Busy busy busy, then a week off where I've slept for an average of 11-13 hours a day. but after a month where I had two nights off from either gigging or going to watch comedy I think I've deserved the break.

Ok last week was busy as hell, I spent most of the week trying to find some way of getting somewhere to stay On Friday night as I was heading down to Bristol. No one in Bristol came to my rescue. Nor did anyone in the surrounding area. In fact by the time I set off, not even anyone in Birmingham was returning my texts for somewhere to stay. (I later found out that Ashley Freize had offered for me to stop wtih him in Reading.) Now I'm not normally that unpopular, except with the sort of comics who aren't doing as well as I am hate when someone's doing better than them, this is an incredibly small demographic though.

Anyway I leave on Friday afternoon with the full intention of being home that night. As I pull up to my house on Tuesday morning at 10 am, barely able to keep my eyes open I remember why it is that I do this job.

Ok so Friday I drive dowwn to bristol in a couple of hours, it doesn't take as long as I remember, then I remember that the last time I drove down that far I lived about another hour north, so from where I now live Bristol's about as far away as Birmingham used to be from where I used to live. If that makes sense.

Anyway I get into the Dressingroom and meet Windsor the compere, I've never worked with him before but he's the sort of guy I've known and hung out with for years, an ex street performer, the kind of guy you see at glastonbury or any major protest, lovely lovely bloke.

that night was fairly quiet but the audience were well up for it, after doing 8 minutes of new stuff in Nottingham the previous night I felt really in control and it all worked superbly, afterwards sitting with some of Windsors friends we chatted about the evening's entertainment and what I was doing. I told a story about my attempted suicide on stage in such a way that it gets a massive laugh, I'd not considered doing it on stage until I was telling Michael J Dolan Britain's favourite funnyman(tm)* about how I'd told my friend Bex about it and that she'd really really laughed at it. So he told me to put it in my set. Essentially he, Dug and myself are currently working on the writing theory that if it's really difficult for us to talk about and if it's sommething that we feel really uncomfortable about facing in ourselves, then we turn it into comedy and talk about it on stage.

This worked and I was so pleased.

Later on that evening Windsor's friend Les said that rather than drive home I should stay over at his, so a whole bunch of us went down there after the show.

We were just chatting and I was made to feel very very welcome, at one point a fox came to the patio window and started scraping at it, and Les said that they came there all the time and would I like to feed it? Well of course, how often do you get to hand feed a fox?

So far this evening was turning out to be so much fun. then whilst we were talking someone mentioned les' second name and I just stopped dead. Les Bubb had been one of my childhood heroes, I'd seen him on all sorts of shows over the years from Saturday Live to Hububb, there's even a joke in my set which is partly in slight tribute to him, and now here he was without knowing me letting me sleep in his spare room. This is why I love this business.

We had a great night and the next moring I drove Les to get his plane to Holland. and headed back to his for some more sleep.

Rob Reilly had told me that whilst I was in Bristol I should check out one of the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Museums but by the time I woke up it was a bit late in the day for that. Wandering trhough Bristol I bought my nephews some wooden pirates as an Easter gift. I then was texting Bex as she'd asked what I was up to, her reply was "Isambard kingdom Brunel was a railway engineer who also suffereded from kidney problems all his life, I bet you didn't know that!" To be fiar I didn't, and replied "I bet he didn't, If he had then I'm sure he would have invented the Steam Kidney. Though George Gershwin did suffer from cronic constipation throughout his life and I think that it shows in his music."

Later in the afternoon I went to the Pub with Ian Cognito and Paul B Edwards, I had a lovely chat as Cogs is just setting up a club at the Horn and Trumpet next door to the Bristol Hippodrome and so we talked about that for a while. Eventually he had to go back to his boat with his sons and I had a gig to do.

As I got into the dressing room I just wasn't feeling it. I was supposed to be meeting up with Ray peacock after the gig and at that point in the evening that was what I was looking forward to. As it got closer to showtime though I started to get my head in the right place, right up until I went down at the start of the show and saw the venue packed. About three times as many people were in as last night.

Suddenly, because my brain hates me I started to get nervous, the thoughts that always go through my head when I'm doing a big gig when I get nervous started again "No one likes you, you've never thought of anything original in your life, they're going to hate you. You know how everytime you've done this material people have laughed? Well tonight's the night that they're finally going to see through all that and realise that you're just a pretender up on that stage, that none of your stuff makes sense!" this is followed by my mind going "I don't want to do this I don't want to do this I don't want to do this I dont want to do this."

After the compere's on stage that's it, I'm in the drop zone and I'm shaking like Ozzy osbourne mixing Pina Coladas on a waltzer.

This all happens for no reason that I can figure out, It's the same room as the previous night and it's not that there's more people in, I think it's that I've looked at them and thought "They're not my kind of people" but that's stupid. I think it's in part because the previous night the small audience had been really quiet and in that situation I know what I'm supposed to do, make them loud, tonight's audience was laughing and giving applause breaks all over the place, they seem really easy to please, so my job at this point is "Don't fuck up" which I think is what causes the nerves.

Anyway my name gets called and Black Sabbath - Paranoid starts to play and I take to the stage. I put my glass down adn fake confidence Like I have done a thousand times before and do my opening couple of lines, Laugh, Applause break, laugh, laugh, laugh dragged out to applause break, death.

I get into the beginning of a joke and I'm building enough confidence to get over the nerves and deliver the performance of my life when suddenly, further proof that my brain hates me, I go blank. I can't remember the gag, I can't remember anything I've ever written other than the joke before the one I've got stuck on, the audience laughs when I say I've forgotten.

Phew, I remember the joke, I start it again from the beginning and get to the end and try and manufacture a cheer and... Nothing.

The audience looks at me like "you done fucked up good" and I realise that I've lost them, if I'd just moved on and not repeated the whole joke they'd never have known I'd backed down and suddenly the confidence was taking a knocking.

There are several theories about what you should do in this moment, throw in a banker to try and win them back as quickly as possible, acknowledge the tension in teh room and say something to release it, in none of the advice that anyone gives for that situation is "well, at this point you should try your most challenging and personal material."

It's material that splits the audience, when I'm storming it and do this stuff I can see that 25% of the audience will sit and stare at me and go "We hate this, we hate you, you're not funny get off that stage now", 50% of people seem to go "Oh? Wow! I didn't expect that, but ok, she's funny!" and carry on laughing as they have, and the otehr 25% just nearly fall off their chairs, often a number of these people will come up to me afterwards to tell me how much they liked the show, how it meant a lot to them etc. However, the mood needs to be right for this.

As I go into this material I can feel them slipping further and further away from me. then I do the Suicide joke, which I've noticed over the last two nights has got one of the biggest and most honest laughs I've had in my set, surely that'll win them back.

No.

The response I get is worse than anything I could have ever imagined. Not being booed or bottled or having someone try to invade the stage, not even chatting or silence. a sound much worse than that. Pity.

I heard a whole bunch of "Awwww's!" coming from somewhere in the back. and then when that bit withered and died a group of girls on the back did something that'll stick with me to the day I die, one of them shouted out "Oh, come on, give her a round of applause for trying!"

I manage to get my head back together after that and work my arse off doing two bits that I've done everywhere and I nail them, getting the audience back on side, though not totally, but enough to salvage the gig, again though, not enough to make me feel good about the gig.

After I leave the stage I get my money and decide to head over to see Ray as quickly as I can, there's nothing worse than hanging around at a gig where you've just died on your hoop. As I get to my car I hear my phone ring and it's Ray "Listen Beth, this gig's horrible, it shouldn't have been a gig, I'm getting out of here as fast as I can the last thing we need is a 6 foot Goth Lesbian turning up, We'll meet you at Jesters"

I'll continue this as soon as I can, but for now that's all I've got time for.

Sorry about the grammar.

Bethany xXx

Another couple of days have gone by and my life continues to resemble a badly written, ill conceived sit com. Like Curb your enthusiasm but without the laughs and with only the social awkwardness left behind.

Yesterday I got up and sent Sarah a text asking if I could use her computer, she sent one back saying sure as she was in Ireland as she'd had some bad news, her aunt had died and it was the funeral.

I said that if there was anything I could do just to ask and then this morning as an afterthought I thought I should send a condolence message to Sarah's sister, to make her feel a little bit better, now my predictive text has messed up a little bit on my phone, and I forget to check before I send, last week I meant to tell a friend I forgot to add her to my MSN and she got the message "Sorry, I forgot to bed you." This morning I sent a message to a grieving friend that said "Sorry about your cunt, Sarah told me all about it and you have my sympathy."

I just wanted to show sympathy and make her feel a little better, if anything I think I may have made the situation worse.

Well back to earlier on in the week.

Saturday night I went off to Gateshead library to do a gig for Warren Speed, Dave Ingram was ill so I compered and it was loads of fun, they were a quiet audience but they were so friendly, and in the end comedy was the winner. I really enjoy compereing, it takes me out of my comfort zone. the acts were all fantastic too, Stefan Peddie opened and did a good job, Steve Shanyaski was on in the middle and was great riffing on themes which I've not seen before, and John Gordillo headlining who was a pleasure to watch.

I eventually got home to Crewe at 4 in the morning and had my flatmate Hollie jump out of her room as I walked in through the front door with a can of deodorant screaming at me as she thought she was the only person in the house.

I'm glad I wasn't a burglar, because she's tiny and the aerosol probably wouldn't have helped much, though fortunately this time it was an aerosol, last time it was a roll on.

Sunday was fun, it was the first day off I'd had in a while so I enjoyed staying in bed until 5 in the evening, later on I had a chance to talk to Sarah on her own and it cleared up the last of the things that I needed to say just to get my head straight.

I went off to the 24 hour garage later that evening to get some chocolate for everyone and some bread and milk.

As I pulled up there was a ford Fiesta with blacked out windows on the forecourt playing some shitty arsed RnB with about 7 Chav girls sat in it screaming out the words to the two who were at teh bullet proof window trying to pay fo ra £10 phone top up with pennies. I tried my best not to look intimidated, though I'm fairly sure, as usual when this happens, that I did probably look like I'd suffered a stroke, or possibly bell's palsy. Anyway the one at the front turned round and looked at me, made eye contact and said "What are you looking at?" I should probably have looked away or said "Nothing" or done the usual intimidated member of the public that they've grown to expect, but I'd been working all weekend and compering the previous night and was still running through in my head how to reply to the audience, so I said without missing a beat "Someone who's going to be a grandmother by the time she's 30?" She sucked her teeth and went off and got in the car and they drove off into the night.

Beth 1, the idiots 0 Huzzah! I won that one!

Monday was a bit stressful, I've started a new comedy night at Vanilla, a Lesbian bar in Manchester, and Tuesday was the second night of it, the first that's been run in someway properly (entirely my fault) and so I headed over to Manchester early in the evening, I was supposed to be doubling up with the final of the Manchester Irish Festival Comedian of the year competition. So I was leaving the legend that is Dug Shelmerdine in charge of compereing duties, adn I was opening.

As I pulled up outside his house I got a call from my headline act saything that they were ill and couldn't do it, so with an hour and a half until I was supposed to be there I had to think fast.

As I got into Dug's house I saw he was getting prepared, by watching Chris Rock, and so the quest to find a headliner at short notice who was suitable was on.

A massive thank you to the fantastic Caimh McDonnell (I hope I spelt that corectly) who stepped in and did the job fantastically. Now when I phoned him I remembered most of the information, except one crucial piece of the puzzle, I forgot to tell him that it was a lesbian bar.

anyway the night got off to a good start even though I did overrun slightly, my gig though, I can do that!

and I headed off to Levenshulme to do the gig there, when I got there I'd a missed call from Caimh, I left him a message with some information and again forgot to let him know it was a lesbian bar.

When I got in I tried to text Dug to remind him to tell him when he got there, apparently he was already there and had just got on stage.

the Irish comedy night was fun, and I forgot the rules to that sort of competition, the one who brings the most friends wins.

though to be fair to the winner he was excellent I really enjoyed watching him So if you're reading this and you're about and see David McCorry's name on a bill somewhere go see him.

Tuesday Jonathan Mayor called needing a lift to Lincoln so I thought what the hell and loaded up the car and headed down there with him, it was a gig for a promoter I'd not played for before so I thought it'd be an excellent opportunity to harrangue him into giving me a gig sometime.

The line up was ace, with one of my heroes Ian Cognito headlining and John Robbins opening. as it happened Shaun the promoter said I could do a short spot that night. Result!

John was superb, i'd gigged with him in Cheltenham on Valentine's Day and he did a totally different 20 minutes than I'd seen him do there so I had a chat to him, and he saidthe same thing that I've heard from a lot of people, and for the fourth time that week which really cemented in my head what I needed to do, "the difference between the people who become headliners and those who go on to be stratospheric is that they have a high turn over of material." essentially what I'd been thinking that week, once I know that a piece works everywhere I'm going to try and replace it.

This was also forced by looking at my Chortle review on this very site and seeing a comment from someone saying that they liked me but that they wished I'd change my material. I've always tried to make sure that I do at least one brand new joke or line every time I go on stage. This has been upped now, I'm trying to write 10 minutes of new stuff a week, even if 9 minutes of that is total shit, there's bound to be some good stuff in there.

the try out went well, considering I only had 5 minutes which is a timescale recently I've not done so was a bit thrown by it, also I chose to open with two new bits I've never done before and one of them got a huge response that I wasn't expecting which threw me slightly too, but I got them back and ended well. Huzzah Beth 1 The System 0 But the real winner on the night was comedy.

Last night I headed down to the Comedy Balloon because Dug was compereing and I was in town, though not before I'd got the fantastic medical advice from a friend who's nearly a qualified Doctor, when she said, that as far as drinking, smoking and drug taking goes as long as you don't overdo it and quit when you're 35 you should be fine. So I've got another 7 years of smoking before I need to quit. Huzzah Beth 1 Medical science 0! Ok this is getting tired now I know.

Anyway the Ballon was full and Dug was excellent, and each of the acts did really well, except one. He'd brought a whole bunch of friends with him and they talked through all the other acts which is not on. then his name was announced and he swaggered down to the front full of confidence.

Now as part of Dug's compereing set he has a "Cricket bat list" a list of all the people who should be dragged out into the street and beaten to death with a cricket bat, there's all the usual suspects, Kate Thornton, Jamie olicer etc (though they're the first ones an audience says to be added to the list.)

This guy got up and said Britney should be added to the list, Dug said no, she's gone mad, it's not fair and then the guy on stage went into a rant about how she should be killed.

His voice sounded ever so slightly like a local radio DJ with that horrible Mid-atlantic twang, and there was no warmth to what he was saying. When no one laughed he said "That's your cue to laugh!" in an almost threatening tone as if everyone found it hilarious and was just holding back because they were playing a trick on him.

One of the girls he'd brought with him was laughing really loud and putting him off, he kept getting distracted, and then came the first heckle, and to my mind the single greatest heckle I've ever heard from the back of the crowd near to her a voice went up "Oi, stop laughing whilst the comedian's on!"

The act got worse and was just ranty with no real point to it, no warmth and no humour, his arrogance wasn't knocked though and he was just horrible, heckles went up round the room that all were funny and all worked, and his response to each of them alienated the room more and more.

Eventually, towards the end of his set, he said "After this I'll be in the car park with my jacket off if anyone wants to take this outside" it was weird, the wheels just fell off the whole thing and as he left the stage giving all the audience the finger he did in fact take his jacket off and head outside waiting for the whole of the pub to follow him outside.

Now I've found someone unfunny before, but not so unfunny that I wanted to follow them outside and punch them for being shit.

I've come close, but usually pity takes over. After the gig we were all sure that that had to have been his first ever gig, apparently it wasn't, hopefully he'll have learned something from that and might take to the stage again with a little more humility this time.

Whilst I have respect for absolutely anyone who gets up on stage and gives comedy a go, I share the views of some of my friends that we respect even more someone who gets up to give it a go, realises that they're shit and then quits.

that sounds a bit nasty, it's not meant to, but there are a lot of people out there who die night after night doing the same material, don't get any better and don't quit. Ok so they get some fun from it, but from a utilitarian point of view "Any act is good which does the greatest good for the greatest number of people" and in some cases the amount of good that the act feels from getting the attention is outweighted byt he negative effect that they have on an audience, that's anything upto 200 people who're having a bad time in order for them to have their good time.

So unless they're a terrible act who never gets better and who might rape or kill if they don't get on stage, personally I'd rather them quit.

Anway, I hope that cleared that up.

I'm in Nottingham tonight, and looking forward to it, anyone who's in the area head on down it should be a good night.

I love you all with all my heart

Bethany Black

it's been a good week, punctuated with fuck-ups.

a short version runs like this:

Drove Scott Cappurro between gigs and hung out, went to Chinese Karaoke, Had John Scot stop over at mine, Worked on my show and made myself sad, had a great gig in Chorlton, Had fun at a 24 hour comedy event, had the day from hell yesterday going up to Newcastle and back in a day because I messed up. if you want to read the longer version it's here:

I was driving Scott Capurro round last weekend as I'd no gigs on and that's something I do to make a little extra cash from time to time, he's a great guy and really interesting for me to listen to and to watch, we talked about a lot of stuff, LGBT politics, movies comedy, it was lots of fun. After bringing him back from Baby Blue in Liverpool to the frog and watching him manage to offend a good chunk of the audience with some fantastic material he left to go back to his hotel and I stayed at the Frog with John Scott who was waiting for Gemma the bar manager to finish as he was staying at hers. we hung around for a while and went through some of his new material and I came up with a coupple of new tag on gags for him to try. After a while Mick Ferry turned up fresh from doing Rawhide and we stood hanging round exchanging stories until the bar closed. There was still stuff to do so we all decided to head off down to Charlie's, Manchester's premier late night Chinese Karaoke bar, with Sam and Tony one of the Security staff. As we all squeezed into his BMW, Sam, looking big and scary in the front, Tony looking big and scary driving and me sat in the back wiht John Scott on one side and Mick Ferry on the other it struck me that to the casual observer from outside it looked like I was about to be driven off to the woods and shot, or receive some kind of punishment beating.

I love Charlie's at that time of night, there where about five of us in there so we managed to get through our requests fairly quickly, and John does a mean Rocks by Primal Scream. Mick disappeared off early and we waited outside for Gemma to turn up when the bar closed. when she didn't and we realised that my phone had died and John didn't have her number we headded back over to my parent's house.

John Scott is fantastic for this reason, the next morning he got up and was chatting with my mum and dad, now they're both quite suspicious of what it is that I do, all they see is me not spending money on anything except petrol travelling up and down the country doing gigs that either don't pay but promise to in the future, or just about cover my fuel, and on a rare occasion actually pay me well. As a result they think that I'm probably not that good and will never be able to make a living from it and that I should probably quit trying to do this for a living, though I know that my dad's incredibly proud of me for doing this as it's something I think he wished he'd given a go at some point. My mum on he other hand has a complete phobia of public speaking and won't let me talk to her about gigs. Last week I was in the paper and she refused to even look at the article.

Anyway, whenever any comics come back and I'm not there they ask them if they've seen me and if I'm any good, and if it's actually possible to make a living from comedy. Thank you to John for backing up everything I've ever told them, and thank you for telling them that most of the proffessional acts have been at the point I'm at right now, and that in time it'll change and I'll reach the point where I can stat earning enough to live off.

Anyway I spent most of the rest of the day doing an interview for the local paper, which brought up some things I'd not thought about for a long while, some of which were difficult to think about, but it was neccessary, more of that later.

Saturday night, I picked up Scott and we went over to Liverpool, and in the opposite of the previous night the Liverpool audience was hell, there was a table of 25 who were in for an office do who just seemed to want whoever was on the stage to take the piss out of their boss, when that wasn't happening they took it in turns to get up and dissappear off to the toilets. Now I'm not saying they were taking cocaine, they might have been the Office Toilet Relay team, I don't know, what I do know is that they managed to kill any atmosphere in the room.

We left fairly soon after that, time to leave the scene of the crime, though not before a punter gave us some of that legendary Scouse wit. Don't get me wrong, I do love playing liverpool, and I do like the people, my mum's a scouser and I can kind of understand why they are like they are, they're not quite like anyone else in England, but sometimes some of them can be arseholes, Scott hadn't done well, mainly becaue it only takes about 4 people in an audience to ruin a gig, in this case there was 25 of them, and as we're getting ready to go a guy at the bar walks over to Dcott and says "You going? I'm not surprised that last guy was shit!" Then followed by "Only messing with you."

I don't understand this, I really don't, it's just utterly stupid, how on earth was that supposed to be anything other than utterly offensive? OK so the guy has probably never got on stage in his life to try and do comedy, but even so you'd think he'd have some level of empathy, to know what it feels like after you've had a bad gig. It's been brought up in a number of interviews with comedians over the years that Public speaking, to most people is scarier than death. I've lost my thread, so I'll move on suffice to say some people are just tools, it could have happened anywhere, it just happened to be in Liverpool, maybe my piss taking of the legendary scouse wit was a bit out of order.

Anyway the journey back to Manchester was fairly quiet, until I nearly killed us trying to cross two lanes to get to a petrol station, by the time we got to the Frog though it was show time again, and I watched a masterclass. Scott was on fire it was amazing.

On Monday My friend Cat came to a gig at the Iguana bar in Chorlton with me. I'd spent the whole day not looking forward to it, and getting there and seeing some of the audience again I still didn't want to do it.

My highlights of the evening included Des Sharples the resident compere reading stories from the newspaper, then asking the crossword questions, no one in the pub could get any of the answers right so he went to ask the questions from the daily quiz offering a free half to the person who answered the most right, before realising that the answers wouldn't be in until tomorrow.

Matt Green opened and was great, though the audience took a while to warm up and there was a little bit of chatter, all the way through this I'm still thinking, "I don't want to do this" then a character act called Lydia Mold was on before me and didn't really do anything to change my view.

Then I went on and it was so much fun. I managed to get some of them onside straight away, and thought "Fuck it" and decided to do some very personal material that I'm going to be putting in my show, it's divided rooms before, and as I was leading into it I realised that the audience was already on my side, I could feel the rhythm of the laughter through the room. That is I'd got into a rhythm, in spite of my having difficulty catching my breath, and I was saying aobut four words and then pausing and there was a laugh in that space whether it was a joke or not. So here I go and bare my soul...

It works, kind of, some of the audience just stare at me, some look downright hostile, some sit smiling a fair few are really into it, and about 7 or eight audience members find it so funny I can hear them having difficulty getting their breath.

All the while the words of Silky are echoing through my head "You'll split rooms and you'll die on your arse more often than most but you'll be true to your soul and whilst there'll be those that don't get it, and those that do, those that do will really get it, and they're the ones who will come and see your edinburgh show and they're the ones who will allow you to eventually do a theatre tour."

Bouyed by this after the gig I'm on a high, and for the rest of this week I've been working more on my show, Like the interview last weekend it involved a lot of soul searching and dragging up some very painful memories, but it'll be worth it.

Yesterday I realised that I'm close to the end of my overdraft limit (this time a small overdraft after all that unpleasantness with the bank which ended in me taking them to court and them refusing to pay me and then me having the bailiffs sent round. I wonder what that did to their credit rating? Anyway in the nice letter they sent with the cheque they told me I'm not allowed to tell anyone about any of this so I'd better stay schtum.) And that I'm due a whole load of cheques that will sort that out.

As it happens I've actually got an overdraft £100 less than I thought, but I didn't find this out until I was in Newcastle and my card wasn't working.

rewind 24 hours, I'm at The Frog watching the Irish weekend start with Vince Atta, Rob Reilly and Mick Ferry, as it ends we head on down to Opus for the Stand-up and be counted 24 hour comedy event which starts at midnight.

now it's a long show, and I'm there from midnight until about 6am, and in the short time I'm there the highlights are:

Mick Ferry slowly disintergrating due to alcohol as he comperes, including some fantastic introductions, the two best of which as far as I can remember are "this next act came and asked me for advice when he first started and I said "Can you carry 12 kg of spuds?" he said "No" and I said, "well give up. you've not got what it takes." but he did like David Caradine in Kung-fu and last week he carried 12kg of spuds round a half marathon, and now he's ready!"

And the other for my little bro Dug Shelmerdine: "The next act's got the life I wished I'd had. I often wonder what would have happened if I'd carried on taking drugs, I stopped when I was 22, I wondered what I'd look like when I reached 30, when I first saw this next act I realised what I'd have looked like."

Other high-points, Garry Delaney kicking the whole thing off, Jason Rouse's testicles and specific sexual threats, and my favourite of all Dug.

Just before he goes on stage a whole bunch of guys stood at the back look over at him and ask me "Is he on?" "Oh yes, I can't wait." "this is going to be brilliant, has anyone got a camera?" as dug is swaying about all over theplace barely able to stand at this point. As Mick introduces him he's leaning against the wall for support as Vince Atta tells him he's got a plane to catch and not to over-run. "Fuck you Atta, I'm the whole fucking show, I'll do what I like!" he says as he nearly falls on his arse.

As he makes his way to the microphone he hugs Mick, and gets to the microphone "I'm starting to realise beer and speed was a bad idea." he rambles through his set at about third speed ranting and shouting, the boy's a genius, he just does funny, though he needs to get a handle on the excess, as he says he's expecting his friends to have an intervention in the next couple of days, I'm actually considering that. Even so he's brilliant as ever.

He takes to the stage again during my set, where, at 5:30am I'm just sharing stories of why I don't drink anymore, the worst things that I've done and a couple of stories of some of the things that Dug and I have got up to over the years.

He joins me on stage and sits in a chair behind me. As I tell the crowd he's the closest living person to Captain Jack Sparrow, they laugh, an alternative description I offer is Russell Brand, if he'd stayed on the smack.

6am, I pass out through tiredness at Dugs and wake up at 1pm, feeling grotty, I've had a cold coming on all week and it's finally arrived.

Showered and changed I head off to Newcastle, filling my car up along the way, I've not eaten yet today, but it'll be alright I'll get something after the gig, when I stop over at John Scott's.

The traffic's hell, but I put on my positive thinking CD and get myself in the mood. I get there at 8:10 and the gig's started, John Gordillo's about to go on and I head back into the dressing room and get changed, I send John a text asking if it's still ok to stop at his. As I'm about to go on stage I see that there's a guy in the front who'll be hard work, but it should be alright.

I go on stage and it's strangely quiet they're all watching but I can't seem to get them, I keep a slow confident pace and they're not really going with it, there's a couple of hit and run heckles which I ignore, I've decided not to go with the personal material and just stick to my regular set, I get a luke warm response I feel.

The gig is a weird one, I don't die, I just about manage to get a decent response all the way through but not enough for it to be an enjoyable gig. After I'm kicking myself for not going for the personal stuff. It would have got a reaction and I think it would have changed the level of my confidence and could have actually managed to pull the gig round, I could have stormed it or it could have backfired and I could have been booed off stage or even attacked, either way it would have been preferable. In the end it was just one of those days where it was felt like work. On top of that I hit the wrong button on my vibrator and the gag that I use it for didn't work, which is usually a great closer to the gig. Instead I come off feeling like I've compromised for an audience who didn't deserve it, I feel slightly cheapened and violated, If I had a doll I could show you where the bad audience touched me.

The gig finished by 10:30 and I was in Durham waiting on a call from John Scott, I couldn't top up my phone for some reason, so I thought I should probably just head up to Newcastle, which I did, still no answer, I stopped off at a petrol station to top up my phone and it wouldn't work there either. Driving around I found a cashpoint and checked my balance, "today you may wihtdraw: Nil" Arse!

I find a quiet spot and park up and wait for a call from John, I'm starting to worry. Eventually at 11:30 he calls and asks if I got his message earlier on in the week, I didn't, it turns out he's switched gigs and is in Bolton, so I can't stay at his. Double Arse. I've got 19p of credit on my phone, I call Stefan Peddie, he answers and I ask him to call me back, he does, he's got friends up from Crewe so I can't stop at his tonight.

Well that's it, I don't have the number of anyone else in Newcastle, I've only two choices, sleep in the car or head back to my parent's house. I choose the latter, put the address into the sat nav and head back through the windiest scariest country roads in the country.

As I'm driving I get into a forrest and think "You'll be alright as long as you don't think of the ghost story Barry Dodds told you." My mind clearly hates me.

Driving through this forrest suddenly the wind picks up and a fog descends and the radio suddenly cuts out just leaving static. I'm getting more and more terrified. suddenly I turn an corner and in the distance on the side of the road I can make out a hooded figure.

My fight or flight response kicks in and I'm petrified as I draw closer I think of the Ghost story about the owls and the woman with the cowl, and I remember as long as you don't see her face you'll be fine...

As it happens it's just a Chav dressed in a brown hoodie, I know this because whilst ghostly figures who emerge from the forrest to steal your soul look like smack addicts they don't tend to carry a DVD player under their arm, and they certainly don't wear Reebok Classics.

As the fog lifts and I'm well on my way to reaching civilisation, well Penrith, the radio slowly kicks back in and through the hiss of the static I can hear what sounds like 1950's rock and roll, with nothing around me to place where I am, or even what era I'm in I suddenly think that in the fog I've been transported through time into the 1950's. At this point in the evening that would be entirely plausible. Then Mark Lamarr's voice comes on and I realise that it's just his Radio 2 show.

It's been an emotional day, and just as I'm getting onto the M6, the radio announces that the Kinks are the featured artist, and they play a live version of "Days" and then Cher's cover version of "I go to sleep" I nearly have to pull over as it's just a little too much and I suddenly find that I'm in tears.

Eventually getting back to the house it's cold, I have a look through the 'fridge. Mum and Dad are away in France for a month so there's nothing, no milk or anything even though they only went the day before yesterday. No bread either, just a jar of Bockwurst and some anchovy paste. I'm not that hungry.

I crawl off to bed. Tomorrow will be a better day, the universe is abundant and brings only good into my life.

And it's true, it does, and today's better, I get paid for the gigs tonight in cash, and later this week all the cheques that've been sent to me will land in my account and I'll be back on top.

And tonight, in Gateshead, I'm not going to compromise, and I will have a good gig whatever happens.

Well I've had another look through the searches that people have put into google to find my blog, and they're ace again some of them at least. Here's a selection of the best:

toby hadoke gay

chris stokes girlfriend

shameless lesbian truck driver

phone numbers you can call from your mobile to wank to in ireland

Leanne Ross topless

blow job party organise

movies of people sticking their bum out and going to poo on the floor

the first one to bring me a half crown

I'm sure Leasnne will be please that people are trying to find topless shots of her, and I don't understand the Toby one, but my two favourites are the one that some guy's put into google to find sex lines in Ireland that he can get from his mobile phone, surely there's no need for the elaborate language, but as Ed Byrne points out the Irish have a lyrical quality to their use of language this beautiful way with words,m which in this case was used to soil a sock whilst talking from a mobile phone.

My other favourite is "movies of people sticking their bum out and going to poo on the floor" I'm guessing from the way that the language is used this if from a 14 year-old or possibly younger who's using the internet either for a funny Mpeg that a friend's told them about or they're a junior pervert, just starting to discover the joys of coprophilia for the fist time. Before long he or she will have grown up and will be lying under a glass topped coffee table watching their partner giving birth to a brown trout onto it whilst they wank themselves into a froth.

If that's what they're into it's a shame it wasn't them who was in the hospital bed that a friend of mine was in a couple of years back, she was telling me about how it was fine in hospital for the first few days until they brought in a posh, but senile old woman and put her into the bed next to he. Said old woman apparently spent the day alternatively shitting herself and masturbating. apparently it was down with the bed sheets and up with the nightie and then there was a furtive scrabbling. But that's my friends story, there's more to it but it's not my place to talk.

My Landlady's pushing to find out who's going to be staying in the flat next year. It's time for me to move out. I did want to stay, it's cheap and it's easy for university, plus I'm lazy and I've never been able to find myself a new place to live. In fact, over the last ten years I've lived in no fewer than 8 places, and I've never been the one who's done the organising about finding a flat and moving in.

I spent a portion of Thursday trying to convince myself that I'm popular and easy to get on with, that I don't go being unreasonable about things any more. Having listened to my positive thinking tape was helping. Right up until I realised that I don't have that many friends at university. And those that I do already have houses sorted out for next year. So I was trying to figure out who to live with.

Turns out I'm not as popular as I thought. Never mind though, at least I'm not one of these mental people prone to exploding over insignificant stuff.

So the LGBT night out was ok, it was fun to spend time with some of my previous partner's friends who I'd not seen and missed whilst everything's been up in the air this last couple of months.

I was in a silly mood all night and was bouncy and happy and silly until we got down to the Limelight for the pub quiz.

Sarah was messing about saying she didn't want me on her team. But we ended up on the same team anyway, it was one of the easiest pub quizzes I've ever been to. Though it did seem like I was the only one answering questions. I let my other team mates answer the round on the Simpsons as it was the only one that they knew most of the answers for, even then Sarah managed to get one wrong "what is the name of The Simpson's cat?" Of course it's "Snowball II" not just "Snowball" as Sarah had written and I'd not checked.

Anyway at the end we did a picture round where we had to name the films from the pictures we were given.

And this is where I was proved wrong about my over reacting to things. Even now I can feel my blood boiling over this.

One of the pictures was from the film "Raiders of the lost Ark" I know that one because it had the picture of the Nazi who gets the thing burned into his hand on it.

So that's what I put down for my answer.

The team who were marking our paper, who are made up of other members of staff marked that as wrong in the marking because Naomi who runs the quiz when giving the answers at the end said "and the last one's Indiana Jones, you can have the point if you've said any of those films"

They marked it wrong. I calmly pointed it out to them. They called me stupid and said I'd missed out the most important bit of the title. I said I hadn't as the picture was from the first film in the trilogy, the film called Raiders of the Lost Ark. They said it wasn't called that it was called "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark" That "Raiders of the lost ark" was the subtitle. I told them that it wasn't and that they were just being really petty. They called me stupid again and suggested that it's like Starwars Episode IV being called "A New Hope", I pointed out that it wasn't, though by this time I was furious. The first released Star Wars film was just called Star Wars on it's original release. It only became "Episode IV: A new Hope" when it was re-released in Cinemas after The Empire Strikes back had been green lighted.

Their lack of knowledge in relation to the films of the Hollywood Movie brats was shocking but above all infuriating. I'd got the question right and they weren't accepting that, and no matter how I tried to reason they did that thing that the semi-retarded do where they accuse you of being thick whilst they can't actually win the argument. I've never argued with four of them at once before. One's usually enough to set off a panic attack.

I'd had enough, especially as none of my so called friends were backing me up any, instead telling me to calm down. The thought of knocking the much older almost paeodphile-esque member of the group off his chair with the empty Magner's bottle that was on the table, before putting my foot ot his throat and treatening him with the broken bottle until his team gave me the point for being correct floated through my mind.

But that would have made me look crazy. Instead I got my stuff together and headed out of there past the fat, ugly and stupid team, the team whose lives have reached the top of their bell curve. The best they'll ever achieve is pulling pints in a rock club in Crewe, I should be feeling sorry for them, instead they sat there laughing and sneering at me.

As I reached the bathroom stall, it was too much the anger, and the frustration at my inability to prove that I was in the right and that they were wrong was too much. I puked and puked until my stomach was empty, and then I felt better.

See up until that point I'd been having a great evening, I'd been able to prove to Sarah that I'm not that much of a cunt, that I'm not as crazy as I've been in the past, that maybe we should carry on being friends, and then because of this it'd all collapsed again. She thought I was a mental.

Even my protestation that it was just like when I was 7 and Lucy Dyke said I'd stolen her beef burger and I got into trouble at school, and I hadn't I didn't even like the one I had for lunch let alone steal hers, and Mrs Bennett should have known that, I did tell her I quite clearly said to her that I didn't like it. Instead I got told off for lying, and I never.

you shouldn't wake in the morning with your head full of anger and replaying that situation over and over in your mind, figuring out how you could have taken down four people one by one in as short a time as possible, with near lethal force. But that's how I awoke on Friday.

I'm not a violent person, but I've realised, my tolerance for the stupid is near zero, so I think I'm just going to avoid them from now on. This includes people who claim that they can subscribe to their own broadband internet supply without having a phoneline, and anyone who decides that they believe that the universe should work in a certain way that doesn't actually comply with the actual rules of the universe. Infact, I'm no longer having anything to do with anyone under 25.

This weekend's been great, it's been lots of fun, but that's going to have to wait for another blog.

Writing this one's infuriated me to the point that I need to go and vent some frustration.

Last night, something which sums up how my life works happened. I was in my room in my flat, I'd lit some candles, made some mint tea and put on one of my positive thinking relaxation CDs, put some oil in my oil burner and was letting the fruits of the forest smell waft through the room as I tried to calm down and get in the mood for meditation.

One of the candles went out, so I went over to re-light it whilst I was stood there trying to light it there was a loud bang as the glass top to the oil burner exploded showering the room with broken glass and boiling oil, whilst I had a panic attack.

Over the weekend I got to see my two Nephews, they're great and I love them, they've both got Aspergers Syndrome, which is like a mild form of autism, all through my family tree there's people who've been hit with various force by the autism stick, so it's no real surprise. They've both been expelled from Nursery recently so my mum and dad are looking after them a fair bit, and it was whilst they were that one of them got into a little exchange with another child that made me laugh a fair bit. Now I normally hate those "Children say the funniest things" type columns you get in tabloid papers and magazines like take a Break, because to be fair, children rarely say the funniest things. They take things literally, or tell people what you've been saying about them behind their back, usually; ironically, that you think that they're two-faced. So this may be one of those moments where it was only funny in the moment, but the conversation went like this.

Kid: "Who are you?"
My Nephew: "Felix. Who are you?"
Kid: "Madison."
My Nephew: "Who am I?"

It was the Manchester Gong on Sunday, which I've started to actually enjoy, I don't need to go along to this anymore, but I like doing it, I've never lasted the full five and at the moment I've got some stuff that I want to test out infront of a hostile audience. Sunday was going well, right up until I told them I was going to do a Joke that had someone walk out at a gig I did in Birmingham last year, I asked if they were up for it and they said yes, so I did it, and instantly all three cards went up. I don't do that joke very often, but I really like it, and contrary to stereotype it's the only period joke that I've got in my set.
So Monday came around again and I needed to get my Car MOTed so I could get it taxed and whilst I was waiting, I got a call from a journalist on the Local news paper, the Lancashire Evening Post asking for an interview over the phone because they wanted to run a story about me winning my heat of the Chortle Student Comedian Competition.

Of all the things that I've done so far in comedy this is the one that seems to be gaining the most interest. It's one of those things when you start out you know you want to be the best you can, or at least I do, and I kept doing that thing of how soon I'd be the most successful comic in [insert place name here] Now I was brought up in a small village in between two towns so I've got a couple of choices.

I wanted to be the Most Successful Comic in Chorley, where I went to school, but Dave Spikey's from there, so I'd have to wait a good long while, and then I thought, Preston, it's where I was born and where most of my friends are and where I hung out for most of the last 6 years, but ahead of me I've already got Dan Nightingale, John Thompson and John Inman. Even in my own village with a population of under 200 there's Steve Royle who's a great comic in his own right and part of Slaughterhouse Live. So I've put off local domination for now.

Then today the story about me was supposed to appear in the paper, I thought, "Great my chance to have the top rated comedy story in the paper!" It just so happened that my story was in the paper on the day John Inman died.

Always pushed out of the spotlight!

I know that that sounds terribly self centred, and it is, sure it's a tragedy that we've lost one of the first high profile gay actors on television, and I do feel that, but at the same time as I never knew him, and wasn't related to him I find it difficult to find that attachment.

I'm the same with lots of other things, as I've mentioned earlier all through the family we've got a few autistic traits, and I'm no different, I do have great difficulty making emotional attachments to people I've never met. I also don't understand how other people do manage to do that, as I managed to prove disasterously last year at a gig when I was trying out some material I thought was great about not making that connection and not understanding the massive national outpouring of grief when children are kidnapped or murdered. If they're not related to me or my everyday life I really can't manage to care.

This is part of the reason I don't do observational comedy. I was greated at first with silence, then shocked looks, then anger. It's the same when people try to show me photographs. I honestly just don't care, I don't want to see your photos, especially if it's of a holiday or a party when I wasn't there. They just upset me, that you were having fun and I wasn't involved.

I was thinking about some of this on Tuesday watching Paul Sinha at XS Malarkey, he was doing new material for his next edinburgh show and some of it made me think of these particular character traits. It looks from what he's doing that his Edinburgh show will be excellent and well worth checking out. After the Gig, After He, Vince Atta, Connor McGinley and John Cooper had great gigs, I was chatting to him and sorted out that I'll be flyering for him again this year, so that's my Money sorted out for whilst I'm up there.

Though I'm still looking for ways to fund it. I'll still be taking just my car and £20 in cash up there with me and seeing what else I can blag whilst I'm there.

After this I headed up to Poptastic in town, a bunch of us had decided to head on there after XS, On the way in I bumped into Miss Kitty Lashes, one of my altime favourite Drag Acts, I spent about two hours talking to him one evening and he never remembers that he met me. this was no different, only rather than being dressed as Marilyn, he was dressed as Liza Minelli. I got talking to Jonathan Mayor whilst I was in there as we wandered inbetween the rooms looking for Girls and Boys as was our want, and it became increasingly difficult to tell as the night went on who were lesbians and who were just badly dressed college girls.

As it happened Jonathan had a fool proof way of figuring it out: "Long hair and self harm scars, straight girls touristing, Short spikey hair where the time and money spent far outweigh the end result: Lesbanim."

I still didn't find anyone, neither of us did but it was a great night, even though we were the last two comics standing as one by one they disappeared.

My favourite moment of the night was watching Andy Watson dancing like a mental to Electric Six's "Gay Bar" and getting tangled up in some straight bloke who was trying to walk past, Andy incorporated this into the dance and ended up grinding up against him, as the guy tried to de tangle himself he had a look on his face like "Right I'm going to punch him for that... Oh... Wait... it's a gay bar, they're allowed to flirt." and then wandrered off looking confused. Andy's not gay by the way, he is however a crazy dancer!

In the end it was a good day, except the point when I'd spent 6 hours working and then got a call from Scott Capuro, I'm supposed to be driving him this weekend and this was the first time I'd spoken to him outside of a couple of times at The Stand last August. Anyway because I'd been sat working at my computer and not talking my social skills had dropped to zero, and whilst he was lovely and erudite I came across as a surly teenager. Hopefully ovewr the weekend I'll be able to make amends.

Anyway must rush, It's the LGBT Night out tonight and for the first time I've got a Thursday free, so I'm making food and then heading off to Crewe's Premier Gay Bar, The Park. I'm actually wanting to get into the swing of student life again.

Things are looking up.

I love you all with all my heart.

On one of the functions back stage at this blog you can look at what searches people used to find your blog, most of them are fairly straight forwards, they've looked for a name or a specific term that you've used at some point in here, but some of them are spectacular.

Here's a list of my favourites so far, as I get more I'll add them:

"black magic to get my ex back"

"cadbury creme egg blow job"

"spanked by landlady"

"women in stafford uk wanting sex"

"Be kind and gentle to the frog and do not call him names Harry Potter"

"where in edinburgh to buy size 14 pvc trousers"

"what does a undertaker do"

"girl scouts in the 1980's to 1990's"

"the boys not right in the head shoulda got a kicking insted and she said"

Some of them really make me wonder what sort of world I must live in that "spanked by landlady" brings up my blog, and that I'm not surprised. but it's the "Cadbury Creme Egg blow job" that's really got me thinking, I'm intrigued about that now. How does that work, is it an exchange, because to be honest it'd take more than that to get me to give a blow job again, or is it giving a blow job whilst having a creme egg in your mouth? Or even blowing a cadbury's creme egg? Weird.

I might have to research this further. Time to switch the parental filter off on my google search.

Oh, who am I kidding like I've ever had the parental filter on!

Another week zipps by like... a zippy thing. It's been such a good week I've run out of similies, like a rollercoaster ride, which is a leit motif that's cropped up quite a lot in conversation this week, but more of that later.

I'll try and truncate this week into one post, into a single sound it would be "PPPPPPppppppiiiiiiiiooooooowwwww!!!!" into two sounds "PPPPPppppppiiiiiiiiooooooowwwww!!!! RAR!!!" the second sound must be made with tiger claws up.

Monday morning usually brings with it an impending sense of dread to most people, but since I stopped doing full time work with nothing to look forward to but a Saturday lie in, which to be fair stopped the week I got into comedy as I suddenly found myself with a million things to look forward to, every night was another gig to either perform at or watch. Even so I still have difficulty getting up on a monday and this was no different, I was still tired from the night before and I had that feeling that you get where everything's ultra real but yet you're unable to interact with it. I'm not sure if I'm the only person who gets this, your body feels wide awake and your mind just hasn't kicked into gear.

I left my Parents house knowing I was not going to make my first lecture of the day but knowing that I'd be able to get in for the second one. I had to, I was doing a presentation for the Sexuality and culture module entitled "Transsexuality: A Modern History" As I parked up at the university and made my way across the footpath past the stream towards the library I got a phone call from my friend Fallon asking where I was, it turned out the other person supposed to be doing a presentation had forgotten and I was late. I walked in and made my excuses managing to raise a bit of a laugh, which was enough for me to latch onto.

Like in the Sandman novel Preludes and Nocturns, when Dream has been captured and put in a glass case and one of his guards starts to daydream, it's enough for him to grab onto the sand and escape.

The presentation went well enough, though I overran, I should have asked them for a light at 55 minutes, as it happens I did one hour and twenty five. I got great feedback for it and managed to get a really good mark, the day was picking up!

So after the next seminar I headed down to the library to check my emails and do a bit of writing before I had to head back home and checking my emails it turned out a magazine I'd emailed about possibly doing some writing had got back to me and wanted me to do some work for them. Whilst I was reading this and trying to figure out what I could write about for them I got a phone call, the competition I'd won last week and then missed the call back from were calling me for my address to send me some DVDs.

My Ex turned up and we had a nice chat and sorted some stuff out and a bunch of friends I've not seen due to being so busy also turned up and we chatted, on top of that one of my friends and her new girlfriend told me they were able to come along to a gig I was doing that night for the Chortle Student Comedian competition.

Today couldn't go much better, maybe I should have bought a lottery ticket.

Now it wouldn't be a day in my life without me attempting to make something right and in doing so getting myself into a scrape. Now as I can't name names here this will sound a little conveluted: a couple of weeks ago I'd said to a friend that she could come with me to this gig, now the MC for this gig was Silky. Silky had met this friends recently ex-ed girlfriend and they'd got on really wel, and said ex girlfriend who's also a friend of mine wanted to come along next time I was gigging with Silky. I couldn't invite both, or rather I could but it'd involve telling both and seeing how they both felt about it and a lot of hassle and I didn't want to get involved. So I didn't repeat the invite to the original friend who was supposed to be coming and invited my other friend who's her ex.

Reading this back I see that I shouldn't have done this, but I wanted to avoid hassle. And it was all going so well on the journey down to the gig right up until we were parking, at which point I think the friend I had with me got a call from her ex asking what she was up to. And she told her, I of course had tried to avoid telling either that the other one was invited. I think I may have caused trouble.

Does that make sense? I didn't think so either, but to either of the parties involved Sorry, next time I'll not try to spare feelings and just be honest.

Anyway the gig was a lovely one, the competition was stiff, and though the audience were quiet they were well up for it. I'd never seen any of the acts before and of the acts on the bill I was really impressed with Chris Stokes.

I really enjoyed the gig and got a good response, but at the end when Silky was going to read out the winner I oddly didn't feel any real tension, I didn't think I was going to win, I think it was that I wasn't really treating it as a competition, I was just having a good gig and getting to be on the same bill as Gary Delaney and Silky, and also having Mr Chortle himself, Steve Bennett, in the audience just made the gig a little more nerve wracking. Two of the most nerve wracking gigs I've had in the last year outside of a Jongleurs tryout and the gig I did at Spank! in Edinburgh when I was being filmed for Paul Provenza's new film were both gigs when Steve was in the audience, firstly at a Laughing horse gig in Richmond which was just a cozy room above a pub with a friendly audience, and then Monday in Birmingham. having spoken to other comics about this I know I'm not the only one. Steve's like the Emperor Caligula of Comedy and you're the gladiator who's just slayed a tiger bare handed looking up to the emperor's box and waiting for him to give you the thumbs up or thumbs down.

Now I've got an image of Mr Bennett in a toga and laurel head dress, wandering around Chortle Towers ordering the sun to rise and putting together a press statement declaring his horse is the greatest comedian ever to have lived.

As my name was read out it was great, though, and I don't want this to sound arrogant, but something I've got used to in the heats of competitions this year. I've realised that this is my last chance to enter a number of competitions so I thought I'd go for it. A couple of years ago I entered a bunch of them only to come second in every heat to Barry Dodds. This year I've managed to win all the heats I've entered only to suddenly do quite badly in the final of each competition. So I now fully expect to have the worst gig of 2007 in Edinburgh for the final.

After the gig chatting with Gary, Silky and Chris was great. Chris has only just started out, but has a unique enough voice and more importantly something to say. Silky's declaration that if he quit, he'd come and find him and force him back onto stage was the right response. And whilst we waited for the time to go home we all discussed how we started out in this weirdest of businesses, and how we'd all done that thing when we started out of just doing any gig we could to get as much stage time as we could. It was heartening to hear Gary and Silky say that they'd done the bit that I'm at now where you're constantly running at the end of your overdraft limit in an attempt to get to the point where you start to earm more than comedy costs you and that they'd both made it to a point where they can earn a living from this and that being where I am that end is in sight.

Tuesday was fun but weird, manage to make more ammends with my ex, though there was a strange moment where I got told off by her for leaving the house after our fight the other week my argument that it was quite obvious I wasn't welcome was met with "That's your problem, you keep running away from things, and you leaving only benifited me, you should have stayed and made things more awkward for me." This confused me, but not as much as when this moved on to where I'm going to live next year and how I was going to have to get a one bedroomed apartment in town somewhere, to which she said "You can't afford that. No, you'll stay here, it's only another year. We'll sort something out." The only way out of this discussion was to say "Wait a minute, only four women get to tell me what to do, My mum, my girlfriend, my boss, and the Sat Nav lady. And you're none of them."

On Wednesday when I explained this to Dug and Doley, Dug just looked confused and Doley went "Eeeeuuuuugggghhhh! It's a trap! she's using some kind of witchcraft!"

As bad an idea as it seems, the rent is £32 a week. And I've yet to make a sensible decision in my life.

The discussion on Tuesday was in order to restore some cosmic balance. As I was driving home from the Gig on Monday night I'd not even made it home before I started getting texts of congratulations on winning my heat, the first one was from Sarah Millican, She won that one! But the next morning as I was woken by the woman from the press office at Revels for a quote (so I jokingly gave them "Damn right too!" though I'm faily sure that it will come back to bite me on the arse.) I realised that I'd got a text from Ray Peacock congratulating me, so I sent him one back about how yesterday had been such a good day and that I was looking forward to the Trent FM competition I was in the next day for a grand. within minutes he'd replied telling me I'd jinxed myself quite spectacularly.

He was right, so to atone I spent the day talking to Sarah, oh and writing Last week's blogs.

Wednesday came with all the inevitability of a phone bill, and I packed up the car and headed off to Nottingham, I love Nottingham it's a lovely town where last summer on a really hot Saturday I got to see my close friend Jonathan Mayor marry his partner Leon at the City Hall. It was the first time I'd been back since and even with the Sat nav I managed to get lost, as it seems the winding streets near Jumping Jacks, the night's venue, don't respond well to global positioning satellites, so as my car apparently drove through the ground floor of John Lewis' into Starbucks, I decided to abandon the car and find my way on foot.

It was odd, I suddenly felt really nervous, but there was a grand at stake here, enough to make sure that I was able to eat until my next instalment of student loan comes in, something that is a very real danger at the moment. Looking round I'd not seen many of the other contestants before. Having had the competition reduced down from heats and a final to just a final, and then being told that I wasn't doing 10 minutes but five and that it was a gong show format before I arrived I was surprised to find out that in the end it was going to be three minutes all together. Most of my stories take about three-to-five minutes to tell, but you know as Mitch Hedburg once said "If you can't make an audience laugh in three minutes you're not a comedian, you're a humourist."

It's a strange gig with a combination of people who've never ttempted stand-up before and one or two who have and with a pseudo-x-factor judging panel, which is a bit strange.

The two best moments for my money of the whole competition was the first act on doing some one liners and one of the judges talking to him afterwards in a conversation that went like this:

"Didn't you enter last year?"

"Yes"

"Didn't you do all that material last year?"

"Not all of it, some was new."

"Didn't I say last year that I'd enjoyed it all much better when I'd heard Jimmy Carr do it on his last DVD?"

And the other best moment, after an act who suffered from ankylosing spondylitis had been on the same Judge Saying "I wasn't sure whether that was supposed to be a joke? Are you really disabled?" he replied that he was and her tone changed to that of someone saying "Good dog" when she replied to what he's said by saying "Well in that case I think you're very brave getting up here and doing that."

I nearly shat out a kidney laughing at what had to be the single most patronising thing I've ever heard.

IN the end I got nervous as I went on stage, which I shouldn't have and that threw my timing for my first minute, but I still managed to get a really good response and relaxed into it.

In the end I came second, I wish I could say to the guy who'd done the Jimmy Carr jokes, but it wasn't it was to Ed Patrick who did a really good set, and I believe won his heat of the Chortle Student competition the next night.

According to the judges there was one point between us, so I took the second place prize of £250, cheque to follow.

And this is why after this year I'll be glad to not do any competitions again. I've never in my life been pissed off for getting £250 before. I've never walked away from a gig having had a great gig, having got lots of laughs and applause breaks, with a cheque for £250 and still been in a foul mood.

And I was, all the way back to Manchester. When I got to Dug's I chatted with him and Dolan about it, and was still pissed off, right up until Dolan said "Yeah... But... you just earned £250 for three minutes work."

And he was right.

Thursday was spent watching DVDs, TV Heaven Telly Hell, and then Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian, or part of it.

Watching Orny Adams on that, it was looking at the worst bits of every comedian you've ever seen, all the bad character traits and ego distilled into one person. It was like looking back at my arrogant behaviour when I'm on a downward mood swing.

It's like that moment you know when you've been drinking loads and you wake up in the morning with that feeling of pain that runs right through your soul where you feel like if you can will it hard enough you could go back in time to just before you started drinking and stop yourself. Where you don't want to see anyone you knew before this very moment, that if you can just start again it would be alright.

Watching this guy's behaviour gave me a flashback to feeling like that.

This was shortlived though as I went off to a meeting about a new Comedy night that I'm running at Vanilla in Manchester's Gay Village. It's the first regular comedy night there (outsid eof Jongleurs that closed down a while back) and I like to confound stereotypes by having a comedy night in a Lesbian bar. The girl I'm working with to get this up and running is fantastic, and the meeting went on for ages longer than I thought because we both just managed to click and talk shit with eachother, which is a quality I value above all others in everyone I want to work with or be friends with.

That Evening Driving with Toby Hadoke to Runcorn I thought back to Orny Adams and was talking about it. I never want to be like that guy, but it's like so many of these things what we hate most is looking out and seeing ourselves reflected back to us, it's why I don't relish going back and playing gigs in Chorley Lancashire.

Yesterday I tidied my room at my flat in Crewe, something I've not done since November as I always found something more important to do.

As I'm going to be there for another year now I thought I'd sort it out. Also I was supposed to be Driving Scott Capuro about this weekend, so I'd not made plans for Friday night, only to find half way through the day that I'd got the wrong weekend. So that means the dinner party I was supposed to be going to is going to have to be called off.

I didn't want to go straight back to my mum's for the weekend so I called in to see Dug, he wasn't in and I couldn't get hold of him so I gave his flatmate Ruth a lift into town. She's ace. I was about to go home when I just thought, you know what fuck it I'll go down to the frog.

I'm glad I did, there was a great line up starting with Silky and ending with Jason Manford, plus I got to hang out some more with Jonathan, who'd been ill, we went for a couple of drinks afterwards and talked about the script we're writing together, it's starting to get really exciting. I can't wait until we've got a draft of it written. Then we deconstructed each other's stage craft, boring ot anyone other than ourselves, and we realised that we work well together as friends and as comics because between us we've polar oposites.

As I left him heading off to company bar I got into my car, happy after a great week, right up until I saw the parking ticket on my car. Entirely my fault, I thought that Disabled parking spaces were ok to park in after midnight, but as the ticket on my car was timed at 1:38 I guess they're not.

I can't afford it, but you know, money keeps on flowing both in and out of my life.

everything in cycles.

This too, shall pass.

I still love you all with all my heart.