Belting Banter & Bellicose Behaviour

June and July have been pretty eventful. Most notably the nightmare that was logging in my PC to check my bank balance and finding £350 had disappeared out of it care of some gambling website and I’d become the victim of card fraud. Having pedalled it into town to go to the bank and get it sorted, one stressful ranty conversation later I came out to find my bike had been nicked. Joy. I decided to cheer myself up by picking up a copy of the fringe festival brochure to see my name in print only to find the show, but without my name in fromt of it, which on further examination was my fault. I went a bit mental and put some stickers I’d found on my face in an attempt to show the world my bellicosity.

In brighter news I went camping twice in the space of four days set foot in Maidenhead, Bracknell, Windsor, Newquay, Truro, St Austell, Cardiff, Coniston and Sunderland. First with wor lass, then on ‘Man & Nature 4′, the 4th Annual North West Comedians comedy camp, 2 fine days worth of drinking, bitching and riding motor boats on lake coniston while fishing and drinking and bitching. I put my tent up in the p****ng rain, the high wind tipped it over but after a couple of bottles of ‘Cornish Rattler’ bought fresh from a Cyder farm the previous day, I was half nakedly hammering the pegs back in with my bare hands and thinking nothing of it. Class.

Wor lass went away to the USA on sunday, so I’m is a bit sad. As evidence of just how accustomed I’ve become to living together, last night in her absence I drew a face on a balloon. Oh dear. (not that she looks like a balloon or anything). With loads of room and time to myself now though I can focus on banging my Edinburgh show into shape ready for August, and I’ll do another video blog for that shortly.

That there London (Preview).

My first preview show went well, still needs a lot of work, but to be honest I more impressed myself driving slap bang through through the centre of London. Stopping at some lights I looked to my left to see big ben and the eye and let out an odd maniacal laugh.

I did cockup on a couple things in the show, as well as forgetting to turn my dictaphone on to record it (fail.) and the ‘aftershow report’ video I recorded for 4laughs was far to dark to be or any use. Generally though, I’m quite happy with the shape of it, just need to tighted a lot of the material up without strangling the funny.

Radio Days

I got the chance guest on the new Alfie Joey afternoon show on BBC radio Newcastle on friday, so I took it. We talked about the Edinburgh show, and it’s the first time I’ve tried to succinctly leap the verbal hurdles of ‘yes, it’s a comedy show about eczema’ and ‘eczema’s not funny’ its more about the experience of living with it and growing pains.

Before all that however, I remember I went to school with one of the presenter’s at the station, and on Alfies’ questioning, called Gilly Hope ‘posh’, which was probably not entirely true. I think I meant to say ’smart’, as she always had pig tails in, but then I had a big basin cut. Anyway, after the interview I called in on my mum, who as well as being a teacher at the school we both went to way back, was all to happy to dug out some embarassing old photos at my request.

If you’re reading this Gilly, it’s just a bit of fun.
Here you are behind and to the left of me. twice.

BEFORE.

AFTER.

oh yeah, my mum thinks Aflie is one of the ‘more sensible’ DJ’s on the radio.

Road to Ed’ Report 1 - Brainstorming

Brainstorming/Mind mapping/Spider diagram, it’s all the same thing.