Well the Manchester comedy Festival is over, so I can finally manage to get back to a regular sleeping pattern and do some uni work. Just in time for a reading week, and as a result I've been out late and getting up at around 3 in the afternoon.

Ok I started to write a blog on the Sunday of the first weekend of the festival. I saved it as a draft and it'll probably stay there, I'll try and write up what actually happened over that week.

Dug and Dolan were house sitting for Jonathan Mayor whilst he and Leon were away in Orlando, so a fair bit of time was spent round at his hanging out with the guys and watching comedy DVDs, we really are that geeky. there's a couple of us who will do that and just talk endlessly about comedy, about the artistry of it rather than the industry of it, the industry's boring, once you get past who gigs where and what different gigs are like there's really nothing else to say. When you meet up with another comic and you need an in to a conversation you talk about that in the hope that either you or they can think of something interesting to talk about. It starts with "you gigged anywhere interesting lately?" and if there's a funny story about dealing with hecklers or an audience that turned on you then you can usually find somewhere to go with that but more often than not you just get a list of places that the person's played recently, which if they're at the same level as you is really dull, or worse irritating, especially if they're getting gigs that you really want to be doing.

It's a terrible thing to admit to, especially as I know that the only way not to go mad or get bitter is to not care what anyone else is doing in this industry other than yourself, you need to care about your own game, because no matter how much you talk about it or how much you write with your friends the second your name's called and you hit the stage you're on your own. It's a little test that the Twat-pack (our little group of friends who are concerned with taking our comedy to it's purest to find our voice and actually try and do something new and refreshing rather than spouting the same old tired and hackneyed subjects and topics, has this name) has asked each other, "when someone says "Stand-up comedy" what do you picture in your head?" and each of us without prompting has said the exact same thing. A black background with a spotlight shining down and a microphone in a mic stand. That's stand-up comedy.

So you're not supposed to care who's doing what, who's gigging where or any of that shit, it's about you and you alone, how you can be better. How you can be funnier, how you can manage that without dealing with trite observations. and for me and Dolan, how we can do this proffessionally as soon as possible because we're both totally unemployable in any other field. So far though we're not very employable as comedians with the odd bit of paid work here and there, though I'm currently getting closer and closer to being able to live off what I'm doing.

So it's the first night of the comedy festival and I've realised that I'm really down on the amount of cash I should have to survive through until my next Student loan instalment comes through. So the launch party for the festival is at the Store where we've been promised free drinks and food so we both head on over there, and it's nice to see a number of people who when I first started out at this I would gig with every night of the week, but now I see only at occasions like this. It's sad in a way but heartening at the same time, for some it's because I've moved on and they haven't and for others it's because we've both moved on and we're the most inexperienced on most of the bills we're put on they wouldn't risk putting us both on the bill together, it'll be a good few years now before we're back on the same bill, and in a couple of cases it's becuase they've shot on ahead of me by a long way and I'm no longer even in their radar.

Dolan hit the free beer quite spectacularly whilst I loaded up on canapés, eating my own body weight in caviar (I say caviar, it could well be "caviar flavoured generic fish roe" for all I can tell. To the connoisseur they'd say I was a bloody philistine, but even back in the day I couldn't tell you the difference between Glennfiddich Whiskey and Spar's own brand: Glen Bogie Whiskey flavoured spirit) At one point I saw Phil Nichol talking to Don ward and went over to say hi to Phil, we got chatting I asked him what gigs he'd done recently and then said about how I was trying to get enough to not have to do a day job, he told me he'd never had a day job and how he'd always managed to make enough from this to live off, before telling me he was off to the Hilton to do a corporate for two grand for ten minutes work saying "You should really win an award!" As he left I found myself saying under my breath, "yes, yes I really should."

Dolan was pissed and winding up Ben Schofield when we decided to leave and head down to XS for Andrew O'Neil and Norman Lovett's slideshow. WHen he got there he carried on drinking apparently getting more and more rowdy and offensive as is his want, I got a call from Sarah 1 and headed off to meet up with her. It was my old flatmate Hollie's 21st and we were all off to Billie Rox for the roller disco. When I eventually got there it was my worst nightmare, I have great difficulty dealing with loud music, and places that I've not been before, and large groups of people, add that to rollerskates and big groupls of Tarquins and Jocastas binge drinking whilst wearing neon leg warmers and "Frankie says relax" t-shirts in an oh so ironic fashion (the fact that they don't realise that this isn't actually irony is rather ironic, but yet not really amusing.) means that this is complete hell. In the mean time one of Sarah 1's friend thinks she's doing me a favour when I've just got my rollerskates on by pushing me, in this situation this is entirely the wrong thing to do and anyone touching my back or sneaking up behind me to give me a surprise activates my punch mechanism, but I'm on rollerskates so that's not appropriate instead I shout "fucking do that again and I'll kick you in the cunt so hard your children will be born on wheels."

The girl is gone by the time I manage to get back there, apparently she left crying and it's my fault, some guys who are pissed and older than most of the crowd, most likely heading down here to stare at the barely-legal teenage girls are milling around next to where my group of friends are and I can see them through their pissed haze trying to not look like they're staring at me, they keep looking and then giggling amongst themselves, one I can lip read is saying "Is that a bird or a bloke?" I skate away, I don't want a fight or an argument right now so I find Sarah's girlfrien Avril and we go for a couple of laps of the dance-floor. She's pissed and seems to be made of legs and arms that all want to do their own thing so staying stable with her's a bit of a challenge. Then two of Sarah's friends from the uni LGBT society decide what would be really funny would be to try and knock us over. They give it a go and I leave the dance floor so that I don't find them dove on them and punch their faces until it's a bloody pulp and I'm just hitting dance-floor.

I take my skates off and find Sarah 1 and tell her I'm leaving and to come and find me at Vanilla.

Almost instantly my mood lifts, I'm feeling better and happier and back to being peacful again, though at the same time I'm thinking that anyone who goes there is a cunt, and anyone who enjoys it is a cunt thatshould have been aborted but who managed to successfully dodge a wire coat-hanger which wouldn't have happened on my watch.

Later I give Sarah and Avril a lift home which is fun, I like Avril she's a much better girlfriend for Sarah than the last one who hated me. They really deserve each other and I hope that they are together for a long time and that they can make each other happy.

8:20 on Friday Morning I get a phone call, I pick it up using the same tone of voice as I did the previous day when one of my flatmates called me at 10:30 "What? Who is this? Don't ever call me at this time!" I'm just about to hang up when I realise it's Sarah, Av left her camera in the back of my car and they need me to bring it over because they're getting a coach to Paris to watch the Rugby final in half an hour. Still asleep I get up put my shoes on and drive over to theirs still in my pjyamas. I hand over the camera, grunt and then drive home passing out until 2pm.

I've already missed most of the days lectures so I try to get my shit together, I'm supposed to be meeting up with Bex before she goes off to New Zealand for 3 months so I text her to tell her I'm running late and I'll be there ASAP. She calls me back and tells me that she'd forgotten we were supposed to be meeting up and would I mind not doing so as she still had a load of packing. I told her that'd be fine and to have a good trip and that I'd miss her.

I still had shit to do. When I started writing this blog I'd mentioned that I'd started to plan for my Edinburgh show for next year, that I'd started writing it, and to that end, after a late night talking session with Jason Cook he'd persuaded me to just do it, to get the show together and premier it at the Manchester comedy festival. Bouyed by his rousing speech I'd immediately booked myself in to do the fesival. But it was now the afternoon of Friday 19th October. My show was 10 days away and I'd talked a lot about how I was writing the show and as of yet I had: A poster for it. The music I wanted for the run in and walk-on, The music I wanted for the rousing speech at the end and a logistical nightmare of an ending that was beautiful and poignant, but expensive and difficult to arrange.

None of this is actually a show, it's all artifice and affectation. I'm quite scared that I've just over a week until the night of the show and I've still not written anything. I decided to run through it with Michael. When I get over to the house in Moss Side he looks like a headache wrapped in a hang-over wrapped in a duvet. Dug's smoking and surfing the net before he heads off to work. it takes a good portion of the afternoon beforeMichael's even approaching human, it takes him two showers but by 8:20 he's ready to go through the show with me. I start running through the stories in chronological order, occasionally he stops me and tells me to say something funny, or to change something or he comes up with a joke relating to what I'm saying, eventually we get through all the stories and it doesn't feel like there's many laughs, but it's taken us 2 and a half hours, so there's definately an hour show in there somewhere. An hour show that's not going to be very funny from the feel of it.

We spend the next couple of hours watching DVDs, first off it the show Gas from 1997, Lee Mack hosting Chris Addison, Noel Fielding and Hovis Presley. Through out we first find ourselves saying "TEN YEARS!" at some of Lee Mack's dated material, and Chris' dated head (it's weird, he looks exactly the same but with a weird haircut that makes him look strangely alien.) Over this whole fortnight I've found myself wanting it to be ten years in the future now, so that I'll have been going 13 years and will hopefully be somewhere near where I want to be artistically, as I think that's about how long it'll take to get there. After watching this and seeing how good Chris and Noel were (they were excellent but they're much much better now) I start to feel better about what I've tried to do with my show. We spend the evening watching episodes of 30 Rock, which if you've not seen you should really watch it's fantastic.

Saturday same and I went to see Scott Cappuro at the Dance House, I'd not seen him for a while and I took Dolan with me, the gig clashed with the rugby and they'd started it early and as a result there weren't as many people there as there should have been, but it was still a good show. We went for a drink afterwards and a chat, he was pissed off after he'd had a gig in Sheffield pulled but it was good to catch up with him and see his show, it showed the value of stickign to what you believe in and not compromising.

The next couple of days were a blur. The comedy night at Vanilla was absolutely rammed, there were people sat on winddow ledges and on the stairs behind the stage, it was the busiest I've seen it for a comedy night and the acts were fantastic, Susan Calman did a fantastic job. Part way through her set three pissed up women came in who were on a birthday do, who were being quite noisy, though some of the Chav lesbians who were there took issue with that and tried to get them to shut up, I believe what was said was "Oi, shut up there's art going on here!" then when one of them tried to shout as she was leaving one of the girls followed her out and shouted at her, coming back in and appologising to Susan for the disturbance and the behaviour of the woman. It was a wonderful thing to behold, and it was part of the reason I started this gig in the first place, to try and get people who wouldn't normally go and see live comedy to come and see it.

It's about 3 in the morning now, i'll try and write up the rest of the week when I'm less tired. For now I'm going to go and watch some comedy lab on TV on demand.

until next time I love you all

BB xXx

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