My friend Robin pointed out how my blog begins with unmitigated joy and descends into despair. I’m fine now it’s the final day, but the following is what I wrote on Saturday night.

Hell is a city stuck perpetually at 3am. Each doorway leaks a stream of piss, women too drunk to care hold down short skirts as a tribute to dignity, men’s mouths squirm from alcohol-palsied faces and all manner of detritus blows down streets that will never see the sun.

Will Hodgson described today as “cunt Saturday”. He’s not far wrong. The whole day was one long, drawn out panic attack for me. People everywhere. Hell may also be being stuck in a crowd that never disperses. I think that’s what it is for me: a never-ending pavement where surges upon surges of people enter the thoroughfare with no exit.

See! See what happens to a man when he is driven to wanton self-importance!

I wouldn’t have got through Saturday night without the image of Matt Crosby drumming in the Bob Dylan backing band sketch in Pappy’s Fun Club. I downloaded the song on iTunes as soon as I got home. Joy.

Awards are funny beasts. It's depressing that for all this fuss, worry and talk it all boils down to about 100 words in a backpage of The Guardian. "Someone you think you might recognise won an award you've never heard of, it used to be called something you'll vaguely recollect".

Last nights zone was my favourite thus far. I’m now just totally going out on a limb and it’s great. It’s a bit sad to think we’ll never all be on the same bill again after tonight. It’s been a real pleasure to work with all the guys. If you fancy some late night fun come down to the zone tonight for the last one.

Here are my top five fringe things:

1. Being told that Matt Crosby had described the ‘Lost Vagueness’ launch party as “a total cunt museum”
2. Doing ‘On Heat’ with Russell, Mark and Jon. Just like old times.
3. Dan Atkinson ending his show by saying “ladies and gentlemen, outside there is someone collecting for an AIDS charity, so PLEASE… don’t give him any money”
4. Pappy’s
5. Richardson getting nominated.
6. Oh yes, and telling a drunk woman heckler who tried to chat me up that "I'd rather fuck a window"

There’ll be more in this blog if they let me carry on. Expect something wistful tomorrow morning.

By four now.

The trend for freaky Thursday audiences carried on last night. It's like they've all been given bad news just before the gig and only come in because it's what their recently deceased friend 'would have wanted'. The first bloke i chat to in the crowd won't tell me his name because he "came to listen, not to talk thank you very much". What an utter joyless cunt. i did what any compere should do in that situation and immediately sacked the front row, replacing them with more giddy people from the row behind. Hurrah!

Richardson got nominated, genius. I've discovered there's no better feeling than genuine one hundred percent pride on someone else's behalf. It's a lovely warm feeling with the merest hint of happy tears and topped off with a Cheshire-cat smile. Good for him. If he and Pappy's won the awards it would be a huge score for joy and hard work. I'm in a good mood.

Last few nights me and Team Zone have been to a few sexy parties. On Weds the PBJ/Mick Perrin one and last night the SYTYF one. The former reeked of fannies and shame but the alcohol was free. The latter was full of youthful souls, wide-eyed and drunk on wonder...and free alcohol. I left both relatively early, parties where I don't know anyone and, more depressingly, no-one knows me, give me the blues. However, I did find fun in doing Joe and Barry's material whilst under the effects of helium from the PBJ balloons, that was a high point. It's nice to do all these things this year, so when i bring up my own show I'll know I'm not missing much, just the sight of comics trying to get off with teenage girls and the vague feeling of disappointment and dread. Who knew?!

I have also had a cold the last few days. I never really get ill, but a wantonly huge dose of vitamin C usually sorts the whole thing out. It's the microphones fault. You couldn't design a better way of spreading a virus. Having just finished series five of 24 I'm guessing the only terrorist threat they haven't covered is microphone infection. I'll look forward to that in season 6. I did a WMD awareness gig and said i wouldn't be willing to eradicate all weapons of mass destruction as it would leave Jack Bauer with nothing to do, and therefore render my life meaningless. I also shouted at a man in the audience for saying the best way to stop the trade in arms is to stop paying taxes. What a jackass. How can you call yourself left-wing and yet sanction not contributing to the welfare state, a truly incredible institution that protects the most vulnerable people in our society. He claimed that the NHS was loosing money. I pointed out that that is exactly what makes the welfare state so incredible; it's a managerial nightmare, it will always haemorrage money, it is totally unworkable, and yet wholly necessary. At this point in the gig i got my first ever 'right-on' round of applause. I'm not edgy or topical ever, but it felt good to do the finger-licking one nil sign in the air to rapturous applause. Maybe i should memorise some George Bush quotes, he's quite the dunce i hear.

Anyhow, look at me rambling like i've got nothing better to do...
oh...hang on...oh dear...
did i mention i finished watching 24? Despair.

j

Last night i got a taxi to the Pleasance and my taxi driver was quite gruff. I always try to break their hard manner with a tip and a 'have a good night' farewell. Having tipped this particular guy i accidentally said "night night' as i got out. As i closed the door i felt like i was tucking him into bed. Despair.

I think the gap since my last blog bears out my theory that the festival is about a week too long. I've spoken to quite a lot of people about this and most seem to agree. It's not that i don't want to do as many shows as possible and spend loads of time here, but there is a big gulf between the initial excitement of getting your bearings and exploring and the 'one week to go' final push.

The Zone has been ticking along, we've only had two shockers, both on Thursdays. I'm very reluctant to blame audiences for bad nights. %99 of the time, if someone blames an audience for a bad gig you can find little things they've done that have caused it: slagging off the local area, complaining about low numbers, letting on that they're annoyed with a lack of energy etc. But i have to say, if you ask a Zoological student what their favourite animal is, they answer "the Thunderbird" and the audience don't even titter you have to wonder if they're made of stone.

Last night was one of the few Zones where it's been a true compere's gig. The guys all did well but infront of 38 people in a room that seats 175 it's always going to favour Charlie Chatface rather than Martin Material. I got some guy onstage to act out a play with props that Barry and Carl could find backstage. It turned into the story of a man who didn't know his lover is a bum doctor. He goes for a check-up only to find his partner Giles holding a hosepipe and funnel and a 'caution - wet floor' sign. Genius.

Other than that I've compered Spank a few times; lovely gig. Went to see the Picasso exhibition (waste of money) and the Bourne Ultimatum (weakest of the three films). Pappy's Fun Club made me love life and remember what comedy should be about (making people laugh and dicking around)

I'm now caught in a circular argument in my head about whether to do an hour next year. I think it's increasingly hard to wait in stand up, more difficult to focus on the long term. Part of me wants to do it just to wipe my slate of material clean and get used to writing a show a year, but that's maybe overly ambitious. Who knows?

j

p.s
To the 'people' doing the 12 hour "contact improvisation" performance art piece in the shop window next door to the FestFM studio, i would like to say, on behalf of everyone who saw it "Fuck Off!"

You are without doubt the most pretentious, deluded people on the face of this years festival, and that's up against some fucking stiff opposition. I know life is hard as a middle-aged divorcee but a broken home is no excuse to believe that rolling around on the floor in jogging bottoms is some kind of valid form of expression. Employing a media-studies student to film the entire thing does not justify your eye-gougingly pointless existence. How can you be so vomitously earnest in the face of overwhelming evidence that 'contact improvisation' is, in fact, merely a misspelling of 'look at us, our personalities are made of toilets'? Twelve hours!? TWELVE FUCKING HOURS. You should get the if.commedies panel prize for having the gall not to take your own lives. Seriously, i'd rather suck a dead tramps eyeball than see that shit again. How on earth can you do that for 12 hours without for a moment thinking to yourself "hang on...wait a minute...Oh yes, I'm a total cunt!"? I know deep down there is a nagging feeling you can't quite put your finger on, it's been bugging you for years but you can't get to the bottom of it. Well it took me exactly four seconds to recognise that feeling as being one of total and utter self loathing for carrying on with the charade that you are not a total and utter quim-rag-mouthed charlatan. You know those men who pretend to be gas inspectors and rob pensioners of their life savings? THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING WITH PEOPLE'S TIME

If i found out you got a lottery grant for that colostomy bag of a show I'm moving to Darfur.

that is all.

I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that comedians, the one group of people who can make a living from telling tales of hardship and woe, are also the only group to never use an alarm clock. It’s hard to justify talking at great length about life’s troughs when you know full well that the following day you can get up after the majority of the population are coming off their lunch break.

But there is a counter argument. Away from Edinburgh I get up on average, at about midday. At this time every person I live with is at work. They get back at around 6-7, just as I am leaving for a gig. As they open their wine and cook their tuna steak I may well be covering 150 miles to make people who I don’t know laugh for a few hours. By the time I get home all the house is asleep, I may meet someone who has arisen for an early morning wee as I make my way to bed, carrying with me the bottles of pear cider I’ve bought from the 24 hour Tesco. More often than not a look of pity will be offered. You’d be justified in criticising a comedian for preaching about hardship, but we have copyright on loneliness.

I imagine that’s the upside of being a comedian in London. You’re all a tube-ride from each other for afternoon japes and adventures. Outside London it’s a more complex logistical affair. Fun has to be organised weeks in advance, and organised fun is never truly magical, any genuine monkey-shines become administrative continuity; we planned fun, it happened, no-one need loose their job. The more you become a comedian, the further you are inhibited from doing the things that provided you with the material to make people laugh in the first place. Take Edinburgh for example. If I become the comic I want to be, bringing a solo show up every year, that writes off August, the month I would be going to music festivals, swimming in rivers and climbing trees. Add to this that the more I gig the less nights out I can spend with my mates and I’m left with the uncomfortable choice between hoping something funny happens while I’m staring at my bedroom wall or forcing myself to do zany things on my own in the day. Then I’d have to lie a lot, pretending it all kicked-off at the SS Great Britain visitor centre, with a satisfying comedic arc and running callbacks. Despair.

Yesterday was my day off. I went for an all you can eat Chinese. I was with my friend Damion and there came the problem that the above relates to. I love Damion, and I love all-you-can-eat Chinese. It should have been total balls-to-the-wind fundom. But so used am I to my own company that sometimes I’m very quiet. Sat amongst the masses in Jimmy Chung’s my head starts to throb with the telephone exchange hubbub of other people’s conversations, all audible, none discernible. It’s like being caught in a mass internal monologue. I can just about deal with my own, but 100 others leaves me panicky. Understandably I seem aloof, withdrawn, moody. Damion tells me such and I’m reminded of my mother’s constant refrain whilst I was being a difficult teenager “what’s wrong? You seem so quiet” I AM ALLOWED TO BE QUIET. I am allowed to still be lonely in a crowded place.

Here's the dudes back stage at the last zone before our day off, having a tipple. Carl does a fart just as i begin filming, for which i appologise. Proper blog to follow.

Jack Bauer may well save my life this Edinburgh. Thursday night at The Zone was a rude awakening, and perhaps a well needed one. I’d started to get quite preoccupied and stressed about my first solo show, which may sound ridiculous but is inescapable when doing something like the zone. It’s a halfway house between a fortnight Edinburgh fuckaraound and your first proper show. As we have little stress regarding press, sales etc, you have to use the extra time to learn as many lessons as possible from other peoples shows; what rooms are good, what agents and publicists are most successful, time-slots, extra gigs, posters, flyers, intro music, eating patterns, sleep, the list goes on. The mistake I made was going one step to far and thinking, ‘hey Robins, here’s an idea, why not get even further ahead of the game and treat the Zone as an Edinburgh preview?’

Well, for one very good reason, people don’t come to see the Zone for downbeat confessional stand-up, they come to see young tits-to-the-wind jonny-come-latelys donning a set of balls and doing their best stuff. It was made even tougher by the fact there were only 35 people in, which makes it a tough old room. Joining these punters were Sophie Church from Hannah Chambers and Christian Knowles, so I’d arranged to do a set, my second of the run. The first one had been awesome, and I did the same stuff, but this time with a different mindset, and it showed. I treated it like a preview, they reacted likewise, I stopped telling the stories and began presenting them, which is a huge difference, and they’re really not tight enough to be presented or sold yet.

So, afterwards I went for drinks with Richardson and Matt Forde, got a bit emotional about the whole affair. Fordy forced me to go to the Dome at 3am, and I do mean forced. I was in no state of mind really, he then beat me in an Alan Partridge rap-off. Fordy’s got early Alan Partridge nailed, the KMKYWAP era. I’m more of an IAM season 1 and 2 man, but it cut me, deep. And so home, almost broken, but with a few lessons to be learned. Those lessons were put into practise yesterday and followed a strict 3 point plan

1. Don’t leave the house until 9.30pm
2. Watch at least 5 hours of 24 Season 4
3. No drinking, except shandy

All instructions were followed to the letter and the gig was awesome. Sold out, those extra 140 people really make themselves known.

Now all I have to deal with is the stark realisation that the most exciting moment of my life may well have occurred during an episode of 24. Seriously. Tony Almeida rocks.

Yesterday Donnelly and I were feeling the beer blues, that feeling when it’s like your insides have been hollowed out and replaced with sawdust and dread. To take my mind off it I went to see Jon Richardson’s full show for the first time. I lived with Jon for a year and have seen his stand-up many many times, but seeing the final product made me feel very proud and not a little jealous. It’s excellent. The only thing missing was about 20 audience members so I may well be flyering for Jon today. When Kitson came out of the show he said Jon just has a brilliant mind, and that’s bang on the money. Every time you think you can see where something might be going it takes a totally unexpected route, Richardson just doesn’t think like other people, and here’s to more of that. Go see it, 8.30, The Pleasance Hut.

The Zone was great, Carl compered for the first time as I had to get away to compere Spank. I opened and did some new stuff, it was basically a 20 minute Edinburgh preview for next year and felt really nice. Spank was a whole new experience. I was co-compering with Leon and I’ve never done that before, it was hard to fight the temptation to go with my instincts as that would have meant taking over too much, so I just waited for an opening and was able to take the time to figure out the funniest thing to say. It was how I imagine a panel show to be, you wait for a pause and then dive in. Getting fully naked after the interval was the easiest bit in many ways. “Whoa! What the fuck?! Naked?!” Yes. Need we say more. I think Hodgson summed it up when he said as I came off “this ‘aint fucking Ibiza Robins”. No Will, you’re right, but it just might be as close as we ever get. And I remind Will that the first time I ever saw him was onstage at Bristol Community Festival wearing only a thong. Touche.

Hodgson was awesome at Spank, as was Rhys Derby and Pappy’s Fun Club. Exactly what we needed after some truly poor ‘offensive’ songs about rape. I won’t mention the people responsible out of some vague sense of compere’s ethics but it was really without merit. The only way I could signal my distain without being out of order was to subtly flick the V’s as they walked off stage. It’s the little victories. What i really hate is that they can shrug off anyone who thinks they're rubbish by saying "you're just too easily offended, we're edgy and you can't deal with that". No. There are good shock comics and there are turgid ones, singing "everybody wants to be raped...no means yes" just isn't good enough. I hope you get run over by a disabled black lesbian midget. Ha! CAN YOU DEAL WITH THAT!

And then to bed, not having drunk too much. I’m compering Spank again tonight I think, so do come along, I promise not to get naked again.

p.s I’ve worked out what that brewery smell smells like. It’s warm milk on wheatabix with marmite. I win.

I never get hangovers, never have; probably will. At least I’ve never had hangovers in the traditional sense. I do, however, get moral hangovers. Where for the following day a cloud hangs over you full of hushed tones whispering “I think you were a bit of a dick last night mate”.

On the way to football Steve Williams said something incredible. I’d congratulated him on a five-star review, assuming that even if he was avoiding all reviews he’d be fine with hearing about an excellent one. He seemed uncomfortable and said “you can’t celebrate the five star unless you’re willing to accept the one-star’. What was amazing is that he didn’t have a secret grin to himself and then try to be all modest, his genuine reaction was one of humility, which is the rarest of wisdoms; one that exists in your eyes as well as your words.

The Zone was really tough for the first time. I made a few basic errors: 1. On finding the audience were a bit quiet I told them so. Never expect excitement; it’s your responsibility to create it. 2. I don’t often use material when compering at the start but sometimes you need to when they’re not chatting, I waited too long to do this, only finding a genuinely funny vein of banter towards the end. 3. I wore a t-shirt with writing on, which I’ve always found can have an effect. It may distract merely 5 or 10 people when you walk out, but that’s enough to turn a good room flat. Also, it was quite a confrontational t-shirt, saying “listen to Frank Zappa”. There’s no reason why someone’s first reaction to that shouldn’t be “don’t tell me what to listen to ass-face!

Anyway, for whatever reason, it was tough, and I think there were press in. Never mind, none of us enjoyed it hugely but no-one really struggled. So by the time it came to do 10 mins at Spank I was determined to have a good gig. I did, a very good one, and it felt like a release, a justification, a redemption. But that is a dangerous thing to feel. I think a big part of being a comic is coming to terms with the constant rollercoaster of thinking you’re better or worse than you actually are. A good gig makes good material seem excellent and a bad gig the opposite. In honesty most of us are somewhere in the middle. What it is unacceptable to do (but hard to avoid) is acting on either of these impressions. You can’t afford to get too down when you struggle, and crucially you can’t get too cocky when you storm.

I wish I’d kept Steve’s mantra in mind after Spank. I didn’t go round telling everyone I was awesome, I was just far too confident in banter to people I don’t know well enough. What a tool. What’s annoying is I like to think I have quite a wise comedy head, in terms of the theory and dealing with the ups and downs, but alcohol, adrenaline and relief are a dangerous combination. It’s just hard to expect people to see that any cockiness only exists in my words, not in my eyes.

p.s following my blog about Phil Kay, he got an excellent 5-star in Metro. “Phil Kay has one of the finest minds in comedy and all lovers of the art should cherish him unreservedly”. Reading that gave me a warm tummy.

This morning, at 4 or 5 am, I returned to my flat as the sun began to rise having witnessed two incredible things. One was awe inspiring, the other was just plain awful.

I have a very special moment each Edinburgh which is just for me; I go and see Phil Kay. This year he has two shows, and one clashes with The Zone, it also clashes with Kitson, Craig Campbell and pretty much every show I really really want to see. So I went to see his earlier show ‘Justice’. I first saw Phil Kay at Late n Live 2005, when something happened that simply cannot be explained. It involved a verbal fight with a Northern Irish audience member and pretty much covered the meaning of comedy itself. It was a moment that blew apart the bounds of what I thought live comedy could achieve, the moment i decided this was the career for me and a moment that almost ended with a fight. During this years show he has kept his trousers on, does not have ‘Library Bar’ written across his arse, nor is he pretending to commentate on a horse race involving the candidates for the new pope in front of a mad Catholic punter. It doesn’t nearly end in a fight.

It does begin, however, with some of the most beautiful prose I’ve heard in a comedy show. So much so that I have to take out my notebook to write down the statement “the law of love says ‘you are enough’”. Unfortunately Phil sees me do this and takes me for a reviewer. “He might be a journalist” I look up “bang, you’ve missed a bit of the show” he says. I’m wearing headphones round my neck and he riffs on that for a while then moves on. But by now my face is burning and I become his point of focus after delivering set pieces. I feel terrible for the pressure he now seems to think he’s under when there is no need, “I’m not a reviewer Phil! I’m a fan! I’m a worshipper!” but I stay quiet, sit back, and enjoy his remarkable talent. I was going to give him a review, just for neatness, but I don’t think you can really review his shows, just him. He walks a line of personal confession that any self-proclaimed storyteller, myself included, is simply miles away from. Of course it’s an intensely personal thing, but for me, as nice as it is to make badges, this style of comedy is where i find hope for the new wave, or whatever you want to call it. The amazing thing is that Phil’s been doing it for nearly 20 years. He’s a true genius, a one-off, or so I thought.

After the Zone, which pretty much sold out and was really good, (a high point was Carl telling a woman with an annoying laugh ‘it’s like being heckled by the Lilt ladies’), we went to the Brooke’s Bar. It was rammed and hot. I met a person I’ve not met before, and it was he who made me realise that Phil Kay is not the only one-off up here this year. I won’t mention his name because of what transpires later, but he’s like a cross between Chris Morris and Peter Cook circa ‘Derek and Clive get the horn’, drunk, breakdown era, vitriolic Peter Cook. He’s bounding about the bar vomiting all forms of obscenity out onto an unexpecting audience, save those who know him, who reliably inform me that this is normal behaviour. It’s ‘what’s the worst thing you can say to a stranger’ stuff, captivating as much as it is abhorrent. When it crosses the line into straightforward assault I keep my distance. But he reminds me of me, in a way. Not the assault, but the tractor beam of desperation to perform that throws you round a room of strangers and leads you to ruin their evening. He will ‘figure in my plans’ I say to Carl and in a brief moment of sobriety I pitch a sitcom idea to him. He laughs for a minute after I tell him the opening scene, “then what” he says, “that’s all I’ve got” I say, “oh”.

They are now refusing to serve him, which is a good move. And we go. I apologise to the people I’ve been ignoring for an hour and explain it was for their own safety. We walk, me, Carl, this guy and his two friends. We pass a chip shop, bursting with proper Scots. Then the subject of this story does something I’ve never witnessed before. He simply strolls into the chip shop and begins berating the locals with a barrage of anti-Scottish sentiment, seemingly in order to fight THEM ALL. This doesn’t just seem to be the case, it is. He is chased out by 6 or 7 very rightly angry men, they knock him to the ground and begin to beat him. It’s the kind of thing you only imagine doing when you’re brain won’t sit still at night; “God, imagine if I shouted ‘Fuck you all’ at a funeral, or went to a Millwall game and called them all fags”. It’s not just social suicide, but increasingly physical suicide that I am watching. As the punches and kicks are thrown we wade in to stop the trouble, in the slightly awkward position of being totally sympathetic with the people who are kicking the shit out of him. One minute they were buying chips, the next being called “foreign cunts” and being told to “speak English” in their own country. He didn’t mean these things, but says them to achieve the desired effect: self destruction. As Burgess said, and never truer than now, “destruction’s our ode to joy”.

As we break it up, and shelter our colleague away from the gathering crowd, tears fall from his battered face, and now I properly see myself in his little-boy-lost eyes. I know that burning need to feel something, anything, other than what you’re feeling inside. In a former life I’d have put my fist through a door, or smashed a bottle or jumped through a shop window, something more controlled than letting half a dozen drunk Scots administer the punishment. “We need to get on top of this”, I say to him, and beating in my head is that statement, like a fucking beacon; “the law of love says ‘you are enough’” to be honest this guy is more than enough. But somehow I need to show him that like Phil suggests, he himself, is all he needs to do whatever he wants. That release, the blessed release that comes from being half-killed by an angry mob can be found inside you, the law of love says so.

Me, Carl and Barry went to a sexy party. Or at least that’s what I called it, about eighty times. “Are these the free drinks for the sexy party?”, “Where are the toilets for the sexy party madam?”. What a card I am. I liked the idea of going to a sexy party more than the reality I think. There’s a lot of schmoozing and even more people wearing hats. I’m not very good at either of these things. I’m increasingly thinking there needs to be some secret call sign for when four or more nice people meet in any one place, like a bat sign, or Morse code. Something reflecting off a cloud saying “we’re not wearing hats, bring the others”.

We had to leave the sexy party early to do our first Friday night Zone. I think the dilemma with The Cabaret Bar is when it’s half full it’s very nice to play but you’re worried about sales, when it’s packed it gets tricky to play but you’re happy it’s full. We had around 135 in last night, which is awesome, but the sound at the back was a bit weird and the bar stayed open during the show. This was no problem when we had 80 in as they turned the lights off, but I could hear the tills going off from backstage which isn’t ideal. It was hot as cocks in there too.

I think the difficulty of the gig wore down my enthusiasm for returning to the sexy party. It was going on 'til 3am, but me, Barry and Anna (our stage manager) went in search of four or more non-hatted people without the luxury of a call-sign. I’m increasingly convinced that the Brooke’s Bar is only good for getting drinks more quickly than in the main dome bar, or if you want to catch a glimpse of Simon Amstell from amidst a sea of hats. Then onto the Underbelly, which was nice but busy and smelt of farts. Barry and I shared stories of our friend Damion Larkin who’s coming up on Monday. It suddenly struck me as I guffawed for the first time since getting here that I’m not laughing enough, and laughing is my favourite thing, more so than making other people laugh. Laughter is an elsewhere; it’s sobbing without the puffy eyes and underlying problems. So to that end I’m off to see a couple of shows. I have chosen Phil Kay and Tony Law (who are both allowed to wear hats).

Not drinking a lot is now a must. After excess at the Spiegal tent the night before last I got a serious case of the booze blues on the day of our first show. It’s not so much nerves as waves of self-doubt and fear washing over you like nausea. The Spiegal tent was fun and annoying. I got there and it was all loud and fun and busy and I genuinely thought ‘fuck, I’m part of this!’, but then after about the 10th person has swanned past you in a porkpie hat you do start to think ‘jesus, I’m part of this!?’ I did get to speak to Tom Binns for a good while though and he’s a really interesting guy. It’s mad when I meet people who were involved in the comedy that I devoured when I was 12-13. I never saw stand-up as an option until I was 21, but new I had to be involved in comedy, and that was because of Bottom, Lee and Herring and Armando Iannucci et al. So to spend an hour with Glen Ponder’s boyfriend was awesome.

The first wave of fear came when I got up the next day, I suddenly remembered the first time I compered a really big room. It was The Komedia in Brighton, I had no experience of compering a place where you couldn’t see %90 of the audience, and I didn’t realise this was the case until I stepped out there. I was panicking inside, like stepping up to bat for England and realising you’re holding one of those miniature cricket bats. It wasn’t til the second half of the show that I nailed it. And I just got a massive reminder of that feeling of almost choking. This also happened for the first 90 seconds the first time I ever compered The Comedy Box in Bristol. I sounded so nervous that Russell had to leave, he couldn’t bare to see me struggle, it’s a shame really, as soon as he left I found my feet and ripped it, and have been MCing there ever since. The third bad memory was of the first ever gigs I did. I used to do an open mic night every Sunday. One in Bristol, one in Cardiff, and that was all. During the day I would sit and stare at the wall in my flat, leading my flatmate to refer to those days as my ‘lonely Sundays of the soul’.

So what better way to shake off such memories as going to see Transformers. Two hours of cars turning into robots and kicking the shit out of each other. Damn straight Motherfucker! It’s a work of unsurpassed genius and has two hot girls in it. They play the cleverest person and the best mechanic in the film so in many ways Transformers is a Feminist triumph. Carl insisted that we sit right at the front because he is a child. And as the nausea from being to close and eating nachos overcame the nausea from worrying about the show all was well.

We all met at the Nicol Edwards, which is becoming our refuge for the festival. Corrie McGuire was there as well and provided a welcome distraction. Then, backstage in The Cabaret Bar, we all prepared in our own ways. I looked at the posters of Cognito that are back there. He’s been an inspiration and a much-loved confidant over the past two years, and it was nice to see his snarling face staring out at me. I remembered once when we had a falling out due to a mixture of his substance abuse and my tiredness on a drive back from Lincoln, we made up almost instantly and the next day he sent me a text saying “It’s a beautiful day John, good luck with it. Cx”. I think I might have welled up when I read that; he wasn’t saying it would be good, or good things would happen, but that each day has a potential to be good, and that’s what I thought of as I stepped onstage for the first gig of The Comedy Zone.

The gig was a belter. Off the top the crowd were so up for it I was taken aback. They were a joy to play around with and I knew from the first cheer that everyone was going to be fine and really looked forward to seeing all the guys do well. Barry, Joe and Carl all ripped it. Relief! And I can't wait to do a set there now. The crowd was swelled by various Avalon and Pleasance staff, which was so nice. Though it means tomorrow will be a definite reality check in terms of numbers it really made us feel like people wanted us to do well and were looking out for us. Other acts came to see it, Simon Brodkin, Rhod Glibert and Russell Kane. Which for me made it feel like the bit in Harry Potter when they all get chosen for Griffyndor and everyone’s really pleased for them. That and the bottle of Champagne we were each handed made it a really special night, so thanks to everyone else for that.

And so to the Dome for a drink with Jon Richardson, Sinha, Alex Horne and Rob Deering. If you can name four nicer people to spend your time with then I want to know.

more soon

jx