'm planning to see Gary Delaney (and hopefully Sarah Millican) there next Monday, as well as Stewart Lee & Bridget Christie in the nearish future. It was very busy when we arrived; unpleasantly so in fact, but as the evening went on some of the people thankfully headed off. Upstairs was a really nice, almost "proper" theatre rather than the usual room above a pub that I'm used to.

After sneaking downstairs quickly to get a pint of lovely Aspalls I got back up just in time as the lights went down and Michael Legge arrived on stage. He seemed a little nervous and pointed out he had a set list as well as his back up script. He got through most of his set before his time was up, though unfortunately there was no time for him to discuss "girl in a wheelchair", which I imagine was the story he told in his blog about the rather rude iPod playing (without headphones) lady on a train. The story about Halloween in Northern Ireland with his deaf best friend were hilariously told as well as his admiration and childhood love and obsession for Sir Walter Raleigh and good manners. Although this is an embryonic work, Legge's natural charm and charming natural swearing helped him through and I have no doubt that as the show progresses it will develop into a full performance that will be well worth seeing in Edinburgh (in 2011) or at the Camden Fringe later this year.

Andrew Collins came on next. I've seen his Secret Dancing twice before and it's a great piece of comedy. Andrew doesn't hide that fact that he is not a stand up comedian and this is part of the reason this works so well. He is a lot braver than most comedians as this part of his show is basically 4 minutes of mime / standing still, which for a non-comedian / actor is pretty brave stuff.

Andrew has 2 personas we know about: Richard Herring's "woolly liberal" foil on the Collings & Herrin podcast, as well as the music-loving ex-NME journalist & 6 Music DJ (who reverses roles with Herring on the Saturday morning shows). Collins on stage has a slight swagger but this strangely adds to his likability.

He has been doing this set for a while now and is honing it in time for Edinburgh Festival. I was disappointed he didn't tell the story about the time he walked next to a pigeon (those of you who haven't heard the story won't quite see why that is funny) but I'm sure that will come up on Monday's show. I don't think he will have any problem turning this into an hour long show for the festival; in fact Andrew could easily talk for as long as he likes on stage and people will happily listen.

Andrew asked for volunteers to Secret Dance with him and although earlier today I told myself that I was going to do it I chickened out and just one lovely man arrived on stage. He seemed to think there would be more, but no. Just him. But he was game and deserved the Collings & Herrin podcast CD that he was given. Which reminds me. I must order my copy soon. I have ordered Richard Herring's "How not to grow up" from Amazon and while I was at it bought 3 of Andrew's books too. Hopefully they should arrive tomorrow.

After the gig I had a chat with Michael and Andrew as well as Rob Heeney and James Hingley, and headed off on the long 10 minute walk home, secret dancing all the way. The evening was almost ruined however by finding out only my left earphone now work unless I hold my head at an unnatural angle. Anyway, if you are looking for a great night out that doesn't cost a vast amount of cash there are 2 more shows to go: one tonight and one on 31st May. You have to go !