Writer's Block

The 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival begins on Friday. I spent most of the early part of this year convincing myself I was going to give it a miss, having been the past two years and becoming quite exhausted on both occasions. It dawned however that my summer would look considerably emptier without it and I knew I'd miss it if I didn't go. It's manic and tiring but ultimately where every lover of comedy wants to be every August. Due to financial considerations, I will only be up for six days from the 16th-21st. I want to enjoy it more from a punter's perspective than from a stand up comedian's perspective this year. That said, I'll be doing two short spots at Fresh Faces At The Free Fringe at 2:50pm at The White Horse (266 Canongate) on the 16th and 19th. So come along to those. Darren Maskell has posted his comedy recommendations for Edinburgh over at his blog. I shall offer my own, starting with Darren's showcase of his Croydon night 'Daft, Red Hot Sper...

It's been an unacceptably long time between posts. It's not as though I haven't had anything to write about either. Ah well. Today's the last day of the academic year at Royal Holloway and so technically it's my last day as a student. I know I'm going to miss being around here but at the same time it's about the right time to leave. At least I passed my degree, though I am yet to discover if I passed it well. I suspect not. Anyway, for the forseeable future everything's going to seem quite scary, but we'll have to see how things pan out. Enough of that for now. This week has been a week of quite good things. I liked this interview with David Mitchell in the Guardian. It's simultaneously peculiar and reassuring that one of the finest comic talents of his generation lives in such modest surroundings. As someone who's been single for what's increasingly becoming an embarrassing length of time, I found myself relating a lot to the second hal...

I attended the Live At The Chapel show at the Union Chapel in Highbury on Saturday night. There's something very peculiar about watching comedy in a church, particularly when ice cream vendors pass up and down alongside the pews. It feels as if God has sold out to the more profitable forces of live entertainment. The surroundings make for a subdued audience for MC Jon Richardson to warm up. With his somewhat grumpy style, he doesn't strike me as the most natural of comperes. Richardson appears to agree with this, chastising himself for enquiring about a woman's cup of tea at the top of the second half. He successfully wrings laughs from such mundane observations however and the material is strong. His silly and childish tale of ice-skating with his girlfriend proved a particularly highlight. Richardson's a strong exponent of the self-depreciating school of comedy and I'd like to see him do a full set. Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler's double act were nominat...

Nearly a month between posts. My blogophobia must be creeping back in. I have to an extent been busy. In the interim, I've written an entire dissertation, been up north to watch Sunderland v.s Manchester United (I'll cover my growing disillusionment with football in a later blog), seen Ross Noble twice in Tunbridge Wells and Croydon and watch my sense of enthusiasm slump to something approaching an all time low. I'm quite confident that my dissertation will derail any chances of a respectable grade for my degree (i.e a 2:2). I had a crack at it, did the research and the notes, but I couldn't get my head round creating something that was 10,000 words long. In the end, it just became a struggle to beat the word count and I had to call proceedings to a halt on Friday otherwise I would have gone mad. My revision's suffered and I've got two exams next week that I'm going to struggle with in all likelyhood. And I'm sat in the Computer Centre at Royal Holloway ...

Friday night saw me gigging at the Tournament in Earls Court in a Laughing Horse New Act of the Year 2009 quarter final. Introducing a competitive element to stand up normally results in the experience being less enjoyable. Horrible as it is, you can't help wanting all the other acts to be less funny than you. Mentally it brings out the worst in me in a sense. Unfortunately, when you're getting started they are one of the primary methods of getting stage time and they appeal as a means of selling yourself. 'Comedian X is a Laughing Horse New Act of the Year 2009 Finalist' sounds considerably better than 'Comedian X has been stubbornly dragging themselves around the open mic circuit for months on end'. Getting through to the next round can often just be a matter of luck, particularly in competitions decided on audience vote such as LH. After all, humour is utterly subjective. I had the fortune to get through to the semi finals, even though I was far from my best...

I've had three gigs in recent weeks, not a great number but I'm allegedly taking time out to focus on finishing my degree. The first was the London heat of the Chortle Student Comedy Award 2009 at UCL. The Chortle crowds are always really nice and I was expecting an enjoyable evening. I was nervous beforehand because I felt the need to deliver a completely different set to my last appearance in the competition . I very rarely do completely new sets because it's generally against comedy protocol, it's better to gradually mix new material in with the old until you've got something that can stand on its own. My nervousness was apparent onstage unfortunately, but I think I was decent enough and now have something to work with in the next batch of gigs. Anyway, you can judge for yourself here . Next came The Comedy Circus, a cabaret event of sorts in aid of Comic Relief at the Bournemouth Pier Theatre. They managed to get more than a hundred people in on a night where R...

I turned 21 on Saturday. I spent my birthday in the Northeast with my dad watching Sunderland v.s Tottenham, something that had been planned for ages as he's a massive Sunderland fan and he's successfully dragged me along for the ride over the years. The game ended 1-1 , predictably with the disappointment of a last minute Robbie Keane equalizer. Before the game, we had a brief tour of the stadium which at one point involved me standing in Sunderland's dressing room with their manager and captain. As has become the custom over the years in rooms predominantly containing strangers, I said nothing. Anyway, above is a photo of my dad and I sitting in the home dugout at the Stadium of Light. Savour it, pictures of me in suits are fairly thin on the ground. My mum rang me up later on and asked me if it felt like I was 21. I told her no, which was true, although I didn't particularly want to acknowledge it anyway. The idea that I should be a fully fledged adult now is depress...