This year I'm not going to the Edinburgh Fringe. I can't say I'm happy about that in itself. There are good reasons why I can't commit to it, the main one of which is that my family life has changed and we have a baby daughter to look after, which isn't compatible with fringe-going, or at least, not compatible enough. I AM happy about having a baby. It's a little conflict. No Fringe- boo. Being a daddy - big yay.

I'm digressing.

With the idea that I'd challenge myself to produce something comedic this year, I registered with the Henley Fringe to do Ashley Frieze's Greatest Hats Album, a show whose premise was simply that I'd do my greatest bits from 10 years+ as a comedian. A simple concept. The other idea was that I'd get some of the satisfaction of writing a show, without the pressure to run in new material, and I'd also get the pleasure of doing an hour long performance, twice, to a nice Fringe audience - Henley has always been reasonably attended for me, and last year's preview of Discograffiti was especially enjoyable.

That was the theory.

I should add that I'd used the Henley shows as an unofficial leaving do from my old day-job employer, and felt a few people might show up from there to boost numbers. I felt it was going to be a highlight of the month.

To answer some of my initial question, I'd have to say it didn't go anywhere near the way I anticipated. So many things were not as I imagined, and you could say that they took away from my aims. You could say that, I'm not going to offer any conclusions at this point.

• I never actually got the time to write the show - I had about 3 ideas in my head for how it would work, and then procrastinated horribly.
• Changing jobs between organising the show and doing it meant the dynamic of my life had also changed.
• My goal to do a purely guitar-based standy-uppy show crumbled when I realised I could take the piano, and that I wanted it as a crutch, making the show immediately more like the last 3 years' solo shows, the sort of thing I was thinking I might move away from.
• The venue wasn't equipped, so I had to take my own stuff along - this actually wasn't an issue, but made me feel like I wasn't being recognised by the organisers for what I do.
• The publicity that was made by the organisers somewhat failed to say what the show was about.
• There were 2 pre-sales on day 1 and 10 pre-sales on day 2.
• On day one, the numbers were boosted by three friends of the venue owner, who were asked to turn their evening into a spontaneous ladies' night out to avoid the place being totally empty. These ladies had an average age of about 60.
• One both days, the pre-sales were all from people I knew, except for two people on day 2, one of whom claimed to be a reviewer.

I have no massive axe to grind with Tom O'Connor. He is one of those TV personalities I remember from my childhood and picture as a jumper-wearing cheerful avuncular figure fronting some gameshow or other. He comes from an era of stand-up comedy that I don't aspire to, or really belong to. I wouldn't have imagined that the work of Tom O'Connor would hit my radar.

My comedy world is pretty broad. Among the heroes is one Stewart Lee, whose show "41st Best Stand-up Comedian" I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe in its year of inception. I've since listened to the show a few times and read the full script, along with copious footnotes in Mr Lee's book. For some reason, despite the show mentioning Tom O'Connor many times, I was still not curious about Tom O'Connor. Why would I be?

I don't know why I should have become curious, but I guess repetition makes something take root in your head, and I think I decided that I should make my own mind up about a stand-up comedian, whose name and reputation were joked about in a show. It's a perfectly reasonable thing for me to decide to do. In fact, today I listened to Mitch Hedburg, who had been mentioned by a few people, and I was absolutely thrilled. Absorbing the works of other comedians is what a comedy person would be expected to do.

I bought Tom O'Connor's CD "A Look At Life". I listened to it in my car on Thursday evening, the evening I'd be doing the second of my shows at the Henley Fringe. I listened to it as an audience member, but also as a fellow practitioner.

Now, was my opinion in someway skewed by circumstance? After all, I was on the way to a gig in which I'd perform to a probably small audience. Surely I'd have the set up of my show and the pre-match nerves to worry about. I don't get pre-match nerves, and I was feeling quite relaxed. I also listened to the CD both before and after my show, forming the same opinions on each half, and I followed it up with some Tim Vine, which made me gloriously giddy with laughter.

It's about this point in the narrative that it's fairly clear that I didn't like what I heard on the CD, and that's true. That's not to say that I hated it or found it offensive. There's a certain brand of comedy which is so dreadful that I actually get angry. It usually involves young smug boys with silly clothes saying a bunch of ego-stroking crap, making half a witty line, or a half-witty line, and then saying something like "That's my only proper joke" or words to that effect. Tom O'Connor is not everything I hate. Far from it.

The funny thing is that I'd probably forgive Barry Cryer for a lot of the things I didn't especially admire about Tom O'Connor. I don't know why. Perhaps Barry Cryer isn't constantly stroking his audience and trying to make out like they're all bastions of the same world view. Perhaps when Cryer tells an old old old as the hills joke, you laugh because you know he was there when it was written and it's somehow coming out as a classic, rather than an old taudry bauble. Perhaps Barry Cryer is just a comedy god and it doesn't matter what he says, so long as he keeps getting up there and saying it.

To review the Tom O'Connor CD in detail would be more dull than listening to it, and that's saying something. I think it's of its time. The disc itself is from 1990. The world view sounds more like it's coming from the 1980s. Punks are commented on as though they're new. Chinese restaurants are treated with suspicion (though Chinese people are not mocked for being Chinese per se). The show complains about the trials of decimalisation of Britain's currency (early 70's). Tom complains about alternative comedy (80's) and even about telling jokes, preferring to tell stories of "folks like us".

Punctuated with songs, which I think must have been recorded in the studio and mixed into the CD, though they would have been performed live during the bit the audience are responded to, this was a bizarre mixed-bag of what its audience seemed to consider as entertainment. The strained singing of this affable Liverpudlian didn't sit well with me, and the gag rate was very low, and when the jokes came, they were old hat...

... but perhaps they were less old hat when this gig was recorded. My guess is that they weren't.

It's a shame. The stage craft and nature of Mr O'Connor are definitely worth learning from. The outlook and material are not.

At least I've formed this opinion from my own experience, rather than guesswork or the words of others. All in all a useful experience.