I've been too lazy at writing this, but as Easter draws near and the end of university for a term ends a load of work needs to be done, and reather than do it I've just procrastinated and hung out with friends, at the current rate I'm going to have to do all my uni work in one week before it all needs handing in.

So after the gig in Bristol I met up With Ray Peacock and we drove back to his, I'd got a text inviting me to a party at my friend Carey's house in North London, and I wasn't going to go, but rather head on home after the gig. I left on Friday expecting to be home that evening, it was saturday and I thought, what's one more day?

Back at Ray's myself and Ray played Buzz on PS2 until the sun came up and then it was time for sleep.

I like talking to some comics after gigs, the chance to talk about what you did and where you went wrong is invaluable, though sometimes they can be less than helpful, Ray isn't like that he's great to talk to about that stuff and always helpful. It's a never ending source of joy for me that this job means that even at my lowly status within the industry I get to meet and work with people whose work I really respect.

Anyway I fell asleep, and had a weird dream, one that was so lucid, and also which didn't seem to occupy the dream space of my brain, but instead some of it seeped into the mid term memory section. Like the dream equivalent of Déja vu. I was sure I'd been told this story before and that my sub concious was just recreating it into a dream, though it left me feeling uneasy. my head lolled to the right and I opened my eyes...

Ray jumped and I scared myself, he was trying to record The Super League show on TV, and had apparently knocked on the door trying to wake me and called my name and I'd not replied yet making the slightest noise trying to be quiet had woken me. I told him about my dream and half way through realised that it made no sense.

It's not quite Martin Luther King, but here's my dream:

I dreampt that there was a show on MTV where they granted people's entirely doable wishes, like Jim'll fix it, where they go to people's houses and give them the treat of a lifetime, usually people who're poor and haven't had much luck recently. and this is where the internal logic breaks down, in this episode they went to see a record producer and asked him what his make a wish foundation type dream would be, and he gave up the chance to have something special instead wanting a pair of jeans made for his brother who was very fat and couldn't find jeans that fitted. And the jeans they made were very special indeed, they were like dungarees but with these sausage things sewn into them, so they had 6 legs, giving his brother the look of a big octopus. The thing that made me wake with a melancolic sense of unease was the beauty of someone giving up their chance for happiness to do something nice for someone they loved.

If anyone's good at analysing dreams and knows what that means, then by all means get in touch.

I spent the afternoon irritating Ray by talking to him whilst he tried to complete a jigsaw, and then headed off to the party.

The party was great fun, Matt asked if I'd do the sound again for his show this year in Edinburgh, so I'm definately going to be there and I can't wait. Also I met a comic called Reggie who was doing Reiki, and he did a session for me which was brilliant, after I got my boobs done I've lost skin sensation in my arm and after a short session with him I got some of it back, apparently I need at least four more.

On Monday I headed down to Old ROpe to see if I could possibly get a spot to try out some new material, unfortunately it was packed out, fortunately I got to see some good stuff from Andrew O'Neil who I love, and Stephen Merchant who was doing some stuff there. Andrew Maxwell headlined, and one of the lines that he did I realised was a little similar to one of mine so I'm thinking I may have to drop it, which in itself is a bit annoying, but looking at it from a different angle, I'm writing things, and thinking about things in a similar way to Andrew Maxwell, this gives me confidence that I'm on the right track.

One of my big problems with being a stand-up comic, aside from my brain hating me from time to time and making me nervous for no real reason, is that for the most part I don't really think that I'm very funny, that nothing I've said, written or even thought is funny or original in any way, this ususally happens about three hours before a gig, my brain suddenly goes "Well they laughed the last 300 times you got on stage but that's not going to happen tonight, they'll see through it all and realise you don't know what the hell you're doing, you're not funny and never have been."

Over the last couple of weeks though, somethings have happened to change that.

After Old Rope I ended up down at the Phoenix for the fist time and ended up chatting and having fun with Tiffany Stephenson Andrew O'Neil and Ava Vidal, all of whom I'd like to see more often than I do, though now that I'm gigging more and more often in London I'm sure I will. But after the bar closed I drove Ava and Andrew home before at 5am deciding that that would be the perfect time to drive home.

Getting in at 10am on Tuesday morning having left at 3pm on Friday fully intending to get home again that night I was tired and slept for most of the day.

After that I'm a little hazy about what I did on which day for most of the rest of the week, but by Friday I ended up driving off to Leeds with Jonathan Mayor. We'd decided to finally get some work done on the Sit com we've been planning. It's a huge sprawling epic with character and plot threads in the style of some of the big american series. I've lived with these characters in my head for the last 7 years and it's time to get them out again and see what they do. But this weekend Jonathan was doing Cabaret Heaven in Leeds and Hebden Bridge so that was enough of a plan for us, I'd drive him and we'd talk, then on Saturday we'd work all day on it.

The gig in Leeds was good fun, it was strange to go back to that venue, I'd not been there since I compered a gig for Amnesty international there and they hated me from start to finish. There was a banner on the wall behind me saying "imagine a world without violence to women and girls" Which considering the reaction I got from the audience was the very definition of Irony. on that night everything I did made them hate me more and more, but Jason Cook who was on the bill also managed to do everything right in spite of himself. His opening line was to look at the banner and say "Imagine a world without violence to women, that'd be a world where they did what they were told the first time then..." and they loved him from that moment on.

I love Cabaret shows, and I enjoy performing at them too, but there's always a few things that don't sit right with me, somethimes it's that the audience don't tend to shut up and pay attention, sometimes it's that the audience are a little too forgiving, the thing about playing stand-up clubs is that if you don't manage to drag a laugh out of them every 30 seconds or at least hold their rapt attention with a witty monologue they'll hate you, whereas in Cabaret clubs often even if you're supposed to be providing the funny they'll let you just ramble on, this can be both a good and bad thing I think, but what didn't sit right with me on this night was that one of the acts had quite clearly stolen a joke from one of my favourite comedians. But that was the only down side.

The other downside to the weekend was that I'd agreed to meet up with Ray Peacock, and then couldn't due to the last minute plan of driving Jonathan, and by the time I'd remembered that and realised that I didn't have time to do both the battery on my phone had died.

After the gig we headed back to Manchester to Legends nightclub for Miss Jinny's birthday Last year I played her party and now she's booked me in for some of her nights which are great a captave audience of Goths and perverts, my kind of people! The party was great fun, I often think you've not lived until you've seen a whole bunch of Goths and Club kids scream like children and get over excited on the dancefloor when the DJ plays Girls Aloud "Love machine" followed by S Club 7 "Reach for the Stars" and then Shampoo "Trouble". Also I do like looking at what people are wearing, the corsets the bondage gear the PVC and the 6 foot skinny Goth girl wearing a netted tutu style skirt gaffer tape over her nipples and little else.

As always at these things I ended up chatting to someone. He's a guy I've seen around at a lot of these things before and we got chatting about stuff, he'd seen me at the party the year before and started with that usual conversation opener about how comedy must be the hardest thing in the world, and then he said that he'd played in bands for years and had a few hits in the 70's, turns out he was in The Sweet, one of my favourite 70's bands and now played for them and the Glitter Band, which I think is really cool, though apparently Butlin's will no longer book them. I just love the idea that he stands out on stage in front of thousands of people as they sing along only changing the chant to leader of the gang to "He's a paedo! He's a Paedo! He's a Paedo with a gang!"

Saturday meant writing and we got a load done it's really starting to take shape and I love it, in the evening we headded off to Hebden Bridge, Home of the Lesbians of the North of England, last time I was there I was doing a benefit gig for the Anti Nazi League, two places in two nights where last time I was doing some right on Charity work and two places where I'd done badly previously. Again the night was fun and we got talking to a young lad who'd just done his first gig that night, I like talking to newbies, and I remembered back to asking for advice from people when I first started out.

On the way back to Jonathan's we talked aobut general stuff and then about what I'm doing for my Edinburgh 2008 show, I'll tell you about it on here, but not just yet, in a couple of weeks, and Jonathan managed to get me to look at myself from someone else's perspective and it made me cry. This was a very important thing for me to do. But I won't dwell on this right now.

When we got back to Jonathan's we watched the first episode of the new series of Dr Who and it was excellent, best series opener I think that they've ever had. Then we watched a bit of Firefly which I'm really enjoying at the moment, the other good thing about writing this script at the moment is that I can watch stuff like this and justify it as "research".

On Sunday I woke up around noon and after some breakfast and a bit of a chat I had to head down to Exeter for a Mirth Control gig. I'd forgotten how long that drive was, but the sun was shining and the world is good so I enjoyed my journey.

When I got there the room was vast and filling up well, eventually just after nine the show started and I didn't feel that the opening section went as well as it could have done. After spending 5 hours on my own in the car my social skills had dropped and so my initial banter was slightly stilted, by the time I did the second section I'd got it back and for the closing section I was really enjoying it and it was a little more effortless. Over the course of the evening I met a BDSM collared Slave and had a very hot woman in the front row decide she was going to set me up with her sister. After the gig I gave her and her friend a lift home and we exchanged numbers, so I'll be in touch with them next time I head down that way. I love my job.

At 5am I got in and sent off a bunch of texts as I headed to bed, red bull and hypochondria convincing me that I had a DVT from the driving, it was more likely cramp in my knee from trying to maintain 55 miles per hour the 250 miles there and the 250 miles home.

Monday I tried out some new material at the Frog during their beat the frog section, as a lot of it was add ons to other bits of material that I've written recently the audience didn't really have the back story or the chance to get to like me before I did some of the more personal and dark material* that I've written recently. I managed 4 minutes and 55 seconds of anger, confusion, pity and abhorence from the audience before they showed me the three green cards, just 5 seconds short of the full time. I wasn't doing it as a competition just a chance to try some new stuff. Though I did enjoy it and I learned from it so that counts as a win for me. I was sat at teh Back after that with Michael J Dolan Britain's favourite funnyman(tm) as we watched each competitor head up onto that stage and as they survived the time went "Well she's officially five seconds funnier than me" or "He's 1 minute and 28 seconds less funny than I am" just to highlight the absurdity of measuing art in this way.

Michael did raise a very valid point though, gong shows aside from enabling you to hone material are fairly pointless, and even at that they're not the best tool, because most audiences at comedy nights go there to laugh, whereas at gong shows they go their to judge comedians. and as Jerry Seinfeld points out to an audience in the Documentary "Comedian": "I don't know why we put so much faith in your opinion, it's not like any of you have ever written a joke."

After the gig I went to give Dan Nightingale a lift home, only to find the clutch had gone on my car again. I knew it was the same problem as last time and I'd left the clasp at home that I needed to fix it, the cable tie that had held it all together for the last month had snapped and so I did the most lesbian thing, short of making a 6 ball break at pool, that I could think of, I mended my car using gaffer tape enough to hold until I got home! I truely am Queen Dyke!

On Tuesday I met up with Dolan and drank lots of tea as we talked about the sit com, he's coming on board to help us out, I honestly think he's one of the best undiscovered writing talents I know, if not in the country. As his performance last night at The Asylum at the Frog and Bucket went to show.

That was a great night, Toby Hadoke's DIary of a Posh bloke was excellent and had me nearly in tears at the poigniancy or some of it and Eddie Hoo Winning £75 on a scratchcard whilst mid way through his set was fantastic. and Dolan's faffing about spending 3 minutes talking about how he didn't have time to waste three minutes before leaving the stage with "Hello" was sublime. If you're in Manchester when it's on check it out it's an ace night and I think it'll grow to be something special.

Also I found out Toby's going to go to Edinburgh for the second week of the festival at the Underbelly doing his show "Moths Ate My Dr Who Scarf" if you haven't seen it please please make sure you do, it's a brilliant show, and that's been bourne out by the fact he's now got a BBC audio book of it coming out and a radio 7 two parter based on it out soon.

Later on sat over in Little Tyneside mk II i got to catch up with Barry Dodds, excited about his purchase of Vince Clarke's Gold Suit from Erasure's 1997 world tour, we chatted about stuff and sniffed poppers until 5 in the morning It was like being 15 again, well actually it was like a year and a half ago before we both got really busy and ended up never being put on the same bill any more. It was great fun and I'm going to make sure I spend more time with him from now on if I can.

As I headed home I thought through the events of the last couple of weeks and especially last night, I'm positive about myself now, and I'm happy and excited about the future, but at the same time pissed off with myself for not being able to hold back from telling people about it, it's still my greatest character flaw I think, my inability to keep my mouth shut and talk about me. Well that and that I'm a massive c*nt.

But I am excited, really excited. Tonight I'm doing a Thursday at the Frog and Bucket, the club that's meant so much to me since I started out and a club where I'd love to be a weekend act, though I've got a feeling that it may not happen. and then tomorrow night I'm doing the Comedy Store in London, the place where I first saw live Stand-up and a club that if I eventually get to the point where I'm doing a full weekend there will really make me feel like I'm a success, that'll be when I know that I've earned my stripes. On Saturday I'm playing the Green Dragon in Croydon and having a full weekend of Thursday Friday and Saturday makes me feel like I'm a proper comedian.

So where from here? I don't know but I've got the feeling this is going to get exciting.

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