It's all blogs and wikis these days. The home publishing revolution is upon us. I choose to use it to write about the incidental and unimportant, with a smattering of the useful and important-to-me thrown in.

I had a gig in Manchester to go to. This was to be my fourth appearance at the Comedy Store there, as an open spot, and was part of my ongoing quest to learn the trade of a stand-up and get bookings with good clubs.

I was quite excited as Milton Jones, one of my preferred acts (it's hard to have favourites) was on the bill. He's very good and I'd already managed to make my girlfriend laugh with my incorrect account of one of his jokes. Bizarrely, she was laughing more at the setup than the punchline, but that's probably why I love her. She thinks differently.

Anyway, I was still unwell and was a bit worried that my tiredness and chest infection might hamper my performance. I had cancelled the spot with the store last time I was due to go on and there had also been some sort of mix-up surrounding the cancellation. I didn't want to appear to muck them around any more than I already had. The importance of the gig, plus the fact that it was my first after the Fringe, added to the fact that I'd be in excellent company (the other acts were very good), coupled with my malaise meant that I was feeling a lot more nervous about the gig than I would ever normally feel.

I wandered across town to meet my girlfriend, who had bought us an evening meal. She drove us to Manchester. Thanks.

We arrived in plenty of time and waited in the green room, which had a sort of fertility clinic vibe about it. It relaxed me enough to get in the right sort of mood.

I don't remember much about the performance, except that I was heckled on my opening line, I ignored the heckle, got too small a laugh (for my taste) on the punchline and then darted for safety behind many "bankers" (well worn bits of material that seldom fail). I threw in one gag which pleased me and wasn't on my list of things to say and I closed to applause, which was nice. I wasn't happy with my voice or the level of the guitar and generally felt I'd done "okayish".

We enjoyed watching the rest of the gig and then drove home.