Yes the title is my favourite quote from 'Withnail and I', which quite aptly describes my current state of play. This blog arrives a couple of days late as I spent yesterday suffering from a hangover of such high proportions that looking at the computer screen was like undergoing Nazi torture. Hangovers used to be alright. I used to be able to wake up, down some concoction of painkillers and some water, go back to bed and wake up strolling through my day as per usual. Nowadays however a hangover renders me completely useless in every way like some sort of victim of a serious accident. I often worry that I will be burgled whilst hungover, or worse still the UK will be attacked on New Years Day when no one is capable of defending themselves remotely, merely groaning for the enemies to perhaps use quieter weapons as we have a steaming migraine.

The hangover is still evident today, and in a moment of sheer stupidity I thought I would head to my recently joined gym to 'sweat it out', which is what meat headed fools tell you to do. Consequently, I now feel both sick and achey, doubling the badness. I hate people who swear that exercise cures all. If this was true, people would head to fitness first instead of Lourdes and collect bottles of fat men's sweat from the steam room in hope of ridding themselves of diseases. I have yet to witness any of this.

This was all the result of a good night out so I cant complain too much. This was my first weekend without gigs since before Edinburgh. While many comics would be in fear of a Saturday without earnings, I am lazy and relished the fact that I might actually be able to socialise with real people for once. Part one of Saturday evening was spent at a school re-union. The sound of such an event sent the fear of god into me, worrying that I would get stuck speaking to all those people I have been trying to lose contact with for 10 years. It is with the creation of facebook that these very individuals are able to find you and continue to harass you pretending that you are still their 'friend'. However, despite these worries, it was a really nice night. Just about everyone there was someone who I had wanted to see and catch up with and many of them are now doing interesting things, which meant I could avoid the subject of comedy for a good amount of time. I was hoping there would be some people who had truly failed at everything just so on my own personal 'life status' graph I could give myself a few extra points, but this didn't happen. Instead there were several speech therapists, social workers, teachers and generally things that help other people in life. This meant that in fact I had to deduct points as the only people I ever really help are those drunk tw*ts to realise it is ok to shout at someone on a stage, and to make the occasional person feel that its OK to laugh at a cancer gag. This is definitely not in the same league as helping someone to talk again. However, at the same time, I get extra points as I can sleep in every day and they cant. Ha ha, gutted.

We all met in the pub we used to drink in underage whilst at school, probably for the first time since we have been legally allowed. They have now renovated it and turned it into one of these gastro pubs that plague London, promising trendy food and classy spirits while all many of us really want is a ploughmans, pies and pint. Still this did not dampen the proceedings and if anything the fact it had changed made us feel slightly less weird for being there. Weirder still was that there were no underage people in the pub now, which means we wouldn't have got away with all our boozing were we kids now. Good timing on our behalf I think, but at the same time, its probably all key to the early stages of ruining my liver eventually resulting in my weekend of pain. Once again, swings and roundabouts.

On Thursday I went for lunch with my Dad, settling for an OK sandwich and chips after searching for a pub with real food for 45 minutes. Damn those Gastro pubs once again. No one wants an 'Aubergine Tagine' with a pint! Don't you understand? Anyway, on our walk home, we witnessed a small road accident involving a lady in a brand new mini and a cyclist. The mini had pulled out of a road as the cyclist was going past, causing the cyclist to fly of his bike, and land chin first onto the pavement. At first we were worried and ran over to check if he was OK, at which point we both rewound what we'd seen in our heads to realise that the cyclist and car had never made contact and instead the cyclist took a purposeful dive before the mini was anywhere nearby. The woman got out of the car to check and the man, with his profusely bleeding chin called her a 'F*cking b*tch' over and over before kicking in her wing mirrors and cycling off refusing help. Everyone was left rather baffled and I feel that that man deserves the 'Arsehole of The Week award'. Hurting yourself then damaging someone else's vehicle because of it is quite impressively stupid. For the first time in my life I wish I'd had the sense of a 15 year old and videoed it on my phone. That'd be at least a few thousand Youtube hits I'm sure.

Some new material at Old Rope tonight. I've actually written some so I'm excited to see if it rocks or fails. I've money on the latter.

After last week's heinous example of a gig, I'm pleased to say this week has, on the whole been pretty good gig wise. Starting with an audience of people who stared more than laughed in Cheltenham which wasn't immense amounts of fun, then a truly lovely gig at Reading University, and lastly a succession of nice gigs back in the capital.

A large part of being a comic is travelling. Considering that often on stage you are only doing 20-30 minutes most of the time, or if you are MCing it may stretch to a tad more, then the comedy part of your day is very small. In comparison, on Monday for example, it took 2 and half hours to get to my gig then 2 and a half to get back (bloody windy A roads!), that's a whole 5 hours of travelling with no actual comedy involved. I often quite enjoying all the travelling. Driving through places you've never heard of before, sniggering at ridiculous town names (Bungay, hee hee hee, Gaydon, ha ha ha, Bapchild, ho ho ho) and having time to just listen to music and think up gags. But for every good journey there are 10 'stuck in traffic' journeys or excessively long ones of sheer tedium like driving to anywhere near Torquay.

The plus side of all this travelling I suppose is that I reckon I'm now a relatively good driver. Not that I wasn't before, but now I'm pretty much a road master. In fact, what is worrying, is that I might well be better at driving than I am at comedy due to the hours I've put in. If the comedy dries up, expect to see my small face behind the wheel of a white van in 10 years time, grey faced and listening to Queen and Capital Radio while cutting everyone up and generally being a shit.

I travel so much now that in fact I've gone to such lengths as deciding I have a favourite motorway, and favourite service station. While this may be useful at 2am on the journey home, I also know that its inherently sad and that the only other people who would appreciate that are other comics, or the sort of people that corner you at social do's and talk to you about how exciting accountancy really is.

So to gig in London for a few days is a lovely relief. Extra time appears in the day and I have used this extra time to be cultured this week. Apart from Tuesday and Wednesday which were spent doing some filming work, and Thursday which was spent on the sofa. But whilst on the sofa I did watch various comedy DVD's, which is, to an extent more cultured than someone at home watching Jeremy Kyle. Friday was much better as I went to see a truly brilliant play reading at the Trafalgar Studios. It was an amazing script about a couple whose teenage daughter had died and their inability to cope with their loss. Very well acted too, and on the whole a great change to my usual viewing of humorous things. The only bad thing was that it was a very quiet moving play, in a very small studio space. I have a knack in situations like these to accidentally make a loud noise and instantly become the most hated person in the room. The noise in question was a coughing fit brought on by downing a glass of diet coke that went down the wrong way, just as the characters were discussing in depth their happy last memories of their child. Needless to say, I slightly ruined the moment. I always do it though, but not intentionally. Its like a superhero power, just not a very good one. Captain Inappropriate Noise or something.

Yesterday I went to see Ratatouille which is a brilliant film. It was only mildy tarred by the fact that I was accompanied by an entire party of 7 year olds that my girlfriend had agreed to help with. Never have I seen more split popcorn and balloon violence in my life. The film is brilliant though, and its scary exactly how much they can do with animation nowadays. I fear that they wont need actors at all in the near future and that the reality of the Matrix may all happen over Equity rates for artificial intelligence performers.

The week culminated with last night gigging at the Red Rose, which is literally 3 minutes walking distance from my house. The gig was great, and a lovely crowd, but it was even nicer knowing that I would stroll home in a matter of minutes afterwards. Why cant more gigs be that close? I say scrap the travelling and build a Las Vegas like strip of comedy clubs in London. North London. By my house. Well we can all dream...

Every comic has embedded in their brain their worst deaths on stage. No matter how great your comedy career is, I don't think anyone ever forgets exactly how horrific dying on stage feels, and those bad times remain clear as a picture in your mind for ever more like some sort of shitty ghost. I find dying on stage actually scarier than most ghosts. Seeing the supernatural doesn't generally involve large members of the public thinking you are rubbish, boring and/or an idiot, unless you are David Icke. Poor David Icke.

My top five stage deaths (should that really be 'top'?) were added to last night by one of the worst deaths I have ever ever had. It also just so happened to be at London's, nay, the UK's biggest ever comedy club, which rubs salt into the wound like an angry shaman with lots of salt and someones big wound.
I have some sort of ancient Egyptian curse inflicted on me that means whenever a gig of any importance occurs I seem to have the amazing ability to screw it up (see previous blog '90 Seconds of Badness'. I would link it but I don't know how because I am a Luddite). This was proved on both Friday and Saturday when I has short spots booked in for the Glee and the Comedy Store, the two clubs that make me sweat with nerves similar to back when I took my driving test. These nerves change cause me to worry about my usually well received set beyond reason, which in turn gives me a nervous disposition on stage that the crowd can smell like dogs. I lose words, bumble through, lose all ability to quickly retort to hecklers and generally be a bit poo.

Friday wasn't too bad. I had 60-70% of the audience on my side, but lost it a bit when a big group of Welsh lads decided I was boring and shouted at me lots. I retorted a bit, but it was rubbish and so I soldiered on. I wasn't too sad about it, but I felt like I could have done better especially as it seemed to be a nice night and everyone else went down very well. I reflected on this far too much on the drive home and must have been some sort of beacon for other people feeling a bit sad about things as I carried two Samaritan type moments before I got home. The first was a Polish man in the service station who was telling me that back in Poland it was a four day weekend, but he was working here 14 days solid. I politely spoke to him for a bit while inside selfishly thought that he is clearly having a worse time than me which made me feel better. Thanks sad Polish man!

The second was when I was pulled over by a policeman on the motorway because a light was out on the back of the car. He was very nice, but I had to go sit in his car while he filled out several forms saying while he pulled me over, and I had to sign some stuff. What followed was a sad tirade of his moans about police paperwork, and how its not the job he wanted it to be. Apparently lots of his colleagues are leaving to serve justice abroad and he's feeling entirely unsatisfied with his job! I just really wanted to get home, so didn't engage him much and instead realised that a bad 10 was nothing as bad as his life, or in fact the entire English policing system.. I chose not to mention the whole Charles De Menzies thing and just sign things as quickly as possible before he started crying.

So I had just about managed to cheer myself up a bit when I did my first slot at the late show last night. It was a great line-up of acts last night and the crowd once again seemed lovely. However I had ummed and aaahd about my material so much that I walked onstage entirely unsure of what to say and lost the audience in seconds. I possibly could have got them back if I hadn't dealt with the hecklers so badly and generally made a mess of it all. People shouted at me, someone yawned and many others just left before I even got on stage to have a ciggy break. Needless to say, I walked off wanting to crawl into a corner and die. The other acts said some nice things about my gags, but the manager of the club basically told me I had no funny material, and what I did have was too wordy which understandably didn't make me feel a whole lot better. But in a way he was right, because I do use lots of words. Joking aside, I do realise that perhaps my material isn't 100% right for the late Saturday night crowd and that compared to many of the Store's rota I haven't been going all that long. Perhaps I should still be leaving these places alone until I have at least the self-confidence to do them. I did also think however that it is entirely sod's law that the manager wasn't there when I stormed an early show in January this year. Yes that show, the one where the DVD of the night appears to have been lost as part of a larger rather cruel joke on my life.

The best advice given to me was from John Fothergill last night, who told me of a time he had died at Up The Creek years ago. Upon apologising to the manager, she had simply said to him 'Well, you could go and kill yourself'. It does kind of put the whole thing into perspective when you realise it is just 10 minutes of your life, and you could actually die which on the whole would be much worse, although you wouldn't remember it, and people might actually feel sympathy for you. In some ways it could be better. It was damn good advice though and I left with that in mind, only to get stuck in traffic all the way home, then step out of the car into dog poo right outside my flat. It felt as though someone was raining on my soul.

Today has been spent eating vast amounts of food and hoping that my luck improves during this week's long week of gigs and miscellaneous stuff. Although as I type I'm already being beaten by over 100 points on Scrabbulous. I might just stay in bed.

Final Note: If you enjoy reading about people's deaths, I highly recommend searching high and low for a copy of 'Ha Bloody Ha' by William Cook. Loads of now very famous comics are interviewed about their first, worst and weirdest gigs and its great to read. Sadly its now out of print, while at the same time thousands of copies of Katie Price's autobiography are being printed. The world is a bad place.