Zaltz And The City

I have been a fan of The Bugle podcast for quite some time now. It's an unmissable combination of bullshit, puns, 80s rock singing, and jokes hosted by The Daily Show's John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman. I have managed to get my non-comedy fan friend into this podcast too and when I found out that Andy was playing a gig on a boat moored off Canary Wharf I immediately purchased two tickets.

Tiernan Douieb was hosting the show and had mentioned on Facebook that there was an issue with the alcohol license so we would have to bring our own drinks. That was a result. It makes a fun night cheaper.

After getting lost in the strange confusing geography of Canary Wharf looking for an off license, I finally met Tesco where we bought 4 warm beers each and headed to the boat, only to find there was some weird token system. We bought a £5 token each and I exchanged mine for the smallest bottle of Magner's I have ever seen. I made sure I took a glass and we sat on the deck. I snuck to the loo, filling my glass with contraband Strongbow and we headed downstairs. It didn't take long till all secrecy was abandoned and all the audience were swigging straight from their cans.

We got seats at the front and slowly the small venue eventually filled. Tiernan came on and chatted to the crowd. He is a warm and funny man and is a great compere. He introduced our first act of the evening, "Upstairs Downton". They are an improv troupe who set their scenes in the Edwardian world of Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs. It didn't matter I hadn't seen these shows, we all know what they are like. After choosing a name for the main character and a plot (standard improv stuff) we settled back to watch the story unfold. At first I was a bit worried about a Downton Abbey improv show, but they were pretty good, even if the set went on a little long.

Tony Law was on next. Tony is in the early stages of writing his new show after last year's huge success, and for me, this is the really fun part. Tony riffs, comments on how he is doing, critiques himself and he totally baffled my mate who asked afterwards when we were back on deck what that was all about. I don't think he was for him, but I and everyone else thought differently. Tony is one of the best comics around at the moment and I urge you to see him. Tony had to leave fairly quickly as I imagine he was heading to another show, and said hi to me as he left. My mate was quite amazed it just how normal he seemed off stage, and to be honest, it still catches me off guard too.

For fans of Penn & Teller's "Fool Us", the next act was a treat. Piff The Magic Dragon. Piff is an incredibly skilled magician who dresses in an extremely cute dragon outfit, and is accompanied by his chihuahua, Mr  Piffles. He chose a volunteer to join him on stage and alternated between flirting with her before playfully knocking her back. This was only the 2nd magician I have seen live, other than Pete Firman and he was superb. Incidentally magic fans, I also listen to Penn's Sunday School, a podcast released every week featuring Penn Jillette and discussing magic, scepticism, atheism and just general funny chats.

Here is a clip of Piff on "Fool Us"

The backdrop of The City of London was perfect for Zaltzman. He is a fantastic performer, and it was great to see my mate's face who up until today had only heard Andy's voice, as he has a rather striking appearance! His set revolved through the current economic situation: not a subject on many comics sets, but Andy with his enthusiasm and well crafted and torturous puns made it a great night.

My mate pointed me towards a quick way home. I was aiming for the DLR and he told me to go to a different station. I didn't really know where I was going and after a long painful walk ended up on the Jubilee line. I got home in the end though, extremely satisfied.

Just to finish this off, I was in the pub with a mate the other day which had the snooker on in the background. To my surprise, Andy's unmistakable face appeared. When I got home I found the clip, and it should be found just underneath this writing...

Peter Buckley Hill - The Albums - FOR FREE!

I ended up at The Phoenix last Sunday to help Peter Buckley Hill celebrate his 65th birthday. The gig lasted from 2pm till 9pm and then they were heading off to the pub afterwards for more drinks. I watched quite a few comics, some who I didn't know as well as bigger names such as Phill Jupitus, Thom Tuck and James Acaster.

Peter organises the Free Fringe in Edinburgh each year which keeps costs down for both audience and performers and he is thought of rather highly in the comedy community. I had first become aware of him at a couple of Robin Ince's Godless shows then again last year when Michael Legge's All day Edinburgh raised funds for the upcoming Fringe.

Peter sang a few short catchy comedy folk songs from his 2006 album and afterwards encouraged us to take his CDs for free as they were cluttering up the space under his stairs. Afterwards I suggested uploading them to Soundcloud. OK, it won't help getting rid of the physical CDs, but it does just help to get the stuff out there. Peter thought this was a great idea so this is just what I have done. So visit these links for all of PBH's recorded output. You can download them too.

The Songs of 2006

tiny.cc/pbh-songsof2006

The Songs of 2006 - Outtakes

tiny.cc/pbh-2006outtakes

Buckets Within Buckets

tiny.cc/pbh-bucketswithinbuckets

Official Bootleg

tiny.cc/pbh-officialbootleg

Torn Between Two Plovers

tiny.cc/pbh-tornbetweentwoplovers

Tubular Brains

tiny.cc/pbh-tubularbrains

The Brits Are Pointless After This...

Chat Show Roulette

After hearing about the line up for Chat Show Roulette, I decided I couldn't not go: Justin Edwards, Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Cariad Lloyd, Matt Lucas and others were to perform for us at the gorgeous little Hen and Chickens Theatre. This is one of Ben Walker's projects, the technical wizard behind the likes of AIOTM, Richard Herring's Leicester Square podcast, Pappy's Flatshare Slamdown and the fantastic Do The Right Thing.

I roped in Richard Hollis and we met up at the bar below the theatre around 645. Justin took to the stage shortly after 730 and explained how the evening would work. it was an improvised chat show, and he nor any of the guests knew who the characters would be that he would be interviewing. We had all filled out slips containing places, items, celebrities and such like and the subjects would be taken from these.

Just to digress quickly, this is a great chance to show you a video of Justin's alcoholic children's entertainer Jeremy Lion. It's nothing to do with this show, and it's not Christmas any more, but watch this and enjoy.

Anyway, back to the evening. The show still hadn't started and Justin worked his way down the front row asking for first names, surnames, names of favourite teachers and pets until we had all the character's names who were to be interviewed. These ranged from the rather sweet William Hunter to the fantastical Thumper Mitchell.

The pianist played on the first guest, played by Alex Lowe. As luck would have it he turned out to be a famous fitness guru who had operated gyms in places like The Natural History Museum, and he and Jeremy reminisced over his career.

Second up were Ceebeebies stars played by Mike Wozniak and the magnificent Cariad Lloyd. I would direct you to a Cariad Lloyd video on Youtube, but unfortunately my account has sort of been deleted. On the plus side, I have two more in it's place: one for music (MrAndyMcH) and one for comedy (LeeHerringFan). Anyway, I had never seen Mike before but he played opposite Cariad brilliantly. especially once it had been revealed that Cariad and he were no longer together and we could see occasional glimpses of Cariad's jealous fury through her fixed children's presenter smile.

Next up was Margaret Cabourn-Smith. I know her mainly as the team captain opposite Michael Legge in Do The Right Thing, and occasional contributor to the Dave Gorman radio show, but you probably know her as Alison in Miranda. She was a British hero who had saved the nation with an undisclosed deed in Mozambique, and this also involved her face painting a lovely ladybird on the pianist's face. Margaret is always rather lovable on stage, and somehow reminds me of Kat Bjelland from Babes In Toyland. (I'm not really sure why)

Finally Matt Lucas's character got called to the stage. He did not appear, and Justin seemed genuinely confused by this. He went to the audience where he had been sitting and discovered him limping bizarrely down the aisle just so his short journey to the chair took almost 3 minutes. I'm not a huge Little Britain fan to be honest, but Matt's improvising was amazing, creating a great character who turned out to be a Mastermind champion who is more than a little racist, which Justin tried to steer him away from as any old school interviewer would.

After the show we had nachos and a beer and had a brief chat with the lovely Margaret and just as lovely Cariad. The evening ended with slight embarrassment outside when I said hello to Matt and mentioned out of courtesy that I would put a picture on Twitter if he was OK with it. I think he misunderstood and I was immediately stood next to him with my arm round his shoulder like some immature fanboy (WHICH I AM DEFINITELY NOT!)

The guys are recording a pilot for both radio and TV and are doing these little shows just to keep practised and their improv skills sharp. If you get a chance, go and see this the next time it is on. It's a real fun night out.

And is it improv or impro?

Improv?

Impro?

Impro?

Improv?

I'm going to keep saying Improv until proven otherwise.

Bowie!

Nothing much was happening at 5:00am this morning. What ever happens at 5am on any day ever? Well, Duncan Jones sent the following collection of tweets:

1. 
   

   Duncan Jones@ManMadeMoon

   So who wants to know a secret? ;)

   
   

   4 HOURS AGO
   

   ·

   ORIGINAL LINK
   

   REPLYRETWEETFAVORITE
2. 
   

   Duncan Jones@ManMadeMoon

   So... First off, its midnight in NY. That means, a HUGE HAPPY BIRTHDAY is in order to my very lovely, very talented dad!

   
   

   3 HOURS AGO
   

   ·

   ORIGINAL LINK
   

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3. 
   

   Duncan Jones@ManMadeMoon

   Been ten years since his last album....

   
   

   3 HOURS AGO
   

   ·

   ORIGINAL LINK
   

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4. 
   

   Duncan Jones@ManMadeMoon

   So you better get to itunes. ;)

   
   

   3 HOURS AGO
   

   ·

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5. 
   

   Duncan Jones@ManMadeMoon

   Would be lovely if all of you could spread the word about da's new album. First in ten years, and its a good 'un! davidbowie.com/the-next-day

   
   

   3 HOURS AGO
   

   ·

   ORIGINAL LINK
   

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6. 
   

   Duncan Jones@ManMadeMoon

   Also, what better way to knock Taylor feckin Swift off the top of the charts! ;)

   
   

   3 HOURS AGO
   

   ·

   ORIGINAL LINK
   

   REPLYRETWEETFAVORITE

Well this is the best 5:00am I have ever had! It's now 8:40am, and it's rubbish in comparison.The album, "The Next Day" has a March 11th release day in the UK. And even better, the new single "Where Are We Now?" is out right now! I never expected to hear any new Bowie material ever again, so this is a very exciting day for me. The song itself harks back to his Berlin period, and has an air of melancholy about it. It's, well, really lovely! Have a listen.

A Letter From Dad

This blog post is not one of my usual "Comedy Adventures". So apologies if you have come here to read about something funny that happened!

About 2 or 3 weeks ago, my friend's dad died. This was a catalyst to get in touch with mine as we haven't really ever had a good relationship. I moved out of home when i was 15 to live with my Aunt and Uncle, and when I was 18 or 19 I came out to my family and friends, via the old-fashioned medium of a hand-written letter. All the responses were fantastic, and pretty much what I expected. Most of my family have some sort of religious belief, but the majority of them were as good as i could imagine.

My dad, however, has somewhat more conservative religious views than most and sent me back a no-nonsense letter that I remember contained the line "If this was Biblical times you would be stoned" and also something about AIDS. Unfortunately at some point my cheap after shave (possibly Hai Karate or Blue Stratos) leaked all over it and ruined the whole thing.

I had met up with my brother (who is a Church of England vicar) a couple of years ago as he was in London for the day and we had a nice meal and a couple of drinks and enjoyed catching up with each other. I had told him that I was thinking about sending dad a letter to try and get back in touch, and the conversation we had made me decide it was the best thing to do. After all, he is in his 80s now, and even though we have a zero relationship, I feel that if he died before I tried to reach out to him, I would have a constant dull thud of guilt inside me.

I am quite lazy though, and bad enough at keeping in touch with family members that I like (i.e all of them!) so it took the death of my friend's dad to spur me into action. I got his address from my brother and typed the following letter and popped it in the post.

I decided to keep it non-controversial. I certainly didn't want to get into an argument or shouting match. In reality I didn't really expect a response at all. But a few days later, this arrived at my front door.

I have obviously removed his address and signature. I don't want to comment on it too much, but the opening line discussing my mum's illness and death showed me that the rest of the letter wasn't going to be too upbeat.

I shared this on Twitter and I was deluged with messages. A lot of them were asking if I was OK. Yes, I'm fine. After all I didn't expect some sort of reunion that would make the end of a Hollywood film blush. But your responses were much appreciated. In fact I got a little emotional as I was reading them on the walk down from Esher station to the pub where I was meeting my other brother.

I look back at myself when I was younger and almost see him as a different person. A couple of people remarked that it was one of the saddest things they had ever read. I agree. But I'm sad for the little boy that I used to be.

Another friend asked if I am going to write back. I had thought about it, but it is not going to gain anything. The ball is in his court, and I have done all I can do to try to regain some sort of civility. But he is not going to change. I am not going to change.

I guess I won't be inheriting the house.

Comedy Sale at The Star Of Kings

Sanderson Jones has started a residency every Wednesday at this Kings Cross venue, and tonight was the first night. Comedy Sale is an interesting project where you have to arrange to meet Sanderson to buy a ticket for the show in person. No internet or phone or booking office sales. For these smaller gigs however you should hopefully be able to buy a ticket from him direct at the venue if you have met him before.  He originally did this gig at the massive Union Chapel in Islington and sold it out last year before heading off to Australia, performing the shows at all the major cities.

"But what's the advantage of Sanderson doing all this extra work?", I hear you cry. Well he then has time to do some research on the particular audience for the show, ploughing through their Facebook and Twitter feeds for comedy gold.

The show is based on his attempts to win his ex-girlfriend back, with many Venn diagrams, Pi Charts and other graph based nonsense along the way.The highlight (for me) of the show is "cockhunting" where he puts a backdrop behind a sexy girl or two and puts them on webcam on Chatroulette. As soon as he sees a guy masturbating, he drops the sheet and we all cheer him along! There will be a video below. Please do not click on it if you're at work, or indeed if you don't want to see a man masturbating!

At the end of the show he revealed that his next big project after selling out Union Chapel, is to sell out The Royal Albert Hall, again selling all tickets by hand! This is something so bonkers we have to get behind it! The Star of Kings show will soon develop into a night with other comics with internet based material, and I will try to get down there as often as work shifts and my bank balance allows.

Join me!