Well, I'm fed up coming back here every day to search for part two of Ray's "Big and Daft" story (I know what happens; but then that didn't stop me watching the film of Lord of the Rings either), so I thought I'd better add another blog entry instead. In true Ray style he'll post it 15 minutes after me anyway so that I don't appear at the top of the blogs, so this entry will make it happen. It's a bit like lighting a fag in a restaurant to make your food arrive.

Last night I did the rarest of things on a Monday - a double-up. Monday is supposedly the ghost-night for Comedy; if you want proof of that, check the TV ratings on a week when there's no football (OK, they're rare too) - Monday is the big draw. The weekend has just passed, people are skint, Spooks is on. Stay in.

I'm skewing the facts somewhat though, because this 'double-up' was a TV Warm Up followed by a gig. The TV show in question was Graham Norton's Bigger Picture, which is recorded at 5pm to give them time in the edit to make sure it's ready to go out at 10:30pm that evening.

In warm up, the type of show you are recording heavily influences the sort of warm-up you end up doing. Sketch shows, complicated game shows (with a lot of studio bits to strike) and sitcoms involve quite a lot of you coming on and off the studio floor throughout, so you tend to pace yourself. However, panel shows, talk shows, and clip shows involve one big, enthusiastic push at the top of the recording and that can be it. I know that sounds easy, but with the exception of Have I got News for you and QI, you are normally hovering at the side for the entire record in case of any problems that require you to leap on the studio floor and fill in, which probably happens only 10% of the time. It means you are on your toes for sometimes 3 hours solid even though you are doing sod-all and it's tiring in the same way 'being a security guard' is tiring.

So after a fairly good warm up at Graham Norton (I gave myself 6/10, got some big laughs and some applause but never felt the energy was good enough), followed by 90 minutes of waiting for something wrong to happen (it didn't), it was off to Outside The Box comedy club in Kingston. I'll be honest - I never knew about this gig until I saw it win the best comedy club in London (small) category on Chortle. Kingston is a doddle for me to get to (when coming from Brighton, not, unfortunately, from London Studios on the South Bank), so I thought this was a good opportunity to do a well regarded London club. The line-ups show just how well it's doing; Reg D Hunter, Phil Nichol, Will Smith - all rock-solid headliners who are lined up to play there.

The gig's tiny, which is not a bad thing, because it means with a handful of people, it can feel full. However, it wasn't full enough to feel like that - we had about 21 people in when it started. Maff, the enormously affable guy who's in charge of proceedings, was hugely apologetic - more so than he needed to be. And then he uttered those immortal words in the world of comedy promotion; "It was packed last week".

Of course, I know where he's coming from here; but as a performer, that statement gives you mixed feelings. Can it be interpreted as "they love coming to this gig, except when YOU are on?". To the comedian's notoriously fragile sensibilities, probably. But I wasn't on their lineup; their rather garish website - http://www.outsidetheboxcomedy.co.uk/ - hadn't listed me as a I was a late addition, so I was in the clear in that respect.

After 8 years of running a big gig myself, you have to put it down to the science of chance. Once you have ruled out the biggies - live football, big outdoor events, fireworks day - whether people decide to come out or not can't be second guessed. The difference to a room though can be huge if it's a small gig. A 50 seater with 70 in is rocking and heaving, when it's just 20, it's sparse and self-conscious. At the Komedia, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between 300 and 250, yet the numerical difference is the same as above.

The difference from the performer's perspective, is that it seems harder. A group of 30 or so people can be really enjoying an act but because there's not enough 'laughers' at any one punchline to get this across, the act starts to doubt the material, and the timing can go awry. This environment really suits those people who have natural timing and bundles of confidence, because both will get chipped away by the dynamics of a half-full room.

I have to stress though, that it's never the promoter's fault, and an act who whinges at the turnout should consider themselves pleased that the gig is a fixed fee and not a door-split. That said, my luck in these matters is legendarily bad. Back in June last year, when I started pushing to do headlining sets in smaller gigs, Christian Knowles booked me for his gig in Chertsey, which is a similar size to Maff's gig above. He sold it to me on the fact that it's 'always packed' and very popular.

That was the Indian sign, clearly. There was only 12 people in that night, and the venue were keen to stress to me that "It was packed last week". Unfortunately, one of those 12 people was Steve Bennett from Chortle, reviewing me for the Chortle site. Until then, I'd never had a a review here, 8 years after starting standup. Steve had seen me countless times before, but he doesn't review comperes (you'll have to ask him why that is) so this was his first time seeing me do a set. Thankfully, he was able to see through a room as busy as a Christmas dinner table, but if you want to put the wind up yourself on a sleepy Wednesday on the M25, get the editor of the UK's biggest comedy site in and spend the next half an hour gently shitting yourself.

In the end, Maff's gig was very nice, but coming on the back of warming up 500 people at London Studios, I'm not sure I was in the correct head-space. I do heartily recommend it for punters and acts alike though; it's very well produced and the atmosphere is perfect for stand-up. Get your tickets quickly; after all, it's likely to be rammed. It was packed last week.

I'm fed up writing 'I've just got back from xxxx gig'. Of course I have, I'm in a perpetual state of 'just having got back from a gig'. So to buck the trend, I'm currently at one.

No word of a lie. Here I am, backstage at Jongleurs Portsmouth, on a laptop, attached to my mobile phone, using it as a modem. It's my new mobile phone, bought especially for internet access, after I dumped my 3G card due to my mahoosive bill (scroll to my very first blog entry).

As ever, having a laptop at a gig is bloody useful. Not only can you play games and answer emails and stuff, but you can actually do some work. Sometimes the stuff I've written at a gig has been some of the best stuff I've done, and then I've got home, and either I can't remember it or it just doesn't seem as funny as when I was 'in the moment'. For some reason; that atmosphere of being around other comics, high on the adrenaline of getting on/off stage, throws better and sharper ideas into your personal ether. So I get them written ASAP and it pays off.

Of course, that's somewhat academic, as I'm at Jongleurs Portsmouth where it's nowhere near as easy to play with ideas and the crowd as it would be in a somewhat more intimate gig (that didn't have 30 RMP's [Royal Military Police] on a leaving do). But it's not impossible, and it's not at all bad tonight. The lineup tonight is Ricky Grover, Jason John Whitehead and David Hadingham - that's a good bill anywhere. I'm compering, as ever.

(pause while the shout for the 'bubbly' draw has just gone out, meaning I'll be back on stage in 5. Do they call it 'bubbly' because it doesn't count as champagne?)

Another good reason for bringing the laptop is that there's no windows to look out of. But then... only 3 Jongleurs green rooms in the UK have actualy windows you can look out of. Can you work out where that is?

Right - 2 minutes until I'm on stage, I'd better get into the correct headspace. I need to use the time while David is on stage to write my script for my radio show tomorrow – www.bbc.co.uk/southerncounties if you’re curious, between 9am and 1pm.

EDIT - just brought David on. Stupidly did my 'staying awake driving home material' which clashes with a gag David does. Only realised when I was half way through, but then I'd committed to the gag. Annoyed with myself now. He gave my hand a healthy oversqueeze on coming on. I only worked with him last week - that's down to me not concentrating. Nuts.

Part 2 of 'Dear Dairy'.

Back from my gig in Chertsey now. So where had we got to? Oh yes. The end of Monday night.

Tuesday, I was supposed to be doing Aberystwyth University. Except, I pulled out. Not because of a diary clash, or because of illness, but because I had a radio job the following morning and it's a five and a half hour there drive there, and the same back. That might seem perfectly reasonable, but let me tell you this; I rarely turn work down, to the point where it is a personal rule. Unless financially I will be worse off for doing it, I always prefer to be working than not, regardless of how good or bad the gig is. My diary on MySpace kinda reflects that. It was technically feasible that I would be able to get to the gig and back again in time, but it would be too hard. So I asked to pull the gig (and hunted around for a replacement - I think this is the least any act can do so as to minimise the inconvenience to the booker) and Christian Knowles gracefully accepted. I even offered to do it if he didn't feel the replacements available were up to muster.

So I had a day off. I went to the gym, I checked emails, I did some online shopping... it was great. I still took about 20 calls relating to Komedia, but hey, you can't have everything.

And then on Wednesday it was back to full speed again; taking my car to the bodyshop to sort out my idiot damage, confirming the acts at Komedia, missing the special delivery of my PDA (can't get it until tomorrow now) and then confirming a few key details about festivals next year (hooray! I'm off to South Africa!). I had a celebratory blueberry milkshake while opening a letter from a company that had tested my blood for food intolerances.

And it appears my tolerance for dairy - especially cows milk - is off the chart. Wheat and Rye are in the 'avoid' category also, but the milk intolerance is 5 times the threshold for them suggesting it is cut from your diet altogether. I did the test a week ago as part of my ongoing mission to work out what causes my sinus and throat problems and if it really is cow's milk and wheat - that's great - but good god, bread and cheese is probably 50% of everything I eat.

Meh. I'm not sure how I'm going to adapt to this new way of life. Gig in Chertsey was good, anyway, even though it was pretty quiet and I was being annoyingly interrupted every 40 seconds by a woman called Fiona who has taken over as the autocue operater on 8 out of 10 cats, after the previous operater apparently fell out with Jimmy Carr.

Oh god, I'm already hungry thinking about what I can't eat. Apparently, Goat's Milk is OK, as is oat milk. Oat milk? Where's the nipples on an oat?

Odd week. On Monday, I made 400 people who hated me love me (and then made 4 people who loved me hate me), on Tuesday I broke a year-long personal rule about work, and today I received a letter that - no exaggeration - will have a massive impact on my life. And it's only Wednesday. God knows what tomorrow and Friday will bring.

Mondays are usually my day off but since getting back from Edinburgh, they've been uncharacteristically busy. The Monday just gone was the busiest of the lot; and it started mid-morning with my third weekly Alexander Technique lesson.

The reason why I've not written that much about the Alexander Technique so far is because the exercises I am doing seem to be particularly divorced of anything throat related (the reason why I am going down this route). However, even though the majority of the lessons so far have involved standing up and sitting down repeatedly, and lying in a 'semi-supine' position, there's definitely something in it. As I understand it, a lot of the Alexander technique relates to the weight you put on your neck, head, and spine to remove tensions and stresses from the throat. Or something similar. She's made me adopt positions that have made me feel weightless, and other times, like I'm falling upwards. At times it seems ridiculous, but other times, unlike anything I've ever experienced. Hence me continuing with it.

My teacher's name is Juliet but she is an ordained Buddhist and has changed her name to Suryagitta (this is phonetically correct, but I have deliberately misspelt her name as she's an avid googler and I don't want her to know I'm writing about her). Most of her clients are singers and actors who have to project, unamplified, so I'm beginning to think my throat problems are small fry compared to what she has to usually do. For the first time though, today's lesson actually involved throat warming exercises. After 45 mins of lying down, standing up, sitting down, and general oddness I was ululating and sending air down across the roof of my mouth. This whole process is fascinating - I'm still cynical, but I'm also optimistic. And to a certain extent, desperate - my voice has gone twice in the last week alone and I have to sort it. It's so important, I'm becoming quite obsessive about it.

As soon as this was over, it was a quick dash to the station to head to London to work on Graham Norton's Bigger Picture. I'm doing the warm-ups for his show, which has a rather odd time slot; with it being recorded in the afternoon despite being a late night chat show. This meant I was going to finish by 7pm; just enough time to get a train back to Brighton to do my Brighton Comedy Festival Fringe show at the Marlborough Theatre. This show, despite how it's advertised in the link, was going to be a different show altogether; a collection of my best stories linked together by the stories I could extricate from the audience. Hence I spent the entire journey up tapping a script and a setlist into my new PDA.

For some reason, nearly all the guests for the show were running late, so we kicked off the record about 15 minutes over our target start time. This meant the audience were getting a touch fidgety and mardy; and I knew they would be confrontational when I started my set. However, it all seemed to click nicely and despite doing a fairly lengthy warm-up at the top (20+ minutes), I got a crowd of doubters on-side. Pretty happy at this point.

After the show, I raced through the pouring rain back to Blackfriars to get the next train back to Brighton, which was cancelled. Things were getting tight. When I finally got on, we had double the commuters in each carriage, and I felt pretty angry about it until I saw the particularly cramped-up hasidic jew stood diagonally opposite and became overwhelmed with 70 year old societal guilt about the significance of overcrowded trains.

When I finally managed to get a seat, I pulled out my PDA to continue to sort out my setlist. Except I didn't, as it was still sat on a researcher's desk at London Studios, charging. Numerous phonecalls later (with my other phone), it was in a padded envelope ready to be sent Tuesday morning via Special delivery to my home. Panic over, however, no set list.

This shouldn't have been a major problem though, as the gig at the Marlborough Theatre wasn't being billed as a major show - it hadn't been advertised anywhere and it was always going to be a 'word of mouth' gig for Brighton fans. So I was somewhat surprised to have a front row of, well, how does Ray Peacock call them? Twats.

It's not as if I can't deal with this, and it's not even as if dealing with it isn't part of my repertoire. It's just that... I shouldn't *have to*. I don't do 50 seater theatres to give lessons in crowd control to aggressive, stupid, and paraletic tits. But on this occasion, I had to. Despite the rest of the crowd being absolute angels, the only feedback heard eminated from this psychotic Scotsman ("I canne understand you, boy. Don't look me in the eyes, I kill you"), his battered wife ("don't Michael, not here, deep breaths, I fucking hate you, you've ruined my life"), her mad Zimbabwean friend ("eeeeh! Eeeeh! EEEEEEEEEEHHH! I've lost my shoes!") and her bisexual boyfriend ("[whatever soundbites exist to demonstrate someone whistling songs under their breath]").

The worst thing was, that they were enjoying themselves, but were too high and rude to show that in a way that didn't wreck it for everyone else. So instead of ignoring them, or barracking them, after 3 minutes of bright red internal warning signs, I politely asked them what it would take for them to leave. When they wouldn't, I got on with the show, returning every 5 minutes or so to build a damning character profile on each of them. This became a running joke. The first to crack was the wife, who left her potentially violent husband ready to leap out at any point (and he really did look like he would). When he stumbled out, 10 minutes later, the gobby Zimbabwean lady decided to berate me for them leaving. That exchange of frank views and opinions resulted in her leaving so angrily she forgot her other shoe. Her other half then snuggled up to a supposedly unconnected male friend as soon as she was out of eyeshot. Madness.

The show ended up being 1hr 20min in the end. There's a review of it coming out next week. Ouch, possibly.

I've rambled on too long now so I will add what happened Tuesday and Today at the end of the evening when I'm back from my gig in Chertsey. I'm particularly worried about this gig as I'm driving my track car there as my road car is getting repaired after I crashed it (point 6 on my 10th Oct blog). I never normally drive this to gigs where I can't park it securely. Suffice to say I don't imagine the weirdness or bad luck has run out just yet; so here's a teaser to the blog entry that's coming. I'm currently digesting my last ever milkshake.

Well, with the exception of Mr Lederer who seems to blog for Jesus (I believe he's Jewish, so is this offensive? I'm unsure, and must clarify that comment was maade to indicate the strength in depth and regularity of his postings), the done thing on here seems to be to apologise at the beginning for how sparse and infrequent one's blog entries are. So, sorry, etc.

My excuses are not as dramatic or as whimsical as Ray's or Ruth's, but have a much greater sense of guilt. Basically, dear reader, I have been blogging behind your back. The local Sussex newspaper (the Evening Argus) has got me writing a daily blog during the Brighton Comedy Festival, and this has been no small drain on my time. It's here, if you're curious.

I did consider cutting and pasting it to Chortle, but the tone of the other blog is much more introductory to both my personal experiences and the world of comedy in general. What I like about this place is that you can talk about the nuts and bolts of this industry without having to explain it all. So, here's whats on my mind at the moment.

DVD's. I got a very glossy and impressive mailshot from Roger Dow (that's Roger D to the comedy know-alls) and Rudi Lickwood today detailing their upcoming show at the Hackney Empire. It looks impressive, and is being filmed for a DVD. In a room this big, with that many punters, my personal feeling is they'd be mad not to.

I did the same when I performed at the Theatre Royal back in May (Chortle Review here). However, my reasons for getting this done were not entirely commercial. Firstly, other than the DVD's you get from the Comedy Store (single camera, fixed microphones, good for putting on YouTube), most comedians don't have a good high-quality video recording of their act. Dropping one of these in the post to a potential booker or corporate customer looks good. Primarily, it's a stand-up showreel, and you have to treat it as such.

Which is why I went completely to town with the production. 6 cameras, a hand-held digicam outside the venue, background and audience shots, separate audio mixes (which didn't work brilliantly, unfortunately) and even a seperate short documentary filmed especially for the DVD; it was as high production as I could realistically do it. I sat in on the editing process for over 3 weeks getting the show exactly how I wanted it, and even laid out the design for the DVD menus. At the end of it all, the total cost was around £3000, which I thought was very fair. And this was before I had any DVD's printed or any artwork made, making the total cost when the pallet turned up in my garden with 80 boxes of 25 DVD's, just under £5K.

And since them, I've been sending them to TV and international festival people, corporate bookers, and anyone who needs a reminder of how I've come on. In the meanwhile, I've also been flogging them on my website and in person at gigs. It's the latter that has got me stressing somewhat.

Firstly, I have to stick around after gigs to sell them. This means I'm meeting people wether I like it or not. The problem here is that the kind of people who *want* to talk to you, on the whole, tend to be mental. But I accept this is the downside to flogging yourself and have learnt to deal with it.

Secondly, I need to let people know *from the stage* that I am flogging DVD's. I have a problem with this. I'm no purist, but I do believe that your time spent on stage should be almost completely about your performance and nothing else. So that little, "hey, I'm selling xxx" at the end feels horribly tacky and commercial. It doesn't help that I've watched people like Mitch Benn and Phil Butler skillfully weave the 'I've got something to flog you' patter into their sets - it just doesn't suit what I do. My confidence goes when attempting this, as it's not something I want to hear myself saying. But I have to - because if I don't, nobody knows, and I'll sell very few. Watching Tom Stade on Sunday though, I realised you *can* do this without looking a cock. His patter is an invite to come say hi to him after the gig, and, you know, maybe buy a CD off him for the trouble. He's very relaxed about it.

Thirdly, in keeping with the point above, I feel awkward selling 'myself'. I appreciate that I'm doing that on stage beforehand, but asking people *who've already paid once to see you* to do so again before they leave, seems churlish. And I feel the ghost of Bill Hicks breathing down my neck, as if ever DVD sold is another nail in my artistic coffin. Sure, it doesn't change what I talk about or what material I do, but the fact is I'm prostituting myself in a way that feels very desperate to me, even if it doesn't come across like that.

Fourthly, what do I charge people? Having seen most of the other comic's offerings out there, I know that my DVD is pretty high quality, but of course nobody is sat there with a portable player watching an excerpt before purchasing - they go purely off the strength of the show that you've just done. My idea was to charge £10, but I wanted that to be the price on the website including postage, so online, it's £8. I found on average I was selling about 5 to 10 each show doing this. But recently, when doing Student Unions (like tonight - I was in Anglia Ruskin [Cambridge Polytechnic]) I've sold them at £5, and they've gone like wildfire. I shifted 27 tonight and in Guildford last week it was 35. Also, if another act on the bill is selling something (a CD or a DVD) I match their price.

In a strange way, it's making me pull the stops out to be as funny as possible. Of course, it's not as if I wasn't doing that previously, but the value of a strong show where you end on a high and keep the tempo up throughout literally pays big dividends, as you sell more discs. The number you shift is a very accurate way of showing how well you did on the night. Also, it's near essential to be doing a set. If I'm compering, I try to sell some DVD's, but it's really tough. Unless I'm in Brighton, I'll flog 6 or 7 tops.

That's even when in the big Jongleurs gigs; but a lot of that is down to the fact that the big J don't let you go around the room trying to flog them, which is fair enough, as they don't want their punters prayed upon. They don't take a cut and that's generous of them, as they could easily ask for that. Usually you have to position yourself outside the main room or at the tech box. However, as a booker myself, I quite like booking acts with a DVD to sell. They'll work doubly hard for every gig to go as well as possible, knowing full well it'll shift discs for them. The flipside is that they're not experimenting with lots of new material in case they die a death, but those who choose a path somewhere in the middle seem to do just as well.

What does make it easier though is that I'm very proud of what I'm selling. It's a good show - easily my best full hour - and filmed and put together very professionally. I even got it recorded in HD so that when blue-ray comes out en masse I'll be amongst the first to get a comedy DVD out in that format. And so far, the replies I've got from people who have bought it and watched it is hugely positive, and the buzz from that has been identical to the buzz of people telling you how much they enjoyed your live show in person after a gig.

But I'll be honest. Financially, I don't need this - I earn a fair wage from performing anyway, so the money made from this can be construed as greed. In the US, comedians need DVD and CD sales to supplement their earnings as the amount of work availble is much reduced and the fees and distances make the OTE of your average US comedian a poor relative to his or her UK equivalent. So it still doesn't sit easily with me; the mention of my DVD on stage and the hanging around flogging them make me feel uncomfortable. It's a very similar feeling to writing the final paragraph of this blog.

If you would like to buy my DVD, please go to the shop on my website. That hurt.

I really should treat this blog like I do my diet; doing a little and often, instead of trying to bit off a massive chunk with fairly large intervals. (I notice Ray Peacock manages massive chunks with fairly tiny intervals, so I'd better end the diet analogy here before he thinks I'm taking the piss).

So anyway, here are the topics that didn't make it into today's blog, but might be picked up later in the week:

1. I'm doing my Edinburgh show again in a few days and I'm stressing over the fact that in just 6 short weeks, I've forgotten it. And that the box office figures are a bit all over the shop.
2. I'm now writing a blog for the local newspaper as well - The Argus.
3. The national car magazine I write for has been shelved* by Future Publishing. (*What a stupid euphemism that is for cancelling something. If a publisher puts a magazine on a shelf, he's stocking it.)
4. I've had two lessons for the Alexander Technique, and it's both fascinating and baffling, and I have no idea if it has made any difference. Definitely one for a future blog.
5. The Komedia officially opened its new venue upstairs. I've written about this on the Argus blog I mentioned previously.
6. I've crashed my car. And I wasn't in it at the time. Confusing, I know, but it's my fault. Significant dents in both it and my pride.
7. I can't work out if selling DVD's is 'selling out' or not. (Spritually, that is. With 2000 in stock, they are some way off literally selling out just yet).
8. Want to wax lyrical on te ticketing nightmare that is the Brighton Comedy Festival. Just need to clear the story with my 'internal lawyers' (i.e. my sense of judgement on what will get me into trouble for publishing it).

Anyway. Here's what I want to talk about.

This morning I got a letter in the post from Jongleurs, attached to my usual confirmation letter for what shows I am doing for the next six months.



It's tough to read, but in a nutshell, the performers rates are going up by between £10 and £30 per show across the board, with different rates for;
1) In London
2) Out of London (OOT)
3) Scottish acts in Scotland
4) Non-Scottish acts in Scotland

And within each band, there's seperate fees for comperes, 1st & 2nd acts, and headliners.

This is obviously good news, but what makes it more significant is that the rates hadn't changed for a while and at the back end of the summer, an email campaign circulated around various Jongleurs regulars saying that we should 'unionise' over this and demand a payrise. I'm not sure if this action was the catalyst to this move by the big J, but it can't have hurt. I sent a text to Milton Jones earlier, as I remember speaking to him about it at the time. He was one of the first people to be so outspoken over his indignance over the Jongleurs rates, so I congratulated him. Jokingly, he told me that he'd be taking 10% of my increase.

Thank God he's not my agent. The suggested 10% is actually greater than the increase in performers' fees, meaning I'd be further out of pocket. That said, he's been part of a successful campaign to hike pay from one of the biggest companies in comedy. In that respect, he'd make a bloody good agent, as - let's face it, that's one of their key jobs.

I've just got home from a gig in Christchurch and I'm still thinking about it even though I got off stage just under 3 hours ago. Usually after a gig I come home feeling happy, or a bit disappointed, and mostly just tired. But tonight I'm feeling annoyed, and yet I'm not entirely sure that I deserve to be.

I'm pretty sure these feelings aren't wholly down to the gig itself, which is in a nightclub in the centre of Christchurch (near Bournemouth), and is your classic midweek 'ton'; 100 miles, 100 people, 100 quid. Nik Coppin was hosting, with Eddy Brimson opening and myself closing. It kicked off at 9:30pm (late for a mid-week gig), and the audience, while feisty and a bit 'green', got into the spirit of proceedings and with a bit of prompting, laughed hard throughout. Even if in some places we were having to explain every other joke. But the gig was doable, that's for sure.

Personally, I had one of those odd shows where the audience enjoyed it more than I did. I'll explain why. The room layout was a touch awkward and there wasn't a spotlight which meant that any routine that relied on seeing your expressions for subtle nuances; or any nuances, for that matter, seemed to go a bit dead. However, I was forewarned - one of the big advantages of going on last is you get to see exactly what does and doesn't work and you can tailor your own set accordingly. But none of these reasons explain why I disliked it.

The show itself went well, but what sapped the fun from it was the fact that there was a table of clearly unimpressed middle-aged women near the front who did nothing but talk loudly and huffily throughout the whole show. The on-the-fly decisions I make here on whether to confront them, make a passing mention, or plain ignore it, tend to be critical and I probably did all 3 at some point during the half-hour. The only problem with choosing to ignore people like this is that it's too hard. You can only block out people so much when they decide to be so obtrusive. It hinders timing, delivery, and confidence. Even though I should know better, I can feel myself subconsciously getting louder and faster to drown them out, and my delivery (and voice) suffers.

And maybe it was that twinge in my throat I've not really had since Edinburgh that made me feel so short tempered afterwards, but soon after my set, as I'm chatting to punters and flogging DVD's at the back, one of the ladies from that table sidled up to me and asked if I would like to join her at her table for a chat. Now, I'm used to the indignant, half-cut punter who, unimpressed with what I've done, 'wants to have a word', but she seemed a bit more erudite than that. In retrospect part of me wishes she wasn't, because if she'd have been a lot less accommodating I would have just ignored her and went home.

Politely refusing her offer to be a vitriol spitoon for her coven, she calmly asked me why I felt I couldn't 'defend my act'. The insinuation here wasn't that I was being offensive, it was just that my act wasn't funny, and she clarified that. Now, all comedians have at some point had someone say this to them, so it doesn't really bother me or make me re-assess my chosen career. I even let statements such as 'you're not funny' go, when what they really mean is 'I think you're not funny'; especially as the room was full of people who were laughing and applauding throughout. Did she feel they were one massive symapthy vote? I told her that comedy was subjective, and if she didn't laugh, I was cool with that.

So she asked why I thought she didn't find me funny. In fairness, I should have just bounced that back to her; I've had countless women in my life tell me that I 'shouldn't tell THEM what they're feeling'. Again, maybe backing off would have been the better option here. But I gave her my honest answer; that she wasn't really listening, that some of my stuff went over her head (she nodded at that. Arggh! Pride in ignorance, my biggest pet hate), and finally that she didn't like me *personally* because I had ripped into her table somewhat, for talking loudly throughout. She said, if that's true, then it was my fault.

Well, I couldn't let that lie. I don't get red mist usually, but the green and blue mist was being slowly faded out. The reason, I explained, that I was ripping into them for talking loudly and interrupting the show was because people had paid to listen to me, not them. She said, "But I've paid as well". Yes, but isn't that the epitome of bitterness to spread your displeasure when you aren't enjoying yourself? "When you did that, despite being asked politely by me and the management, you continued regardless. It was rude and it was ignorant." She continued regardless, unsurprisingly. "Well, lots of people around us weren't laughing, so it wasn't just us who didn't find you funny." I imagine some of those people were wondering what the accepted exceptions for not punching women were.

What made this conversation so much more bizarre was that I had three huge members of security stood that 'security distance' away in case she decided to do something mental (like, I dunno, agree with me) and I was breaking away from the conversation briefly every minute or so to sell DVD's and sign them for people who were not only being hugely complimentary about the show, but were getting drawn into my rebuttal of this lady's charge list. Nik Coppin was also stood nearby, frankly fascinated as to why I was bothering to make such a reasoned case to justify my existance to someone who clearly doesn't matter in the slightest.

So I've spent most of the 2 hour drive home thinking about what I did. Having DVD's to sell means that I'm sticking around after shows when normally I'd be gone in a flash, and sometimes I'm stuck chatting to people I'd normally run away from, so I'm going to have to get used to these situations. Part of me wishes I just left, but then part of me would have been bloody annoyed to have left her to assume the moral highground. She didn't desrve that. The sole purpose of my argument was to give her something to think about; that her opinion was only important to her, and that the impression she left on a room of strangers was that she was both ignorant and impolite. Good. I hope that seed was planted fully, and as I write this, she's entering a similar blog on 'cross-stitch weekly' about her massive contrition, and realisation of how worthless her own self-importance is.

I should also be thankful that I got the lady I did though. As the rest of the group left the venue, one particularly gnarled and inebriated woman from that table screamed that she'd 'write a terrible review of me in the Standard'. Either she meant some sort of local Dorset publication, or Bruce Dessau has seriously let himself go. "OK", I retorted, "What's my name?". "EXACTLY!" she announced triumphantly, and walked into a fruit machine. That's the sort of punter feedback I'm right at home with.