Everyone @ Chortle

I shall be seeing in 2008 sober, thanks to one drink too many on December 29th. Whoops. So just enough time for a brief look back to the year that was '007...

My own personal highlights would include going to the British Comedy Awards - didn't win but it was still great to go. Plus on the same note, hearing about the RTS award and the Rose d'Or for the same show, although I didn't get to go to those dos alas. Though to be fair to them, they had lots of ad execs and sponsors to fit in, some of whom may have at some point seen at least one of the shows nominated. Rant over. For this is about the positive...

Filming with the Delorean was an ace day - racing around all over St Alban's, filming stand-up bits with me dressed as Marty McFly, driving the Delorean, with flames coming out the back, smoke effects, dry ice, etc etc. Sounds great? Well the producer of Comedy Cuts didn't think so - so the show it was filmed for has cut it. You will never see it. But I had a great time doing it, so there.

A highlight I have to mention is the mere purchase of a DVR - basically Sky Plus for people without Sky. It's totally changed how I watch telly, and it's great.

And back on a professional note, my fave gig of the year was going the Genesis show at Greenbelt festival in Cheltenham - 500 people, I think, and they all got the jokes. Twas lovely. And in the realm of writing, it's been a great year for the fact that I've become a 5-day-a-week writer (much kudos to Not Going Out, After You've Gone, and a forthcoming as yet unnamed bbc1 comedy drama set in Africa).

And a sloppy mention to my other half Zoe, who has really been the highlight of my year! Bleurgh. Okay, enough of my personal highlights.

MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS:
Rediscovering the art of a good cover version (ie. it doesn't have to be loud punk)
Michael Buble
Amy Macdonald
The Fratellis
begrudgingly acknowledging that both Amy Winehouse AND Girls Aloud have something to offer to both contemporary music AND my music collection
Apache by The Sugarhill Gang. Old but brilliant.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS (not necessarily all 2007, but most are):
Black Book
Tideland
Ocean's Thirteen
The Bourne Ultimatum
Atonement
The Lives of Others
Stardust
Beowulf 3D
Reign Over Me
Enchanted
Breaking The Waves
Mr Smith Goes To Washington
The Red Violin

FILM LOWLIGHTS:
American Pie Presents Another Bad Film To Sink Humanity Into The Ground
The Fountain
Captivity, Vacancy, and various other films that think torture is an acceptable film genre.
too many remakes/spin-offs/sequels - didn't rate Die Hard, The Simpsons, Shrek 3, Hostel 2, Harry Potter, Saw 4, Sleuth, The Golden Compass, Pirates 3...

TV HIGHLIGHTS:
Dr Who (the Blink episode - which was just the way a Dr Who episode should be. If you haven't seen it, see it.)
Heroes
Lost (yes, I'm sticking with it)
Prison Break
House
Jericho (while it lasted - one series, with maybe a reprieve for a few episodes of series 2 to follow)
Drive (while it lasted - 4 episodes - goes to show it's worth waiting for US shows to hit our UK schedules, rather than hastily download them as they air...)
Californication (filthy, but fantastic)
The Secret Millionaire (I think I cried one episode)
Cast Away (a guilty pleasure)
Live At The Apollo (a rare time that TV actually gets stand-up about right)

and finally a parting treat, cos there's bound to be one you haven't seen...

TOP 6 VIRALS:
In reverse order...
6. hallelujah chorus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D09DCZryG2U)
5. evolution of dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg)
4. will ferrell and baby landlord pearl (http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/74)
3. sam veale's brylcreem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOYTQKoJ1N8)
2. dramatic chipmunk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw)
and at no.1...
1. kung fu baby (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxAirY-5QCQ)

Happy New Year!

For all the whining about life-choices, this has, I suspect, been (though I hope it will be superseded) the best year of my life. Late last year I threw myself to the winds and the winds have blown me onto pretty satisfying ground.

The "Anthology" shows are drawing interest, I'm not entirely penniless and I'm not entirely alone. These are good (and different) things.

I wish good things for all of you as well

Stick with me. I'm not promising but it could be interesting.

Happy New Year and Lots of Love,
Andrew

Even as I waxed effusive about normal people yesterday, I knew I was being in some sense disingenuous, though the representation of my thought process was authentic.

Truth is, it was made abundantly clear to me that the happy normals I spent time with in Wales had made decisions that placed them on the opposite side of the compromise scale from where I sit but, still, they are on that scale. They wanted artistic lives of risk and excitement (like my package of vagabond whimsy) but decided that too much comfort could be lost by taking those rides.

Thus, they probably sit awake wondering about the lives they could have had, just as I wonder about the domestic seductions they represent. But that doesn't mean the compromise scales are balanced when our notions are weighed against each other.

That my opposite numbers have regrets does not mean my choices are as good as theirs.

My week in Wales was spent largely among (read no condescension into this) "normal" people. Extraordinary normal people -- artists, dancers, amateur film historians, living in a "real" place with real relationships, doing real things.

But even though life there was nicer than a life spent as (at best) a marginal figure in comedy, I still can't seriously entertain the thought of living in a world which, to me, has always seemed sort of fake, there to flesh out the "authentic" world of places like New York and London in the same way extras and bit players flesh out the world of a film.

What would life be like, I wonder, if I were a humbler person; if I could somehow be happy with a relatively simple existence, which would, ironically enough, be less simple in terms of day-to-day options than the cash-constrained ambitiousness of the life I live today?

After deciding to spend an extra day in Wales, where things have been so damn nice (emotionally, I mean; the weather has sucked), I began to enter too much territory -- too much me for the people I'm staying with, too much talking during movies for me. (I tried to join in as a coping mechanism and got chastised for my talking.)


Uh-oh. I was just given coffee and affection, necessitating a change in the tone of this post and bringing into sharp relief the subjective nature of these things.


Everything is beautiful. We're going to a bizarrely-spelled Welsh place on the bus. Last night's dream, in which my happy dancing was followed by my mother telling me that I was embarrassing her by smelling bad (I think it was due to unwashed clothes and simply rolling out of bed and into the dance party), has been nearly forgotten.

I have been craving normalcy.

Am I getting it? Do I want it? Can I take it?

How's your 2007's been?

Mine had some ups and downs, my car got broken into 6 times, I had my childhood photos stolen, I went through emotional hell trying to keep an ex in my life as a friend because she was worth holding on to. I ran out of money, I got knocked out in the final of several competitions and didn't manage to get an agent. I had a TV executive have to be introduced to me 4 times at the same party a few hours after she'd seen me perform because as far as she was concerned I was totally unmemorable. I got led on by several people and gave up on looking for love. My parents moved out of the house that I was born in, and I finally had to grow up and fend for myself. I suffered permanent nerve damage and now have lost skin sensation on about 5% of my body. I had some friends and co-workers die and was there for friends who were going through some really horrible stuff. Two close friends were diagnosed with degenerative diseases, and one had a fairly serious AIDS scare.

But,

I started making a living doing the thing I love the most, I got good reviews and more interest than ever from the media, I grew as a person and finally became comfortable in my own skin. I returned to the Edinburgh festival and cemented my reputation as the festivals biggest blag-slag managing to achieve an incredible amount through networking and hard work. I wrote stuff for two of my heroes at opposite ends of art form, and got naked in front of 800 people. I ran my own successful gig and built a fan base gaining a number of superfans who travel to see me, and I wrote and performed my own one hour show to 60 people who'd all paid to see me, which was pick of the day in the metro and the journo from the Guardian wanted me to let him know when I'm in London so he can watch me and put me as his pick of the day too. I finished changing who I am to suit others and realised that I've changed me to make me happy and that means I can change the world. And then I found Rosanne, a woman who I love and who loves me and who I miss whenever I'm not around her.

So what does 2008 hold? More success, more of everything, more love more happiness and more weird and wonderful things happening to me. I don't know what 2008 Holds really, but I know one thing, this is where it starts to get really interesting!
__________________

For a variety of reasons, not all of them narcissistic, I decided to make last year's primary Edinburgh show a chronicle of the previous year in my oh-so-fascinating existence. I didn't know how the year would turn out, only that I was increasingly fucked; in a drugless, alcohol-less, nevertheless downward spiral.

As the months passed, I monitored my days, getting excited if something else seemed poised to go wrong. (Better for the show, I thought.) I assumed that, to benefit my story arc, I'd be forced live life in ways I'd previously avoided, taking emotional risks for the good of the show I'd have been unlikely to take without it.

Of course, this meant that, before August, I would have to fall in love. Imagine my frustration as May became June which gave birth to July with no love interest in sight.


Because no one would love me, I had an inferior show.


Now, damn the luck, there are events transpiring that, while more than pleasant, would have better served my comedy if they'd happened earlier in the year.

And for Christmas-related reasons, I'm not doing the Anthology show tomorrow, which means I don't have anywhere to talk to strangers about it.

I’m looking out the window at a Welsh valley.

I don’t feel beaten as one typically does when ogling a valley. (Winner – Non-Sequitur of the Year, 2007) But I do feel outside time as it relates to ambition.

I want to be in love. I want money. I want a career.

In reality, I have nothing.

Sleeping in borrowed spaces on two continents, warmly advising others with more capably-navigated lives than mine; conjuring spectacular notions and ripping songs from solvent friends’ CD collections.

This is not a life..

But . . .

I feel great. Everything seems possible.

Maybe it’s because the world is closed for the holiday and when it starts up again, I’ll feel out-of-step once more.

Maybe there’s someone who’s made my life better and I’m not as out-of-step as I like to think I am.

Maybe . . .

Tough ol' gig tonight. A private gig for about 40 teachers, who'd been drinking for about 5 hours, and were supporting 3 of their own who'd done a stand-up comedy course. Then they have a meal and some more wine, and then I come on for half an hour. As the compere got up to introduce me, saying they've got one more act to come, someone heckled, "But we've peaked." Never was a truer heckle spoken. So I ploughed through. After, the man holding the cheque, before he handed it over, engaged me in conversation. I had to humour him until he'd pay me, so alas our conversation went like this:

Punter: "You're very fast. I missed some of your punchlines because I was chatting to my friend. You should have paused more to let us do that. Some of your jokes were too clever, really. So I missed lots of those. That's why people were chatting."

Me: "Oh, well, you do what you can... A lot of people were enjoying it... You win some, lose some... Well, a lot of wine was drunk..." and other cliches.

What was racing through my head - what I wanted to say - was:

Me in my head: "Oh I'm sorry, I was too clever for you. You couldn't keep up. You want me to dumb down, I see. Aim more at your level. Well unfortunately they didn't give me a survey of IQs on the way in. If I'd known I'd have dropped the multi-syllabic words and just alluded to genitalia - sorry - "got my cock out" - understand that? Yeah, next time I must stoop to your intellectual level. Next time, if you see me at a gig, let me know you're in the audience, and I'll lower the comedy a little just for you, and praps lose the jokes that need your attention for more than 2 seconds, and instead just show you a big picture of a horsey, doing a poo. Now give me the cheque."

Hello! How are you? Good? Thats nice to hear!

Catface Cabaret was on Sunday and it was lots of fun. The audience figure was at an all time low which greatly dissapointed me, but it was probably one of the jolliest audiences & combined with the tres bien acts made for a great christmas send off.

Check out my my space profile www.myspace.com/leannediggins for a clip from last month's cabaret. I um-ed and er-ed about putting that video up because although my tummy is supposed to be flabbing about, I hadn't realised it would be that circular. Oh well. Okse says its just contentment so er... Check out my contented tummy and dance routine - I'm conveying one of my emotions using the gift of dance. Can you guess what it is? Thats right, I love myself.

So I've done all my Christmas Shopping now and it was as traumatic as I suspected it would be. I went to the Glades Shopping centre in Bromley yesterday on my day off - it was stupidly windy. Like so windy it nearly made me cry with frustration. Ah well its done now ain't it. GOODO.

I lied to someone the other day and said I only ate fish cause he was a vegan. I felt I had to. I also lied to a shop assistant in Tesco last week. I'd bought party food cause I like loaded potato skins etc, and the cashier said "Are you having a party?" and I felt such a fat pig that I said "Yes" and she said "when is it, today or tomorrow?" and I said "Tomorrow." Then she said "Have fun!" and I said "Thanks, WE will".

Have a great christmas and God bless us everyone.

Firstly, an apology as this will be yet again another very long blog. Various interesting things that I feel should be brought to your attention, but rather than write about then in palatable exciting portions as they happened, I thought it much better to bombard you all with an overdrawn essay.

I have lied to you slightly. When I say 'various interesting things', I mean only three 'things'. The first two of these I will lightly skim over for your benefit. These shall preside under the intelligent heading 'Christmas Audiences are Sh*t'.

Section 1: Christmas Audiences are Sh*t

Last week we had the final Fat Tuesday of the season. I had been looking forward to this show as the entire season so far had been great line-up and audience wise, will 5 out of 6 being sell-outs. There is little else you could ask for. So when the tickets for the last show started selling very well I was pleased. Yes, I overlooked the fact that 22 of the tickets were going to the Christmas works-do party of a bunch of human rights workers. On first reading and from previous experience of human rights workers, I thought I rightly assumed that they would be a great bunch of down-to-earth types, who righteously save impoverished people and will be well behaved while enjoying a good laugh. Sadly I was only half right with this judgement. Yes they do save peoples lives, however, as a audience they are terrible. Promising a group of 22 and agreeing to arrive early to sort out seating, only 16 appeared 15 minutes into what should have been the start of the show. After delaying the evening they proceeded to talk through the acts, getting up to offer each other drinks and subsequently ruining punch lines and atmosphere. Lacking bouncers in our venue, I dealt with it as the MC, and then each of the acts also dealt with them during their sets. In the interval I asked them to stop it or leave resulting in us losing half of our audience. This decidedly shitty atmosphere was worsened by a chap called Mohammad taking offence at one of the acts jokes about the 'Mohammad' teddy bear, resulting in a religious debate during the first 30 minutes of the show. I'm sure you can imagine that warmed the crowd up to no end. Hooray for touchy religions, I don't think.

After the interval, it did get better with most of the talkers having left and Paul Tonkinson being very very good. Ultimately though, despite the fact that it was a top line-up, all seats sold so extra Xmas money for me, it was still a sad way to end a great season. A good example of a time when the audience ruin the gig, not the comic.

Not being at a high enough comedic level to do all the big Christmas shows, I usually only hear about the state of audiences in December, never really witnessing the horror that is created by winter crowds. Sadly it happened twice last week, as the Friday following Fat Tuesday I did a gig in Kingston with football thugs in the front row. This time my 25 minute set became a 15 minute set as I was told that its 'lucky you ain't a gooner 'cos I would've kicked your head in if you were'. As you might guess, this is the sort of heckle where a clever put down would mostly only confuse them and lead to unnecessary violence. So I did what any weak spineless short beardy man would do, and cut out all my remotely intelligent stuff, before running away ten minutes early promising myself to never ever do that gig again.

Section 2: International Comedian

This weekend I was able to officially upgrade my comedy status from an at who 'performs all over the UK' to 'international comedian' as I embarked on a mini entertainment based adventure to North Cyprus.

Having spent much of my youth at a school with both Greek and Turkish pupils, North Cyprus was something of an enigma to me. Both factions of the Mediterranean kids would be best of friends, apart from during the months after a long summer holiday back in Cyprus. After this there would be several playground battles about whose island it really was, causing the teachers to create barriers not dissimilar to the English troops.

North Cyprus is not legally a country. Well not according to the UN anyway and you wouldn't mess with their say so unless you were a hell bent war dictator from the US. So only according to Turkey is it actually a place, ever since they invaded Cyprus in the 60's. Its not my place to say whether they are in the right or not, even though after studying it, they are clearly not, but it makes North Cyprus an interesting place to be. By crossing a small border and wiping your feet on a mat (not etiquette but actually to prevent the spreading of foot and mouth. Not sure entirely how a carpet prevents diseases. I wonder if Cypriot doctors rub peoples faces with carpet if they are ill. Perhaps they are just the magic carpets of Turkish folklore. We will never know.) the country changes from Greek Orthodox to Muslim, with architecture, language and tradition changing with it. Oh and generally there are a lot less tourists.

But it has become a large haven for UK ex-pats due to cheap land, nice weather and other things British cities no longer have. So now the next thing is to entertain this large ex-pat community, sending myself, Barry Dodds, Andrew Murrell and Rex Boyd as sacrifice for the first ever comedy show north of Nicosia.

The gig itself was great. These people were so desperate for something to do that they treated us like comedy gods. There were a few issues with people talking during the middle section, but most of the people involved apologised to as afterwards, which is something that wouldn't happen in, say, anywhere in the UK ever. And the people were lovely. There was the odd one or two weird ones (never before have I been chatted up by a mother and daughter at the same time, and never ever again do I want to be.) but mostly it was interesting to hear all about to live abroad. All jokes worked too. In fact rarely have I seen an audience so easy to please. After the gig, they refused to let us be dull and go to bed (believe me, I tried.) and bought us drinks till 5.30am in the kind of bar I loathe with music I hate. However, several drinks and I was more than happy to be there.

The only problem with the weekend was all the travelling. Admittedly I got to Cyprus quicker than it took to drive to Bangor in Wales last Monday, but North Westerly Wales is of no comparison to a Mediterranean beach island, no matter what the Welsh tell you. As anyone who's ever flown can tell you, sitting on your arse on a plane is tiring. I still cant work out why, but it is. We flew out early Saturday morning, then drove an hour and a half to the gig, had two hours, then did the gig, partied till the wee hours, and reversed the whole journey the next day. Needless to say I was knackered. Its a crazy amount of miles to be travelled in such a short space of time, something that was re-iterated by our cabin crews confusion that we had only been on the plane the day before. They had just assumed we really didn't like it over there.

It was a good experience though, and I realise that no matter how far away a gig is, its always the same scenario of not having the time to see the area. Of all the places I've been in the UK, I might claim to have visited, but I only really know the upstairs of a pub, the cellar of and arts centre or the comedy club in town. Its just enough to make those three jokes at the top of your set to re-assure the crowd you know everything about where they live. That, as they say, is the magic of show business. Although from the comedians point of view, its more the tragic children's party magician than the glamour of David Blaine.

Section 3: In Addendum

There was a lot more I wanted to type about, but judging the length of this essay it could be my first novel. So you will never know about the poo bin, Barry getting cat aids, the poisoned Jack Daniels, the gangsters or that Stardust is actually half decent. If you see me, do ask.

Oh and if you are lucky/unlucky (depending on your views of the terrible popular music scene) enough to have MTV, watch '2007's Most Shocking Stories'. I say two funny things as a talking head. Only two mind, but goddamn I'm proud of those two.

Coming soon...

So much for a day of rest...

Sunday 16th December:

6:55am - Alarm goes off. On a Sunday. Because...
7:20am - arrive at the studios of BBC Southern Counties, where I'm 'Guest of the Day' on their religious show. This means I chat for 10min at 7:30am about comedy things, plug my new Guildford gig with Tim Vine, then talk about selected articles after 8am chosen from local parish magazines. Am tempted to read out the flower rota, but instead make up some other another story about stamps. Feels amazingly early. Didn't bode well that when the newsreader let me in, she had coat and scarf on. Freezing cold morning. I reckon snow tomorrow, though like a Jongleurs Xmas audience, it probably won't settle and will just get annoying.
9am - bacon sarnies with Zoe. Yum! And yum.
11am - bit of work on the train to London, gagging up a forthcoming comedy drama for the Beeb set among news crews in Africa. I've seen the pilot and read the whole series now, and it's going to be great. Look out for it.
12noon - do a seminar at the Arts Theatre off Leicester Square about taking a show to the Edinburgh Festival. Populated by newish comedians. Toy with putting them off, to limit the competition next August (Edinburgh's busy enough as it is...), but decide to be nice and try and be helpful. I think it paid off, as one lass works for Radio 3, and since my 2008 show will in part involve classical music, she's a good contact to have. And I'm bought my first FREE BEER!!! of the day. But thanks to only 4 hours sleep due to the radio show.
3pm - Bit of Christmas shopping. Foyles bookshop, a gadget shop, and Virgin Megastore which for some reason is now called Zavvi. My kind of Christmas shopping, that is.
4pm - The Golden Compass at Cineworld, West India Quay. Hated it. It was like a bad spoof of Harry Potter meets Narnia meets Lord of the Rings, only spoofs normally have jokes in them, and this was just boring. If you're going to set up a fantasy world, make it make sense. Frodo has to get rid of a ring? Oh yeah, cos it's bad. I get that. In The Golden Compass there's this thing called Dust, which is like dust, only it's bad, or good, or something, and the people in it are interested in it, for some reason, and it flows into or out of human lives, and everyone has a pet that follows them round for some reason, cos it's their soul or something. I. Don't. Care. And don't give me that, "But it makes sense in the books" nonsense. I haven't read the books, and don't plan to. The film is made for filmgoers, not people who've already experienced the story in a different format. It should makes sense and be fun for me, over 2 hours. The bear fight was good, but apart from that, no. I won't be watching the sequels.
6pm - Christmas drinks with the cast and crew of a musical I'm working on, called Rubbish! Good folks, good food, could only stay for 20min. But still long enough to get my second FREE BEER!!! of the day. Sleepy again.
8pm - Arrive in Brixton for a gig. But the audience don't arrive, so we pull the gig. Am paid anyway, which is nice. (I still know some people who wouldn't go to Brixton for eight quid just to collect the cash, but there you go.) Anyway, it paid for shopping for the day and more besides, and was bought my third FREE BEER!!! of the day, as a sympathy pint. So by now I'm really ready to snooze.
9:30pm - On the train on the way home from the non-gig, though I forget that I haven't done a gig, and chastise myself for not trying out the new jokes I wanted to. Then I remember that I didn't do a gig in the first place, so the opportunity for trying new jokes didn't really arise, unless I just confront random passers-by in Brixton with the material, which, I'm guessing, isn't advisable. Goes to show, am very very sleepy.
12:15am - Now. Very very very very sleepy. Should go to bed really and stop writing this...

some "hoodies" (not actually wearing hoodies as far as I can remember) were starting a fracas, supposedly in the name of "East Africa", and Elise suddenly became a crime-fighting hero, telling the bus driver to wait while she ran to the nearest police station (with me panting behind, semi-cluelessly) to get help. A slow-moving, seemingly groggy, lone police officer at the Kentish Town station seemed fairly uninterested and when we got back to where we'd been the bus was gone.

Fortunately, another one came right away and we quickly got on, followed, of course, by the very thugs we had reported. (They'd apparently been ejected from the previous bus, enabling that bus's driver to abandon us to danger and move on.)

Well, Elise leapt to her feet once again, alerting the new bus driver to the danger posed by these villains from our previous carriage and he stood his ground against them, laughing as one told him he could easily be shot and killed.

Then today, barely recovered from her heroism, Elise straightened out my spine, making me, she says, considerably taller and causing my belly to sound less like a drum when pounded on.

She is a true American hero. (British-variety.)

And I have not let my end of the friendship flag, manfully downloading illegally-available episodes of "House" for us to watch, a habit I will maintain until the writers are fairly compensated for web runs of their work (and beyond). Her inspiration will continue to move me into new arenas of indolence and chicanery.

I salute her.

Again at The Ship.

Haven't said anything here yet about the show we did two weeks ago, so I thought I'd post excerpts of what I said about it in some things I sent out to promote the next one:

"last time, scott capurro told us about his suspenseful hiv test and potential sources, deborah frances-white told us about the son of a wwII japanese soldier who came to australia to find an australian soldier who had been kind to his dad during the war, terry saunders told us about locking himself in his own toilet and i told about being laughed at by Tiny Tim."

"they were a good audience but i'm not sure they didn't feel in some way betrayed by the nature of the show even as they enjoyed it. it seems there's an unspoken compact between promoter and audience "guaranteeing" certain rhythms and styles.

interestingly however, the most comedy-savvy in the room -- a couple who venture in from outside london every friday to see comedy, often at jongleurs or monkey business -- were the most unabashedly delighted."

I guess I hope those snippets make you wanna see one of these things. Next show will be holiday themed and feature Sarah Bennetto and Ewen Macintosh among others.

Stay tuned for more details.

but not the type usually associated with "the festive season".

Monday, I went to a "do" celebrating the conclusion of several weeks of actual broadcasting by the now (re-)relegated to the internet, Radio Peckham (known far and wide for the jingle proclaiming them "the mighty, mighty, mighty 101.4") and the highlight of the affair was a kid who manhandled pretty much every one of the sandwiches on offer, presumably looking for the best one.

I wouldn't eat those sandwiches afterward, but he handled them with a delicacy that suggested he thought he was being polite. The kid would (in effect) do things with his right hand that were relatively low-impact, while his left hand sent piles of mayonnaisy debris flying toward all corners.

But I was pretty sure I hadn't seen him do much damage to the Jamaican-style chicken, so I opted for more of that and ended up smelling of sulphur for the next few days., a fragrance which likely suggested the arrival of an emissary from Hell at today's party -- the funeral for Earl Okin's mother. (She would have been 95 on Tuesday had she not died on Sunday.)

What a fascinating group -- Earl's 94-year-old ex-landlord was there (he owned a clothing shop on Portobello Road during the post-WWII era) plus Jews of all ages, who reminded me of the New York variety and made it eminently clear that our ethnic lifestyle predates our arrival in our current nations.

Sadly, the otherwise happy experience was marred when I spilled hot coffee, barely missing a sweet octogenarian named Bunny (just after I told her I'd suffered from a disease that robbed me of my taste buds). Perhaps I was shaken up by the hasty disappearance of the lox from the bagels on display.

At any rate, it must have seemed in character to people who first saw me when I entered the funeral late, the door slamming behind me as I conspicuously walked back and forth from my pew, trying to make certain I had the right prayer book.

Then came the lengthy ringing of my cell phone.

I don't know. I think these are the wrong kind of parties.

Doesn't anyone throw Christmas parties anymore?

Right I am getting FUCKED off with Face Book. It keeps leaving me feeling foolish. Pour example', It says that people voted me best singer like, and best looking and stuff and it turns out that's a default thing. How embarrassing, there was I thinking that I had loads of admirers and its all been a cruel game.

It also says on my wall that I've said that certain people are HOTTEST or BEST PERSONALITY and I didn't even SAY THAT! Makes me look a right tit. I never even said you were hot, or marriage material or NOTHING. Also, I tried to amend my personal details, cause I don't want people stealing my identity and it said the changes were amended and then clear as day they seem to be back again! I'm considering deleting the account and starting over. However, its taken me ages to stalk-book a load of my so called friends so what shall I do? I'm in a real quandry.

I'm in a bit of a weird mood this week in general. I know tiz the season to be popular and I'm gettin' involved, but it all seems such a chore. I also haven't done any christmas shopping and that sux dogs dix. I've got monday off after Catface Cabaret so I intend to go for it then. (Thats right, Catface Cabaret is on on sunday @ the Hen and Chickens for a special CHRISTMAS BONANZA)

I have committed to several knees ups over the SILLY season, and I'm going to go to all of them but now I can't cope with the hangovers like in the good old days. The days where all of the christmas period rolled into one, with just a few flash backs to scenes such as my mates quietly posting my cardigan through my parent's front door after a night out, so as not to alert shouty mum. ( I'd dropped it on the lawn on staggering outta the cab).She luckily had her back to the door but I could see it. Made me laugh, she shouted more. I'd then have about 4 hours sleep and hop off to work all jaunty. Probably I didn't hop but I was bloody better off than I am now. These days if I'm jaunty in the morning its cause I'm still mashed.

The silly season. What a cringeworthy term. GOD. More like, "have a reason to not look so much of an alcoholic" season. More like "Why don't you all just FUCK OFF" season. So, come new year I plan to plan to plan... its always bloody planning. Why can't you just do what you say you will? Oh no my inner monologue is transferring directly onto this blog without me vetting it first. I'm sorry I have to go.

Just returned from my first ever December holiday. It wasn't a traditional winter holiday - at the bank, and at the airport, and at airport security, everyone asks where you're going, hoping to say, "Ooh, nice!" But I say Holland, and they just go, "Oh." No one knows how to react to going to Holland in December.

It was a lovely few days, though bloody freezing. My other half Zoe grew up over there, so it was a chance to see her old house and school (two separate places), her best friend from them years, and most importantly I now realise, to pick up Dutch sweets. Liquorice, pancakes, mini-pancakes, doughnut balls, syrup sauce, chocolate sprinkles... the Dutch diet seems hell-bent on avoiding fruit and veg at all costs.

The one thing I wanted to get my teeth around was a Turkish pizza - for some reason absent from UK takeaway shops, but all over European ones, and they're lovely. Never found one at the right time alas, though I did find a kebab shop and ordered a takeaway kebab to munch on a bike that we'd hired, only to be given a massive takeaway platter with two kebabs, chips, salad, sauces and cutlery. How I was supposed to eat that while cycling through the streets of Haarlem, I've no idea. A translation problem I guess.

The highlight for me I guess was Saturday night, when we were welcomed into a proper Dutch family home. We did know them - it was Zoe's friend Noortje's family, and very generously the father of the family even gave us both Sinta Klaus presents.

(Sinta Klaus is the Dutch version of Santa, which they cleverly do at the start of December, leaving Dec 25th for the baby Jesus. Sinta Klaus is meant to be a benevolent bearded bishop who arrives from Spain on a white horse via steamboat, assisted by a black fellow called Zwarte Piet (a picture of him and Sinta is attached). People actually black up this time of year to represent him. It wouldn't last long over here...)

The meal was full of convivial laughter and they all subconsciously checked which strand of a conversation I was listening to, and kindly switched to English. The only time the laughter stopped was when I tried to explain the Two Ronnies' Four Candles sketch. It really doesn't translate well.

about a BIG project that could make a BIG difference in my life and the lives of others. It was requested that I dress appropriately.

BUT --

If I spent the money I needed to on dry cleaning and shoes, I'd have been completely broke.

SO --

I didn't pick up my dry cleaning and bought the cheapest pair of sneakers I could find, their only advantage being that they were not falling apart like the previous (otherwise identical) ones. I found a crumpled sports jacket in my dirty laundry and draped it over my arm so that it looked like I had been wearing a nice jacket but for some reason had taken it off.

My shirt was unironed but freshly laundered and, fortunately, stretched out by my fat. I put those white, plastic things in my collar and wore jeans in respectable black.

Since I don't have an overcoat, I wore t-shirts under my fat-stretched shirt to keep myself warm. One of them was a pocket-t.

Just before the meeting, I noticed a lump on the left side of my chest -- a ball in the pocket of the t which had once been bread but which had been turned into dough by the washing machine.

I guess some days before I had wanted to throw the bread away but was not near a garbage can, so I shoved it into my shirt pocket 'til I found one. Now, I was beside an important associate with a ball of dough in my hand and -- still -- no place to throw it out. (I'm still not sure how I got rid of it.)

My posture was off, my shirt was too tight, my jeans were too low, I felt freakishly fat and unattractive and I was crammed, one of four, into a tiny, ancient elevator.

I think the meeting went well.

I have just returned home from seeing the GZA/Genius of Wu-Tang fame perform his entire groundbreaking album of 1995, 'Liquid Swords' (or as pronounced by many a Wu-Tang member 'Liquid Schwwwaaaaaards'). Sadly despite the fact that I have been looking forward to this since being 14 hip hop lovin' years of age, it has once again joined the ranks of gigs that don't quite live up to the self created hype.

There were several reasons for this, including the very poor sound, and the inability to see thanks to my vertically challenged height as well as the bad layout of the venue. The final straw was the main man GZA getting blindingly drunk and acting less like the hardcore member of one of the most influential hip-hop groups of the 90's and more like that weird tramp in the park who shouts at people and chases imaginary insects with his eyes.

But despite these things most people seemed to really enjoy the gig, except me. I begun to wonder if it is just my own high standards of expectation of how the gig should be, combined with my ever increasing inability to tolerate a lack of comfort. Looking back on gigs I haven't enjoyed of late this seems to be a common factor. Kanye West's performance in Edinburgh was spectacular, however the dickheads that were all around me, barging me and acting like Scotland invented rap were not. The Stones Throw gig in Camden was not the best set list I've ever seen a group do, but was it more to do with the fact my feet hurt and I was a bit tired? And true, the Beastie Boys set at Bestival was pretty shoddy, with none of the tracks anyone wanted to hear, but could my disappointment have been increased by the fact I couldn't really see anything due to the four men dressed as bananas right in front of me, and my knowledge that I would get little sleep due to the arseholes in the tent next to me who wanted to know 'where Dave was? And when is he coming back?' ( I was tempted after an hour of this stoned conversation to shout 'he's dead! I killed him because he kept f*cking talking'. But I didn't.)

Doing comedy, it takes the edge of my enjoyment of watching other comedians. Admittedly, there are still quite a few acts who I always enjoy watching, and would pay to see, but you know how they do what they do, because you do it too. (Re-reading that line, I realise that it sounds funny if sung in a Bing Crosby style. Try it, its great.) Music is not like that. Music still holds an air of mysticism for me. I am pretty much musically inept, and so watching someone play a great music gig is my escapism. I hold great respect for musicians and hence I am one of those irritating people at parties who when someone is attempting to engage me in conversation about music I will say I 'like everything' and proceed to talk to you about for hours, trapping you by the stairs when you just want another beer. I'm that into my music that it means it truly annoys me when a gig is bad.

I hope it isn't just because I'm getting old and grouchy, but I think I can justify the crapness of these aforementioned bad gigs because all of them could have avoided such high levels of mediocrity without too much difficulty. Well apart from the Kanye West show. The only solution to that would have been if everyone who bought tickets was fielded first and only specifically chosen people were allowed in. Unfortunately though but that's how fascism starts and I would prefer to stand next to a nob-end of a human being than for Nazis to run large music venues. In the case of the others though, all an audience deserves for the ticket price are these things:
1) The performer to want to be there. That's pretty key.
2) The performer to do the stuff people want to hear. Some new stuff is allowed, but what is not, is playing an hour of instrumentals instead of playing a single track anyone actually knows until the very end, and consequently boring 11,000 people. Beasties, are you paying attention?
3) The venue's sound to work. A simple sound check is all that is required to stop us thinking the acts are slurring (Bob Dylan is an exception) and the drum's aren't the only instrument (Drum 'n' Bass gigs are an exception).
4) Enough space in the venue for everyone to be able to breathe and maybe wiggle at least an elbow in an attempt to dance without decapitating the small beardy man next to them.

My three favourite gigs in the last 18 months have done all of these things as well as leaving long lasting memories of amazing music. At Radiohead in Edinburgh 2006, they played two and a half hours of all the tracks everyone wanted to hear, in an outdoor venue on a hot night as the sun was setting, a few minutes walk from where I was staying. Poifect and I was able to buy a t-shirt. At Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings at the Jazz Cafe earlier this year, the funk was so infectious that everyone was dancing. And I could see no matter where I stood. Bonus. And lastly, a few months ago, Joanna Newsom at the Royal Albert Hall. Her voice sent shivers down my spine and her songs were amazing, but also, I got to sit down for the duration.

I like to think of this not so much as fussiness, but more musical maturity. At least I hope that this is true. I dread to think that the day will come when I will only go to a live show if I can sit in an armchair in my pajamas, hovering above the stage, while the band plays the only three songs I like. Although saying that, it does sound very very good.

Well the last blog was about dreams, two in particular, and I've had them analysed and sorted them out. I've now got a way of making sure that I dream so that I can look at what they're saying and do something about it before they become nightmares. Apparently dreams are your unconcious trying to make sense of the world and telling you to sort stuff out in your life. Nightmares are your unconcious screaming at you and saying "Right you cunt you weren't listening were you? Maybe you'll listen now when I fill your head with rats and spiders and make you wake up crying and feel like that for the rest of the day."

I always knew my mind was vindictive, but not that vindictive. It's the reason I freak out when I'm sat late at night at this computer, because even now my brain is telling me that there's some big scary zombie walking up behind me ready to kill me and that the second I turn round it'll hide, only to come back out again. A couple of weeks ago Jonathan Mayor managed to make me nearly have a full-on autistic spazz out in the car when we'd gone up a winding country road to a pub where he had a gig. As I was trying to turn around on a dark unlit county road he said "well as long as you don't see a figure in a hood you'll be alright. referencing the scariest ghost story I've ever heard. I was trying to hide the tears as I dropped him off (fairly unconvincingly). It's because this is what my head's full of. I think it's part of the reason I love the Gothic, and Horror films, and why I don't get freaked out watching images of real horror. I worked processing forensic photos for a while and I'd rather look at photos of families burned to death in their beds or bodies left in badly ventilated flats over three months of summer than be left alone in my own mind. that's where the true horror lies, and when I watch horror films or read about serial killers or any of these macabre things I'm into when I'm not being comedy or studying, it's like I get a break from this.

Ironically I'm a night time person with poor social skills. It means I get to spend a lot of time on my own in the dark. And that's hardly fair.

Anyway, my point was... My nightmares were about abandonment issues, fear of a sudden change in my life, fear about losing my creativity, fear about allowing myself to fall in love and that I might get hurt or heart broken, or that I might cause hurt or heart break. So there you go.

The last time I left my story I was kissing a girl out in the street outside Vanilla, since that it's all been about internal monologue, thoughts and feelings, which whilst real are probably deathly dull. I know I hate hearing other people twat on about their dreams etc. they're rarely interesting. This next bit however will involve not only what I got up to, but also a lot of me using this as a forum for trying to sort out some of my other fears, one of which was in the last dream. Psychoanalysis the easy way. Just putting the thoughts out there.

So I went on a couple of dates with this girl, and she's fantastic. She's intelligent, she's got a great sense of humour she's artistic, we have loads in common, and she's absolutely stunningly beautiful. Like you look at her and go "wow!" at least I do. And I fall for her quite quickly.

This relationship is a healthy one. For the first time I feel like I'm actually getting this one right without falling into the horribly needy trap that I've fallen into in the past and which has destroyed my previous relationships.

Between going out with her and facebook though I've discovered I'm not as attractive as I thought I was. I'll explain. I added the "Hot or not" application and put up a good picture of myself thinking "I've got friends who've got faces like a bucket of smashed crabs and they all get 8.6 or above, so this'll be a nice confidence boost." Haha. No. It doesn't work like that. I put it up and after one month I got 5.1. That's just 0.1 above perfectly average looking. I thought, well that's because not many people have voted and it's early days I'm obviously going to get a higher mark soon enough. Haha. No. a month later and my score has gone down to 4.8. I'm officially a hippocrocapig.

So to get rid of any further chance to have my self esteem damaged I removed the application, instead just keeping the "Compare me" application which overall has been quite complimentary, but more on that in a minute.

I start seeing Rosanne and people keep coming up to me, friends no less and saying "your girlfriend's well hot." and I say with a smile "yes I know, yet again I'm punching well above my weight." expecting people to laugh at what is clearly a joke, because at the end of the day love and relationships are not about looks unless you're very shallow, it's about a number of things of which physical attraction whilst important is entirely subjective as she thinks I'm hot and I think she's hot. But the reaction I get to telling my friends that I'm punching above my weight isn't a smile, nor a laugh, it's an almost emotionless "yeah." Woah, woah woah! You're not supposed to say that! One of my friends even said "well you've got a good sense of humour." which is what you say about people who whilst not ugly have odd shaped faces who don't fulfill the remit of "classically beautiful", Sarah 1, my ex's response to me saying this was "Well, you're not bad looking." AND I WENT OUT WITH HER!!!

The compare me application starts to let me down too. Whilst I'm the 13th Bravest (patronising cunts) and 17th most famous. I'm 114th most attractive, and 142nd most kissable, this one's doubly damning because the reason I'm so low on most of them is because no one's had chance to vote on me, whereas with this one 10 people were given the option of kissing me or someone else, and all 10 chose the other person. This isn't fair, as I'm a very good kisser. I'm also 220th funniest out of my friends. Now I am aware that I've a lot of comedians in my friends list, I don't know for certain but I'm guessing 219.

Anyway this blog's supposed to be about comedy. so I'll tell you about a couple of gigs I've had recently, which I really should talk about. There's 4 that spring to mind. Two that I did well at and two I died on my stinking hoop at. Though as I'm now aiming for artistic purity and attempting to do something different than anyone else I was expecting my death rate to go up, to about 50%. What I wasn't expecting was some of the things that this would bring.

About three weeks ago I drove down to London to do the Vauxhall Tavern, I've had gigs pretty much every night in November and earlier in the week I'd done the Iguana in Chorlton where I'd been asked back by popular demand. The first time I'd played there I'd had a horrible gig that I hated. It was the first time I got heckled with an audience member saying "are you a man or a woman." and I just didn't have fun. Des persuaded me to go back and this time I had the best gig I'd ever had. One woman laughed so hard she fell off her chair, and another had to walk across the stage to go to the toilet because she said "I've laughed so hard I've wet myself a little bit." So I went back there having been asked by Des yet again, though this time it was because I'd been one of the most requested acts. the gig was OK, not my finest and I lost them a little in the middle when I was trying to figure out how to do the transsexual material without doing it in the same way as my one hour show, I forgot that it needs different pacing and timing and needs editing differently for a club set. Also the microphone was crackling and putting me off. either way those are excuses. I did alright, and after when Des was paying me he said "you brought a lot of friends with you tonight didn't you?" I said, "no, not really, just two." and he said "Oh, it's just I noticed there were quite a few lesbians and teenagers in the audience." and so this followed on from something I've started to notice. I appear to be getting a following. If I'm gigging somewhere there are a number of people who'll turn up just to see me. And this brings us onto the Vauxhall Tavern gig.

I was desperate to do well here and I was looking forward to it. The Vauxhall Tavern has a hell of a reputation, it can be quite rough and the sort of audience who don't take any prisoners. Also it was going to be the first time I'd been on the bill with Zoe Lyons since a gig in West Hampstead nearly 4 years ago which I still think of as my worst death ever. And dying with a cold I arrive at the venue and head back stage.

About two minutes later Zoe comes back stage and says that my biggest fans are in the audience and would like to buy me a drink, and that maybe I should go out and talk to them. This is getting odder. Like seeing people putting me down as their hero on myspace and stuff I really quite like it but at the same time, my lack of self confidence doesn't allow me to think that I deserve this on any level.

None the less I head out there anyway and get talking to these two guys, Mike and Xan who are lovely and tell me that they've travelled for several hours to come and see me. they're quite excitable and we have a great chat and head outside for a cigarette. they ask the sort of questions I'd have asked my heroes should I have ever met any of them, what their favourite films are, who their favourite bands are all these things that you ask just to see if their answers match up to yours.

On my way back in I see Corrie who I think now works for Pozitive sat at a table talking to Jonathan and Zoe so I head over, Corrie I like very much, but she seems to be an albatross for me. I met her about 8 months ago at a party and we had a chat and she seemed really nice, but since then every time she's been in the audience at a gig that I've done I've died on my arse. Tonight I need to change that pattern.

Anyway I head back stage again and get ready. I sit there listening to Zoe effortlessly bring the audience up and get them laughing, and soon enough she announces me.

I walk out into the bright lights on the stage that's a little too high and trot out my opening salvo, and they don't get much. By the usual first belly-laugh point I get a sound of shock and disgust, which normally follows the laughter but in this case is on its own. after this quick turn around line after line die in the air and I'm only 3 minutes in when I realise that this is going to be a long 20 minutes. I settle into telling the stories and the audience listens without heckling, but without laughing either. The worst response, even worse than chatting. It's a response which says "we get what you're doing, we just don't think you're funny." I talk about my suicide attempts and get genuine horror and sympathy from certain members of the crowd, I break off at one point to talk to a heckler, forget where I am and a guy at the bar shouts out where I was. I find myself unable to get anything workable out of this. It's made worse by the fact the mic stand is fully extended and I don't take the mic out usually but it's a good 8 inches too low even at full tilt.

In my head something gives up. poof. Like that I'm no longer trying to be funny. I'm 8 minutes in to my set and I realise that I'm not going to get anything from these guys so I decide to just tell them the stories and not expect any laughs. 12 minutes later I leave the stage thinking "I've driven 220 miles, to play in front of a gay audience, who should usually be my target audience, had two superfans turn up and died on my arse. Why am I doing this as a job?"

As I leave, the audience, just to add insult to injury start calling out "More!" and "Encore!" in some bitchy sadistic game of bullying, as if they've not had enough of making me feel bad they want me back out there so I can suffer some more for their entertainment. I sit back stage. a bit broken by this, feeling down. Corrie comes in whilst I'm filling out the form for my pay and I say "I'd just like to say I'm not always like this." She says she's seen me do well before. Both Zoe and Jonathan give me good advice and I sit there still feeling like shit. Mike comes to the stage door and says "Oh my god, you were brilliant, they're all obviously tasteless arse-holes, you were fab, well worth the journey." They later leave before the next act, and before I can give them the autographs they asked for.

On the car journey home I talk to Jonathan about this, about my feelings about suddenly having fans. It's weird. I really feel like I don't deserve it. When I was a kid I thought all I wanted was to be rich and famous. as I grew older that faded and all I wanted was to be successful, and for me success can't be measured in monetary terms nor in the amount of people who like you no matter what, it's about giving all of yourself to your chosen art, in my case comedy, about opening up and bearing your soul. The Wrestler Mick Foley is a hero of mine, he wasn't the best physical specimen and he wasn't the best technical wrestler but he was the most committed to his art. He could take a bump like no one else, he could endure more pain than anyone and he'd take more risks because he felt that if he didn't go that extra mile, if he didn't put himself in grave physical danger by being thrown 15 feet from the top of a steel cage to the floor, if he didn't wrestle on drawing pins, if he didn't take 30 hits to the head with a steel chair whilst handcuffed, then he wasn't earning his money and he was doing the fans a disservice.

It's how I feel about comedy, if I'm not going all out to try and find the things at the very core of my soul that I can bare, the inadequacies, the down sides the bad points of my personality, my failings as a human and the broken wreck of a shell that I've managed on occasion to become, then I'm not doing what I need to be. And in exposing those raw nerves to an audience I feel like I'm gaining some level of artistic purity, and therefore a level of success. That's more important to me than money or fame.

I tell Jonathan about this and about how for the last month or so every gig I've been to I've had a bunch of people who've been there just for me. And that my average for people coming up to me after I've performed to tell me how much they enjoyed it is never less than 6, even when I die on my arse. and that the whole fans thing is freaking me out.

There's a good reason it's freaking me out, actually I tried to explain this thought in the last paragraph and got side tracked. The reason is this, I don't feel like I'm there yet. I don't feel like I deserve to have fans whilst I'm dying so frequently, or when I see comics who I know are much superior to me, either due to being around longer or due to being a lot more technically proficient or whatever. When I see them and see that they don't have fans who do this. Also because I thought when I was a child that if I became famous I'd feel different. And I don't, fame doesn't really exist, it's all bullshit.

Jonathan told me off. He said that it was rubbish that I didn't deserve it, the fact that people were willing to travel just to see me die and still tell me I was great meant I deserved it. If it's happening you deserve it, and if it's not then you don't and you'd better get used to it because this is only the beginning and if you don't get your head round it, it'll drive you mad.

Since then I've had people at every gig either ask me for an autograph or their photo taken with me or tell me that they're a big fan of mine and that they'd come to see me (on one occasion a girls family bought her tickets for her birthday to go and see a show I was on at because I was on at it), and I keep trying to tell myself I deserve this, but it's hard.

Even writing about it here is hard. It feels like it's arrogant or showing off, which is the last thing I'd want to do. I managed to get a group of comics early on when I started this have a go at me for getting ahead of myself or being arrogant and getting gigs I didn't deserve, and their words really stuck with me. I'd hate to be that person the way they made out that I was. I just honestly am starting to get a response I'm not entirely comfortable with yet. Weirder still my girlfriend was at a gig earlier this week watching the band CSS, I was working but when I spoke to her on the phone she said that after the gig as she was leaving and the 400+ people were filing out one girl came over to her and said "oh my god! you're going out with Bethany Black aren't you? do you think there's any chance you could get me something signed?"

So that was the first of the four gigs I'm going to talk about, don't worry the others are all fairly short in comparison.

So I'd died on my arse, though over the next week I'd had some good gigs and some bad ones, the Friday night one though was really important for a number of reasons.

Firstly it was in Preston. My home town. The place I'd not gigged for two years. I'd died on my hoop there, and had one gig where one audience member shouted out "Garlic bread" for the full 20 minutes I was on stage, I'd later left the stage and burst into tears as I left the building before crashing my car into the pub carpark wall.

Secondly there'd be friends there, I'd not told them I was doing it so as to minimise the number who would be there.

Thirdly this is a lovely gig, run by Agraman who doesn't seem to think that I'm suitable to play many of his gigs. Maybe he's right.

I need to make sure that this one doesn't get buggered up.

I'm on the bill with Dug, it was Agraman's concession to allow me to play here, that dug and I had the bill split, so that we between us took up on 20 minute spot. Back stage waiting to go on the compere heads out and does one of the worst jobs of compering I've ever heard, just ploughing through material rather than trying to warm up the audience, not really laying out the rules of the night so much as hoping they already know, and then just when I think it can't get much worse I hear him use a joke that I know belongs to another act. He brings Dug on to one of the coldest rooms I've seen in a while. Dug takes one for the team.

Someone at the venue, who doesn't know much about comedy seeing that the opening 20 has been split into two 10 minute acts writes on the running order that the first act (dug) will introduce the second act(me), which is a terrible idea, but one which the compere goes along with whilst not remembering to tell the audience to turn off their mobile phones, in spite of the organiser on the night telling him to do so. His response to this is "I'd better write this down, do you tell all the comperes this?" the organiser says "we don't normally have to, they do it as a matter of course."

As dug manages to get the audience something like a comedy audience he introduces me and I head out onto the stage and into one of the nicest gigs I've had this year, I stop thinking about being funny and am just funny, the laughs come and I build and build them, at one point getting a laugh every 5-8 seconds each successive one getting bigger and bigger, I finish with a story that builds to a natural round of applause and leave the stage to a brilliant response.

Vindication.

I head on out into the audience to talk to my friend Jude who's there, she tells me that I should have let her know I was performing and they could have printed the big interview that she did with me (she works for the big local paper) and we have a great chat, Bik also, who I've not spoken to for ages comes over to talk.

After a bit I head to the back of the room to where Dolan and Dug are as I watch the compere fail to maintain crowd control or even address the level of noise there is at the back of the room, over the noise I hear a Bill Hicks joke done in Bill's speech patterns, I can't believe the cheek, as I head to the bar I hear him do three Sarah Silverman jokes in a row as I get my drink. He introduces Andrew Lawrence and I watch him for a while, he's fantastic and I really like his work, but I'm trying to text Rosanne, and as the venue is a big steel box I've got no signal, so I head out into the smoking area for a cigarette and to send the message I've just written. Whilst I'm out there a group of about 5 students come over and tell me that they thought I was great and that they want to see me do a full set "you're much better than him" they say pointing to if.comeddie award nominee Andrew Lawrence. I'm not but it boosts my confidence somewhat. I chat to them and it's fun then one of the girls asks for my autograph, this time in my head I'm repeating over and over "you deserve this, you deserve this, you deserve this" as if repeating it will make me believe it's true. At this point I get a text from my sister telling me one of her friends was in the front of the gig and said I was excellent.

Heading back in I feel fantastic.

Later on, after the gig, Dug, Dolan and myself are in the green room, I'm furious with the compere, I hate the idea that people can get away with being joke thieves. I work really hard on my writing. I spend months getting stories just right so that I can use them in my set and the thought that someone could steal that and use it as their own makes my blood boil. It's like stealing the food from my table. Both Dug and Dolan are trying to stop me from saying anything to him, as it's not my place. On top of this I'm furious at the way he introduced Dug, pointing out to the audience that both he and I were "new acts" and then this thing about how they were to be nice to us and supportive as we were brand new, it's in essence the same as saying "these first two acts are dog-shit, they really are, they've not been going long so they'll probably not be funny, but you know, sit around and watch them there'll be real acts on afterwards."

So Dug's saying "don't say anything, no one's making it anywhere in this business by stealing other people's material." And Dolan's telling me that it's not my place to say anything because I'm lower down the pecking order than he is. As he goes to leave, the compere shakes my hand and says "Excellent work, that was excellent, you've got some really good material." I say "thank you." through gritted teeth and every fibre of my being is trying to stop me from saying "Thank you, don't steal any of it."

In this game you can only be concerned with how you're doing, because jealousy is a pointless game, but it's hard. It's really hard. There are those who think that being a comedian your job is only to get laughs and how ever you do it as long as the audience is laughing you're doing your job. it's the struggle between being an artist or an entertainer. Whilst I sometimes get jealous of those who have a natural affinity with a crowd, those who can just work them effortlessly, those who can write big crowd pleaser style jokes, whose observations are shared by the majority because even though they started after me and do less gigs than I do they can make a living from this easier than I can, at the same time I know that it's just a different skill, and that what I do is different and, as Jonathan says "Is a stronger flavour."

It's like, being the crowd pleaser is like being mild Cheddar, pretty much everyone likes it, or will at least tolerate it, whereas my act's like stilton, some people hate it a few are indifferent to it and there's a number of people who really really love it and will go to the ends of the earth for it.

See, I don't really care what anyone else is doing, it doesn't effect my job, but what I do hate to see is someone who's not very good at the job they've been paid to do, who then steals other peoples work and passes it off as their own.

I said I was going to talk about the other two gigs, I will do next time, it's 5am, and time for bed. I'm off to see Marylin Manson later and need the sleep.

Next time I'll talk about the two gigs for Warren Speed, and a gig in Exeter. One of these gigs fell apart on me in spectacular fashion.
I'll tell you about gaining and losing dyke points, arguments with security guards, and some more about my fantastic girlfriend including her birthday night and a comic at my club managing to accidentally pick on her at a gig not realising she was with me.

There's also the horror, the horror at Dolan turning 30 and responses to my new hat. I promise I'll get that all up here before the week's out.

until then, I love you all.

BB xXx

attending (as I generally do) Elise’s cavalcade of newish acts. But there’s big-deal stuff goin’ on tonight and I don’t feel like a big deal here.

My old friend Freddy Asparagus used to say you gotta make anyplace you are the place to be. But I haven’t mastered that skill (which, at least partially, is simply feeling that’s the case).

I feel left out; marginalized. Not the big fish/small pond-type, I’d rather be negligible but still at ”the thing”.

On the bright side, there are leftover Christmas crackers from an earlier party and I am wearing a paper crown.

means I won't be comped for tonight's show? (He did go online to send an event update after I sent him my request.)

Oh, well. Peter Grahame said I could come see Rich Hall and Omid Djalili. (And, um, Ivor Dembina.) But I guess I'm not goin' there either.

Elise's show is tonight and I suspect my presence will be appreciated (not to mention, expected).

I guess I'm not as central a figure on the comedy scene as I like to think maybe I am or can, kind-of, be perceived to be.

On the other hand, Elise is bringing me chocolate Chanukah money, so who needs that other stuff?

I have had several journeys to gigs of late, that involve me being by myself in the car for very long distances and periods of time. As I am a man who gets easily bored, the monotony of the ever winding road has led me to become a master of inventing new and exciting ways to keep myself entertained on a long journey.  

Disclaimer: Don't try these at home kids. Mainly because they are games for car journeys. It wont really work at home.

Musical games ( to be used when bored perhaps 30 mins into journey):

DIY I-Pod Shuffle -

This is not particularly exciting, but as you'll see, its only 30 minutes into the journey and using my i-pod, and a clever thing that tunes it into the radio, I see if I can out shuffle the i-pod by randomly spinning the dial on the 'songs' selection and guessing what the track will be. Sadly I have never ever won this game.  Mainly because its dull and I give up after 3-4 goes, but also because out of 7000 tracks, it could be anything. The game has now evolved into me trying to get tracks that relate by randomness. For example 'like irregular chickens' by Kid Koala, into 'Chicken in a Box' by Mr Scruff, into 'Glory Box' by Portishead. This rarely happens though and instead I tend to just select tracks I did not even know even existed on my i-pod, and which I can only blame on my girlfriend and her poor taste in music.  

However, thanks to my computer wiping my i-pod, this game has been substituted for the game below, until I can once again fully update my i-pod which seems to take an eternity.

Create Your Own Radio Stories -  

The stereo on my car is a bit sh*tty. Not as sh*tty as my friend Mike's old car stereo however. The number 5 button did not work on it, and when the car had its battery replaced, the stereo reset itself, and the password key to unlock was 4555. Hence, very sh*tty.  

My stereo is unable to remember radio stations. This didn't used to bother me as everyday was merely an i-pod journey. But now, with the absence of technology I have begun to understand the joys of radio. Current favourite programmes being Jools Holland's show on a Monday, Funk Factory on a Tuesday and Mark Lamarr and the Weekender both on a Friday. As much shows due to their musical eclecticness and the fact that because of them I will find more exciting tracks to scour the Amazon used and new section, there is a more fun game to play. Well its not that fun, but it involves you switching your tuner to automatic, and hitting the switch so that it flicks automatically to the next station. You do this to create exciting stories or conversations using the sentences you hear. Example (from last night's trip back from Cardiff):

'..so if you want to hear some true old school English soul...' flick
'...try calling her. I'm sure she wants to resolve the situation as much as you...' flick
'...said Hanuman, the wisest, swiftest and strongest of all apes.'

That's special.

Sing like Tom Waits -

Sometimes I decide that I will attempt to sing in a Tom Waits accent to any song that appears on said radio/i-pod. This can be funny when you turn dull pop songs into eccentric and often disturbing jazz pieces. This weeks favourite is the awful and bland Shane Ward song 'Breathless' becoming a heart broken love lament, and at sometimes a bit rapey.  
The downside to this game is that if you play it enough on the way to a gig, it can ensure that your throat is sufficiently damaged, therefore hampering your performance ruining the only reason you've been driving for bloody ages in the first place.

Imagination games (to be used when quite bored but not yet bored enough to be dangerous):

Points scoring -

Thanks to much recent playing of the computer game 'Burnout: Revenge', and previous years of playing GTA and the legendary Carmageddon, I imagine that I can clock up points were I to hit or damage other items on the road. You might like to create your own points based system, as mine changes every journey due to forgetfulness. However, you might like to use the following few as indicators of the scoring:

People who walk right in front of your vehicle as you are driving - 7 points. Not many points because these arrogant f*ckers deserve to die and there should be laws that allow you to rev into them.

Swaying cyclists - 25 points. Only the ones who don't look behind and sway from left to right driving through red lights.

Smashing into the side of a shiny 4x4 - 150 points. They are easier to damage then their over protective planet killing owners believe.

Already dead roadkill - 3 points. Points are purely for the satisfying 'squelch' noise. 4 points if its a bear.

Middle lane hoggers - 200 points. Extra points for revving really fast past them, swearing at them, shouting move over and hitting them from the side as you do so.

Domino effect traffic jam rage - upwards of 4000 points.

Confusing other drivers -

I recently discovered thanks to acts putting their satnavs in my car, that my speedometer is 7 miles faster than the speed I am actually going at. This means at the ridiculous 50 miles an hour average speed camera sections of the motorway at 57mph, which is usually faster than the other cars who are believing in their speedometer. To cut to the chase, while on these sections of road, its very fun to drive alongside another vehicle and make imaginative faces at them, whilst either indicating that there is something wrong with their car or perhaps your own brakes. Make over elaborate faces and gestures before zooming off, leaving them baffled. Fun.

Making up swear words -

These can be directed at other drivers, areas, traffic jams or generally anything you feel deserves abuse of some sort. My rules are simply that it must be an old school phrase I haven't used in ages or a brand new word. This week I have resurrected 'div', and 'dicksplat' whilst inventing the term 'shit wizard'.

Dexterity games (only to be used when extremely bored and preferably the road is emptyish) -

Dodge the Cat's Eyes -

A game taught to me by Dave Hadingham and which many a seasoned travelling comic plays. When changing lanes, try and do so so that your tyres don't touch the cats eyes on the road. Tough but extremely satisfying when achieved. Even if it means you have to endlessly switch lanes unnecessarily just to do so, at the frustration of other road users.

The Passenger Side Reach -

You know that thing that fell of the passenger seat when you took a corner earlier. Well you want it now don't you? Even though its on the floor in the corner of the other side of the car. Hmm? Why not get it? Why not? Don't worry that you cant see the road while do. Just try, go on.

Road Chef -

Want to prove that you have magician's hands? Try using only one hand to drive whilst peeling a satsuma, tangerine or other citrus fruit of your choice with the other (oranges only to be used when at a professional level). Also try opening pistachio nuts or tearing that foil bit off the tops of bottles for fun food related malarkey whilst swerving the steering wheel in a dangerous manner.

In conclusion, I have realised that there is a very good and sufficient reason as to why comedians have extremely high insurance rates. Roll on the days of KITT becoming a reality.

a guy did a story about sucking a cock for the first time, having gotten drunk and not fully remembered that he wasn't gay. (A true-life adventure, apparently.)

Someone asked if he was, in fact, gay and he replied that he would have said no but for the small matter of his having sucked that cock.. So, I brought up the old joke about how you lay a few bricks, nobody calls you a mason, you tell a kid some facts, nobody calls you a teacher, but suck one cock . . . Unfortunately, he couldn't hear me and thought I was offering him a second cock. (What would have happened if I was drunk?)

Later, Elise went on, which is why I was around, and was, I think, nervous but the audience responded to her warmly. I'd like to see her perform frequently enough to not care what happens when she's on stage; she was very relaxed on Radio Peckham today and she really is a natural.

When all you need is to relax, I think you're in pretty good shape.

Saw the big electric menorah in Trafalgar Square tonight and it seems England has developed greater sensitivity to her Jews in just a couple nights. (The correct number of lights were lit instead of all of them was the case the other night.)

I do like it here.

It's not a bad place to be a Jew.

Back from the British Comedy Awards, and wondering if a tree falls in a forest (the British Comedy Awards happens) and no one's around (it's not broadcast), can anyone hear it (erm, well will anyone see it?)? Well they said on the night that actually they might screen it at some point, but I reckon it's probably going to gather dust somewhere before eventually being taped over with an episode of Deal or No Deal (is it right to call that an episode? there's a sort of plot, so I suppose it is...)

Anyway, the winners list is available at www.chortle.co.uk, so I won't go into that lot here. Suffice to say Not Going Out didn't win either award we were up for, but that was to be expected. We were pipped to the post by Gavin & Stacey for Best New Sitcom, and Lee lost out on Best Male Actor to David Mitchell from Peep Show. I don't think any of the wins on the night were that contestable - it was all in all a fair awards do, with little upset or incident. Which is a slight shame, as this the ceremony where Caroline Aherne heckled Nigel Hawthorne, and where Julian Clary did a fisting gag about Norman Lamont, and where Michael Barrymore unplugged an autocue, and where Spike Milligan called the heir to the throne "a grovelling little bastard". You expect a *few* tears and tantrums, surely. Well not tonight. Perhaps the fact that it wasn't being broadcast live took a bit of the edge off it. Who knows.

So, what can I report that the Chortle news story can't? Well, I can report that the goody-bag contained an Al Murray dvd that I was thinking of buying, so that saved me a tenner. I had a nice little chat with a woman called JK Rowling, who has apparently written some books. Jonathan Ross got her to sign a book, which turned out to be The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. Ha. I met the producer whose book it now is, and took a photo on my phone of what she wrote - if I can work out how to upload a photo from my phone, I'll post it here... anyway, you won't hear on telly what she actually wrote, so I can exclusively reveal that instead of an autograph, she wrote, "I wish I'd written this." Yeah, and I bet he'd written Harry Potter too.

Stephen Fry gave a great non-funny acceptance speech, and Liz Smith got a standing ovulation. One leading comedy personality who lost out an award was heard to tell his writers that it was their fcking fault, but I think that was a joke. And I saw Stephen Mangan and Graham Norton kiss on the lips, but only briefly. I'm really struggling for gossip, you can tell.

Alright I'll tell you one thing I heard - which is that this phone-rigging malarkey is nothing new. I was told that years ago, when phone voting just began, a certain entertainment show was up for People's Choice award, so viewers had a good month or so to phone in to support their favourite show. So whenever this show had a on-air competition, as they did often, they would put up their voting phone number instead of the compeition line, for about five minutes, then say "Sorry - that's the wrong number - whoopsy." They did this for a good 3 weeks, and quelle surprise, on the night they had three times more votes than anyone else and took away the award. Never questioned, never caught, never found out. Simpler times, I'm sure.

I am now off to Holland for the best part of a week. Blogging, Scrabble and facebook status updates shall cease till then...

I was gonna walk the few minutes from Camberwell Green to Elise's place in Peckham -- after all, it saves me 90p. But there was a #12 bus alongside me and I figured I had to take it, seeing as how it's a bendy bus which you can board from the rear; one, therefore, on which you don't have to pay.

Sure, I thought for a second that I might get caught but who was to catch me? The bus started moving and I was home free.

Except for the fact that it was going in the wrong direction.

So, I got off -- farther from Elise's than where I had begun -- and discovered there had been, I don't know, maybe eighteen (maybe more) police officers and Transport for London employees directly across from where I'd cadged my ride, who'd apparently implemented some sort of sting, numbing and killing passengers who had done what I had done, only a few feet away.

Wow, I really dodged a bullet.

So, I happily walked the next couple blocks but -- suddenly -- there was a bus beside me again, this time for sure in the right direction.

I got on in the back.

I didn't pay.

Nobody paid. (The system is designed to make you feel like a schmuck if you do pay.)

Elise texted me to see when I would arrive but my presence provided the answer -- I was there within moments.

A fine week, job-wise. On Monday I headlined the Comedy Store - a first. Alright it was a charity benefit gig who had hired the night from the Store, but still, it was the Store, it was full, it was laughter-filled, and it was great fun. It was for bowel cancer (an odd way to get paid - be-dum-ching). I found that by adapting my medical jokes to mention the word 'bowel' occasionally, I got impromptu rounds of applause which was nice. Must bear that in mind for future benefit gigs...

And tonight - Wednesday - I go to the British Comedy Awards to cheer on Not Going Out for Best New Sitcom. As you'll know, it's not being screened this year due to idiocy, but it was being filmed, so it might be shown at a later date (though most likely the tape will be stored in a cupboard or used as a doorstop). I've just fetched my tux from my parents' house, and bless my mum and her patience, resewing buttons at midnight because I've fatted up a bit since I last wore it.

So it promises to be quite a day of schmoozing. It kicks off at 1pm with the BBC Radio Entertainment Christmas Party, then drinks at the Oxo Tower at 6:30pm with the nominated Avalon shows (Not Going Out, Harry Hill's TV Burp, Al Murray), then off to the comedy awards at 9ish, then mingling till the early hours. Not too late for me, as I'm off on my hols at 7am Thursday morning, so my patient girlfriend is hoping/praying that I'm not going to come in too pissed. I hate to disappoint.

Anyways, wish us luck. In theory I'll post any gossip and happenings here when I'm back from the awards, but in practice I'm looking at about 4 hours sleep that night maximum, so that may have to wait till I return from my travels to Holland. By which time you'll have heard who won anyway. My prediction is Gavin & Stacey winning lots of things.

as I wrote yesterday, that Saturday's post was probably one post over the line as far as brief, perfunctory, trivial entries were concerned. And the following comment confirmed my sense of the trend:

"is there anyway that you could stop writing these appallingly bad blogs. at least the other writers have the decency not to write every single day, an