I slept in later than I intended to. There were two reasons that I should have gotten up sooner. Firstly, I didn't want to waste the whole morning stewing in bed. Secondly, I was experiencing a bit of back pain from the particular position I was lying in that particular bed. But, my natural-born-indolence got the better of me and I didn't emerge from my slumbers with any sense of urgency.

Juggling The Two Gigs
I'd spent some of yesterday on Chortle looking for gigs. The recent experience in Watford had somewhat buoyed my confidence in myself as a stand-up comedian and had also made me feel like I should be doing more pleasant gigs, as well as toughies, and that I should try harder to get my feet under the table (as it were) in this part of the country. To that end I'd applied for a last minute gig in Leicester tonight. The condition of the spot was that I'd have to pick up the headliner from Wolverhampton and return him there after the gig. In return for that favour, I got a decent-sized support slot, a fee and some petrol money. Seemed reasonable to me.

Unfortunately, the person offering the spot was not the promoter, so although I got my details off, I didn't hear back and wasn't certain whether this Leicester gig was happening (for me at least) or not. At midday today, I was then offered an MCing spot (from someone else) in Southampton. This had the advantage of being a direct offer from the promoter and also nearer than Leicester. My system is to go with the thing I first committed to, so I had to make sure that the Leicester gig wasn't happening before giving a definite on Southampton.

By the time I'd gotten around to deciding that Leicester wasn't happening and had rung the Southampton promoter, he'd given the spot to someone else. So, I found myself with no gig to do tonight. Given that I hadn't expected to be doing any gigs at all tonight, I suppose this wasn't a great loss.

Mr Harry
As part consolation for the absence of comedy with me involved, I decide to watch the Harry Hill DVD (Hooves) that I'd bought earlier in the year on eBay. I've been carrying this DVD back and forth from my girlfriend's house in the hope that I would find time to watch it. I made the time this afternoon and saw it all, extras included.

I think that live comedy doesn't always translate well to DVD. In this instance, it felt like some of the music-hall aspects of the show, along with some of the chaotic on-stage absurdity, might have been better experienced in person. Some of the material seemed to fall flat, and some of it was loosely executed. Having said that, the overall standard was much loftier than a pub full of open spots giving it their best, and there were a few absolute corkers of jokes in there. To keep the pace for an entire show without a break was an impressive feat, and the time spent watching the show passed by quickly. The extras were fairly dull and pointless.

Harry chose to end the show on a song, which was played moderately straight. This was reminiscent of the ending to the Lee Evans XL DVD, which I watched earlier in the week. That DVD ended with Lee singing a totally bland song, accompanying himself on the ukulele. I don't see what point it served.

Rule number 1 of a comedy show - if it's not for the purposes of creating a laugh, then don't do it.

I would have thought that that was obvious.

Scraping the barrel
I'm close to the 100 mark now with my catalogue of the World's Worst 100 Websites. It's getting harder to find candidates now. I want to get a list of around 120 to choose from. Any tips would be appreciated. Use the comments feature on that site.