Travelling is the best and worst part of my job. I sort of look forward to a few days away, then once it actually begins it gets on my tits.

Can't please some people can you?

I pack a bag and get loads of dvd's and books and work and stuff together, with every good intention of spending some quality time with myself, get in the car, drive to my hotel, then sit and stare at the wall. Not one of my books was read, not one of my dvd's were watched - I just lugged around a heavy bag for two days, and after succumbing to the charms of Forbidden Planet in Middlesborough I actually came home with more stuff than I left with.

So first up was the university of Northumbria on Monday.

I'd been to Durham on my way up to visit my friend and Chortle Student finalist snowball in Hell Ed Gamble, who was in the middle of doing revising and needed distracting by a comedian who selfishly just wanted to break up his journey. We went and had coffee with Pete and Tom from the Durham Revue, and the fact that it was proper exam time began to dawn on me, everyone around us was stressing and had their heads in books. Proper exam time and I was off to do two uni gigs...I know from experience that not all students are as easily distracted from their work as Ed Gamble...

My fears were confirmed on reaching the gig (after going to three seperate Premier Travel Inns before finding the right fucking one, and I would end up in the one without it's own bastard car park) - about forty people in a room that would hold three hundred. Compere Lloyd Langford and Lee Bannard were already there and Lloyd was already hatching a plan to do the gig in the dressing room, which would have been nicely filled with forty people...and so began one of those odd nights that I seem to end up always being at.

Lloyd went onto the stage in the main room and began the show, informing the audience of his plan and then leading them like the infants of Hamelin out of the door and to their new destination. It was like a genuine underground secret gig - no mic, no stage, no lights really, but it turned out good and felt clandestine and unique. Very informal, very off-the-cuff, but an absolute pleasure, the front row in particular entering into the fun and spirit and being proper supportive (I even had a lightsaber duel at the end with one of the lads from the front row - even though he only had a stick and I had my brilliant proper one).

After the gig we went through to the bar with them and had some drinks and stuff. I fell a little bit in love with a lass from the front row but she was dead posh and any prospective marriage to me would be quashed by her parents and she would probably be better off with the president of the student union or something.

On Tuesday we travelled over to Middlesborough for the gig at Teeside University, which sadly didn't have a dressing room as such, and so we had to go ahead with the gig in the proper environment.

After the gig at Northumbria Uni it was an adjustment to go back to stage, mic and lights comedy, but we got through it. I realised that I get very bored on stage sometimes, and that really is the crux of why I end up in 'situations' at gigs. As I've said many times before on here, I really don't see the attraction of ploughing through the same words night after night. Whenever I do a 'set' and don't deviate from it in any way I always feel slightly hollow afterwards, no matter how spontaneous it can be faked to look, it never really is, and even if I am the only person in the room to know this, it still makes me chalk the gig down as one that I didn't enjoy. I like to try and find something unique to do in the room, something I wouldn't have been able to do the night before, and won't be able to do again. Doesn't always work, I don't claim to be an expert, but I like to try for at least my own amusement and usually end up with something to talk about and the audience go away happy and with the satisfaction that they have been a party to a genuine one-off night.

Last night, there was a lass in the audience who was in her final year of a course of a Crime Scene Investigation course. Yeah? Who can't see this one coming?

I had chatted with her early on in my 'act' and she had been a little bit confrontational - nothing ridiculous like, she was joining in and that, but there was just the slightest edge to her that she had taken against me in some way. Not to be dissuaded, I decided to construct a crime scene for her to investigate. I got Lloyd to take her out of the room and out of earshot and I went about making the scene with the help of a couple of audience members. When I phoned Lloyd to tell him to bring her back, the scene that met her was as follows:

At the back of the stage there was dead body #1 (well I say 'dead' - he was sitting up and laughing when she came through the door, but he was meant to be dead) with my lightsaber next to it, clutching my Access All Areas pass and blood (Pepsi) streaming from a head wound. On the steps at the front of the stage was dead body #2, again surrounded by blood (Pepsi) with a crisp packet on the floor, an arm missing, and a badly broken neck (as opposed to those 'good' broken necks you can get sometimes).

Pretty obvious what had happened I think, but she didn't have a clue. She didn't even notice that dead body #2 had a fucking arm missing! Didn't dust for prints, didn't take witness statements, didn't check the bodies properly, just looked at the Access All Areas pass in dead body #1's hand and then shrugged.

So here, once and for all, is what happened. I considered not telling you and letting this saga go on like Twin Peaks for weeks and weeks, and you could all write in with your suggestions and there could be a prize if anybody got it, but I can't be arsed. I'm not known for my patience.

So...body #1 had rushed the stage and taken my Access All Areas pass so security couldn't stop him being there. He grabbed my lightsaber and went to attack me. Body #2 ran on to protect me and took the full blow from the lightsaber, losing his arm in the process. I pushed body #1 away and he hit his head on the wall at the back of the stage, falling dead and bleeding to the ground, still clutching my Access All Areas Pass and my lightsaber leaning beside him. In the meantime, body #2 had slipped on a discarded crisps packet, falling back against the speakers, his missing arm meaning he could not break his fall, smacking his head and falling to the ground, breaking his neck (badly) on the steps and blood streaming from him.

It's fucking obvious if you just fucking think about it.

The CSI girl said that a broken neck wouldn't bleed...I had to point out once again that he'd had his fucking arm cut off.

There's going to be a lot of unsolved murders in the Teeside area in coming years...

Hey. Miss me? Of course you do.

I've got a busy week ahead, after the empty, sad and lonely one that is about to pass, so thought I should put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) and write something whilst I am able to. Am off to Newcastle for a couple of days on Monday and Tuesday then London and Somerset for the rest of the week ahead.

But anyhows, what news from my camp?

Well, as the title of this blog would suggest and as promised in my last blog entry, I have news about the podcast, and it is thus;

Ahem...

The Ray Peacock Podcast Number #1 will go online for download in mp3 format on the 4th June 2007, for an initial run of ten roughly-weekly shows. It is totally free, you can listen to it online or your iPod (it is pretty much mostly in stereo if you listen through headphones), and www.chortle.co.uk have very kindly agreed to host it. We are currently trying to work out how to put it on MySpace and iTunes also. MySpace should be easy enough (there is a MySpace page at www.myspace.com/theraypeacockpodcast which you are all more than welcome to come and be friendly at) but the iTunes thing is proving trickier as I have been put in charge of it. I'm not very good at doing technical internet things, and often struggle to get my emails properly, so having a load of sheets of paper talking about RSS feeds and all that bollocks that I in no way understand hasn't really been the idiot's guide to putting a podcast on iTunes that I had been hoping for. The instructions are as difficult to follow as the ones for my dvd recorder, which I got at Christmas and am still yet to burn a dvd on.

But never mind this technical stuff, what can you expect from the podcast itself?

I'm glad you asked, and I would like you to remember and continue to bear in mind that it is free before you start turning your nose up at it. If the first episode is anything to go by then you should evaporate any expectation of anything beyond myself and Little Raji James who used to be on Eastenders but ruined it babbling on at each other for forty minutes. Steve Morrison (my occasional writing partner) shall also be present ordinarily, but as he was seeing another writing partner behind my back at the time that we recorded it, he is only heard fleetingly on the telephone (and that may end up being edited out as he began the conversation by asking me if I was doing the podcast with "that black").

Myself and little Raji are going to record another section for it this week, but I can tell you thus far that the first episode contains discussions about crying babies, Scottish neighbours playing bagpipe cds in the morning, far too much casual racism, faux pas at Doctor Who conventions, late night MSN conversations and a water tight defence of using the word 'cunt'. I can sense your excitement and expectation...

And that's all my news. Literally. The week past has been utterly barren of anything worthy of mentioning other than the day spent recording the podcast - and indeed, the podcast was the only thing that could be attributed to artistic achievement in a week I'd originally intended to be brimming with it. Hence the lack of blogs. Wouldn't have been very interesting for me to write a blog about how my Jabba the Hutt throne model arived on Tuesday would it?

If anybody from my management is reading this then I promise I shall start doing some work from Monday onwards. I'd start on Sunday but I am planning to watch all six Star Wars films back to back once and for all, which is just as important if you think about it...

I lost nearly two hours of my life tonight by watching Basic Instinct 2. I don't know what I was thinking...there weren't even hardly any busters in it.

Last night I did yet another audience warm up, this time for The Consultants at Teddington Studios. You know how these new shows sometimes have a tendency to be a bit shit? Well I am happy to report that this is very much NOT the case with The Consultants - the fact that the show was so good and all the sketches hit the mark made my job a whole lot easier. The fact that my little legs were tired after a few hours running around the audience made my job a whole lot harder though.

Also - I feel I must say - I was essentially locked away by my management yesterday. The show was an Avalon production and my call time for the show was 4pm, which I arrived promptly at and was bundled into my dressing room. There was a script and stuff in there and I noticed that the show wasn't being recorded until 7pm, which I thought was slightly odd. I wasn't in the show, I was just the warm-up person.

An hour went by without me hearing a thing.

Then another one.

I eventually got bored with reading comic books and there was no telly or porn or anything in there, so I decided to venture outside of my cell and see if anybody anywhere cared about me. I ran into the producer Nick Symmons and he made a nice fuss over me. I explained that I had been there since four and he said that I was called for that time as he thought it would have been helpful for me to sit in on the dress rehearsal. I said that nobody had told me that. He said did I not think to just come down to the studio. I said no. He was very apologetic. I said in future he might be best of leaving me a little note.

I personally think Nick Symmons arranged the whole charade deliberately to undermine me, whenever our career paths have crossed he has seemed to go to great pains to place me in uncomfortable situations.

A few years ago, for example, he employed me on Harry Hill's TV Burp to play a character called the "Couch potato", which involved me dressed up in a massive potato outfit (later seen in my 2005 Edinburgh show) and walking the streets of London causing mischief. We filmed one of these at the Brits that year and it wasn't any good so we never did any more, but the first time I set foot on the streets dressed that way I was jumped on by a gang of youths who tried (and failed I might add) to 'tip me over'. They failed to take into account my trademark low centre of gravity that defied many an opposing rugby league team in my playing days of yesteryear.

Now, I'm not one for keeping my fists down in these physically confrontational scenarios but it is really difficult to maintain any degree of being handy when you are dressed as a fucking potato. Nick Symmons, on the other hand, was out of the blocks like a good'un, swinging his arms at my young foes and chasing them away. If you've ever met Nick you will know what an unlikely image that evokes, but I swear to god he took no prisoners that day. That moment alone cemented my admiration and respect for the man. That and the fact that he tends to produce exceptional television, and as I said, I have no doubt that The Consultants will maintain his consistency.

So, the warm up went well enough. It was a long old recording, and because of the breaks between sketches and costume changes and that, it meant that I was having to do far more work than I normally would on a TV warm up, but it chugged along reasonably nicely over the course of the evening. I met some great people in the audience, including a couple called Chris and Crystal who had met when she was stranded at Leicester Square tube station after coming over from Canada, he looked after her, they got engaged six weeks later and now have been married for seven years. Isn't that lovely?

On the other side of the coin I met a man who had bought himself the title of "Baron" on the internet, and terrified both myself and the rest of the audience with his tales of being in Pantomime up north. Apparently he was in (or had) Aladdin in Durham many years ago but struggled to understand what the northerners were saying...yeah, he was weird.

My warm up ended with me proposing to a girl named Clare who I had met at the beginning of the evening and done some of my great flirting with. She turned me down, but explained it was because she was scared of Julie the floor manager who I had intimated previous intimacies with.

The best TV warm ups are, in my opinion, when you can ingratiate yourself with the people working on the set and play this up to the audience. Throughout the evening I had spoken about the sexual tension between myself and Julie, whilst she occasionally shot me nasty glances much to the delight of the studio audience. Everytime she halted my babbling to begin filming I had a smart arse flirty comment to throw back at her, and the double act started to write itself with her saying things along the lines of "We're going to do it one more time" (Me: I used to dread her saying that), "Nearly there now" (Me: She used to say that to make me try harder), etc etc oh you get the idea...

She played bad cop to my good cop brilliantly and deliberately, and the look she could give when taking off her glasses and tossing an icy glare my way after I'd been naughty would be enough to strike excited fear into a lesser man. The 'banter' with her was the highlight of my evening, and I can't thank her enough for making me look good.

And that was that. I really wanted to stick around for drinks afterwards with everybody, but truth be told I was too fucking knackered to. I'm always very aware of seeming rude in those sorts of situations, because it is rare that I ever do hang back after a show, but it really is just a case of being tired and knowing that I have a long drive home to negotiate before I can properly relax, as opposed to me not actually wanting to. Well, sometimes I don't actually want to, but last night wasn't one of those times...

And that was that - I have a kind of a week off this week, with just one compering gig just around the corner from my house, so you may not hear from me, but all being well there will be some definite news about the podcast within the next seven days as that is taking priority in my sabattical. I am assured by the 'producer' (little Raji James) that we are very nearly good to go, and I have no reason to doubt him. I am sure he wouldn't let me down, especially as he would technically be letting all of you down as well as himself.

I'm not at all tired but I have run out of things to say so shall fuck off and leave you to it. I will probably just wander around my house now all sad and anxious in the morning light. Not that you care.

xxx

Hello

So firstly, today I fell over.

I can't recall the last time I fell over in public but let me assure you it really doesn't get any less embarrassing the more you do it.

I was leaving my house to go to the Fopp gig this evening (Tues) and there was one of them foam sheet things that they use in packaging lying on the steps outside my house. Being a relatively lazy chap, bending over was never an option so I simply stepped on it. Slippy fuckers them sheets are. I fell for at least twenty seconds, flailing my little limbs in an effort to find some sort of solid ground but eventually lying in a heap on the second step, my knee red hot and feeling wet with blood already and my elbow throbbing.

Luckily there were a couple of hundred children from a nearby school walking past, otherwise nobody would have witnessed my feat of stupidity and found the necessary humour in it to laugh like fucking hyenas as I picked myself up and, for some reason, walked back into my house rather than to the car.

I gave it ten minutes before venturing out again (to ensure that my audience had moved on, and to check the damage to my knee which was horrific and probably needed stitches if I wasn't so brave as to just hold some tissue paper against it and cry a bit). Back on the first step I moved the foam sheet (which I actually suspect was from the packaging of my Jabba the Hutt statue from a few weeks back - dunno how it got there), and I actually hit it in anger. Genuinely, like a fucking five year old I hit it! It wasn't nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.

So into London I went, having a little mooch around Forbidden Planet and buying some comic books to kid myself I'm still relatively young. Mike McShane was in Forbidden Planet, speaking very animatedly to a friend about a comic book. I would have spoken to him but I don't know him.

I met Little Raji James who used to be on Eastenders but ruined it for a quick drink before the show. He was off to a film premiere in Leicester Square, some Shilpa Shetty thing, and when I met him he was bounding up the road from Leicester Square with his Ipod in his ears singing out loud to "Don't you forget about me" as he bounced along. It was like the end of the Bollywood version of The Breakfast Club and I didn't know where to look and so just simply stared in astonishment at the man. I was relaying this tale to my friend and Chortle Student Final maker up of numbers Ed Gamble tonight and we both agreed that we are worried about Raji's sanity. Or at least we would be if his slip from stability wasn't so fucking funny to watch.

I have informed Raji that he and I are not to talk at any length in the near future until we record the first podcast (that is so imminent you can almost smell it), because there are simply too many things that I want to talk to him about on the record. Our conversations are wasted in private, I want everybody to hear them.

Fopp was a nice gig this evening, with Edinburgh previews from Dave Ward and Al Pitcher. It was nice to see people getting nervy about the fringe, and going through the excitement of putting a new show together and that, but it provided me with no envy about not going up to Scotland this year. The idea of going up there really doesn't appeal to me right now - I am a big fan of the place, just from afar these days.

On my way home I stopped in at a KFC in North Finchley to grab something to eat. Oddly, over the last few weeks I have come across a couple of peripheral players from my life past who I really wanted to tell you about, but had difficulty in putting it into the right sort of words as it is a vaguely awkward topic to discuss, but I'm going to give it a crack.

I used to live in North Finchley when I first moved to London, and it's perhaps the only place in my life that I have ever integrated myself into the local community, due in no small part to the fact that I worked behind the bar of the Tally Ho pub on the High Road. It was a a fucking rotten job, but it was also one of the best and perhaps most decadent times of my life, I was getting over a long-term relationship at the time and so my life consisted of very late nights and going too far at the dark ends of the street with various barmaids and customers alike. Some may call it a slag phase, but I prefer to think of it as me simply having too much love to give...

(You buy that?)

I met some great people, as well as some cunts, but with the passage of time it makes no difference as I am no longer in touch with either.

There were two people that made a genuine impression on me at that time however, and they are the two people that I have bumped into over the last few weeks, the second being this evening outside the KFC.

The first one was a guy called William who lived in a 'home' in Barnet, who would come down to the pub on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon and be the most genuinely entertaining man I have ever met. He would wander around the pub, often collecting glasses and chatting with everybody. It is very difficult to explain how he spoke, but basically he would refer to people walking past and say things along the lines of "There's your dad! I didn't know you're dad walked around here!". I know it doesn't sound funny, but trust me - it really was. He had no doubt heard somebody say this sort of thing in a coherent way at some point and simply learned and repeated it, but it was genuinely funny - and not in a 'laughing at the special bloke' way, it was just surreal stream of consciousness. When I bumped into William in the Tally ho the other week I was with my friend Martin and William pointed at him and said "Hello Dickie Davies! (then to me) I didn't know you were friends with Dickie Davies!".

Martin doesn't look even a little bit like Dickie Davies. I hurt myself laughing at this.

Now, I am a bit of a soft touch with people like that, and would slip him free drinks at the expense of J D Wetherspoons, because the dude kept me entertained during 12-12 shifts, and despite his seemingly impenetrable personality I would often try to break through to him in some way in, I convinced myself, much the same way as Tom Cruise in Rain Man. I was often told that it was impossible, that he was on a different plane to everybody else, perfectly contentedly so like, but nevertheless not really aware of what we would consider 'reality'. The thing is, I did break through to him in a most unlikely way.

I would spend most of my time behind that bar singing. Wetherspoons had a policy of having no music in their pubs, and so to beat 'the man' I would provide my own musical accompaniment. On the day in question I was singing Simon Smith and his amazing dancing bear which is a fairly obscure song to most people - it's the sort of song that people think they know, but actually don't, it just has a familiar feel to it. As I was singing it one day, I heard from the other side of the pub somebody singing the piano refrain from the song.

Dooodoo do do do do, doodoo do do do do...

It was William, pointing straight at me with a massive grin across his face, his other hand miming playing a piano, whilst he cued me in to sing the verses.

From then on, whenever he came into the pub he would come straight to me and start the singing, we performed it as a duet more times than I can remember. I saw him the other week for the first time in about six years and he started to sing it again, later telling me sadly that he "did really miss me not working here anymore" which brought a genuine tear to my eye.

The other guy in Finchley who I regularly spoke to was a guy called Horace, a big black dude, who wanders around the High Street in a massive parker coat in all weather, often sitting down to draw some pictures in crayon, and incredibly endearingly shouting "The best of luck!" to any passer-by that gives him the time of day. Horace became known to me as Mr White, and I to him as Mr Boldsworth (my real name) as he once informed me that he was a "formal gentleman" and liked to be adressed as such and would adress me in kind.

Now, in contrast to William, Mr White is not quite as stable in his actions and would occasionally have enormously aggressive outbursts on the street, seemingly out of nowhere. From a long way away you would hear him go from "The best of luck!" to "You fucking cunt! You fucking fucking cunt!".

For a long time I just thought this came from nowhere, but as we got to know him better we found out that people were goading him into doing it. There was a word that when shouted at him will trigger this response. I'm obviously not going to tell you what that word is, it's pretty non-descript, and I don't know why it triggers the outbursts but it is genuinely upsetting to see, and as I got out of my car tonight I heard "you fucking cunt! you fucking fucking cunt!" behind me and knew straight away that it was Mr White.

I went over to him quickly and said hello, in an attempt to diffuse his temper. It worked immediately, and I was greeted with "Hello Mr Boldsworth, not seen you for a long time". We had a little chat, and he asked after Miss So-and-so who I used to knock about with, and a car pulled up beside us. Four lads inside and one of them asked Mr White if he wanted some food, Mr White said yes, and then this cretinous specimen threw an empty KFC drink and wrapper right at Horace, before shouting 'the word', triggering an outburst and driving away laughing.

When William would walk through the pub, certain individuals would wind him up, and take the piss out of him, all in aid of their own and their friends amusement. This is very different to somebody making disabled jokes or whatever, I see no reason to exempt anyone or anyone's situation from humour, but this is very precise, very specfic and personally targetted cruel bullying.

Seeing this cruelty still going on was the depressing downside to crossing paths with them both again. Like I say, I haven't seen either of them for around about six years, yet they are both still figures of fun to some people (not all I hasten to add - just a distinct minority), and have to endure this bullying when they go out and attempt to integrate into society. One of the main problems with the care in the community idea, wasn't the much mooted idea that these people simply can't operate in the community, but rather the fact that parts of the community are simply unable of offering any semblance of care, choosing instead to abuse these 'impaired' people for their own entertainment. There are genuinely some out and out cunts knocking about.

So the reason for me mentioning William and Mr White today, is just to say that I personally think they are both fantastic people - not patronisingly, genuinely. As I said, William happily entertained me consistently at my time at the Tally Ho pub, and a "Best of luck!" from Mr White would regularly temper any late night dark mood when I went down to the local 7Eleven. They should have every right to lead as normal a life as anyone, regardless of whatever mental issues they have, and the fucking bullying that I saw them endure is an absolute insult and disgrace. To find someone's weakness and exploit it in such a way for literally no reason is abhorrent.

The only evidence of retarded people I saw this evening were those lads who found it so funny to throw a drink at somebody after pretending to be friendly towards them. Like beckoning a cat towards you and then striking it. It may be one of the cruellest things I ever saw in my life, and my only bit of consolation is the possibility they were laughing so much at their hilarious 'joke' that they wrapped their shitty little Fiesta around a fucking lampost on their way home, ridding society of four less cunts in the process.

Tipping them out of their wheelchairs would be an exception to weakness exploitation I would gladly allow.

So, yet another bank holiday weekend comes and goes. This time, I decided not to work over the holiday, just to see what it would be like.

I fucking hate bank holiday weekends, it makes my idle life seem so much less special when everybody gets the same plus points for a few days. In fact, I'm glad it rained today and ruined it for you all - I bet it's gorgeous weather again tomorrow when you all have to go back to work and I can sit in the garden and enjoy it (if I manage to get out of bed that is - I don't have to you see...). My dark side has been woefully underused of late and I think I feel a demon phase coming on...

Well, as soon as I've worked out how to use my new dishwasher my demon phase will come on...I moved into this house four months ago and only got it yesterday, but now that I have all possible domestic appliances in place I can now look for a wife and get on with being naughty again.

So, what do we need to discuss? I see that Chortle have got a new search engine thing on the site which can pinpoint specific comics by a narrowed down search. Was dismayed to see that I am not considered to be a 'conversational' comedian, but am firmly attributed to being a 'character' comedian despite not being such for over a fucking year. On top of the annoyance this caused, I was further rubbed up the wrong way when pointed in the direction of some comments in the 'comedians' section on the Chortle forums about me, which said something along the lines of "I've only just realised that Ray Peacock is a joke name - Rapey Cock"...

Right.

Let's get this sorted out once and for fucking all. "Ray Peacock" was the name of a character I used to do (my real name being, as we all know, Ian). When I stopped doing the character I retained the name "Ray Peacock" as a stage name. It is no longer a character act. I repeat - it is no longer a character act. And nor is it a joke name. I do not profess to be a comedy genius (but I am one), however I would be able to come up with a better 'joke' name than Ray Peacock. It is just a name. A random name.

And while we are on the subject - can somebody explain to me what the fuck a 'Rapey Cock' is? Why would it be a joke? It doesn't actually mean anything. Whenever anybody has said it to me and laughed I have always stared back at them blankly, because I really don't see what the joke name is. "Rapey Cock" is just nonsense. Only Tittybangbang would try and pass that off as a joke.

And I apologise for the bad language - I am perhaps from an unstable family eh Peter Kay?

I swear to god, I am coming so close to wandering around muttering to myself about not being 'understood' - if you look up 'tortured artist' in the dictionary you'll get a link to this blog soon. And people wonder why I turn to the dark side from time to time...

Anyhow, as I told you, on Friday (well, Thursday really because I stayed over) I went back to Bristol to do a full day as warm up on Deal or no deal. If you don't believe me then you can follow this link and see a picture of me telling the banker to fuck right off under the wing of resident warm-up Mark Olver. I had good reason to tell the banker to fuck off too, because he made my job considerably more difficult on Friday. Again, can't really give away details, but suffice to say, it is not easy keeping a crowd of people 'warmed up' after they have watched three consecutive massacres unfold in front of their very eyes. It was more like riot control. If you think the tension is bad when you watch the programme at home, you want to try being slap bang in the middle of it in real life...

I did manage to do an impression of Mr Edmonds though, with my jeans pulled up high and my t-shirt tucked into them, on the actual Deal or no deal stage during my warm up which was great fun and not a little surreal - particularly as the real Mr Edmonds then ran onto the floor and physically ejected me. As you have read on this here blog, I have had some weird heckles and attacks on stage, but nothing will ever beat being pushed off stage by Noel Edmonds whilst he proclaimed I looked nothing like him. I countered that I was trying more for look from the SwapShop years and that was the icing on the cake of the experience. Couldn't quite work out whether the man actually liked me or not, but can't come away with anything but respect for him after witnessing him at work over the full day - he's fucking exceptional. No autocue either by the way - his entire presenting is off the cuff. Very impressive.

Then Saturday was over to Cardiff for the rugby league.

If you haven't been to Cardiff town centre recently then you would be in for a bit of a shock as most of it has been knocked down. I was planning to park opposite the Big Sleep hotel in the multi-storey as I knew how to get there, but once I did get there I was met with sky where the buildings used to be. Really weird to see the land so altered (The Big Sleep hasn't been knocked down like, but if it was they might get an extra star).

As I said last time, I'm a big fan of the Millenium Stadium, but I did witness an unbelievably ridiculous bit of red tape there. The Huddersield Giants team were coming through the gates (they were playing on Sunday but had come to watch the Saturday match) and one of the players (Ryan Hudson) had lost his ticket. The rest of the squad left him to it as he stood on his own searching his pockets for the missing ticket and trying to persuade the people manning the gates that he was a player. I quickly scanned through my programme to see if there was a picture of him in it and there was, so I went over to try to help. Even the fact that he had arrived amongst the Huddersfield team, and even with a programme of the actual event with his fucking picture in it, they wouldn't let him in. He thanked me for trying, but they didn't budge. How childish is that? Bethany Black told me she got to a gig recently and they didn't let her in until the audience were allowed in - and she was in the fucking show! Tell you, if I turned up at a gig and they didn't let me in, I'd be straight back home without looking back. See how they fucking got on without me.

The game was good on Saturday, and an easy win for Saints against major rivals Wigan which is always welcome (despite being par for the course over the last few years). Because there were three matches on that day, you had six different sets of supporters in the stadium. No segregation, all sat side by side and amongst each other, no bother, everyone in good spirits and being primarily supportive of the actual game of rugby league above and beyond club loyalties. I once again must express my pride in being associated with by far the greatest sport in the world...

As always, after the elation of the game I had the steep emotional comedown on the way home, and my mood has swung like Spider-Man all weekend since, but I have plenty of books to read, and I am restarting my writing with a vengeance tomorrow which should serve as some sort of distraction short-term. Getting on top of my moods is a constant battle, but we shall dwell on that some other time.

The dishwasher should restore some sort of balance too.

I've just about recovered from my day of warm-up on Deal or no deal on Tuesday and am ready to report back to you.

The ridiculously early rising hour took it's toll on me and the journey to Bristol definitely took another five years off my life (adding up these regular five year deductions I'm not sure how I am still alive today). For some reason I thought that leaving that early would mean I could just drive through without all those bothersome other cars on the road but that simply wasn't so. The A1 was full up already and, not to be outdone, the M25 was massively oversubscribed with users. Do normal people really get up at 6am in the morning and sit in that every day to go to work? You must be fucking mental. It took me three hours to do thirty miles and there was no way I was going to meet my call time of 9.30 at the studios.

The plan was that I was simply going to observe the warm-up for the first show, as the warm-up requirements are very specific.

I don't know how I did it, but I got there at one minute to ten, just in time for Mark Olver to hug away my frustrations at the studio door and then walk straight onto the floor to begin the warm-up. Well, I say I don't know how I did it - I do - but don't think it would be wise to incriminate myself on here by giving specific miles-per-hour...I'm going to get a hotel this evening to try to avoid a driving ban when I return tomorrow.

As I stood and watched Mark do his stuff, a lady in the crew came and said hello and asked me if I was there on work experience. I told her I was doing the warm-ups in the afternoon and then thought about it and said "so...yes...I suppose I am". That's how it felt on Tuesday - like the first day of work in a new job, with all the awkwardness of not knowing where you are meant to be or what to do when you got there. It didn't feel like that for too long though. Like in any job, your first day stands or falls in direct relation to how good your mentor is and how well they welcome you and put you at ease.

When you work in comedy, one of the first things you become aware of is the sibling rivalry between comedians. It is rare that a comic will forgo the opportunity to trip another comedian up in favour of actually helping them along the way. With this in mind, when another comedian does help another along, it becomes all the more noticeable (after the suspicion it arouses is gotten over of course).

What I am saying is, Mark Olver could not have been more helpful in teaching me the ropes of the job and, perhaps more importanly, diluting my nervousness on Tuesday. He has been doing the warm-up for Deal or no deal from the very beginning and watching him on the floor it was clear why. He is exceptionally good at it - totally integrated into the crew and adored by the contestants and audiences alike, it's little wonder they have kept hold of the lad. It became very clear to me as I watched him, that there would be no shame in simply copying exactly the template he had honed.

I know there will be other comics reading this now and thinking "It's only a TV warm-up for fuck's sake - what's all this template bollocks your banging on about?" and to those comedians I would say "Oh fuck off".

The thing with Deal or no deal is, it really isn't a regular TV warm-up because it isn't a comedy show. It's not a matter of getting the audience up for laughing, because that isn't a prerequisite of the show, it's all far more technical than that. They don't want the audience taking it lightly, they want them engrossed and tense from time to time, and despite the fact that the actual show being filmed is likely to cause that in them naturally, it is still a reasonably delicate path to tread as the studio 'warm-up'.

I can't give anything away about the specfics of the two shows I did on Tuesday afternoon because they won't be aired till September, and I can't give specifics away about the behind the scenes stuff, and nor would I want to, because the cloud of mystery that surrounds certain parts of the show (like the banker and all that) is what makes it great and me telling you about it would merely ruin it for you, so I will just tell you that the tight-nit crew were very supportive of me and made me feel really welcome and part of the team, and I did well despite a couple of little hiccups, and was pretty proud of myself in my attempt to fill Mark's shoes for the day.

Especially because, when we were waiting for the recording to begin I was eavesdropping the contestants bemoaning the fact that Mark wasn't going to be there and saying how much they loved him. Before I went on for the first one, the director played Mark's radio Bristol show over the speakers and Mark spoke directly to the studio which gave me a brilliant 'way-in' to go for the sympathy vote. I told the audience how much the contestants and crew all loved Mark, and how much I needed the audience on my side, and they went for it. The audience looked after me as much as I looked after them, and I might try the same trick tomorrow when I do it all again.

Also - most impressively - not one swear left my lips. Which is more than can be said of Edmonds who managed to ruin all my SwapShop memories by saying 'bollocks', 'shit' and 'bloody'.

But I never told you that.

One of the things that happened that I will tell you about however was a mobile phone incident. Obviously part of the requirement of a TV audience is that they all have their mobile phones turned off. I'd ordered this at the beginning, made them check and double check that they were off, and the filming had gotten underway. Thirty seconds in and the sound of a ring tone filled the studio and everything ground to a halt. So here's a tip, when you switch off your phones in these situations, make sure you don't have an alarm set on it because that will still ring. All the crew were cross with the lady in question, but I really felt for her because that exact same thing happened to me one year in Edinburgh when I was watching the Durham Revue. The embarrasment factor of it feels really unfair too, because you're trying to do the right thing by switching your phone off entirely and then it makes you look a fool, or worse just plain rude. A lesser warm-up person would have gone back on and made a big deal out of it, but she had nothing but my sincerest sympathy.

Even if she had just cost Endemol twenty grand or something.

And that's about that for now, no other news I don't think. After my Deal or no deal stinti tomorrow I'm off to Cardiff on Saturday as Saints (hooray) are playing Wigan (booo) at the Millenium stadium in a special one-off rugby league fixture (all the Super League teams are playing a game each over the weekend - but I'm just going to the three games on Saturday) so that will be nice I think, I'm a big fan of the Millenium Stadium - I had one of the best days of my life there in 2004 when me and a much lesser St Helens celebrity than myself gatecrashed the players party after we won the Challenge Cup, and I'm looking forward to visiting it again.

Rubbing shoulders with Noel Edmonds (literally - exactly the same height me and Edmonds), and going to watch Saints at the best major stadium in the UK - how exciting is this week shaping up to be? You are right to envy me...

Speak when I get back x

This may be a quick one (although whenever I say that it normally turns into a monster post) as I need to be up in just over three hours to go and do a day's work in Bristol.

I'm doing a couple of days as studio warm-up on Deal or no deal tomorrow and Friday, and tomorrow I shall have the pleasure of being taught how to do this by Mark Olver who is the regular/resident warm-up person on the show. He told me on the telephone this evening that it's a 'piece of piss' but I am loathe to accept anything that Olver says to me as truth, particularly given that he told me that the gig in Bristol where I ended up practically naked, doing pull-ups on on the ceiling supports whilst the audience mulled over the best ways to attack me, was 'a lovely gig'.

We shall see...I am both looking forward to it and nervous about it too. Not helped by the fact that I have to be up at fucking 5am. Why they have to film it in Bristol is beyond me, but apparently my suggestion of them filming a few in my conservatory was rejected by the top brass there. I don't know if that means Edmonds or the banker bloke, but either way, I have to go to them.

Anyhow, on Saturday I did a gig (as I mentioned) at Bracknell again. However, it was different to usual in that it wasn't a regular gig. A gentleman named Clive had booked the venue for his fortieth birthday party and wished to have comedy on too.

It was a very strange affair. Mainly because I am now so used to performing there to the regular crowd, but suddenly I was in exactly the same room, all looking the same, but filled with...and I'm not being ungracious...'posh' folk from outside the area.

And 'posh' folk sometimes don't like people like me. Well...I'll rephrase that...sometimes don't like me.

Why this made me swear so much more than normal is anybody's guess, but I think there is some sort of unresolved Northern working class chip on my shoulder that simply won't allow me to ever behave in an appropriate manner within these strange situations. I just felt that we really had no mutual ground to meet on, and that the gig had been 'invaded' in some way.

Yet, for all my moaning and incorrect (as always) pre-empting of what it would be like, it actually turned out good.

It was a fun night, and birthday boy Clive himself compered the show (I actually believe that it had been his plan all along to simply buy a comedy club so he could demonstrate his potential) and I had a lot of fun playing with the audience/guests - particularly when I had one of the posh blokes on stage in an attempt to teach him how to appear 'hard' with a roleplay of me spilling his beer in a pub. He was doing really well until he showed his true colours by getting out a pristine white handkerchief to mop up the spillage. All that after I had warned him that he was under no circumstances to apologise to me for spilling his drink too.

I love when people apologise for things that aren't their fault though. Katherine from the Comedy Company told me the best one I've ever heard on Saturday about when she was walking through London and apologised to a bin that she had walked into.

In all it was a much nicer night than I had envisaged, but I would still maintain that I was not worthy of the encore. As a general rule, if a compere asks an audience whether they want more and they simply don't respond, it is not a cue to then say "Please welcome back, Ray Peacock!" - particularly as Ray Peacock was in the process of running away from the building. Still, as I said, it was Clive's first gig...he'll learn as he gets a few more under his belt (assumming he has enough money to keep buying gigs to perform at of course).

Then on Sunday I had a day trip up to Durham to do the Cool Fun Comedy Night run by my great mate and Chortle Student Award Finalist No-Hoper, Ed Gamble.

As I wasn't really relishing the idea of driving that far up country, I decided to invite my little pal and sidekick who used to be on Eastenders , Raji James, to accompany me on the trip.

He brought his video camera and we again attempted to make a road movie, but as the battery on his camera was fucked, I am not sure how successful this has been. I know that he captured me resolutely refusing to put on my SatNav despite the fact that I then went on to turn straight onto the M1 towards London, and I know that he goaded me into saying some pretend-racist things in an attempt to either blackmail or undermine me in the future, and I know that he managed to film my entire set at the gig (because he could plug in the camera) including my impassioned speech that we as a society forgive Gary Glitter (I meant Gary Barlow - I just said the wrong name by accident) and my claim that, despite being morally against any forms of violence, I would happily kick Jordan in the face without blinking, but other than all that, I don't know what he will be able to salvage for YouTube...

I enjoyed Cool Fun Comedy Night immensely though. It may have been partly because I was around mates who I hadn't seen for a while or partly because all the girls bloody loved me after the show, but I think the main reason for liking it was the fact that it is just a gig put on by some students. That sounds dreadfully condescending, and I absolutely don't mean it that way, but I am a big admirer of people just doing comedy for the fun. All the regular performers there could just expend their energies trying to get gigs at professional clubs, or ring for open spots and that, but instead they have found a great venue of their own and are putting on the show they want to do. And I really like that idea, I really like that they are just doing it, and that it is turning out to be good. I am currently sitting here painfully aware that this sounds so fucking patronising, but that's really not what I am doing, I just genuinely admire people creating stuff and showing it off. I'd much rather go to a night like that than something slick and overproduced that has just had a shitload of cash thrown at it to publicise it.

Don't get me wrong, it's got to be funny too. There's nothing I hate more than a whole show of performers showing off to the back of the room whilst an audience sits baffled, but thankfully this didn't occur very much during Sunday's show, and the room was full with an appreciative crowd who were only too willing to allow myself and the other acts on stage to indulge in stuff that they perhaps wouldn't do at a normal club. It was certainly the most relaxed I have felt in front of an audience for a long while, and that alone made the traipse up there worth it.

The long journey up there also enabled myself and Raji to discuss the forthcoming podcast that I am going to be doing, and the journey back enabled Raji to inexplicably spend an hour or so pretending that he was in the secret service for some unfathomable reason.

That was when we stopped at Scotch Corner services to get petrol, and for some reason Raji wouldn't come into the actual bit where you pay, choosing instead to wander around my car suspiciously glancing up at the security cameras and furtively eyeing up the other customers as though they were an imminent threat. When I came out after paying he opened my car door for me, all the time looking arond the place as though I was about to be attacked, and then got in the car himself.

He wasn't even that drunk, and I have searched the internet all day today to see whether this sort of behaviour is evidence of some sort of mental breakdown or impending madness, but have drawn a blank. The fucking video camera wasn't even on - I don't know what on earth he was doing, and he wouldn't explain it to me, even when I pointed out that if, heaven forbid, Scotch Corner services has an armed robbery or something of that ilk in the near future, he'll be the first fucking person arrested.

He's a funny fucker though, and he lets me bully him so I shan't hear any other criticism of the man. Unless it's about East is East which he was in, because that was fucking rubbish.

Let's end this post abruptly - I really have to go to bed.