The 23:15 train from Waterloo to Guildford was rammed full tonight. I was journeying back from a typical Saturday night London double-up - Covent Garden and Chalk Farm, since you ask - and with an early start tomorrow I ran back to get the earliest train I could. There was one seat left on the train when I boarded, and even then there were loads of people standing. No one was taking this seat. Then I saw why.

Sat next to the empty seat was a Muslim man, about my age, with a rucksack, and reading the Qur'an. I'm happy to say I didn't hesitate for a moment before sitting. Not like the prejudiced people standing. "I won't sit next to that terroristy fella, not me. I'll stand here, four feet away - that'll protect from any potential blast." Perhaps it's more that they want to be four feet away from the social embarrassment of stopping a man detonating a bomb. I dunno. For whatever reason, no one wanted to sit next to this guy. I, as I say, didn't pause for a second. Such a moral philandering love-all-the-people social example am I. Or it could be cos there was an old lady coming up behind me, and I knew that if I hesitated, she'd be the one who gets to sit down all journey. No, ma'am - you pester the woman in that seat with orange sticker for her seat. I don't care if she is pregnant.

So I sat next to this avid Qur'an-reader for the 40min journey home. I got some work out, but if I'm honest, I couldn't concentrate on it, cos part of me is thinking, "What if he is a terrorist? I mean he probably isn't. But surely he has all the signs. He keeps fiddling with his rucksack. He's listening to an mp3 player (could be last-minute instrutctions of what buttons to press, I dunno, on a podcast or something). He even had a phone where you have to enter a password to activate it. The clues are there. Most telling of all, he had chosen to read his Qur'an on one of the busiest trains I've ever been on, on a Saturday night at kicking-out time, when every one of the 5 carriages was rammed full of what I like to call 'drunken morons'. It was one of those train journeys where I look around and think, "Yeah, I wouldn't say no to nuking this lot myself."

That train did really contain everything bad about the west. There was gluttony in terms of severe drunkenness; greed in terms of people showing off new phones, trainers, jewellery; pride in terms of some girls over-revelling in their own beauty; lust in terms of so so many lecherous men touching up inebriated women they've just met... Most of the seven deadly sins were represented on tonight's 23:15 service. If my next-door neighbour had reached into his rucksack and pushed a big red button, I could hardly have blamed him.

Despite all of the above, and the prejudices I had (be honest: if you're judging me now, what would you have thought if you'd been sat next to this guy? Particularly when every few minutes he's nervously reach into his big for something I could never see?), I quickly decided he was not a terrorist. Any smart warmonger would realise that this train contained few people that mattered. In many cases they'd be putting them out of their misery. This guy, I had decided, was just a studious religious man, taking solace in his holy book on a Saturday evening's journey home from London.

I glanced over at one point when he brought out another book - a pamphlet translating some bits of the Qur'an into English, and explaining a few points. He noticed my glance, and I sensed a bit of prejudice from his side too now, back at me. Did he think that me glancing over his shoulder was me assuming he was one of Alan Qaeida's cohorts? Cos that's not the case. By now I'd decided he was a good 'un. I was looking at his book now cos I'm interested in theology. Who's the prejudiced one now?

Alright, probably still me. Ultimately when he got off the train, he was nice and polite when I moved for him. I was proved right. He was a good egg. The other passengers still cast judging looks towards him, and were clearly glad he was gone (well the old lady was - it meant she could finally get a seat). Was I right to have terroristish concerns? Especially when the guard ('guard'? he's a ticket collector. He didn't guard anything. He was in the carriage at the rear of the train - he told us so himself. Coward.) told us on the tannoy that we should keep an eye out for anything suspicious. So surely a bit of prejudice is allowable, if he ticks every box in the I-Spy Book of People Who Are Against George Bush. I dunno. Maybe I thought he was a terrorist, but was just lazy enough to want a seat and British enough to not cause a fuss by raising any kind of alarm. Either way, he was not a terrorist. At least not tonight. Although for all I know he's gone away now to hatch some plan to detonate next Saturday's 23:15 from Waterloo to Guildford, tipped over the edge just cos some weird ginger guy kept looking over at him trying to read his book...

As a comedian, if you have a free weekend, you do wonder if you should fill it with things, go away somewhere perhaps, or wait by the phone in case you get a gig offer. Well last week the latter happened, which meant that oh yes I could go away - the gig was in Cyprus.

Never been before, but a lovely place - we arrived in a mini-heatwave, so it was a sweltering (for redheads) 33 degrees. We (myself, Yianni, Brian Higgins and John Mann) were there from Saturday lunchtime till Monday evening, so a lovely few days to relax. The gig was Saturday night, and was hard work but achievable, and it should be hard work to be honest - you need to earn a few days' jolly in the Med. The crowd were lovely but the hurdle was that it was outdoors, just a few metres from the sea. So there are no acoustics, and the laughs go straight upwards. So (a) you can't hear them, to know if you're doing ok, and (b) the audience can't hear each other laughing, so they become less likely to laugh out loud (laughter at gigs seems to be a communal thing - it's often all or nothing).

But we all had lovely gigs, proved by the drinks we were bought after. We were really well looked after over there, and the next day and a half was basically us swimming, having some light bites, and generally chewing the fat. It also proved the perfect background for reading my new book - Stephen King's The Gunslinger (first of his nine-part fantasy epic which is his attempt to write a book longer than Lord of the Rings).

Worth saying that this was the Turkish part of Cyprus, although we landed in the Greek part. I never realised just how big an elephant it is in the room that is Cyprus. They really don't get on. There's a massive Turkish flag on the mountains on the Turkish side, painted onto rocks, which I hear were turned over in the middle of the night a few years ago on the eve of the Greek side's national day. Now that's rubbing it in.

It does make things very confusing. On the Greek side, prices are in Euros, but also written in Cypriot pounds, while locals get used to the newly-introduced Euro. Over the border, it's Turkish Lira (aka YTL), but you can usually also pay in British Pound Sterling too. But they'll still ask for it in YTL, even if they know you're paying pounds. eg:

HIM: That's 7.50 please.
ME: Here's five pounds.
HIM: Which means you get 50 YTL cents change.

...while up the road, the same thing would cost 6 euros, but have a sign next to it saying that's about £4.50 CYP. One thing - four different prices. I'm so glad Yorkshire hasn't declared independence and introduced the Yorkshire Lira, with a Lancastrian Dollar down the round being worth half of the previous number you thought of, equivalent in Mancunian Euros to double the Brummie Ruble.

Haven't blogged for a bit - been away on the canals. Four of us on a big 10-berth boat - a lovely week with great sun, but not the restful break it could have been given that the minimum you need to man a boat like that (with locks) is 4 or 5, so we were all on duty all the time. And my, I've never known hay fever like it on them boats. For the entire seven days, all of us were mid-sneeze. Some tasty canalside pub grub too. Mmm.

So that was the last break before the final push of Edinburghian preparations. I've had 3 previews in the last few days, and the show is coming together nicely. At the minute I'm mostly previewing the speaky bits - the jokes, stories, etc - with the complicated setpieces (that I stupidly and over-ambitiously like to do) to be slotted in when I can be arsed to sit down in front of Powerpoint for a day or four. This year's show potentially features a spoof karaoke video, me on the ukulele (which I have yet to learn), plus two other songs to backing-tracks. Having never sung as part of my stand-up act, this is all a little daunting. And Edinburgh is but 6 weeks away now. Cripes.

I picked up my Edinburgh fringe guide today (available from the Time Out office in London), and was pleasantly surprised to see my 1/4 page advert is nice and near the front - just 3 pages into the comedy section. It was also nice to see that my text entry is at the top of the page it's on, so that's a slight bonus. Every little helps when you're up against every living comic. And my, there are a lot of them. I read through to halfway through the Bs, and that took half an hour. This is the one bad thing about the Fringe Guide - it's almost depressing to see that much comedy will be in one place. Which is the opposite effect that comedy should have. But no city needs this much comedy. No city can give enough punters to the number of comedy shows in the fringe guide. There will be a lot of shows peformed just to the technician this year, and I just hope mine isn't one of them.

I'll post my press release here as a blog soon - in the mean time if you fancy coming to a preview, or the show itself in Edinburgh, then my website www.paulkerensa.com has details of where and when. If you don't, then poo to you with knobs on.

Back from three days on the road, with hotels courtesy of laterooms.com. And the moral of this tale is: 'You get what you pay for'. The £60 converted dairy in Romsey nr Southampton was lovely - complete with own snooker table, lovely breakfast, free wifi, charming old wooden decor, horse outside the window, that sort of thing. Then there's the £20 room in Bournemouth. The polar opposite. The doors wouldn't lock, so I even took my laptop to the bathroom (on the next floor down) when I went for a shower. Although I didn't need to worry about security it turns out, because I was the only person in the entire building. Not even staff - they live down the road.

But it's ok - when away like that for gigs, you can while away time with a DVD or two. Which I ran out of, but handily the 'hotel' is right opposite a massive Asda, so I was finally persuaded to invest in season 3 of Prison Break. Not as good as the first two seasons, but needs must when alone and bored in Bournemouth.

The other part of the weekend was the wedding of my good friend Rachel, to Mark, who is now also a good friend. A lovely do at a barn in Bicester. Really great day, with tear-jerking speeches, very nice surroundings, a good hog roast in the evening, yum... Of course since I am now planning my own wedding, I was guilty of making the odd note or two. Only in a good way, of course - "Ooh, pudding takes 20 minutes...", "A cake that's half chocolate, half fruitcake - nice...", "Hogroast served in the evening at about 10ish - good touch..." That's right. It was all about food. I tell you one thing about my wedding: no one's going hungry.