Incredible.org.uk

Dr Hilary Jones

2011-12-22T12:23:00.001Z

As his website couldn't actually process this email I intended to send to him I'll put it out there on the internet for everyone to read - if you know Dr Hilary Jones, please pass this on.

RE: Burzynski Clinic

I wonder why you publicly endorsed the work of Stanislav Burzynski. Is it your medical opinion that he is offering effective medical treatments and that it is beneficial for patients to pay large sums of money to enter his clinical trials for a treatment that has not been proven to work after 30 years of experimentation?

Putting aside issues of false hope and even patients having to fund someone else's medical research, if someone has an inoperable condition, surely their quality of life at the end of their life is of most importance. Are you aware of the conditions that Burzynski patients must live under to undergo the treatment?

In short, I feel you've publicly advertised something that the average clinician would advise against. Why is that? I'm curious.

And The Secret Is

2011-10-03T10:35:00.001Z

On Saturday, I was involved in running a comedy workshop. At some point the tutor said "and the secret to a proper punchline is..." and I drew a big line across my notepad and poised my pen ready to write down whatever she said. She observed this and brought it to everyone's attention. We were both in the right. If you're about to give or receive a good bit of advice, then you should make a moment of it.

So, prepare yourself.

I'm going to tell you the secret to how to be a good human. I mean the sort of person who is successful, happy, stimulated, as bright as you can be: all that good stuff.

Ready?

Here we go then. Be curious.

That's it.

What does that mean? Are you asking that? If you're not then you're not being curious. Go back to the start of this and try again. If you're also asking "What the hell does he know?" and by "he", you mean me, then well done. You're being curious. That's the point of this. There's a lot of information out there for the finding, and if you're not curious enough to ask questions, to look for the answers, and generally try to work stuff out for yourself, then you're going to lose out to people who are.

I'm not entirely espousing my own philosophy here. I'm agreeing with the fabulous Richard Feynman whose book Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character shows this philosophy in sharp detail. For someone who comes across as a bright eyed kid within a lot of his stories, Feynman actually discovered and refined a lot of aspects of Physics that would put most people's achievements into the category of relatively minor.

So what's the alternative? I'll give you an illustration of what happens when people don't act in a curious way, or don't assume curiosity.

[Scene - a works cafeteria, a woman is showing two guests round]

Her: So here is the coffee machine and it makes coffee if you want it. You press the buttons on the front. The cups are on top. Over here we have a fridge with some ready made sandwiches in it, there's salad in the bottom with ham, tomatoes - there, and drinks. Here are some fillings you can have - there's tuna, cheese, and you know. There's rolls over there that they use. Then over here there's fruit.

[Cut to the writer, seething in the background]

Why was I so pissed off? I'll tell you why. Nothing that woman said was anything other than self-evident. You can see that these things are there - they don't need describing. If someone can't see it for themselves, will telling them the fucking obvious actually help? If they're so stupid that they need the self-evident pointing out, then the problem isn't that they need a tour of the flaming obvious, it's that they need some help. Serious remedial help. If they could, and I suspect they could, see for themselves what was being shown to them, then the problem lies with the patronising idiot who feels like their own observations are more important than providing the way for someone to be free to make their own.

Sure, some things are not self-evident, like etiquette, or hidden items of stock (they can make a pizza if you ask them, kind of a thing)... but we shouldn't live in a world where you expect the self-evident to be pointed out.

Looking at things the other way, let's take Amazon.co.uk as a positive example of how curiosity works for the better. You don't expect someone to tell you how to use Amazon, or to come to your house and tell you how many pages a particular book has, or what the weight is of a particular bit of electronics. You don't expect someone to jump up and information dump you with all the details of everything. You have to look for it yourself. Frequently it's on the screen, or clickable from the screen you're on. Your expectations are low, and you have to do the work. As a result, Amazon sells you items, related items, makes you aware (if you care to look) of delivery dates, and doesn't require any human interaction to do it.

So, when people get the wrong end of the stick, fail to notice information that's right under their very noses, or expect the flaming obvious to be laid on a plate for them, they're not putting the effort in themselves, they're not being curious, and they may as well come and join the canteen tour above. Let them eat the obvious cake of their own idiocy.

For those people who work it out for themselves, you're going to be successful. You don't need nanny, and yours shall be the future.

Here endeth the rant.

The Digital Music Age

2011-08-05T16:55:00.002Z

I'm very excited to be able to sell my album digitally online:

I'm rather hoping it will also pop up in iTunes and Amazon soon.

Nothing to say?

2011-08-05T11:07:00.001Z

If you only read my blog, you'd thing I had nothing to say the moment.

The council announces a public ban on signs

Of course I've got stuff to say. I'm Mr Saying-Stuff. You'll find me on Ian Fox's Blog as a guest poster. I'm trying to write something for every day I sit here waiting to go to the Fringe, which has started without me!. I can't believe they would go ahead and just do it when I'm still a week from arriving.

In other news, my album of The Seven Deadly Sings is now on release at CDBaby, and should make its way to Amazon and iTunes soon. This is very exciting. I'm now official. I even have a product number all of my own!

So, plenty to say.

Not Neglecting My Main Blog

2011-08-01T22:45:00.000Z

Although I've decided to blog daily until I go to the Fringe on Ian Fox's Wordpress Site, I've not forgotten about this particular blog, which has been chronicling my life on and off (and a lot of off) since October 2001... sort of. Wow. Nearly ten years of writing shite about myself.

In the spirit of sharing something "exclusive" on this feed, I'll say what I had for dinner. Sort of.

Despite the fact that I left work at a reasonable hour, and had already been to Tesco once that day, I had another Tesco trip to do, and needed petrol. This meant that I didn't arrive home until 7.30pm. That's my life. The 75-90 minute commute will do that to you.

However, on the plus side, I'd bought enough salad to kill a man, along with some nice fish cakes (perhaps my early tweet: It was my goldfish's birthday. I got him a fish cake. He didn't like it. It was his mum. inspired me). So, with salad consumed, it was time to start watching the new series of Torchwood with my intended.

After one episode, she said "I'm going for a shower... and then let's watch the next". Result.

I spend episode 2 making the CDs for my fringe run. I've had some CDs duplicated, but they came without inlay cards, which I'd had made separately. I needed to cut the cards down and add them to the CD wallets. Only 100 to do. It was easy enough.

That's the sort of rock and roll nights we have at my house. We watch TV, I cut out some cards, and then it's time for bed. Still, it's good recharging time, given the insanity that's to come in a few days' time.

If you wish to buy one of the original CDs, with a wallet that doesn't need a separate inlay card, then please visit my store.

I've Been Seein' Someone Else

2011-07-28T14:05:00.002Z

Well, not exactly. I'm doing a pre-Fringe blog. Please check out the two entries so far.

T-Minus Something or other
Flop Sweats

Like an Oscar Acceptance Speech, but better

2011-07-26T12:39:00.001Z

Back in April a chat on the internet led to what has been a fascinating, challenging and ultimately rewarding 3 months of my life. You can read here all about Funny's Funny, the event of which I speak.

As we pulled this event together, people fell into one of a few categories:

Disinterested - if this is you, then feel free not to read, or maybe do read in order to see if your interest can be piqued
Nay-sayers - it's easy to have a go, and some people mystifyingly decided that it was in their interests to ridicule what we were doing
Supporters - in truth, the majority of people we heard from fell into this category

Now the dust has settled a bit, I think it's time to say some heartfelt thanks to the latter category. I could thank the few detractors whose pointless bile made me even more resolute to do a good job, but I suspect their contribution was an overall zero.

To the people who put on the 21 (22 if you include the cancelled one) showcase events, I say a big thanks. Being there on the night, pulling together people, audience, publicity and other logistics: it made the difference. The atomsphere at the shows was universally praised and this is in part thanks to the organisers.

To the MCs who held shows together in a professional and supportive way, even though they had a dozen acts on the same bill, a big big thank you. The acts appreciated the way they were treated and introduced and we were glad to know the shows were in safe hands.

To the judges who sagely calculated scores, wrote constructive notes, and gave the acts feedback as requested, a huge and respectful thanks. Judging comedy is hard going: fairness and personal taste are not always easy to resolve. We wanted the fairest and most comedy-focused judging, and we believe that this was achieved to a very high standard by our volunteer judges. Thank you all.

Various online comedy journalists wrote about our event, interviewed us, or gave us platform to talk about what we were doing. This helped spread the word and also opened up the debate surrounding the problem we were addressing. It really mattered. Thanks.

To Steve Bennett of Chortle, who supported the event by organising the final, a massive thanks is due. The quality of the final and judging panel gave the event a credibility that we might not have achieved single-handedly. In addition, the fact that someone else had taken on the organisation of the final allowed us to focus on the performers and showcases more. Ultimately, it was an excellent climax to our event.

To the 252 women who signed up to our site, thanks to you. In the end, we managed to secure bookings for 224 of you, and had a surprisingly low drop-out rate. It seems that every performer came to this event with the right attitude and made the best of their showcase for both themselves and their fellow acts. To those who spread the word and generally told us how much you appreciated us, an extra special thanks. To those who sorted themselves out via our website with barely an email exchanged: we may not have spoken to you SO much, but it was a companionable silence and kept our workload down.

And finally to the other members of the Funny's Funny team, I can't say how much of an honour it was to work with you all. Rob, you did a huge amount of show organising while appearing to be gigging every day and doing everything else you do - the number of contacts and details you pulled together in a short space of time was amazing. Thanks. Jane, you were working in a different time-zone to the rest of us, but still managed to keep us on the straight and narrow, pull comedians in for performing, make the judging criteria equitable, and get the acts connected with the right showcases in record time. Okse, your design work and mentoring was really appreciated - the posters looked great, the logo was brilliant, and those hard moments when a friendly voice was what was needed, were provided for. Beth, your help in getting us off the ground, and your encouragement during what was a difficult time for you was greatly valued.

I could write a lot more on why this was such an amazing event to be a part of, but let's keep it brief. All I'll say to conclude is that if you put a bunch of people together with a shared goal that is worth achieving, then magic can happen. It took a lot of work to achieve it, but I think we got more out than we put in.

Thank you all.

A Collection of Thoughts

2011-07-26T10:21:00.001Z

What follows are some random musings. I don't mean they're totally random. A totally random musing would involve choosing two words from two books and seeing what happens:

"and McNally" - there: that's a random musing.

I mean that here are some disconnected unrelated thoughts that are sitting in my head.

If You've Got It Flaunt It
It's the time of year when we all try to write press releases to make ourselves look good to try to attract an audience for the Fringe. Despite outward appearances, I actually have a lot of trouble in saying good stuff about myself in press releases. I'm a generally honest person, and all the promotional stuff I write always feels like lying. It's not that I think I'm no good, it's just that I think it's not reasonable for me to be the judge of how good I am.

I've noticed a friend of mine, whom I helped with their Edinburgh show, has taken one of their principle difficulties and broadcast it across the media as a selling point. I mean that they've done it honestly. By highlighting what might be a weakness, they've made it a talking point and virtue. I think that's brilliant. Perhaps I should be looking for things about myself that I would rather not talk about and start whacking them into press releases.

If Not Now, When?
I made a few resolutions about a year ago when I had a health scare. One of those resolutions was to sort out my weight problem. I also decided I wanted to get married to my girlfriend. I have achieved one of the two of these. Given the impending wedding, if I don't sort out the other, then I'll be married in widescreen, and nobody wants that. I've run out of excuses. It's time to take weightloss seriously.

Be Careful How You Act
I'm principled and opinionated. I get in there and get involved. Sometimes this is appropriate and sometimes it's not. I hope I've the instincts to pull back if I've overstepped the mark, but we all make mistakes.

I'm afraid I wind some people up. It's not intentional. It's hard to act in a way that makes you totally inoffensive - I wouldn't know where to start with that; I also can't really be bland. It's all guns blazing or nothing with me.

That said, I don't like it when some people reflect my behaviour back to me through the fairground hall of mirrors that is a difference in personal perspective, and I see myself as being a bunch of things that I don't think I am. This is where you can say perception is reality. For someone to interpret me one way is almost as much my problem as it is theirs. Well, I say that... it very much depends on the person.

However, I must accept that I come across as know-it-all, overbearing and judgemental from time to time. Then I sometimes come across as cheerful, warm and supportive at others. The trick, I guess, is to watch my own behaviour a bit more carefully, since it's clear that others are watching it and sometimes seeing something in me that I don't want to be.

Searching For Identity
One's identity is very important. I don't mean bank details. I mean who you think you are - what you consider your life's purpose and work to be.

I try to be many things, and I think the thing which drives me to irritation most is when someone questions my right to assume those roles/identities, or in some way denigrates me in those roles. Call me a fatty bum bum, and I'm not bothered. Call me an unsuccessful comedian, and I'll have sleepless nights.

Funny, eh?

Being Bright
A while ago, I recorded a 15 minute comedy radio programme with a friend of mine. It was a project for her university course and has never been even considered for broadcast. It was purely something we knocked up in my, at that time, incomplete house. We called it "not too bright" and I still occasionally listen to it. I kind of wish we'd found a way to do something with the core idea, but perhaps it didn't have legs.

When I script comedy for myself in a double act, I frequently put myself in the role of the idiot. I guess I was the "non bright one" in "not too bright".

Last night, though, I was required to consider my brightness from a different angle, as I did The Bright Club in Cardiff. This small but perfectly formed gig was brilliant fun, very supportive, and a chance to see comedy of all sorts, mixed in with some rather over-thought-out-but-excellent powerpoint presentations.

I had a lot of fun with the crowd.

I also sweated quite a lot. I was so bright, I was positively glowing red!

Intermission
Yes. I know. Blog posts should probably be shorter and pithier than this. I'm just enjoying writing one, so please bear with me. It won't be much longer.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You
With last night's try out of some last minute tweaks for my show, it's pretty much time to do the last two previews and then take it to Edinburgh. Friday night has me in Hexham and 1st August has me in London. On 3rd August, I'll do some excerpts from the show as part of a stand-up set in Nuneaton.

My show is The Seven Deadly Sings and my stand-up gig list is on www.ashleyfrieze.co.uk/gigs. Come if you can.

Making The Merchandise
It's almost a sort of witchcraft. You go onto some sort of website, upload a file from your computer and then T-Shirts, CDs, Mugs, postcards, flyers, posters and the like all suddenly get made, stuck into a van and sent somewhere.

I've been making pretty much all of the above for various reasons. The Vistaprint racket of claiming everything's free, except charging you whole bunches of extras (and not quoting VAT) is a simple fact of life. In general, though, I'm pleased to have the CDs to sell and give away (Vistaprint don't make CDs) and things like flyers and posters are a negative - i.e. if you DON'T have them, then it's BAD.

In a chance of strategy this year, I'm going to be paying for some flyering and postering services in Edinburgh. This is primarily to increase my exposure. I intend to make a success of this year's Fringe. The show's good enough - now I need to focus on the audience.

More...
I'll be blogging again shortly. For now, please take a rest from reading my outpourings.

And thanks.

Or sorry.

Choose which suits you best.

Keep Your Options Open

2011-06-24T15:50:00.001Z

Things don't always go right first time. Sometimes you don't know what to do for the best. Sometimes you're not clear which option is best for you. What should do you do?

I think it's important to have a contingency plan. Now, here's a thing. Contingency plans cost effort. However, a risk, in itself, has the potential to cost the whole thing you're working on, so the effort of a contingency plan is worth it to cover a risk. But... if you're not sure what may or may not work, then you can't be sure that one particular plan is going to be totally worth pursuing. Should you be more cautious than throw effort at a potential unviable contingency plan? Is there a benefit in being more conservative?

I have been bothering people a bit recently with my approach, which is to have multiple plans running in parallel. You don't invest heavily in each plan, but you do investigate it and its sibling options a bit. What then happens is that you have a bunch of open options ready to use if you need them.

If you only have one possible plan and wait for it to fall through before generating an alternative, then the elapsed time is greater, and your options start to reduce the longer you wait. If you keep a few irons in the fire until you know more exactly what you need, then you're always much more likely to be able to do something.

So, it's apparently more effort, but you get a lot more in return.

Keep your options open!

Concurrency

2011-06-23T15:36:00.001Z

It's all happening.

I'm involved in a storm of unrelated activities. There's the day job and the variety of challenges that that presents. Most of those challenges seem to be caused by human frailties. We're not perfect or logical creatures, we humans. We don't see things objectively and we don't necessarily play fair, or even agree on what fair is. That's day jobs for you. You'd only do them if they paid you.

Then there's the stand-up. I've been gigging doing different sorts of sets at different sorts of clubs. Not a huge amount of regular sets at the moment, mind. I've other fish that I need to fry.

There's the Edinburgh Preview season. Unlike some of the people tweeting today about their mad panic in June to have a show ready for previews in July, I've been ready, as I have for the last couple of years, by May. That said, this year is a bit of a cheat, since it's last year's show with edits, which is clearly much less work than writing a new one... or is it?

Well, It probably is, but I'm not noticing the benefits of apparently having more time, since I'm somewhat engrossed in the organisation of Funny's Funny. It all seemed like such a good idea at the time: "No, it'll barely take any time," I erroneously stated to my long-tolerating fiancee. She's done well and left me to it. In fairness, some great stuff has come out of this event, and I'm proud to have been a part of it. It's just been time consuming. Very. Time. Consuming.

Last night we went to showcase 10 or 11 (it's hard to say which, since two were happening on the same night; let's call it showcase 10. It was in Birmingham and had 10 comedians and a headliner and MC. The comedians all did well and each was very distinctive from the others. Such diversity and quality in just one showcase - it makes me think that this event is a hotbed of talent.

But then I'm bound to say that. As an organiser of the event, it's in my interest to look at it positively and to portray it as such. I can't help it. I'm clearly biased. However, if we're talking about reaping the benefits of something like this, I can genuinely say I was grateful for the positive feedback from all I met, and was thrilled to think that we've been able to bring something of this scale together. It makes it so much more real to be there in person.

My fiancee came along to the night, and we jointly facilitated unifying all the judging scores into a single answer - into the system it went and we'll find out who the finalists are in a few days.

Tonight and tomorrow I've got Edinburgh Previews. The showcases for Funny's Funny continue, collectively run by the promoters and organisers and other members of the Funny's Funny team. There's always someone doing something for Funny's Funny. I need, now, to focus on my Edinburgh show. I believe there'll be an audience. All I need to do now is remember the script.

I think an in-car rehearsal is coming up.

A snapshot from my life.

Love.

Ashley

It's All Happening

2011-06-06T00:42:00.000Z

I had a performance anxiety dream last night. They happen every once in a while, usually caused by the combination of looming shows and a feeling of being underprepared. I won't go into the details of the dream. It didn't bother me too much, and is probably just a part of the normal wash cycle that a busy brain goes through between sleeping and waking.

Today was the first gig of the Funny's Funny Female Comedian of the Year showcases. The gig was in Edinburgh. The next show is in Cirencester. Today I also had an Edinburgh Preview show, in Cirencester. I'm starting to wonder whether Edinburgh and Cirencester knew they'd be connected in such a way.

Reports back from Edinburgh suggest that the show went pretty much as expected. Cirencester went better than expected, to be honest.

Overall, then, I can sleep tonight, safe in the knowledge that the world is still spinning on its axis. The right information got to the right people just in time for the show, and the right jokes came into my head just in time to say them out loud to the audience.

As June progresses, things will get more challenging, I'm sure. As it is, though, I think it's a good start.

Can I Use The C-Word?

2011-06-04T10:18:00.000Z

Sorry to people who don't like that word, but the word I mean is cunt. Cunt, cunt cunt cunt cunty cunty cunt. There. Got over your aversion to it? No? Well go and see The Vagina Monologues and get back to me later.

So, why bring up this word now? Is it the only C-word worth talking of? Well, there's another c-word in my life right now: competition. I'm currently in the process of organising a national comedy competition for women. Of course I am. It's the year in which I'm getting married, and I have an Edinburgh show to put on in a few weeks, with new material and previews to sort out - of course I should be running a national comedy competition for 12 weeks.

I've wondered whether this is a subconscious pre-marriage thing. Is it like a sort of last-ditch bit of batchelor-hood to lure 230 women into giving me their phone numbers? I'm going to go with no, but my psychologist may get back to you on that one.

What's any of this got to do with the cunt word? Well, I got an email from a participant. I won't name her. She wrote:

Can I use the c-word?

Print that out. It's a classic question. Put it on a monopoly-chance-card-like thing and have it in your back pocket. In any situation of massive irritation (and I've been through a few of those recently) you could just pull it out and show it to someone. If they agree, then you can vent your spleen with that oh-so-effective syllable.

Why would a female comedian ask me whether she's allowed to use this particular word? It has to do with precedent. Let's imagine that some women are adamantly against this word. Imagining it? No? Then you probably don't need to see The Vagina Monologues (or the Va-hoo-haa Monologues if you're a prudish American theatre who couldn't even bear a medical term on a poster). If you HATE that word, then it's sort of understandable; swears activate a certain part of the brain and maybe you don't like that feeling... it might be worth seeking some counselling though.

Shouldn't women comedians set a good example on stage? Well, if they want to, yes. And what is a good example? (Not starting a sentence with "And" would be one.) I think it depends on who you are and what you do. If any comedian wants to use any word that is, in itself, non-oppressive (actual racial slurs and homophobia don't deserve a platform in my view), then they should use it. If a comedian wants to be an example of something, then great. If a comedian wants to just tell their jokes their way, without the demands of a subtext, then that's kind of the definition of being a comedian.

The problem with making female comedy into an issue is that it kind of presumes that female comedy is in a different social bracket to male comedy. I'm proud to say that I co-run an organisation called Funny's Funny (www.funnysfunny.org.uk) which is defined by the belief that comedy is comedy, regardless of any demographic classification of the performer. This means it makes no difference whether the comedian on stage chooses to use a word or another - they're not representing anything and the rules for them are the same rules for any comedian.

Why would a female comedian feel some burden of expectation on them as to what they can and can't say? Is it society? Is it the comedy industry? I'm afraid to say that it isn't. There exists an organisation who claims to be in favour of female comedy and claims to be all about promoting female comedians. This organisation asserts that there are disadvantages imposed on female comedians by the rest of the comedy industry; they claim to redress the balance. Unfortunately, it's this organisation who has created a number of insecurities and discontentments in my fellow comedians - the ones who happen to be female.

Why would an organisation who claims to offer support do the exact opposite? Why would they try to cramp and stifle the very thing they're supposed to nurture?

Can I use the c-word!?

I've never been a female comedian and I have only the anecdotes of my colleagues to draw on. No personal experience. I have, however, received about 50 pieces of feedback about "the other competition" from female comedians within the event we're running. This feedback would anger me just as much if it were male comedians complaining about any competition.

From tomorrow, a series of events will be happening nationwide. Please try to go to them if you can. See some new and not-so-new acts giving their best under normal comedy club conditions. They happen to be women. They're funny. The best of them will go into a final where they'll compete for a prize and get excellent exposure in the comedy world.

I hope they never need to use the c-word... off stage, at least.

The Like Button

2011-05-27T10:51:00.000Z

We've all needed a like button at some point. Well, here's one for you. It's the Ashley Frieze simile generator:

It was

Easy.

It's Not Luck

2011-05-27T09:49:00.001Z

Last night I was watching an old recording of Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment, a deeply flawed scientific experiment on whether taking your horoscopes seriously can make you happier. Don't worry. I know Gorman was doing it for comedy and for TV, and the flaws in the experiment aren't really the point.

In the show, the outlandish and ridiculous behaviour of horoscope-following Dave is compared with the life of his twin brother, who is painted as a family man who stays at home mainly, and doesn't do much out of the ordinary. Dave's "happiness" measurement swings wildly from very miserable to very happy and has a lot of variation. Conversely, his brother has a much more stable and generally positive (but not too positive) life.

This reminds me a lot of The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman. Luck, it seems, is not a product of fate, privilege or some external magical influence. It's all a question of whether you bother to do things that are out of your comfort zone. Quite simply, if you take more chances and if you treat failure as less important, and if you're open minded to the possibilities that lie in front of you, then you will most likely experience something that you can describe as good fortune.

It's a bit like what happened when I asked for new car mats from the man at the car leasing company, when he said "anything else I can help you with?". The answer was no, which I didn't take to heart, but he said it with a smile in his voice and followed it with the blessing of "shy bairns get nowt", which is North East for "I like the cut of your gib, you daring buffoon".

Quixotic though it may seem at times, the same "just do it attitude" has seen us go from a standing start to a full blown national event with our female comedy competition - The Funny's Funny Female Comedian of the Year. We spotted an opportunity to do something we truly cared about. We decided that we would commit ourselves to it, regardless of any slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that may come our way, and we shared our enthusiasm with a bunch of people we saw as allies. The result is that we are now running one of the largest comedy events of the year. It's only 27th May, and this idea was only born on 19th April. In less than 40 days we've seen so many amazing things happen.

The point is this. Life doesn't happen to you. You make of it what you choose. Many things are outside of your control, and it's a convenient delusion to think we can exert too much control over our environment. However, if you so choose to, you can cause good stuff to happen. Good fortune causes other good fortune, and a bit of subjectivity on how you treat your own luck (i.e. pretend it's more positive than it is) can help you achieve even more.

So, read the book and come to our events and you too will feel lucky.

Select All Friends on Facebook

2011-05-23T09:59:00.003Z

If you were to paste the following into your address bar with a friends box up, then good stuff will happen:

javascript:elms=document.getElementsByName("checkableitems[]");for (i=0;i<elms.length;i++){if (elms[i].type="checkbox" )elms[i].click()};

A Comedy Review

2011-05-19T23:56:00.001Z

Live Review of Pappy's, 18th May 2011, Swindon Arts Centre
It must be quite a gear change to go from playing your sell out hour long show at the Edinburgh Fringe to touring the Arts Centre circuit. Pappy’s current show takes their last Edinburgh offering – All Business – as the second act of a game of two halves; the first part sees them warming up the audience with a selection of sketches and songs with no particular through-line.

Despite the sparse audience at Swindon Arts Centre, the Pappy’s team hit the stage firing on all cylinders creating belly laugh after belly laugh. They could not rely on their reputation or their fan-base to win this crowd over and they didn’t need to. Their particular brand of shambolic silliness, childlike rudeness and verbal slapstick is underpinned by a preciseness of writing and structure, which balances the material to get the most out of the audience.

The stand-up skills of Matthew Crosby and Tom Parry are relied on to fine-tune the relationship with the audience making sure nobody misses a moment. Ben Clark provides the warm heart of the group as well as the musical strength behind their songs.

Often, though, it’s Tom’s wild improvising which threatens to steal the show as he gleefully jumps off the script to see how far he can push the audience and his fellow performers. With Matthew’s sometimes unsubtle signs to Tom to come back on track, and Ben’s frustrated attempts to follow suit, the improvising often ends up as a shared joke between the performers and the audience. Tonight the ad-libs were effortlessly hilarious and were yet another highlight of a show where nearly every joke hit the mark.

The greatest hits element of their first section suffered a little from its lack of narrative arc and climax. Their use of the dinosaur “Dean” from their 2009 show became a simple recurring character sketch, rather than its original character journey, and the links between most of the sketches seemed to step out of the show a little too much. That said, these sketches are well worth their repeat airing in any format, with classics like “Old Louis” and “Anne Frank’s Boyfriend” showing how a simple idea, realised well, makes comedy gold.

In the second act, the team proved again that all they need is a few low-tech props in carrier bags, and the energy to have fun with them. The show threatened to run off the rails a few times, the “Four Foot Freddy” character was acknowledged as not really working, and their techie for the night didn’t quite hit all the sound cues, but Pappy’s used this as even more fuel for their performance. Sometimes it seems like they’re on the stage to make each other laugh, as much as the audience, and watching the usually serious Matthew trying to keep a straight face is almost as funny as seeing Tom’s insane slapstick.

This is a show worth seeing more than once. A night with Pappy’s is side-splittingly funny.

Quite Insane

2011-05-19T16:31:00.000Z

If we really knew why we did things, I think it would surprise us. I am the sort of person who will throw myself into things without stopping to consider too much of the pros and cons. I can be thoughtful and think things through in advance. In some cases, I overthink. However, I'm at my best when I leap off the mountain with the confidence to believe that I'll probably find something to grab onto on the way down - figuratively speaking.

I can see how I react when I see people doing that. Such was the case with Tom of Pappy's last night; his apparent raison d'etre on stage seems to be to toy with the script and the audience just to see what happens. I suspect there's more structure there than it would appear, but the beauty of watching him is to be swept away with the sheer excitement of "just going for it".

So, we, a bunch of activisits, decided to "just go for it" with Funny's Funny an organisation that's putting together a national event by using the goodwill of a whole heap of people who all agree that what we're putting together is worthwhile. At the centre of the event is a team of overworked people, holding all the details together as coherently as possible.

We didn't stop to consider how much work this would be. The answer, had we asked it, is "an insane amount of work". However, we followed our beliefs and the feedback we've received for daring to do it, has been extremely positive.

We've had criticism, of course. It's easy to criticise from the sidelines. Everything one does is a compromise, but you have to work out what you're compromising. If it's other people, or your core values, then you're probably compromising too much. If you compromise on details because it's an imperfect world, or because of respect for the boundaries of the people around you, then you're doing the right thing, probably.

I'm lucky to be working on something I care about with a team of people I like and trust. We're having to give a lot to achieve what we're achieving, and when we reach the conclusion we'll be satisfied of a job well done... there's still more to do.

Wish us luck. The hard part isn't over.

Why I believe it was Chomsky who said...

2011-05-17T09:58:00.001Z

Wouldn't that have been a pretentious start to a blog post?

I think any sentence starting in "Why I" should probably continue with "man" as in "Why-eye man, yuz ganna have a reel piss-up like".

Language isn't communication, it's a tool that sets of thoughts in the brain. Words are just words, but by experience and convention and luck, we respond to them. If I write the following:

"There's a giant black dog on my keyboard"

you'd be hard pressed not to at least visualise some of that.

This is why I got interested in how to make a computer generate sentences at random, and how much this can be used to make me laugh in the middle of the night while I'm sitting in a towel, after a shower, with nothing better to do. Those days are gone, but the programs remain. Here are some links:

The Haikulator - this generates random haikus and was the subject of some haiku research
The Bibulator - this generates random tracts of nonsense biblical gibberish
The Nth Commandment - more biblical gibberish, but in the form of nonsensical imperatives
The Chartulator - last night's discovery - a program to generate pop charts that are meant to be perverse

Why do some of these make me laugh more than others? Why did some of the Haikulator's Haikus end up embroidered on shirts, almost as a slogan that meant something to me? Why is the Chartulator not very good, causing it to end up in a "crypt" folder that I rediscovered by accident last night with no recollection of ever having made it?

It comes down to the same reason that we find puns funny or not funny. Words, in orders which don't quite belong, or with leaps of logic or connections that we know are absolutely unsafe/insane/ridiculous cause us either pleasure or pain depending on how artfully done they happen to be... or how nearly coincidental they turn out to be when just picked from a virtual hat by a computer program.

I'm not saying that some comedians are funny because of pot-luck... but some computer programs are.

Rediscovering my webshite

2011-05-16T23:54:00.000Z

I've been doing a lot of web development recently for Funny's Funny. In the process, I've consolidated all my web hosting into one easy to manage web hosting solution.

In the process, I even rediscovered an old in-progress bit of silliness - The Chartulator. Why!!!

Be Right On - Sunday

2011-05-09T15:45:00.000Z

What's better than one day of performing 3 shows nearly back to back where two of them are the same 1 hour 1 man show? Why it's finding half a worm in your apple.

I should take a moment to publicly thank Ian Hawkins and Aidan Goatley for their involvement in the show. Ian stepped in as technical support and general show-runner as well as an act for the Great Big Comedy Picnic. Not only that, but Ian has also provided excellent company and post-show analysis, offering good feedback and ideas. Aidan, though not specifically enlisted for the goat-herding that needs to be done for a Fringe show, has taken the bull by the horns and... I realise now that this sentence has been banjaxed by his surname and his description, in his act, of his work in a pet shop. The point is that he's turned up early, watched my solo show twice, given excellent feedback, and pitched in for the show he was asked to do.

This is what Fringe is all about: doing shows, working with people you like, and chasing the dream of entertaining an audience.

Sunday's dream was... well... it was what it was.

Pre Show Stuff
I spent the morning and some of the afternoon in my hotel on their wifi. I had breakfast, hid in my room on the wifi, went down to the bar on the wifi, and eventually left, having been slightly hijacked by a strange man with no front teeth, who wanted to tell me "man in the pub" conspiracy bollocks. He managed to do JFK and Diana within 5 minutes. I did slightly goad him into this.

As I was walking around Brighton, I got to thinking about a corner of my show which has never really worked. I had another idea for it and started chewing that over. Eventually I went to the venue, early, to try out the idea before it was remotely show time.

Let's Go On With The Show
Show 1 - A nice audience, some of whom had decided to see the show before I went round attempting to drum up some business. It was a fun show, but I overran a bit. Overall, enjoyable.

Show 2 - Nobody came. In the end, I scraped the barrel of the bar and offered to comp in anyone who wanted to come in. This gave me a rag tag bunch of misfits of an audience who slowly whittled down any vague authority I might have been able to pretend to have from the stage. That said, it was interesting to do the show with such a crowd and I think we had some fun along the way. As we'd started late, and as the show hadn't been hitting home as much as I'd liked, I ended up doing edited highlights... I think we ended on a truce.

Interestingly, one of the people who came along, bought me a drink - a Jager-bomb (whatever that is) - which I passed on to a friend, given that I was driving.

Show 3 - The Great Big Comedy Picnic - after the previous show's "fight", I was expecting something along a similar line. In fact, I got an audience of 4 who were lovely to us. Sometimes you need an audience to fix the work of the previous audience. I told them that they could be supportive, they obviously believed me, and we had some fun. I even dug out some of the whimsy for them.

I went back to my lodgings tired but happy. Fringe stuff is hard going. It's worth it, but the lows could get you down if you let them.

Every show is a fresh opportunity, though.

Be Right On - Saturday

2011-05-09T15:19:00.000Z

Gosh. So much happened on Saturday, it was bound to go a bit wrong. And it did.

I was up very late on Friday night, doing websitey stuff, so I ended up being exhausted and tired and incapable of understanding why my other half insisted that I deal with the cats at 6 in the morning when they were bleating and making a nuisance of themselves. In the end, I got myself downstairs and fed (and secretly medicated) the cat who wanted to go out. I say secretly medicated and I mean that you can't give a pill to a cat directly - it has to be hidden in food. The food then has to be eaten and inspected for refunded pill.

Then the other cat came in and I did the same process.

I think I must have gone back to bed at some point.

All I know is that I woke up a bit later than planned and had to get to Brighton. I'd rehearsed the previous night, trying out my new PA system, and deliberately not changing the battery in one of my guitar pedals, to force myself to remember to do it in the morning and, thus, take the pedals with me.

After some more internet flummery, where I struggled with getting the thing to work that wasn't working. I got dressed and started packing the car. I'd changed the battery in the pedal. I'd got a plan for how to pack the car efficiently. I'd packed my overnight bag and got details of where I was staying. I felt on top of things...

... let's fast forward to me arriving at a venue, unpacking a car and going upstairs to set up the stage about 2 hours earlier than necessary only to discover a remarkably vital missing component. The bloody box of guitar pedals.

Don't Panic Captain Mainwaring
Some people would panic, but I did that once, and it didn't help me. Other people would choose to get angry, but that's futile too. It doesn't solve the problem.

I double checked the situation and then walked directly to the big music shop in Brighton, via the small one that didn't have what I wanted. I insistently got the staff to provide me with the equivalents of the missing items and then I handed over a credit card. With the second hand market and the nearly-new appearance of these replacements, I'd only be down a few quid.

What a good idea it had been to set up the show early.

Show time
Show 1 - The Seven Deadly Sings - a modest audience, including a reviewer. Lots of new stuff was tried out and The Improvised Love Song worked. More on that in a moment.

Show 2 - The Seven Deadly Sings - again! This was harder because I was more tired, had had to set up the show in a hurry as the previous one kicked out, and had forgotten to attach the foot pedal to the piano. A few technical hitches. An audience who were nowhere near as easy to please as the first one... in short, I worked for it, and I was a bit confused by having already performed the show once that day. Tiredness kicked in. The love song bit was great too, though.

Show 3- The Great Big Comedy Picnic - immediately following the tear down of the previous one, I was now utterly confused and exhausted, but feeling somewhat relieved that the hard stuff was done. I had some friends in the audience, but it was a definite late-night Saturday feel, with an audience who needed big stuff to make them laugh. So, we had fun, but it drained the last of the sapped energy.

Ups and downs, then. Overall, a positive experience. I went back to my hotel and went on the internet to do more website geekery, and played Angry Birds a bit. Then sleep.

Improvised Love Song
This is the new idea for this year's show. The audience are handed cards with words on. Each word is a classic boy-band love song word. They then hold their cards up in random order, as they feel like it, and we, using the hive mind, create a new love song. It's really really great fun to do. I'll be looking forward to the next 20 of those.

You can't rehearse something like this, and I guess it was a bit of a risk. I invested heavily in it, even buying a laminator so I could make the cards. One of them is blank, so the last word of the song comes from the audience member who has the card - written on with a whiteboard marker.

It makes me and the audience laugh together, which is nice.

Internetty Stuffy

2011-05-09T15:04:00.000Z

First of all, apologies to the half a person who bothers to visit this site and discovered that it was a bit broken for a couple of days.

I'm in the process of changing my web hosting provider. I'm now going with WebHost4Life who are totally powered by wind energy. Given that I'm a big windbag, this seems somewhat apposite.

I've also been reinventing my use of email. All roads lead to Rome, and almost all of my email accounts had been converging on my mailbox with my old web hosting supplier. This is now changed. I'm on GoogleMail which makes a heap of sense. I can use it pretty much any way I want to, and the result is that my email life is going to be a lot better.

I'm yet to switch off the last remnants of my old service provider... you won't notice, nor will you care, but it's been a big sweep up, and I think it's going to be brilliant.

Hotel Hell

2011-05-03T15:49:00.000Z

Publishments

2011-04-21T01:06:00.001Z

A couple of things.

Firstly, I've been unimpressed by the behaviour of the Funny Women competition, who have decided to run a pay to play scheme. While you can see it from their point of view if you try hard enough, there's no good reason for comedians to have their goodwill and career aspirations exploited in this way.

We have set up an alternative competition - Funny Females as a way of avoiding acts feeling that Funny Women is the ONLY way forward.

Secondly, my article in Micro Mart will be published in the edition out tomorrow. It's on online Skepticism and generally keeping misinformation out of your head.

Enjoy.

Why Live Performance Beats So Many Other Artforms

2011-04-15T15:02:00.001Z

The highest paying "gig" I ever got was for a national newspaper. I'll rephrase that a bit. By gig, in this case, I mean one-off job where I did something and then got paid. Actually, they paid me twice, once for writing the piece, and a second time for their own choice to publish it. It's good money, but it's a rare privilege.

After that article, I got a handful of emails and one or two people I ran into mentioned reading it. As experiences go, though, it was a bit empty. It was like throwing your efforts into a vacuum. Even the editor of the supplement it went into was unable to give me any feedback on the article. Why? Because that's not how it works when you put your creative work out in that sort of format.

Live performance is different. From one minute to the next you can see how the audience are reacting. If they like it, they'll spontaneously show it. It's a lot more ephemeral. You won't be able to go back to the performance a few weeks later and re-read it (as you could with an article or book), but the instant pleasure of a job well done is the reward for the ephemeral nature of the form.

As live performing is a one-take situation, you end up thinking at a more intense level. You are on the spot for the duration of your performance. There's only so much you can do to prepare to be spontaneous and in control. Some comedians go through various rituals to prepare themselves. I've heard of acts using their favourite lipstick, or chanting a mantra to themselves. I've seen someone do a 10 minute warm up.

My own technique is a non technique. I do a few unqualified vocal exercises, which are basically a bit like the system check you get when you turn on a PC - is this bit still connected? Do I have that bit? How big is this? Ok... we're away. I also put a few ideas into my back pocket for things which I've noticed about the room, which I may wish to talk about if the mood takes me.

You hit the stage and then that's it. It's over in a few minutes, and only the moments you created in that performance count... and only for a few minutes after you've performed them. That's it.

However, I wouldn't trade it for anything else - in creativity and feedback terms, at least - the pressure and the feedback are like manure to my allotment of creativity. I'll be fine, so long as I don't stink the place out!

There was a time...

2011-04-08T14:22:00.000Z

Just found some of the usual sniping that seems to dog threads on Chortle about comedians. In this case, the comment Ashley has been consistently shit for a number of years, his only good feature is the massive amount of room for improvement was written about me on this thread.

There was a time when I thought these things mattered. Luckily, I don't judge my success by the opinions on the forum. I can judge my friends on the basis of who chooses to stand up for me. It's appreciated when people step in. These days, people are very positive about me. It used to be slightly different:

Troll: Ashley is so very shit.
Helpful friend: NO!... he's... not... that... bad...

So, thanks to all who've stuck up for me. And thanks for the trolls whose creative insults seem now to make me chuckle. I must have grown a thicker skin. Like a custard/rice-pudding hybrid.

One afterthought: most new acts go through a phase of not being all that good. The question is whether they learn what stuff doesn't really work, and improve. I've seen a lot of new/non-pro acts recently. I hope they learn some of the things I've learned. Those that don't will either give up, or drive themselves to ruin.

What's Important?

2011-04-06T14:30:00.000Z

We assume that we're consistent individuals, since we always see the world from our own perspective. Many people are probably self-aware enough to notice how inconsistent they probably can be.

I'll look back at last night a moment, and then contemplate what I would be most excited about today. The answer is slightly surprising.

Last night's gig was a bit of a challenge. I saw some amazing performances, and saw some top acts holding their own and being extremely creative in front of an audience who weren't giving away freebies, and were happy to implode, just to see what the comedian would do. Some of the acts were looking quite nervous as the gig unfolded. I was much less flappable, Saturday night's gig having inured me (at least temporarily) to the whole "weird gig worry". I even challenged myself to try out some new material, something I'd have been seriously advised not to do under the circumstances.

So, what should I be most concerned and excited about today? Should it be the new material? Should it be the prospects that open up after a gig? Should it be what I saw or learned on stage?

Back when I was as inexperienced as the act who detonated himself and the whole night on Saturday, then the morning after a tough gig I'd be wondering what my future in comedy would hold, and how I could possibly make more of a comedian of myself. I'd be worried about the next booking.

I'm not fussed about the next booking; it's tonight and I think it will be a nice one. Even if it wasn't, worrying about bookings is just the background to my life now, and more of a job than an ego thing.

So what is getting me a bit giddy today is the prospect that my new vacuum cleaner hose will arrive soon. The loss of suction will soon be a thing of the past.

Ring the changes. We're inconsitent!

Some old gig reports

2011-04-05T11:00:00.000Z

It turns out I have had gigs before that weren't so easy, or were memorable enough to write up:

Coventry - at the snooker club - a gig so bad that it even caused a road accident for one of the acts... sort of.

Then there's the recent Cardiff Gig which was challenging, but worst for the opening act.

Then there's the gig at which falling over was the funniest thing I did.

And a bit of blether about one of many joyous Cradley Heath gigs.

To be honest, this blog's full of my reviews of my life, but I can't be sure any of it is worth reading.

Never in all my days

2011-04-03T11:09:00.021Z

Two kooky gig reports in as many gigs. That's an unusual situation. Strap in - here's yesterday in a big fat nutshell.
Before The Gig
I spent the day working on some new material. I say that - I actually spent a lot of the day playing Angry Birds on my computer and wishing I could just get through the next level, so I could get back to writing the material I was meant to be writing. When I finally did get onto the material construction - a sound-editing job, coupled with the script for interacting with fragments of songs to create a dialogue, I had a very nice time and prepared the results for performing that night, even though the material would best fit my show The Seven Deadly Sings which I'm bringing back, with edits, in only a few weeks.

Full of the joys of spring, I picked up my fiancée from work and set about the voyage to London, via Membury - the official service station of gig evening food. We had a fairly eventless car journey, though I insisted on showing my long-suffering other half a mini preview of this new 3 minutes of material, which I whipped through while playing the sound cues, rather poorly, on the car stereo.

You have to understand that there are 4 categories of material (this is not true, there are limitless categories, but I'm claiming 4 for now). It a grid where on one axis you've got "makes the audience laugh" and "doesn't make the audience laugh", and on the other axis you've got "I wrote this with a straight face" and "I was laughing when I wrote this". Generally, so long as you're in the "audience laughs" half of the grid, it doesn't matter whether you were laughing when you wrote it, though it SHOULD matter and you SHOULD write stuff that makes you laugh, otherwise why should you expect an audience to find it funny, and how will you show it's funny if they're not quite getting it?

My biggest fear, when I previewed the material in the car, hoping to do it that night, was that I was in the worst square of the comedy grid, the one which was "made me laugh until the milk was running out of my nose, but doesn't make the audience even smile". I had been roaring with laughter during my writing. Luckily, she-who-shall-be-marrying-me was also amused - or at least faked it well.

At the Gig
I'm going to describe what happened. I'm not going to name names, but I am going to be honest about how I saw things. The reason I feel objective enough to do this will be clear by the end, and if you're reading this, and are one of the people I've described below, then I'm going to assume that you CAN handle my opinion, otherwise you wouldn't have sought to find out what I had to say at this point in the long narrative that this blog entry has become.

I'll try to be nice, as well as blunt.

We arrived at about 8.20 and from the look of things I would have expected the gig to be cancelled, as there was no audience to speak of, and only few people in the pub. I pretty much gave up the idea of there being a try out of the new material, reasoning that the gig would probably be pulled.

However, as I was about to ask the organiser when she was going to pull the plug on proceedings, a handful of audience (4) arrived and took their seats and I was told that the stag night from downstairs would also be coming up. I was also told that there were 9 acts (NINE! ACTS!?) on the bill, and that, owing to the fact that we were running late, as the audience had taken their time to assemble, we'd be doing the show in two sections.

Nine new acts in front of a bunch of drunken stags, doing a series of 5/7 minute sets... what could possibly go wrong?

Well, the sound could go wrong for a start. I'd not realised, when I was on the stage during the sound check, that the sound was lovely on the stage, but rubbish and underpowered in the rest of the room. For sound engineering buffs out there this is what happens when the small speakers (monitors) at the foot of the stage, facing the act's ears, ARE working, when all the other aren't. It didn't help.

The compere got some attention from the crowd and then brought on the first act. She'd been worrying that her material wouldn't suit the audience, and I did my best to cheer her up by doing my ET impression, which involves a pocket torch and the tip of my finger. I know - it sounds rubbish, and it was pretty much the first time I'd ever tried it. Still, it amused us, as we waited to see whether taking to the stage in front of a drunken bunch of stags, who weren't exactly proving to be the sort who sit and listen, would amount to certain death.

In the end, the act raised her game, bantered with the crowd, got some laughs and generally tried a style that was more suited to a hard-work room. Sadly, her gear change into off-beat material about ladybirds was less effective with the audience we had. This is, by the way, the point. You must always play the audience you have. This can mean adapting your material, or it can mean adapting your style. Ultimately, it's chemistry - will you have enough to work with with this audience? If not, then it's just the game. Jim Davidson would not go down well with a bunch of Guardian readers, and I'm pretty sure that Robin Ince, might avoid playing a bunch of Daily Sport readers. Each to their own.

Ultimately, it's not the audience's fault that they happen to be the audience in front of you... that said, they can choose to be supportive or not, and these stags were on the brink of making the wrong choice for most of the night.

Notwithstanding some of the difficulties, the first act chose her moment to end her set and I think she acquitted herself well. One down, 8 to go.

The second act - a rather arrogant early twenties lad - hit the spot with the stags, as his material seemed largely based on porn, violence towards women and masturbation - in every permutation he could think of. I look at my own material sometimes and wonder what it says about me. In the case of this swaggering youngster, I think his material says that he's got some issues he needs to work through. Like most young-twenties stand-ups, some of his issues seem to be about masturbation guilt. Other quips, suggesting a love of pedophilia and causing pain to others, are probably unlikely to go down well with the majority of intelligent, fun-loving audience members who go to comedy clubs because they like to be entertained.

Act of the night was the third stage-goer, who didn't seem to need adapt her material or style greatly, but simply commanded the room with her dark yet girlish one-liners, deftly told with a winning smile. She was very professional and handled herself well. I've gigged with her before and expected greatness - she was one to watch and I was pleased that she got the cream of the gig.

After three acts, most audiences grow restless, and this audience weren't going to get that rest for some time to come. We had a middle-aged lady who seemed fresh from a comedy course. I may be doing her a disservice, but it seemed like she used training to enter the stage, take the microphone out of the stand and place it exactly to one side. I think this is an important skill, and I'm glad that comedy courses teach it so well. Unfortunately, it appears they also teach a sort of mewling, talking self-effacingly about yourself in a self-conscious manner, using your alleged quirks for joke-fodder. This wasn't the audience to be trying this out with.

Bolder and more brash, the final act of the first section bribed the main stag with a Sambuca and then paraded his own series of pet hates in front of the audience. I disagreed with much of his politics and chose that moment to go and buy a big glass of wine. Perhaps I should have drunk it myself, as the second half was going to be the one when it all happened.

Halfway to paradise
In the interval we fixed the sound system. By fixed, I mean I messed about with it, until I worked out what was wrong and managed to make it feedback brilliantly, thus proving I'd got the main speakers on. This was all under control, and in the end we got it sounding pretty good. My fiancee admitted to me that she found it pleasing that I jumped in and did sound engineering as required; she's most definitely the right girl for me, and I'd marry her sooner if it wasn't for the fact that we've already set a date.

I didn't play with the sound to impress her. I'd be doing it anyway. Still it's good to know that she appreciates it, though, since I'll be tinkering with sound equipment for as long as I can.

In the second section, there were to be 4 acts, including myself. This was trimmed down to 3, as the organiser decided to forego her spot to enable the night to run more to time. This was a selfless act, though it also got her off the hook. This wasn't proving to be the easiest of audiences, mainly a result of alcohol, and the nice non-stags had all left the gig by the time the second section started. The lairiness of the stags, coupled with the outright misogyny of the second act (see, not everyone goes for the sobbing-into-the-pillow-while-being-raped girlfriend material) had seen half the normal audience off, and the interval proved a convenient exit door for the second half.

So it was the stags and us. The "us", in question was pretty much the acts who were still waiting to go on, and perhaps one other. Most acts left as soon as they'd played, not wishing to stay around any longer than they had to. This is a shame as I think one should always stay to the end as you're bound to learn something. It's all very well knowing how YOU would play that audience, but perhaps you should see how the other acts do it. You may discover how it can be made easier... or harder. It's usually edifying in some way. Of course, if the gig's gone badly you may wish to disappear, and this is understandable. You may even have a distance to travel, and need to get on with it - fair enough. In general, though, you'll learn nothing from experiencing only your own set and the waiting to go on before it.

Anyway, all bets were off with this gig, since it was such an unusual situation.

On with the show
The first act of the second section picked up the pace of the staggish frenzy by suggesting the audience drink when he swore and encouraging the stag to down a pint. This caused amusement, though it didn't really help the mood of the gig. The thought of it becoming a bit more sombre and polite had to be dismissed entirely.

The next act was to be the last one before I went on. I told his girlfriend, as he took to the stage, that nothing in this room really counted for much - if he got a laugh, it was a win, as it was a tough room (but not representative of what an average audience would be like) and if he got nothing, then it didn't count. I could point out that he got a couple of laughs, which tailed off as he switched from stand-up to just monologuing his material to an increasingly inattentive room. That would sound overly critical. To be honest, it's pretty much exactly what happened, but is only to be expected for a newcomer to comedy, taking on an audience that's really not going to give them any room to learn the craft. It was a do or die gig, and the audience's chatter signalled that the time had come for this act to make a closing remark and leave the stage.

The act chose to take on the loudest-mouthed stag by shouting at him to "Shut the fuck up". This got his attention alright, and I watched the face of the act to see if he would use the moment to create a laugh, or make a friendly connection, or otherwise bring the gig into order. What I saw was an angry and frustrated individual getting himself into the start of an argument. The argument soon proceeded to cries of "I was just talking" and "I'm trying to work here" and "You're not funny" and "I'd be funny if you just listened" and "No, you're not funny" - the things that will never end well.

It was at this point that I got under the table. I slid from the sofa until I was lying with my legs under the table, pretty much trapped there. I then feigned the need for assistance to get up - making my fiancee wonder whether her capable sound engineer of a man was also a wounded deer in his spare time. I wasn't really trapped and I stood myself up and went to the corner of the room to await my call to the stage.

Remember - those acts who had left early had missed the opportunity to learn something. I was learning something. I was learning that I really had no clear battle plan for what I'd do when I hit the stage. I assumed I'd think of something. I'd prepared myself a bit for the gig, even switching my rugby top for a nice button-down shirt, though I did that mainly for my own comfort, rather than to look good for the stags.

Anyway, having gotten out from under the table, I then stood in the corner of the room and giggled quite uproariously to myself. "I've never been brought on to a fight before," I considered, as I watched the act leave the stage, the argument raging around him, and saw the MC try to reason with the crowd to bring them back into order. I could even imagine accidentally being seen as an aggressor, as I took to the stage, and having to fend off a stag, who seeing a big feller walking at him, might assume that this verbal battle needed to be taken to a more physical one.

The outgoing act left with his other half (I wonder if they had an argument that night, as she saw a rather hot-headed aggressive side to his personality), amid a bit of continued shouting from the stags, and I readied myself for the bit where the compere would say my name and I'd go on. I also half-imagined that he'd fail to make the crowd listen and just whisper something like "Now you're all warmed up, here's your fantastic headliner, Ashley Frieze" - a sort of parody of the way someone might bring an act on - then I'd have to walk through no applause to the stage and see whether I couldn't make my mark.

But this night hadn't finished all of its surprise-giving.

What Katy Did Next
Failing to regain control of the room, and misunderstanding the organiser's signals to "just get on with it" as "stop the show", the compere then told the audience that the show was over and said goodbye. That was it. I didn't perform.

As it happened, I rather had a good time that night. I shared some banter with most of the acts and, as I'm now able to offer the benefit of my 8 years experience to some newer acts, who seem to be interested in my thoughts on the subject, I think I was able to give some reasonable advice to some of them (which they asked for) and cheer them up a bit as they contemplated the artistic suicide that seemed to be that stage. As far as camaraderie goes, it will make a nice gig story, and I got on well with many of the people who performed that night.

Some of them may stop getting on with me after they recognise themselves in my review of what happened, but I hope not. I speak as I find, and everyone gives unique performances at each gig, and will change as they develop the craft. Nothing's set in stone.

What of the hiding under the table and the giggling to myself. Well, it's the final thing I learned that night. When I'm under pressure at a gig that's potentially going to hell in a handcart, I generally look for ways to entertain myself and the people around me. Silly ET impressions, sliding under a table, laughing off the insanity of trying to do comedy in a bar-fight - they're all tricks I employed to keep it funny for myself.

I've never had a gig cancelled on me while I was waiting to close the very show that had been running for a couple of hours. I've never seen an act/audience interaction go so horribly wrong as it did.

Though some parts of the night seemed to be obviously and inevitably doomed to failure, like watching a slow motion car crash that's already started, it was a load of fun and I can't wait to go back to learn some more.

So many things were not quite to plan

2011-04-02T00:41:00.000Z

Where do I begin with how today threatened to go wrong, but didn't? Well, apart from spoiling any sense of tension in the story by telling you that it all came out in the end, I'll start near the beginning.

I ran late this morning, which was a frustration and set my plans for an easier morning rather aback. Then I had to go to the estate agent's to discuss some stuff. I found the testosterone and youth-fuelled shiny suit wearers to be as irritating as I'd expected, but the overall experience was fine. I even managed to buy something in advance of tomorrow, which means I don't have to buy it tomorrow. So far, a win.

The afternoon proved that the thing I was going to try to fix was beyond easily fixable, and even though my strategy for applying improvement in a stepwise fashion will work, it was not going to be easy. Damn. I like it when a little ingenuity solves a big problem without the drudgery of doing hundreds of little changes.

I left early, because I only had half the details of tonight's gig in my head. I reckoned that I should be able to get there for 7 and then be nice and relaxed and read my book. This plan was immediately scuppered by an additional 30 minutes of near standing traffic en route. Then I arrived at the venue and went to scope it out and find the start time.

To say that nobody at the venue knew what was going and who was organising it would be unfair. They didn't have this information in the front of their minds, but I kept going from one person to another until, between them, they worked out who was doing what and when. Then I asked about the PA system - they have one - the lighting - they don't have it - and the microphone stand - no to that too. This wasn't looking good for a gig.

We got a microphone working while people rang around to see about a microphone stand. I then got onto the texts and formed about 4 options for how to get hold of a microphone stand if I needed to. Options included:

Someone I knew, who's in a band - he doesn't have his own stand
A friend of mine, who's brother is in a band and who MUST have a stand - he was out on tour
Another person I know in Southampton, whom I know does some home-recording - he didn't answer quickly

We got to option 4 and I rang up a venue called The Talking Heads. I know they have bunches of kit, and I asked them if they'd mind lending me a stand. I'm a terrible negotiator and offered them, up front, tons of ID, deposit and whatever it would take to make them say yes. I even tried to suggest that I wasn't a total stranger, having gigged there a few times, and knowing people they know. Despite my cack-handed method of asking, they said yes, reasoning that my suggested deposit of double the cost of a mic-stand was pretty much a win-win situation for them.

I headed out to get the stand and while I was gone the other acts arrived. I got ID checked by the nice lady, who took my mobile number and rang it just to prove my phone would respond. Neat.

Then back to the venue. The other acts tonight were Paul Ricketts and Vikki Stone. Normally I don't mention other people on this blog by name, but tonight was a night of camaraderie and bonding, and they deserve a positive mention.

Vikki plays piano in her set. We then hit the problem of the fact that the DJ could only give us one channel in total through the house PA. You need two for a piano and a mic; I wanted to use my guitar also. I had a lead long enough to get us to the stage, and Vikki piped up that she had a PA system in her car. Off we went to fetch this, and then it was used as a sort of mixer to get the sound into a form where it could enter the PA.

Paul was unhappy with the lighting; the whole - "there's no lighting" situation, so he went off with someone from the venue to see what sort of stuff might be lying around that we could use as lights. He came back down with a couple of dodgy, exposed-bulb, up-lighters. These were falling to pieces. Does anyone have gaffa tape? Vikki does - it's in her car, of course. The lights were up to chest height and the top bulbs didn't work, leaving illuminated knees. We fixed this by moving bulbs, and found power extensions enough to plug both lights in on stage at the front corners, giving us a focal point. I had an extension lead in my car, but we didn't need it.

Now everyone had rolled up their sleeves and set up the gig, we could actually go ahead and perform. As a joke, I suggested the run in music of "Let Me Entertain You". It's not that I like that song. It's not that I don't like it, either. It's just THE cliche for run-in music for a comedy club, and I thought it would be funny to use it. As I crouched beside the stage with the domestic dodgy lights on the corners, currently not plugged in, the music struck up. As the first electric guitar hit came in during the intro, I plugged the lights in and they came on, causing a laugh from the people who realised how both showbiz AND shit that effect was. I giggled to myself too, and then set about compering the gig.

We got through the gig. Paul was excellent. Vikki, whom I'd not seen before, was lovely to see. The audience were up and down, as is to be expected, but they were supportive and even moved into the best position they could move into, when I asked them to.

We got paid and left. We also congratulated each other on a job well done. It was our, biased, joint opinion that the three of us, with our collection of components and our attitude to problem solving, were the right sort of trio to take on a gig like that, where things weren't set up. We'd each spurred the other on into finding the right solution to the logistical problems, and then we complemented each other as a line-up.

That's nice to agree on.

I drove back to the Talking Heads, via a shop. I gave back the mic-stand, had my deposit returned, and gave the nice lady a box of chocolates as a thank you. It was amazing that she agreed, with no offer of payment, to save our bacon by loaning us the stand. It's nice to show your gratitude.

I drove home via a petrol station where I accidentally entered the HGV only area, tried to get across to the car bit, didn't see that there was an actual kerb between the two areas, which then crashed over, surprising myself. I did no damage to anything, except my credibility, and slinked off home.

Nothing actually ended up going wrong - it just seemed that way during the problems.

Hammer Job, Job Hammer

2011-04-01T13:57:00.000Z

Note: this is a geeky coding post, so please stop reading unless you care about this sort of thing.

I remember my own mistakes of the past. I used to use one trick with object oriented programming (still reading?). I used to use inheritance. There were a lot of reasons for this, and I blame Microsoft - not in a "Windows is shit" kind of a way, but more because they made a lot of use of inheritance in examples and automatically generated code, so it became the common tool for any job.

When you have a hammer, everything's a nail, right?

Well, time's moved on for me, and I've learned of two other techniques:

HAS-A - sometimes you can use an instance of another object to DO what you want, rather than have everything become something else, just to use some behaviour
State vs type - it's not necessary to provide the answer to certain parameters by overriding the getters for that data, you can just store the data in the object which needs to be configured.

There are more techniques, of course... but these two are the ones which seem to be forgotten. If everything has to be a type, then you end up with types that basically provide static data via dynamic getters, which could be replaced by having the data stored in the object and used with static getters.

Mind you, there are reasons when you want to do things the opposite way around. If you're using patterns where there are tons of objects, and you want them to be virtually stateless, then the type can dictate the notional state, since a single type identifier can imply a lot of data.

Let's not even mention the Liskov substitution principle. Ok. Let's mention it. A is set to be of type B, if you can use A in any place where you can use a B. This defines inheritance, but kind of assumes that you haven't made A undo some of B's behaviour. So if B always does a thing, and A makes it not happen, then you've got something which defies the idea of additive inheritance. It's sometimes a necessary evil.

Right now, I've got some classes on my screen where there's a template, which has all manner of possible data items. Somehow, rather than implementing a single type where these items can be easily turned on and off, the implementing person has created a type for each possible permutation, which duplicate bits of each other. In this situation, there's a single type and just variants of how to configure it... multiple types don't help.

Ockham's razor, in Latin, reads - Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate, or Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. So today's job is having fewer duplications, entities, types and nails being hit by hideous hammers.

Quite Confusing

2011-03-18T14:46:00.001Z

I think I'm at a time and configuration in my life where it's a bit confusing. I'm getting old, but I feel extremely poorly equipped to be too grown up. I value running around and being irresponsible (within responsible parameters set by my grown up self) way too much.

My aching limbs are a sign that I'm showing the wear and tear of the years and the overweightedness (which is an abstract noun I've invented for this occasion).

Planning a wedding is a good thing, though it seems like a huge basket of confusion at the moment, given the fact that you end up reviewing other people's weddings as evidence that yours will be nice, and start to ponder whether, for instance, such and such a photographer is any good considering the really bad clothes of that particular subject he happens to have photographed. I don't care about other people's weddings, just ours. Still, we'll get there.

I'd like to live in our house. We do live in our house, but it's not ours ours, just ours... you get me? No? Me neither. I'd like to own the house I live in. I own a house, and that's a responsibility, but I don't get to live there, which is a shame, because I liked that house. I liked living there.

I prefer the living arrangements we now have, except for the house, which I don't prefer, since it's too small.

Tonight I'm driving an irresponsible distance to perform for free for charity. This will probably be great fun, but I reserve the right for it to make me feel old.

Oh, and I'm writing a book, and it's going to be huge... and take about 6 months to draft.

Does anyone know a publisher?

Watching In Slow Motion

2011-03-12T02:15:00.000Z

I don't want to complain about tonight's gig. I had a good time. I would like to note down a little of what happened, as it's a classic example of when reality meets expectation.

I had heard that there would be a good sized audience for the gig, so I packed my video camera, thinking it might be a good one to capture on film. As the gig was in Cardiff Bay, and I quite fancied seeing the location used for some Doctor Who and lots of Torchwood filming, I set off a little earlier so I could absorb some of the atmosphere of the place.

My video camera also takes stills and I'm now the proud owner of some shorts of Roald Dahl plaza. Interestingly, Google Maps will show you the Torchwood hub on the map as though it's a real place. This is where I pity the archaeologists and historians of the future. Separating fact from fiction is going to be a problem.

After getting to a stage where I thought the night was going to be amazing, I headed to the venue - a casino - where we'd be doing the gig. After the Slovakian reception lady had repeatedly done the "you're a comedian; tell us a joke" line to me, I got into the body of the place and discovered the layout and the equipment.

In short, neither the equipment nor the layout were individually ideal, and they certainly weren't suited to each other. We got a certain distance in the direction of making the sound right, and then I went off to fetch my guitar. I parked the video camera idea at this point and I have no regrets about that.

Let's fast forward to the bit after the first act has been on. The show has started late, the compere has been faced with the confused responses of an audience that aren't focused, interested, or really able to hear him. The compere and first act have had a large stream of people walking around them as they stand in a performance area of some sort, trying to project to a distant bunch of people, only some of whom care.

It was really hard, the start of the show. Things weren't set up right. You could see it coming a mile off, yet there didn't seem to be anything that could be done to avoid it. I was getting giggly. In a silly way I find the impossible gig scenario quite funny. It's hideously pointless, yet fascinating.

I dispensed some of my trademark advice. This, I think, was taken in the good spirit it was intended. You can't lose with a bad gig, I said. If you get a laugh of any sort, then it's a win, because it's against the odds. If you don't get a laugh, then it's not a problem as it was inevitable in a gig with the odds stacked against you.

How appropriate to be discussing odds in a casino.

Fair play to all concerned, in the second section the audience were moved closer to the PA system and into a compact area, with only the people who gave a damn sitting there. Thus, the second section did pretty well.

Then the final section and my turn. I'd really enjoyed the absurdity of the night, and I went out there to have fun. I/we (the audience and me) did have some fun. That's a result. Though the point of the story isn't to show how I had a good gig. It's more to document that every gig is a gamble and you just have to make the best of it.

How romantic

2011-03-01T15:36:00.000Z

Subject: dear, good mood to u
From: "Juliya S" [with my email address]
To: [arnld2001@yahoo.com]
Date: Tue 01/03/11 8:56 AM

Aloha, my gentleman!

All my life I am waiting for the moment when we eventually meet.
I want to share each and every sunset with u http://lovedsouls.com
when the sun sinks low and the darkness spills across the land
like a magical balloon.
You will hold my hand and your touch will be warm and tender.
The horizon is sure to be one of the most beautiful things on the earth,
but its beauty will pale compared to what we feel to each other.

Embraces
Ju

I shall now reply:

Subject: U r mi horizon
From: Me with your address
To: You with my address

Aloha to you. And welcome to the luau of life.

You say that you've been waiting all your life for the chance to meet me. I'm amazed. How have you even heard of me you mental pseudo-Hawaiian nutjob?

Sharing sunsets is a hell of a commitment. It means staying up until sundown every night. Sometimes I might want an early night. Sometimes I might want to go to the cinema. I don't want you, half way through the film, dragging me outside to show me the sun going down. It would be cute at first, but it would get very irritating.

I'm not sure the darkness spills across anything. Arguably, light spills. Darkness is more the absence of light, and I'd never compare it to any sort of balloon, least of all a magical one.

You say that I would hold your hand with a warm and tender touch. Are you sure? I reckon that after you've cooed at the 7th sunset of the week in winter, I'd be feeling pretty icy. Get off my hand, you freak, I'd say with my body language, my frosty body shivering like a magical dog with a case of the squits.

In short "Ju" what you're offering sounds awful.

Please stop emailing yourself from my mailbox.

Regards

Me

Some random advice for budding comedians

2011-02-19T14:47:00.003Z

I was chatting with a facebook friend and ended up reeling off a bunch of tips on how to be a comedian. They may be useful to you if you ever wondered how to crack the art form. It's a bit of a random blether as I've edited from bits of the original hat. Hope it's interesting to read.

Things to avoid:

Doing yourself down as a comedian - don't tell them you find doing comedy hard in any way, even if a joke fails, don't tell them you have no confidence in your role as comedian
Doing yourself down totally on stuff they don't know/care about - parading one's failings/insecurities IS funny, but up to some sort of breaking point, by which the audience stop caring. Likewise, if it's a small thing that they haven't necessarily noticed, then they may not make the leap of realisation that it's funny.
Cliches - avoid obvious subjects.... at least, avoid facing them head on - I'll mention this a bit more in a moment.
Monologuing - give the audience room to breathe. Stand-up is a dialogue - make room for their reaction.
Big explanations for small jokes - the size of the laugh must justify the amount of listening it takes to get to it. Small jokes need small explanations, big jokes, need big ones. If the journey isn't meant to be funny, then keep the journey brief.

Cliches Here are some things which are expected of a comedian to talk about. You can talk about them, but if you do, you should either do a quick line, or come at the subject from the side. Otherwise you're probably not saying anything new, or surprising enough to make a decent laugh.

Weight
Appearance
Periods
Porn
Masturbation
The hilarious difference between genders/races etc
Sex
Family
Tubes
Airline experience
Sat navs
others that you can guess

So, if you opened a set with "So... periods", you will probably get a bunch of audience members and many comedians going "Here we go again".

Positive advice Boil the story down to the biggest joke and work backwards from it. What's the simplest and shortest route to the punchline. Do the subsidiary punchlines justify their branches from that route? Where's the surprise and revelation in each thing you say. Ignore my advice completely and make up your own. Stand-up is a personal thing and my tips should be taken with a pinch of salt.

If you'd like a script doctor's view of your material, feel free to email me on ashley at ashleyfrieze.co.uk a long-hand script of a set. I'm happy to send you feedback as though I was editing a script of my own, with questions, alternatives and ideas for you to try. This may make you go "No. My way is the ONLY WAY", which is a good reaction, since you're showing conviction in your draft, or it may make you go "Yes, but, how about I do this other thing you didn't suggest" which is a good reaction, since you've been able to kick start the script development and make something that's more you than me... alternatively, I might strike it lucky and suggest something you could use.

It's up to you. Or you can not bother. :)

How to start
The "I know what you're thinking" line is a comedy cliche, but it's also an easy way into an audience.

Example: "I know what you thinking - I didn't know that Barry From Eastenders Had a Baby With Shrek" (see photos of me for context)

My favourite "I know what you're thinking" moment was something along the lines of a stand-up saying the following and then getting heckled in the most perfect way - the heckler didn't miss a beat. It sounded like this:

Man: I am a mind reader. I can reach into your minds and work out exactly what you are currently thinking...
Heckler: ... tosser!

Brilliant. Still makes me chuckle.

With Respect To Believers

2011-02-04T13:52:00.001Z

This weekend sees QEDCon, a skeptical conference. I wish I could attend. I will have to enjoy it vicariously through the various reports and podcasts I'll see/hear over the next few weeks.

Skepticism is an interesting subject to me. I find myself being both in support of and against its methods from time to time. On the one hand, the sort of thinking that you'd find in a Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh or Edzard Ernst book is unassailably sensible. Here's a summary of how rational thinking works.

Step 1 - define the criteria for judging whether something is true
Step 2 - modify the criteria to account for other confounding variables
Step 3 - modify the criteria some more to account for human failings, like confirmation bias
Step 4 - apply the method and look at the results

If you've done the steps right, and there's debate about exactly what's a confounding variable and what is a human failing, but let's assume we can work those out for a second, then the answer isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of deduction. This applies to anything.

A problem occurs when you start out with a viewpoint of the answer before you've designed the test, and then either design the test to agree with your answer, or retrospectively adjust the method of the test to prove your answer.

Believers are idiots.

Naysayers are idiots in equal measures - they're just registered disbelievers.

Skepticism, linguistically, implies naysaying, which sometimes is a consequence of disagreeing with a belief on the basis of evidence, but often seems to be assuming that some saying of nay is required and then finding evidence to enable that, which is not pure evidence-based rationalism.

So, before entering a debate on what represents a reasonable claim, you have to agree on your criteria for defining what would be accepted as a reasonable claim. This has to be very specific. I don't think the skeptical activists would disagree with that, though their rhetoric often sounds different. When you're confident that your answer is better than someone else's you can't help but display a giddy sense of "he's a bloody idiot", which can occur on either side of the fence dividing believers from naysayers.

This is where skepticism worries me. On the one hand, QEDCon is going to represent an amazing gathering (not an "Amazing Meeting", TAM fans) of minds, providing events and speeches I'd be thrilled to attend. On the other hand, to a large extent, the event will involve a lot of "preaching to the choir" which may, to the uninitiated, look like backslapping and general smugness. I'm not saying it IS that, I'm saying it might as well be that, when the human failings of the passionate are mixed with the perfectly brilliant views of their heroes.

Let's look at the issue of how rational thinking can be applied without closing the door to a meaningful discussion with believers, in other words, how do we approach unproven claims without becoming naysayers. Indeed, can even calling those claims unproven be a starting point?

This is again where I see my own attitude reflected by the jolly band of skeptics. I'm the sort of person who would start a conversation assuming I was right and "they" were wrong, and I know it doesn't win arguments, it just highlights the divide. So, some of the skeptic activists are, effectively, winding up the existing skeptics to agree with what they may already agree with, recruiting some other likeminded people, but are not necessarily likely to reach out to the undecided or the believers.

This is why I like the way that Goldacre describes scientific process, in a way that's not derisory, but just logical. This is why Singh and Ernst's first examples in their wonderful book "Trick or Treatment" are so good, as they do not relate to contentious current debates, but instead show the fallacies still present in current debates, via examples from the past that nobody would, with hindsight, dispute. Ultimately, deciding right from wrong comes down to the method proposed by John Diamond in his book "Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations": essentially paraphrased as "Why don't we determine what's right or wrong, but some sort of system of counting?".

So, I'd like to be part of the choir that's being preached to this weekend. I like the rational song. It's my song. To paraphrase James Randi, I want to live in a world that's based on real things. That said, I'd like to see a change in the way that skeptics approach believers. There's zero point in exchanging blows on a "my ideas are better than yours" basis. The first question to ask is this - "Are you a believer? or can we discuss evidence and rational deductions in relation to your subject matter?". If the person defines themselves as a believer, then you should probably stop.

My view is that neither believers nor naysayers should be allowed control of anything that's important. Let's have the thinkers step up to the plate. This will involve getting out of the conference hall, and spreading the philosophy of rational thought, rather than its outcomes.

I think that's what skeptics are trying to do. So I'm a skeptic.

I Should Bloody Know Better

2011-01-04T02:17:00.000Z

I've been putting off upgrading my phone to the latest firmware version because I thought it might be problematic. I'm not a technophobe, as anyone who has read my blog will probably realise. In fact, I'm rather good with computers and gadgets.

I didn't want to mess with the firmware of the phone as it would inevitably require backing up data and restoring it afterwards. However, I was goaded into it in the Orange shop today.

The man behind the till smugly identified my phone as an HTC Hero. I quickly retorted that I think it's a "piece of shit", an opinion I'm prepared to hold onto, since it's been slow, awkward and generally irritating. He countered with the usual "which software version are you using?" answer. This is meant to make me sound like an idiot for holding onto the original software, rather than upgrading.

I admitted I'd not done the upgrade as I'd heard mixed reports about the results. However, his sneering was all it took to send me down a path I rather regret.

Here's what I ended up doing.

Searching round in vain for the right upgrade and the method of upgrading
Downloaded a new HTC sync to find that it only works with the upgraded phone
Found the ROM upgrade, after searching Google and Orange's site
Did the ROM upgrade, only to find that this didn't get me compatibility with the new HTC Sync software, as the ROM upgrade only took me to Android 1.5, which wasn't much further forward
Discovered the phone still doesn't work with my Wireless but DID have an auto-update over-the-air feature to get itself up to Android 2.1 via Mobile Web
Left it downloading the update for about 4 hours
Maybe five
Then discovered that HTC Sync 3.0 doesn't actually work properly...
Got irritated in the extreme and started writing this...

I now have a phone where I can't get the contacts onto it. Downgrading to the previous HTC Sync may help. I want to kill someone.

Extremes of customer service

2010-12-14T15:49:00.000Z

I have two service providers to deal with today. One of them is a cat boarding kennel - Manor Farm Cattery, whom I had to ring in order to rearrange cat accommodate over the Christmas break. Since we'd paid a deposit and had taken their valuable space over a busy season, I expected them to say something like "We'll keep the deposit and maybe hold you to a percentage of the agreed accommodations". At the very least I didn't expect them to be so amenable and helpful in moving the dates to another busy time of year.

They were simply great - a class act. Well worth using.

On the other side there's another service provider. This provider has failed me in an important way and hasn't been sorting out the issue. I happened to drop into their office on 1st December because I was nearby. Suddenly everything was a priority. The person told me that they would get progress for me by midday on the 3rd. "And I'm promising you" she said. I asked if her previous assurances of getting things sorted out were also a promise. She admitted they had been, but this time she really meant it.

By the following week, nothing had happened. No progress. No apology for doing anything. I sent an email explaining that it was obvious that the deadline had passed and I was looking for an update. No reply.

Over the weekend, I sent a further email explaining that I didn't expect to be ignored. No reply.

I have been quite measured in my approach to this situation. I don't want to blow my top at them because I feel I'd lose the moral high ground. I don't want someone to be doing what's necessary grudgingly, and I don't want to be unreasonable. However, in my private moments, I sit and wonder what it would take to get a reaction from this individual. How do I get her to start answering my mail?

I thought of a good one today. I thought about sending a big bunch of flowers. This would make everyone in the office coo and peer over her shoulder to ask who it was from and what they said. Then the card could say something like:

My Dearest Ineffective Person

Since you've ignored my emails I thought I would send you these flowers, which in time will die like the empty promises you've made to get your shit together. Roses are red, violets are blue, get on with the stuff you promised to do.

In the end, I just rang a couple of times. I will be speaking to this person or their manager. I will be reasonable. There's no need to flounce. I think the fact speak for themselves - the service has been very poor and there's no excuse for ignoring reasonable attempts at communication. I'm not an angry complainer, I just want my problem solved.

I'm glad my cats are looked after by the nice people.

We have two cats

2010-12-13T14:18:00.001Z

...and one of them looks a bit like this .

Continue with your lives now.

Ah, a spam message

2010-12-02T10:23:00.000Z

It's been a while since I blogged about a spam message. Here's a quicky, which came in "your mail has bounced" notification - a clever bit of social engineering that's likely to get you to open and read the mail.

Subject: maybe it's the best time
From: "Katya M" [with apparently my email address]
To: [amandastilo@hotmail.com], [amandastiv@hotmail.com]
Date: Thu 02/12/10 12:18 AM

Ave, my friend!

I am a sporty, intelligent girl, kind, honest, interesting,
communicative, easy-going and open-minded young lady
www.girlsfromcountry.org
I have a lot of friends, they say that I am very decent and
devoted person, understanding and interesting interlocutor. Moreover
I’m a mysterious girl with deep beautiful eyes. To tell you the truth,
sometimes I think that I’m hopeless romantic and try not to loose the
hope to find my dream… but after that, backing to the reality I understand,
that all these just dreams and I should get rid of these ideas, but
just can’t… I want to find a person who can understand, respect and think
much of me. In general I consider that the main thing is mutual
understanding!

Katy

Here's a reply I couldn't send, since she was claiming to have my email address as hers

Dear Katy, or should I call you Katya? In fact, you shouldn't hide behind an anglicised pseudonym, be proud of who you are. You're Katya. Say it. Say it loud. You've Katya... or maybe you're me!? Maybe this whole thing is something I do with a deep-rooted part of my subconscious, unbeknown to my normal self. Are you me? Do I write these emails in the middle of the night while I'm otherwise asleep? Eeek. In that case, I'll just say "Dear Me", and I mean that in every sense.

I'm glad to hear you're sporty and intelligent. When I first read that I thought it said you were spotty and intelligent. I know that pain. Sometimes the geek gene gives intellect, but doesn't have space to offer clear skin. In your case, you've got the brains, but you're using them to move yourself around a sports field. This might make you a nasty joke, the scourge of the geek, but you're also kind, honest and interesting (modest too, perhaps?). I have no doubt that you're communicative, given the unsolicited nature of your email. To say you're easy-going and open-minded and then emphasise your number of friends and how they thing you're decent and devoted and understanding and interesting... well, I think it disproves the easy-going thing. You seem a bit intense.

What the hell's an interlocutor? It sounds scary. Does it involve rubber hoses and electrodes? Then you're mysterious on top of it? Do I look like Peter Andre? You're starting to scare me. You claim to be a hopeless romantic, but your technique suggests you're more of a ruthless interrogator.

Anyway, backing to the reality (backing to the life), I don't give too hoots where you get rid of your dreams or not. I'm not a person who can respect and think much of you - you've made me frightened. As for understanding you. No chance. I've no idea what you're on about.

I hope you find love, or at least help... and if you're me in a nightdress and a state of fugue, then I hope we both get help.

All the best

Ashley

Digital download is best!?

2010-12-02T09:31:00.000Z

Hmm - so £6 for the CD, sleeve notes, format independence, longevity, etc... and MORE for the digital download... right...

The Gospel According To Stats

2010-11-26T14:49:00.001Z

For fun, I had a chat with a street preacher at lunchtime. He told me a story which I thought I'd examine critically. He said that he once flicked through the bible at random and came up with a page that spoke to him with huge relevance at that time. His wife said it was a coincidence, so he showed her what he'd done and came up with the same page the second time. He then did it a third and a fourth time, in a book with 2000 pages (or thereabouts). This was proof to him that there was some force at work.

I won't deny or agree with the putative divinity in that story. Let's just do some stats, though. Let's ignore the idea that the book has a flaw in its spine, predisposing it to open at that exact page. Let's use the idea that he was truly random in his page selection, first of all.

Probability of choosing the same page four times is 1/2000 to the power of 4. This is one in 160 billion. Quite improbable. Wow.

Then let's assume, as I have done, that, in fact, he replicated the act of searching at random a bit less randomly than he imagined, going to approximately the same 300 page region of the book each time. Somewhere near the middle, maybe, or maybe near the end. A 300 page range wouldn't be a bad guess for one's flicking-at-random-target-area. That would make it a one in 810 million, which is very long odds, but comparable to the sole-winners of the one in 14 million national lottery draws.

Now, let's use a quick experiment I did with my Uri Geller book. I tried to flick to about the same page each time. I got a range of 40 pages. So, let's imagine that this guy repeated his steps really well. The probability of hitting the same page each time is one in 2.5million. Lottery winners beat those odds every week.

So, even if the book wasn't biased, the significance of reaching the same page each time seems to be statistically less universe threatening than at first imagined.

Taunting

2010-10-26T00:27:00.002Z

I gigged in Taunton tonight (Monday night). It's a venue I've performed in on several occasions and I pretty much knew what to expect. You take a youthful audience, give them a free comedy night in an arts centre, import a bunch of London acts (with me as a lone ranger coming in my own car from a different direction), and see what happens. As I knew the venue and the format, I was comfortable clocking in a few minutes after the gig start time, after a nice leisurely drive (listening to Robin Ince and Josie Long's podcast).

The only real challenge was the absence of a techie, which meant that I had to do my own sound - this proved remarkably unchallenging. Of minor note was the fact that the rest of the show had been short and to the point. I don't think any of the acts had done particularly long or self-indulgent sets. This was about to change. I videoed the gig, and I shall, at some point, see how I behaved. It was a version of me that I may or may not be proud of.

I think I was wrong, the other night, when I said that I'm not the sort of comedian who appoints a gimp for the duration of the night and then makes them the butt of every joke. I don't set out to do that, and I don't always see it as necessary, but I have been known to do that. It can work awfully well. I think it's usually some minor detail of someone's behaviour which draws me to them and enables me to create a whole world of insults around some made up character traits that I've exaggerated.

So it was the rather unfortunate Tom, tonight, who found me throwing jokes at him, with a room of baying people basically egging me on. Of the 35 minutes or so that I did on stage, poor Tom probably got about 5 or 6 minutes of attention - it wasn't that bad. In some cases, I was just using him as punctuation. However, I have to admit that I don't always keep myself as the victim of my own humour.

I wonder what it means. Do I attack pleasant young people during my set as some sort of curmudgeonly attack on youth itself? Do I find weakness, when I'm playing the alpha male role, to be a lure? Is it just that I like mimicry of whatever I see in front of me, and know that returning to the same subject, like a chorus, can be very funny? Does it matter?

I don't think I was brutal. I tried to be creative, while not being too afraid to wander through stereotypes and well-worn joke territory. In fairness, I censored out quite a few things that entered my head, so I wasn't going all out to attack the poor fella. I also changed tactic. On the one hand I was creatively making visual comparisons between the chap and "Where's Wally?". Then I'd move to teenage pregnancy. The next minute I was mock-flirting in a gay-cowboy-woodsman kind of a way. It wasn't so much an attack as an explosion of enthusiasm.

I wish I'd had longer with the crowd, but they pretty much frosted up at 25 minutes, so I was pushing it harder and harder as I did longer. The energy levels (figurative, not spooky) weren't quite right, so I brought the thing to a conclusion.

On the way home, some Doctor Who podcasts, including The Ood Cast and The Doctor Who Podcast. Google them.

In summary, I like gigging in Taunton.

Gotta Love The Net

2010-10-25T13:49:00.001Z

Only on the net can you press a button, buy an album, and then within a few hours, enter into a discussion with the artist of that album on the delightful contents of said purchase.

Sometimes it's like everyone and everything is just one click away.

Doctor Who Soundtracks in Midi

2010-10-25T10:12:00.001Z

one for the geeks, methinks.

Food for thought

2010-10-21T14:47:00.001Z

A point made to me last night about my objection to homeopathy was quite interesting. The person I was discussing it with used an argument that summarises thus:

"Aren't you just getting offended on behalf of other people? Would you take it yourself? No? So what's the problem?"

Interesting point. Is it my responsibility to protect the foolhardy? Does it really do any harm? What's the harm in Homeopathy?.

The person was more making the point that one should share knowledge about how crackpot it is, so people can judge for themselves, rather than try to stop it directly. So, I recommend we make more jokes about it.

On the occasions that my girlfriend drinks a mug of boiling water, we always refer to it as homeopathic tea. I recommend you do the same.

Also, I recommend you refer to mediums as being "guessers" and reflexologists as "foot-fetishists".

Woo-hoo

2010-10-21T12:16:00.001Z

I didn't quite get yesterday. It wasn't a day of things making sense.

Work had me reading a bunch of 150 page documents where people promised the world and I was left wondering whether they really could deliver. This is way too dull and melted my brain a fair old bit. I think my brain grew during the process, but only in the sense that it became inflated by the hot-air it was forced to process. This is figurative... and rather unintelligible - a tribute to the documents I was reading.

During the day I went online and noticed a discussion on Rhys Morgan's blog on homeopathy, which is one of my bete noirs. The simple fact is that there's no active effect of homeopathy in itself. There are three effects that make people believe in homeopathy:

Placebo - belief can heal, apparently, which is great, but no proof of a medical treatment method - arguably, you could replace homeopathy with smarties and get the same effect
Return to mean - the fact that people can sometimes get better for no singular reason, or because their illness has run its cause outside of any intervention
Confirmation bias - the idea that "I was doing this when that happened, and I thought this would cause that, so this causes that"

I made some reasonable points about an anecdote on the above blog, and got into a dialogue with a contributor, doing the classic well it worked for me argument about this hocus pocus. His parting shot was "Would you rather be right, or get better?" made me spit my dummy out... a little.

Confirmation bias is fascinating in its own regard. I have noticed people flashing their lights at traffic signals to make them turn green. Do you think that flashing your light at a red light can make it change? If you do, then maybe you have a reason for it... don't emergency services, with their flashing lights, make lights change in their favour? Haven't you seen someone flash at a signal and then it changes to green? We have a plausible mechanism and a bit of anecdotal evidence there. My ex-girlfriend first taught me about this trick - making the traffic lights change by flashing them... mind you, it doesn't always work. So, is this a real thing? or is this confirmation bias making us believe a rumour, coupled with the fact that if you flash enough, the lights will eventually change (regardless of your flashing)?

I emailed the highways agency to find out. I'll tell you their answer later on.

On the way to the gig last night I was discussing all these crazy beliefs with my in-car companion. I was explaining some of the wacko treatments out there, like Cranio Sacral therapy, which I think boils down to "your head's a bit out of whack, let me screw it on properly for you". I explained the term "Woo" as the name for the practioners of alternative medicine. I think it may have other origins, but for me it comes down to the fact that the people who haven't got any clinical evidence and proven mechanism behind their so-called treatments have, ultimately, to answer questions on how it works by basically saying "Woooooooo!".

Punter: So you manipulate my head and then what happens.
Head witch doctor: Well, we align your energies and then, wooooooo, it sort of teaches your body how to tune into not-being-ill-FM.
Punter: How?
HWD: [waving hands and fingers around like a poor conjuror] Ooooooooh.

Simple fact. If alternative medicine actually worked, with proper evidence, and plausible mechanisms, it would be called medicine. In other words, it's an alternative to what is consider effective and logical. If you want to get better, you want the most effective treatment, not the most bold empty promise.

We got to Windsor and had a long pre-gig warm up. We played the biscuit game. Not that one. The game where you make biscuits into films. I had Breakfast at Tiffin-ys. But that may not be a biscuit. Running late, the gig got started.

I then discovered, bantering with the audience, that there was not one, but TWO Chiropractors in the audience. My head exploded. It was too early in the gig for me to know I'd have the audience behind me if I launched into them. To me, these guys might as well have been dressed as witch-doctors with hats on that said "Give us your money for our dangerous and ignorant treatment". I asked them their opinion on Simon Singh, and they hadn't even heard of him. If you haven't, then I recommend reading Trick or Treatment (not that I've read it myself, but I've read the reviews, seen the aftermath, and read his other work, so I'm happy that it's a good recommendation). Eventually, I made a joke about not having a go at Chiropractors because it might "get their back up". What was interesting was that they were sitting with an NHS Primary Care Trust worker. Who knows what they've been up to. I had bantered with this guy and made jokes about NHS cuts. I didn't think to set up an expectation about quackery in that discussion, it would have been gold.

I'll explain about set-ups in this situation. If you're bantering with someone, I've realised that it's a good thing to create a big expectation. You can declare, from the evidence in front of you, that someone is very very manly, for example, then ask them a question about their manliness; their answer will either meet or confound expectations - a laugh either way.

So, in the spirit of "turning back time" (thanks RH) here's a re-script.

[What sort of happened]

Me: What do you do?
Man 1: I work for a PCT, in the NHS.
Me: You don't have to clarify that it's the NHS - I know what a PCT is. Maybe the audience don't know, though. Anyone not know? [some murmur] do you want to tell them?
Man 1: It's a Primary Care Trust, hospital management.
Me: Oooh, these cuts must be affecting you a lot. How's your job?
Man 1: Yeah. Not good.
Me: 16% tougher, eh? What's your favourite... cut...?
Man 1: No comment.

[Things that should have happened]

Me: Perhaps if the government forced the NHS to cut all the quack treatments they pay for, there'd be more money for proper medicine. These quacks, they're stealing your livelihood. Sorry for your bad luck, mate. [turns to person next to him] So, what do you do?
Man 2: I'm a Chiropractor
Me: Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. You pretend to cure people by giving them a back rub. Do you do NHS work? [audience laughter]
Man 2: [Murmurs of indignation]
Me: Sorry. I didn't mean to get your back up. Your sort believe that the back is the seat of all medical problems and that you can re-align the back to cure stuff. How would you deal with a back injury?
Man 2: [Mumbles some more]
Me: Sorry. I'm sure you're highly qualified at this made up treatment. Is it right that you don't need to read the inside of the textbooks in Chiropractic, as you can just look at the spine. Sorry. I don't mean to your your nose out of joint. That would hardly be relevant. I'm sure you're a well-meaning guy who's trying to help people. At least there aren't that many Chiropractors out there. [To next man] So, what do you do?
Man 3: I'm a Chiropractor
Me: Oh, this is awkward... Nevermind, what's your name?
Man 3: Zeno. [That was his ACTUAL NAME and the next bit happened]
Me: That's unusual, where's that name from
Audience member: It's a greek philosopher
Man 3: It's not a greek name.
Me: It's not like Xenu, the thing from scientology is it? No, you wouldn't be involved in any woo beliefs, would you...

By scripting the bits that didn't happen, I've learned that I need to be more on the ball in setting up expectations, as there were some remarkably jaw-dropping moments that could have genuinely happened if I'd been a bit more manipulative with the conversation... sorry to pull back the curtain a bit on how I do MCing, but it's all about cheating in conversations. I was actually quite thrown by having these two quacks in the audience that I got a bit giddy and off-centre. The first act had to use the full extent of his calm and centred delivery to take control of the room, for which I'm truly impressed and thankful.

The gig was hard work, but a lot of fun in the end. We'll see how show 2 goes next month. I dropped off my co-comedian and then went home. I had, by this stage, already received an email from the highways agency saying that the majority of traffic signals do not respond to flashing lights, and that there are other ways for signals to be changed for emergency services. Some can respond to strobing, but only at a certain frequency, which could not be simulated by someone manually. At a red light on the way home, I flashed my lights and it went green. Woooooo!

I had an abortive attempt to record episode two of The Roadcast yesterday. The simple fact was that I stopped being in the mood after the gig, so didn't record the journey home. The journey to the gig was recorded, but the in-car chat with James might not have been good enough in terms of levels (it was good in person). I'll have to have a review. I may use some of the blether, but may have to do some serious editing to get much out of it.

And that was a big bag of confusing yesterday.

It Builds

2010-10-19T22:56:00.002Z

Just when you think the audience have switched off... well they get more into it.

Apparently I'm A Podcaster

2010-10-19T20:12:00.003Z

Episode 1 of The Roadcast is here:

This is the podcast I'll be recording occasionally and running from my podbean account.

Facebook select all friends

2010-10-19T13:49:00.001Z

Great "hack" from Facebook - to select all your friends, just paste this into the URL bar:

javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

Great for events and suggesting pages etc.

Don't look - brain hurty stuff

2010-10-19T11:25:00.001Z

Worlds Collide

2010-10-07T00:18:00.000Z

Sometimes worlds collide. It can be good, or it can be bad. Either way, it can make you go "Oh My God" (other non-existent deities are available). On Tuesday night I had two world-colliding experiences.

What Are You Doing Here?
The venue I was performing at is an experimental theatre event. I had seen the names of the organisers in passing and had also performed at the space the previous week. I had been booked by someone whom I don't know personally, but nearly know. My booker was a comedy cabaret/character performer who uses the same venues as I do when I go to Edinburgh. So the worlds are joined, but we're not close.

I arrived at the venue last night with an ex-colleague, who has graduated from "someone I used to manage in my team" to "London pal". He also moved from Hungary to the UK for the privilege of this upgrade in life. It's more complex than that, but I'm simplifying for brevity. On the door, a lady greeted us and then things kicked off a little.

The woman running the theatre space used to be a co-volunteer on a scheme I did 6 years ago. In the intervening time, when she fell off the radar, she's managed to get married, have a child, have most of her 20's, and then reappear in my life (or maybe I reappeared in her) in a totally incidental and unrelated way. Not earth shattering, but it felt like things had to re-tilt and re-align after.

Why Are They/Is He Acting Like That?
Then the fated performance. I think there were a couple of mix ups. I don't think it was clear when I should have started or ended my performance. There was a billed start-time, but a directive to flex it to get an audience, and not a strong statement of "but you must end by". I was in the wrong starting late and doing a full slot. It would have been better to do a bit less.

Part way through my performance, two women came in, dressed as clowns, and fussing slightly. Not terribly disruptive, but not terribly observant of "don't interrupt the performance". As I was in stand-up mode, I bantered with them "Ah, Stephen Sondheim got my message, then". This is a joke I'm too proud of. "What are your names?" - "Doris and Gladys" - "Two of my favourite 'iss' names". Light hearted.

Partway through a routine, one of them asked, bluntly, "When do you finish?". I pretended it was a heckle, quite a scathing heckle if you think about it... then I pretended it was a chat up line. In the end, it was clear it wasn't a joke and they wanted to go on stage now as it was their turn. I wrapped up, over which they talked, and then gave them the floor. Using a space is a matter of cooperation, and it wasn't like I was holding a full room in rapture.

At the time I was quite peeved with their behaviour - bustling into my performance, in character, and making me feel a bit like I needed to control them as audience members. Even worse, I felt they could have spoken to the techie, quietly, rather than been all weird about it. From their point of view, I was in the wrong - the overrunning smart mouth on stage, cracking jokes about them.

So the worlds collided - we saw things differently. We probably needed to be more sympathetic to each other. I think I tried, but my bete noir is when people talk over my performance. So when the woman complained about my "hotel song" and said "What have you got against Walthamstow", I replied "It's not Walthamstow, it's the hotel I stayed in; you'd have found that out if you'd listened to the song rather than talking over it". I can't keep my big mouth shut.

It's Good When Worlds Collide
You learn something when new combinations are formed. It always opens up a new opportunity or a new way of doing something. Even if that new way isn't to your taste.

Someone's Filming The Gig

2010-09-20T20:17:00.000Z

Ain't No Sunshine

2010-09-17T14:54:00.000Z

30 Seconds

2010-09-17T14:32:00.000Z

Well That Didn't Go To Plan

2010-09-17T00:44:00.001Z

Words don't fail me. If they did... etc...

I had two gigs booked tonight. The first was in central Manchester, the second in the Preston area. I set out with the best of intentions. I was on the road in a timely fashion. I had a CD of a new song I wanted to try out in the second gig. I listened to that CD periodically to learn the song. I had my sat-nav shining the light of the way, like a beacon of knowledge, though it's a beacon that's lost its internet connection, so doesn't know about traffic at the moment.

Then stuff started happening. The M6 was down to 0 miles an hour. I know that this is probably a problem, as it sits between where I live and where I'm going. Then I managed to screw my way around it to the first gig, but arrived relatively late, feeling rather stressed and uncertain of whether my next fart would be a "magic" one. I decided to hold my guts in place and do the gig, so I could rush the 50 minutes to the next one.

Timing wise, things were really pushed for time. My set was sent off the rails by a heckle in the middle of a routine that never provokes a heckler. It was a genuinely amusing moment as a crowd got into a discussion about whether Amore is a terrible song or not. I wasn't expecting that reaction. I think I made the right decision in letting the heckler put some rope around his neck before leaping in... I then mocked what had just happened and twisted the script to point it at the heckler, which sort of worked. I brought the set back on the rails and then rushed off to be paid so I could leave.

Weird one... enjoyable, but weird. Then I had a delay in being paid. Then the gig I was rushing to was cancelled... which is odd, since Bobby Ball of Cannon and Ball fame was, apparently, one of the 4 in the audience who had turned up, and I think I would have enjoyed playing to a crowd which contained him.

That's the risk of double-up gigs... they can get stressful... without the payoff.

The Seven Deadly Sings: Writing a Love Song - version 2

2010-09-14T01:22:00.000Z

Elton John Performs Stand-up Comedy

2010-09-14T01:07:00.000Z

The Seven Deadly Sings - Discussing Songs - Superstition

2010-09-14T00:38:00.000Z

Still Confused

2010-09-03T13:46:00.001Z

I still haven't fully taken stock of the Edinburgh period. I'm simply trying to stay afloat and positive. I think it's getting a bit easier. I'd like to spend some time tomorrow relaxing with the cats, though one of them has decided to go for a stroll and not hang out with us. I'm going to assume that he's coming back near the house sometimes - he's probably not gone actually missing.

Anyway, ideas are forming for stuff I might like to do next year, and I think I'm going to try writing things while I'm in the mood to do that. I'll try to do it as it comes to me, rather than force myself through the process. There's plenty of time to create something lovely. Funny, hopefully.

I'm still in an odd mood. I'm not quite balanced. I'm tired from last night's gig, though that was worth the slight loss of sleep it cost me. It was a local gig, so I was home on the same day I left the house. This is not a challenge for a gigging comedian. Being home before 2am is a result, really!

Last night's gig was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. It was a good post-Edinburgh outing of the comedy skills. The acts all did well and the audience were, ultimately, lovely and giggly. They took a while to warm up, and the opening MC bit wasn't as instantly grabby as it has been. That said, the dynamic in the room was a bit different to normal, and there were a few "incidents" which required handling.

It's nice to be a regular MC at a club that you like performing in. What happens in this situation is that you never feel that unsettled by things that occur. You're there for the long-haul and it's unlikely that any given 5 minutes is going to destroy your relationship with venue, promoter or audience... provided that you've got the right attitude to it. So the hecklers at the top of the show didn't faze me at all. I found them funny. Here's why.

There were two gentlemen at the back of the room talking loudly as I was settling the audience into listening mode. I pointed it out over the mic so as to make them aware that they were being disruptive. The audience focused on their chatter, and yet they didn't stop. I pointed that out. It continued. I pointed out that they weren't self aware. I then had the audience all point to these men. This eventually caught their attention.

I said hello, a little friendly banter, and one of them - very drunk - pointed at me, and with a cheery smile on his drunk face, declared "Wanker!". His friend, a bit more sober, then apologised. This repeated for a bit:

WANKER!!!! .... Sorry!

I laughed. It was funny. You had to be there, but I hope I've captured the contrast in their behaviours. One guy had only one response to me, and the tail end of his response was a very funny politeness of apology from his friend.

Though I made it clear to them that they were welcome in the club, provided that they shut up and enjoyed the show, which made nice with them without turning it into a shouting match, I also mimicked their behaviour for laughs, and was pleased to notice that they disappeared, the staff having removed them for simplicity.

In the rest of the gig, things went easier and I even did three of my songs to the audience, which were nicely received. All was lovely.

Today I have renewed my mail redirection. That's not really as rock and roll, is it!?

Tomorrow I shall have a go at tidying up the garden, hopefully finding any missing cats in the process.

Aching Cheeks

2010-09-02T12:28:00.001Z

I've been back from Edinburgh for a few days now. It feels like it's been a lot longer. The glorious days of the Fringe are over for another year and I had a rollicking good time. I laughed until my cheeks hurt, yet now there's a new feeling, one that happens every year, it's a sort of tingling in the cheeks, and not in a good way. That's right folks, it's post-Fringe blues.

I've managed to avoid the post-Fringe fallout about once in my life; this was when I was far too busy getting deeply into the relationship I'm now very happily still in. Even then, I still had occasional moments of confusion, pangs of nostalgia and wistfulness. Right now, I'm feeling positive about life, but my body and my subconscious is unraveling the cheeriness that I became infused with while I was in Scotland's capital. It's a shame, but I think that's how it works.

In some ways, I think the Fringe works the same way as a relationship. When a relationship ends, I often feel something flowing out of me; it's the internal feeling of permanence of the relationship, and the baseline happiness that's encapsulated within it. When a relationship ends, it's like the happy it contained has to flow back out. Likewise when a relationship starts, all the giddiness I feel as it becomes more and more real, sort of flows into me. This is figurative. It's not like there's some actual physical force here, it's just a feeling. So, when the Fringe ends, the body and the mind must slow down to normal. Important things like money, cooking, washing, and so on, must all be done. In short real life isn't a month-long playpen for comedians.

So my cheeks are feeling a bit turned down, rather than pointing skywards in glee. I'll get over it. In all other aspects of my life, I'm feeling positive. I'm going to lose some weight. I'm going to be "good", whatever that means, and I'm going to cultivate new material for my stand-up comedy, while trying to tour my show. This must be good.

I will try to put some video footage online at some point. There were some lovely highlights of my own performances at the Fringe. On top of that, I was happy to see that the song I prepared for another show to use was so well received and well delivered. I'd no idea what they were going to make of it when they tried to learn and stage it. In short, it seems they made the best of it. So that's nice.

It's nice when something I've made proves to be a successful venture for someone else. For example:

Amy Winehouse: Toast - Performance by Hannah George from The Fitches

Anyway, I thought I'd look back fondly on Edinburgh with a few highlights from the festival.

Ashley's Festival Highlights

Getting James Sherwood's "Horse Face" song stuck in my head

I wandered past Professor Richard Wiseman in the street - I nodded at him - we don't know each other, but I was pleased to see him, so I nodded my respect

MCing one of the best line-ups I've ever MCed at Pick of the Fringe - Vladimir McTavish, Stephen Carlin, Tom Allen, Jay Foreman, Imran Yusuf - staggeringly good

Telling Tom Allen that I liked Bleak Expectations - I do

Getting multiple rounds of applause mid-song at Shaggers - I was too busy trying to avoid coughing, I barely noticed it at the time... thanks, though... it was the audience's exuberance, not my performance, that caused it

Having a few hilarious gifts of suggestions from the audience of The Seven Deadly Sings in the chatty bits

The two drunk older ladies at The Great Big Comedy Picnic shows who made exhibitions of themselves to all of our amusement

Pappy's show - worth seeing twice again... and I did... and I laughed harder the second time

The beauty of The Boy With Tape On His Face - genuinely lovely, funny and silly

Getting boundlessly helpful help from my "techie" James Bran - thanks fella, you were essential!

Being nursemaided by my housemates, handing me water all the time

Trying to replace energy with "charisma" in my set... with varying degrees of audience confusion

Turning it up to eleven at the unplayable late night gig to see what would happen

Being given free tickets to see a show I'd been umming and ahhing about going to see - then enjoying the show thoroughly

Seeing Gary Delaney's show and loving the way it managed to keep pace without losing its personality

Going to see a show that I knew was mental and enjoying how it was just a couple of notches more insane than I dreamed it might be

Coming off stage after a performance which hadn't worked and having a laughing fit... both times...

Breakfasts at Kilimanjaro with my darling girlfriend

Discovering my ability to walk tirelessly over hills and cobbles

Finding out that my article in the Mail On Sunday was going to contain my anti-homeopathy joke

Everything else...

This Is It

2010-08-13T14:53:00.000Z

It's a positive and a negative feeling right this moment. I'm about to leave my rather nice home life and venture off into the unknown, with a show I haven't performed recently, and a bunch of technical and practical problems to solve when I get to Edinburgh. I've got sore legs, it's cold, I'm on anti-biotics for the soreness caused by the flea bites that have reddened my skin and made me uncomfortable. I'm a bit tired from last night. I've been sitting in a quiet house all day, so feel a bit hemmed in. In sort I feel a bit small...

...but I'm also prepared. I think everything is packed that could reasonably be packed. The iPod is charged and raring to go. The Sat-Nav is upgraded so well that it now doesn't work, but I rather like the upgrade, so I'm going to live with it for a bit (hopefully they'll fix the SIM card problem in the next upgrade). The car needs fuel, but I know how to sort that out. There's just a computer to stick in a bag and I'm on my way. I've been planning this all year.

So off to Edinburgh. It's been the centre of a lot of my performing life, and it's been the city where a lot of good things (and one or two bad) have happened for me. I love being in Edinburgh in general, and in Edinburgh during the Fringe exponentially more than that. I'm tired of following the festival through tweets and reviews. I want to see it for myself. I want to smell the damp, get annoyed by the crowds, have the ups and downs of good and bad audiences for myself, and generally grab this baby by the horns (horned babies, eh?!).

However, I'm also nowhere near as fit as I should be. I'm fat and sluggish. I'm either going to work and sweat this off, or be found mewling in a heap in a couple of days' time. Time will tell. I'm hoping that the act of heading to Auld Reekie will awaken the very core of my enthusiasm for the Fringe, starting the tireless motor that will drive me around the city. I'm usually of boundless enthusiasm and energy for "doing the Fringe". Usually.

I don't want to leave my girlfriend behind, though. I'm going to miss her horribly. She's coming up in just over a week, so we won't be apart for that long, but it will be long enough.

That's where I'm at. On the brink of heading to where I both want to and don't quite want to be.

From this point forward, though, the funny is set to ON.

E is For

2010-08-10T23:56:00.001Z

Well, E is for Edinburgh, obviously. It's also for Elephant, Escapade, Epsilon and Extra Extra Large, but only the last of those (with a hint of the first) actually applies to me this evening. I'm preparing for Edinburgh, which has taken many forms, some of which have been rehearsing (or not) and some of which have included just thinking about, or nearly doing stuff.

The way to kick start my Edinburgh final packing preparations involved going through my wardrobe and kicking out my quite-fat clothes, in the acceptance of the fact that my very fat clothes are de-rigueur (there's a spelling I had to look up) with a body like this. Fine. So I'm fatter than I've been at the Fringe ever and have one of my most demanding schedules. Fine. I'll burn off the flab (or die trying).

The next step was to get out my soldering iron. I find it easy to be slowed down by things I know I'll find easy and enjoyable to do but haven't managed to do yet. It's not the doing. It's the starting. The simple act of firing up (well, plugging in) the soldering iron so I could convert one of my leads (hopefully one that WAS dodgy and has now had the dodgy bits cut off) into a nicely tamed guitar lead with a right-angled end (which turns out to be very very useful) was all it took. Finally, I was on top of my Equipment. This it the major E for this year's Fringe. My show is very equipment intensive and I need to have stuff with me. I need spares. I need leads.

The soldering wasn't the easiest task in the world, mainly because it's not very desirable to hold a rather hot thing that you've just heated to the melting point of solder. However, I soldiered on (see what I did there) and the lead is ready for trying out on Thursday, which is my next gig.

Next I turned my attention to the guitar bag. I can't remember when I bought this bag. It may be three years old. It might be older. It was bought in Edinburgh and has been falling apart ever since, largely because someone (me) keeps overfilling it and then dragging it around. In a previous year a little gaffer tap was put on the bag. I've just given it a full gaffer tap make over. I've even made little envelopes for all the shit that usually gets lost in the depths of the pockets, so hopefully I can keep the whole thing under tighter control. In short the guitar is now in a better carrying bag than I've been using.

Did I mention that I restrung my two main acoustic guitars this weekend? No? Is that because it's not an interesting thing to talk about? Well, even so, there's a fringe benefit to having done that. Firstly, the guitars look lovely and shiny and new (I polished them too) and secondly there is a load of clipped guitar string bits in my study bin. This turns out to be a very useful thing to have around when you've got a prop to fix.

For the previews of the Seven Deadly Sings, I had a kneepad with a sleigh-bells attachment. This was made by screwing the rubber mounting of the sleigh-bells into the knee pad. Though the pad is made of, well, padding, the screws penetrated the outer material and seemed not to want to go anywhere... except that one side would have a habit of falling out once in a while.

When I was recording the Christmas Song For Jews track for the CD, I decided to disassemble my sleigh-bells kneepad and play the sleigh-bells by hand, tapping the assembly into my hand to avoid the bells ringing even longer and even more tinny-like than they already did (sorry to people with tinnitus who end up getting the CD). Anyway, my sleigh-bell kneepad was in pieces. This is the sort of problem that can dog a man on his way to the Fringe.

I've been stressing over the absence of my nice bag of cable ties - a sure-fire solution to the problem of the knee-pad. The answer, my friend, is that nobody knows where they are. By which I mean that I don't know and nobody else cares enough to search. Why should anyone care, it's 50p worth of plastic. How can I more permanently fix my sleigh-bells to the kneepad (noting the fact that I don't want it to be totally permanent as I may one day stop playing sleighbells and start tiling floors again)?

It's like when we watched Toy Story 3 the other day and I knew how the characters would be saved from their ultimate peril; you look for the thing that's been set up, the characters that are missing, and work out that they're going to come in and save the day. Yes. The Guitar String People Save The Day.

I used a D or maybe G string from my bin as a cable-tie. It poked nicely through the kneepad and threaded into the sleigh-bells strap. A bit of cable twisting and some gaffer taping and the deal was done. Boom.

This is a lot of information about not very much. I feel like I busied myself nicely tonight, and I feel a step closer to Scotland's capital. It also feels like it'll never be Friday afternoon at this rate.

The internet is not being a help. It's either full of the silence that indicates that everyone has better stuff to do, or full of the snippets of info that prove that they're having way more fun than I am. Reading reviews, good or bad, is a distraction, but a recipe for no major happiness.

I did discover the worst sort of review that can be given, though. A review that's negative, and absolutely reasonable and fair comment; that surely must be the worst sort. There's no get-out clause. You can't say "they didn't understand me" because this sort of review proves that it did. You can't say "it was a bad show" because the review's got that covered. You can't say "they don't know what they're talking about" because such a review not only knows its own business, but probably knows more than the reviewee does about what the reviewee was trying to achieve. A reasonable bad review will pretty much subtract the obvious from the picture and just leave the features. Imagine a picture of your face with only either your spots or blemishes, or your perfect features visible. It wouldn't be a caricature. It wouldn't be unreasonably harsh or glowing. It would just be the truth... and if it said you weren't up to much, it would be the worst sort of "mirror mirror on the wall".

This is why I don't really want to read any review of my show until I've done the last one... yet I suspect I'm too weak to avoid it.

E is for "Expectations".

That's an abrupt end to this, but nobody expected me to go on forever.

At The Back Of The Mind

2010-08-10T11:42:00.001Z

I'm distracting myself. I'm trying to avoid the obvious fact that the Edinburgh Fringe is getting deeply into its stride and I'm not there to stride along with it. I'm seeing Tweets and other news snippets of people's reviews, colds, good shows, bad shows, parties and other jiggery pokery. While this is going on, I'm having my normal life, trying to be oblivious.

Sometimes it's easier than others. We had a very nice night in last night and watched a silly Nicholas Cage movie. There isn't a Nicholas Cage movie that I don't want to see... well, maybe one, but I haven't seen it. That was very nice and I didn't think of Edinburgh once. Well, I did. I thought about making 20 posters for the show (by making, I mean sending for print, they were already made). I even did that work, but I did it as any computer operator might use a computer to send some files over the internet. I didn't do it while visualising being in Edinburgh.

The festival will come in its own time. I'll be there for a time which will feel at once both extremely long and tiring, yet fleetingly short. This is normal. The pre-Fringe blues aren't too bad at the moment. I feel a bit like Friday is a deadline and I'm not sure if I'm ready for it. I feel more prepared than I have in previous years, but I won't feel that way for much longer, I'm sure.

Tonight is supposed to be for packing. Tomorrow night is meant to be a night out with my girlfriend - our last private night together before I go away (I'll be away for a week before she joins me out there). Then there's Thursday night, when I have a gig. My last normal gig before the Fringe - the first one on the new strings of my guitar, which I'll no doubt end up getting out of tune about 5 minutes into the performance, unless I warm them up very thoroughly just before the sound check.

To distract myself further from the Fringe I'm trying to sort out any loose ends that are sitting about in my work environment. I tried to submit the codes from my collection of diet coke bottles on www.cokezone.co.uk (I didn't make this as a link, because I'm increasingly of the opinion that it's a phenomenal waste of time). This leads me to the following letter that I won't send.

Dear CokeZone,

I notice you've barred me from entering incorrect codes into your website for another 24 hours. Do you think that the reason I enter codes in is because I'm trying to hack your site and so deserve delaying? Is that the reason you put that safeguard in place? Is the necessity to stop people guessing codes a serious problem for you?

IF SO, THEN PLEASE MAKE THE CODES FUCKING LEGIBLE

I'll continue to guess whether it's an H a K a N an M or a W for as long as you continue to print the codes in badly drawn dots which are covered by glue and fragments of label. Perhaps you could relax the rules for people guessing codes...

I wouldn't mind, but the points seem utterly worthless.

Lots of love

A new 7-Up drinker.

The CD for my show comes tomorrow. Very exciting. I'm hoping that I'll like it more now I've stopped stressing about it. It will be on sale. Hoo yeah!

The Beginning of A Story

2010-08-07T00:57:00.001Z

I was driving home tonight and I met a man on the road who had crashed his car. I say his car, and I say crashed, and I even say man, but these are not correct. The chap was a teenager, an au-pair, working for a local family. The car wasn't his. The crash was more a skidding out of control on a corner and resting with three wheels in the verge. The smell of beer was followed with the suggestion that it had only been one.

We discussed what to do to pull the car out. I had no desire to start towing a car of equal size to my own off a verge... I suggested he call the family and get their breakdown recovery people out. I suggested a call to the police for assistance, but he was worried about being breathalysed. In the end I gave him a lift back to his family's place.

Then I had the exciting drive home. It was exciting because I have no fuel at all in my car - all gauges say 0. So I've no idea how I got back (coasting and cruise control helped) and I've no idea if I'll make it as far as the filling station tomorrow.

What was more exciting is wondering how the story ends for my Czech friend. I'd given him various bits of reassurance in the car - to try to make it seem a bit less of the end of his life and more just a problem to be solved. I don't know if the family will have a sense of humour about it and sort it out, or whether there'll be fights. In short, the answer is already known as he woke them up about 30 minutes ago... but I'll never know.

I pointed out that he was able to walk away from the car accident, which is surely a benefit. I pointed out that he just had to face the music. I told him that today's tragedy is tomorrow's story; in five years, he'll tell people about "the time that". I don't know if it will help. The shame is that it may make a great story, but I only know the beginning of it.

Tricky Second Album

2010-08-06T01:34:00.000Z

This is not the first time I've sat down to create a CD that would be duplicated and given out/sold in quantity. It may not even be the last time, though I'm pretty sick of the whole escapade right this minute. Last time I made an album, it was with a friend. We worked on it for several days and did a lot of takes of our songs. In general, we played live and got the whole thing in a single layer, with occasional places where we added layers, or played over a backing track. I remember it being enjoyable.

That said, we were often recording at night, so sometimes it sounds like we're whispering to avoid completely pissing off the neighbours, because we were.

After the original recording, there was then a bit of a mixing process, complicated by the fact that we did our takes back to back, so I'd often have to keep winding to 10 minutes 23 seconds into a track to play with the take we were actually going to be using. I don't remember this process being too challenging. Then the mixes were played at the computer where some additional filtering was done, resulting in... da-dahhhh... the final track.

These final tracks were sent to the CD-R people and I got 500 CDs back (in retrospect, that was about 450 too many!). I remember it being easy.

However, a combination of incorrectly set up microphones (or poor quality ones) and lack of experience and inability to "wake up" the sound when it got to the computer resulted in something which I didn't expect to sound that good when I listened to it again a few days ago. It actually sounds ok. However, I expect to be able to do better.

I now have a lot more experience (some 80 more tracks more experience), better equipment, including a new sound card and some software that I've partially bought (I've bought a time-limited licence). In short, I should be able to take the music I've been recording and make it sound great. On the subject of the recordings themselves, I've been working on them for weeks. Really. Weeks. I've been painstakingly adding layers, instruments, re-takes, effects... I've really tried hard. So I expect my second attempt at an album to be much much better.

The thing I listened to in the car on the way to work - the so called "release candidate 2" of the CD - sounded weak. Worse than that, when you tried to turn it up, it sounded poor. This led me to wonder, again, whether the answer lay in some magic settings. I tried a whole new magic set of settings, remastering most of the album's 37 minutes in a 1 hour lunch-break. A lot of this was applying settings by rote and hoping they'd come good. In short, when you're mastering that much sound, you can't sit and listen to it all between each iteration. I top, tail and sample it.

I set off from work with a new release candidate, I'd hoped that it would sound so good that I'd stop off on the way home to post it to the CD-R people.

It was awful. Actually really really awful. I was upset. I was stressed.

I've had another go. I think I've cracked it this time. While I was at my gig tonight, in the intervals, I had another think about how I want to do this process and found a better combination of settings - on the way home, I listened to some sample tracks I burned to disc at the gig; they sounded pretty good.

So we may be there. Tomorrow morning's car journey to work will either make me glad I got it right, or angry that I'm a few days away from driving to Scotland, and I'm stuck doing a job I want to sign off as done in time to get the CDs before I start the engine for the 8 hour journey next Friday.

In other news, I managed to accidentally piss a lot of people off by parking badly today. I also managed to enjoy a very nice gig this evening with a headline act who is brilliant. I had no agenda when I started chatting with the audience... so stuff happened. It was fun.

G'night.

Now what...?

2010-08-05T01:42:00.000Z

I haven't listened to it through, but there's a 37 minute long CD which contains all the stuff I've been working on in the "studio" for the last few weeks, in a form which, imperfect in some ways, I'm planning to immortalise by getting it replicated.

I say it's imperfect because it is. There are some aspects that I could improve on, and there are some which I just don't know how to improve, but it's going to have to do because I'm pretty much at my deadline for getting it replicated. Of the 37 minutes, some of it was taken from live recordings, which just sound "as they do", and one track is a "remaster" of an existing song I have on my website. In all cases, I've done my best to engineer something that sounds as good as I can get it.

In fairness, I could have spent the entire time it's taken to make the "album" in getting one track right, and still not really done it. However, this hasty recording has been hugely time-consuming and I think I have the right to be proud of the results. I'll know for sure on my ar journey in the morning when I listen to it through. I hope I'm happy with it.

Wish me luck.

Then it's onto the next insane scheme... something about heading to Scotland...?

Do These Rituals Work?

2010-08-03T15:50:00.001Z

A lot of comedians have a special ritual that they do before the gig. I could construct some sort of a hybrid ritual from comedians I know if you like. For example, it might involve doing 20 minutes of specialised vocal and physical warm-up (not necessarily a ritual, as it can help with performing, though it can form part of a ritual if the reason for doing it turns out to be more psychological than muscle based), sipping a can of Red Bull, washing your hands thoroughly, applying lip salve while looking at yourself in the mirror and doing smiley faces, and being sure to have a certain something in your pocket as a backup plan, or for luck.

I'm not sure I really have a ritual. I do a mini vocal warm-up, where I try out the low and high registers of my voice, just to make sure they're working and have broken in a bit. I only do that if I'm worried about it. I have to make sure I have a plectrum in my pocket, but that doesn't really make for a ritual; it's practical. I have the pseudo-ritual of the sound-check to worry about, and this usually focuses my mind. Setting up the guitar isn't complex, but it's a process that's as soothing as ironing can be (unless you hate ironing, in which case this is a bad example). If I'm feeling in the mood, I might hop around a bit, and I certainly pace the floor a bit, whether I like it or not.

There may be some anti-rituals, though. There are things you should not do. You shouldn't touch an act who didn't go down well, in case you get "shit gig lurghi". You shouldn't allow yourself to hate the audience in any way - this won't end well. You shouldn't be seen too much by the audience before going on. These things are meant to protect you from bad things happening, possibly.

Last night's gig was a bit of a surprise, to be honest. I think I discovered what's behind some of the rituals, and I broke a couple of the no-no's into the bargain. For example, I shook the hand of an act who didn't do so well, because I felt he deserved respect for holding his own against the odds. I also shook the hand of the act before me, who'd left the stage, while doing rather well, on the basis that his time had been called, to which the audience moaned. If an act that the audience like is pulled off and they're not happy about it, then following them can be hard. Doing a handshake with him might well have been a talisman against them not liking me, and a prophylactic against "shit gig lurghi" taking root, maybe even a way of transferring "good gig genie" onto me. But it wasn't. I shook his hand and told him he had done a good job (he had) and I said something lame like "Fuck yeah!" because it put me in the right frame of mind.

This is the secret to a good gig, more than anything else, being in the right frame of mind. Some of these rituals are nothing more than a "superstitious pigeon" route to finding the right frame of mind for doing the gig. When I'm funny I'm spontaneous, fast-talking, quick-witted, assertive, hyper-aware of what's going on around me, positive, cheerful, larger than life, loud, and a great big fat YES. That's where I had to get last night, and I did it by focusing on why the gig had been going mental, and why that was actually rather amusing (it sort of is... in a "oh dear, I'm going to be battered" sort of a way), and then making the most of the fact that it's only a game and the only way to play is to jump in at the deep end.

Here's the secret to the success I had last night, where I had it. I went off script. I did it deliberately, a lot. I also delivered different words to those on the virtual page in my head. I re-crafted my stand-up persona so that it had more alpha male in it too... I'm not normally a big sweary guy on stage; my Fringe show can be done without a single expletive. However, sometimes you can slip swearing into conversation to make out that you're the big man. This is done by using swearing as punctuation, not as the substantive of what you're saying. I'd also read the audience, and their laughter button began with a C. Well, kids, today's gig is brought to you by the letter C and the french number "un" and the letter t. Say no more.

Cunt.

The audience in that room needed something big that was happening right in front of them. There was no use hiding behind the script, and no use in asking them to do the work. This is not incredibly atypical of that particular audience, but it was the most extreme case of it that I've seen there. Did I enjoy blasting out my set in that way? Hell yeah! Why not become a bombastic caricature of yourself from time to time. It works for Brian Blessed... in fairness, he's stuck that way.

Note to self: write a hilarious song about wanting to have sex with Brian Blessed... it can only be funny.

So what happened at the gig? Well, the audience were in attendance at a free comedy event, that's usually well attended, but by people who don't expect to give much, and can just treat the space as a cafe. Indeed, everyone seemed to be eating something very similar in appearance to a Findus crispy pancake (well, in shape). People could just as easily chat as listen to the comedy, so you had to reach out and impress them. It was actually as simple as that. If you were uncertain in any way, it didn't work. If you expected them to help, it didn't work.

So some acts did their schtick and the audience didn't care, and some acts used their schtick as a stick to stick it to the stuck up sticklers in the crowd. That, to me, was the dividing line. If it were a different sort of gig, it wouldn't be necessary to have to adapt. In the case of one particular act, who did rather well, I think he was born to play an audience that wants a powerhouse performance, and I've only ever seen him give his all. He made me laugh. I'm not going to say his name. Screw him for being so good, I'm not his publicist; he can put his own name around.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly at the gig, and I can only put it down to my "Fuck yeah!" attitude. I gave myself permission to be as big and silly as I like to be, and I got some laughs. Job done.

Or maybe I got my ritual right. Maybe the correct ritual for getting a gig to go well involves stressing over CD production techniques, rebuilding your spare room into a more practical (and it's bloody great now) office space, and falling off a ladder causing small but rather painful minor abrasions. That was Sunday's job. The ladder was only about 7 foot off the ground, and I wasn't so high up it... but when it went, I was left clinging onto the ledge I was climbing up to. When I let go (almost instantly) I thought two things - "I'm going to fall" and "It's only about 2 feet from my feet to the floor". It still hurt. Oweeeh.

I've strayed from the point, which is this: performing stand-up comedy to an audience who have been total bastards all night is a lot more fun than falling off a ladder.

Fuck yeah!

All Change

2010-07-30T15:56:00.001Z

I read in a tweet recently that you know when the Edinburgh is quite close when you answer most questions with "Let's talk about that in September". I'm sorry. But I'm very much of that mind at the moment. It affects home and work equally. At work, I'm basically scheduling things in two categories - stuff that'll be done while I'm away, or stuff which needs sorting out when I get back.

At home, I had pretty much shelved the ideas of getting some sort of storage solution to manage space in our home, within which it's increasingly feeling like the walls are closing in. That's right. I've shelved the idea of shelving. However, you can't stop people having ideas. So at the weekend the suggestion to re-zone the spare room came up and before you could say "are we really going to rezone the room before I go off to Edinburgh, even though it's a good idea and I think it would even have benefits up front, including the immediate recording challenge I've set myself, and I don't think it will fix a lot of the space issues in, say, the kitchen, but it might actually help and make me feel less like fucking gulliver sometimes" the decision was made.

So, we decided we would get rid of the bed and use a sofa bed instead in there... and move the study stuff to where the bed was, creating a patch of open floor in the middle of the room, which we really don't have.

How do you get rid of a double bed? Well, it took two emails. The bed was picked up yesterday morning and is now already in use in someone else's home. It turns out that if you have a good social network then good stuff can happen.

Given that we were only discussing the idea on Sunday, and it's now Friday, I expect to have the room rebuilt in its new form by Sunday and we're going to IKEA tonight to find a suitable shelving unit to use as the new back wall of the room. This vertical storage should protect us from the "stuff being everywhere" problem that we presently face. In this pre-Edinburgh period, it feels like a distraction from show preparation, but it's also essential and will have immediate benefits. I'm not losing time, I'm gaining a recording studio, and kit storage area.

In Edinburgh preparation news, I've done the press that is most urgent for both shows. I've got some other work to do, in the form of a jingle for a podcast. I'm trying to focus on the CD for my show. I had a bit of a boot up the arse yesterday when a friend's quickly-produced CD was sent to me for listening. It was really rather good, which made me feel like I wanted my own CD to sound good.

Last night I decided to have another crack at the rather annoyingly "not working out of the box" sound device that I'd bought. I was up until extremely extremely late in the night. However, the output was about 17 tracks from my CD - well, rough cuts of them. The problem is that these rough cuts may have to be re-done... though it will become easier to do subsequent versions of them, since I'm now more proficient with the settings and software that I have to use to do the work.

I'm excited about the sound-recording opportunities that I'm sitting on, but there's really no time. I've got until Wednesday to produce a full CD and artwork (admittedly, the artwork is largely done) and get it sent for repro in time to take to Edinburgh.

These challenges are a lot of fun, but they're doing my head in. I was very very stressed last night, until I got going with the recording stuff, when I was immersed and happy as I felt like I was making progress. I got a bit sweary and also felt like there were a load of loose ends hanging around from jobs I've not gotten around to doing as I've been too absorbed in show prep.

Today I managed to return some clothes bought online, and get a new passport application sorted. This is a step forward. I'll re-listen to my CD in the car and work out what I need to do for each track tonight and tomorrow... I'm going to keep the finished tracks offline unless I release them via iTunes. I will be selling the CD online when it's made. I may also start work on the next one, once I have some time... which means, of course, September.

Mind you, maybe I should take the kit with me to Edinburgh and make a new song every day.

Yeah, right.

Quick prediction. Day 1 of the Edinburgh Fringe for me:

4.45pm - Great Big Comedy Picnic
6.30pm - Cloud Comedy @ White Horse
9.30pm - MCing a show in Espionage
11.15pm - Appearance at Counting House
11.30pm - Meadow Bar (round the corner)

Perfectly normal first day of the fringe... Maybe I'll relax a bit and go and see a nice show too.

Next week represents a rather frustrating period - they start the Fringe... without me! I'm going to get antsy... I'll manage, though.

It's Not How I Remembered It

2010-07-27T09:51:00.001Z

We watched the film Ghost last night. To me this was always the sequel to Dirty Dancing - Patrick Swayze in musical numbers with the then pretty Demi Moore (before she decided to be more of a cougar). The idea of a character who was dead and could only appear in pottery lessons and via Whoopi Goldberg, well, it was groundbreaking stuff.

However, watching the film, Ghost, last night, it was really a lot different to how I remember it. There was still groundbreaking, but this was done more by his motorbike, and though there were dead people around, the main character wasn't actually dead, more just possessing of Satan's powers. I also hadn't remembered the fiery motorbike from the original Ghost, and they seemed to have morphed "Unchained melody" into "Ghostriders in the sky", though the chain was still present in the form of a fiery chain which was used to kill demons.

All in all, I enjoyed Ghost, last night. Nicholas Cage seemed to have replaced Patrick Swayze and Eva Mendes had replaced Demi Moore, but other than that it was the same film. Completely the same film.

Happy Memories

2010-07-27T09:34:00.001Z

I look back on this particular interchange fondly. I was reminded of it by seeing another comedian had received an anti-fan letter a bit like it today. These out-and-out failures really give your stand-up career a bit of texture and I think they should be celebrated...

...ironically at least.

Hello, I Missed You

2010-07-26T11:53:00.001Z

I now realise that I haven't done my stand-up set in ages. So when I turned up for my gig on Friday night there was a chance I'd be rusty... not really, I was, in fact, fresh. I've been performing, just not my stand-up. Not only that, but I've been performing in what amounts to a marathon (i.e. a 1 hour show) so doing the short sprint of a stand-up set shouldn't have proved to be a struggle. I don't think it was either.

I arrived plenty early and rearranged the room for optimal comedic joy. I think this proved to be a useful move. There was even time to mess around on the Steinway Grand that someone had just left lying about. Shame they hadn't left it in tune. Never mind. It still played well and suggested some things to me that were hidden in the music I was playing on it. I think it sometimes feels like a well-made instrument "knows" how it should be played and suggests it to the player. This is figurative, I don't believe instruments are animate - except pianolas, which are posessed by Satan.

The show was a bit of an odd one - a works do with a strange demographic in the room. The compere was a very likeable and pacy bundle of joy, which had a positive effect on breaking the room in. Then stuff happened, and I'm not going to review it.

I took to the stage in part two of the show. I barked some gags at them non-stop for a couple of minutes, went into my first song, kept the energy going, ended the set and felt like I'd done a reasonable job. Compared to my Edinburgh show, which comes with a lot of information, and at a different pace to the stand-up, the more familiar and densely packaged stand-up set felt like it was a magic incantation. It invigorated me as much as I used it to throw some energy into an audience.

There were only 40 people in the audience. It can be easy to work all 40 members of an audience in a well lit room as you can see what everyone is doing pretty much all the time, and they can see that you can see, so it can bring them to the front of their seats a bit...

...I took it as an opportunity to have some fun, and that was the right thing to do. It's why I got into stand-up in the first place. I really enjoyed it.

I got a parking ticket for my troubles, but I didn't even seem to mind.

Let The Streets Stream With Shit

2010-07-26T10:21:00.001Z

At first this looks like a bit of pettiness, someone campaigning against a toilet. Then you realise that the council have pretty much closed all public conveniences in Wokingham (probably because they can't give people parking tickets for pooing) and this is a poor substitute. There once was a time when we were proud to have public toilets - a step away from people just pissing in the street; it was civilisation taking hold of an uncivilised world. Now it would appear that disabled people had better stay at home, rather than face the indignity of being caught short.

For fuck's sake, grow up local authorities. Stop making laminated health and safety signs, and build some bloody services.

Maybe Just Getting Old

2010-07-26T10:17:00.001Z

I think I've always had a slightly irascible side. I can allow myself to be irritated by things; this leads me to wanting to take action to do something about whatever it is. I was quite a sarcastic proactive dick back in my mid twenties and then I think it pretty much went away in my early thirties as I was always far more engaged with other things, like running (well, driving) around the country messing about.

Or perhaps the memory cheats. Maybe I'm always like this. I don't know. However, I do know that I'm definitely in touch with the more campaigning side of my personality. It's a product of the fact that I see the world in black and white and cannot actually cope with something that is (to me, at least) obviously completely wrong.

This is why I waded into the Keith Chegwin row. As far as I'm concerned it's a really simple situation. It's also compounded by the rather illiterate means by which Chegwin appears to express himself, which activates the genes I have which judge people as being lesser if they're not even showing basic education. I guess my logic goes like this "if this person can't even write in English, how can they expect their opinions to be taken as though they're logical?". I can't help being snooty, it's innate. I try to avoid it when I can, but it's there. I form judgments.

How do you deal with having a judgmental personality? I try to make some/all of it come out in my comedy. When this works, it's like making gold from lead - it's quite magical and you get a positive result from it. Joking about something that annoys you is very cathartic. If that's not possible, I might write something serious about it. Sometimes I write it here. Sometimes I submit it to a wider audience. There's no harm in putting yourself out there.

The difficulty with criticising things outside of yourself is two-fold. Someone can always question your entitlement to make any criticism. I think we all have the right to our own opinion (even if you are Keith Chegwin and, therefore, are wrong). I think we can all form conclusions from the things we know. Secondly, though, if you're criticising an individual, and they recognise themselves from your description, they may decide to wreak some sort of revenge upon you. Perhaps the aforementioned ex-TV-sub-celebrity might decide to get his lawyers in touch with me if I make too many assertions about his brainpower. Perhaps a fellow comedian, if I were to criticise their work, might react by creating social barriers within the comedy fraternity, affecting me in return. Criticism is not a case of broadcasting into a vacuum; there is a reciprocal effect.

That said, I can't quite stop myself from another mini-tirade.

Why are there some comedians out there who mistake blurting out filth and being obnoxious for being funny? Why is it reasonable to give a stage to someone whose idea of making someone laugh is to do the most banal form of witless obvious drivel? Worse still, why is it a good idea to give that person the stage at the Edinburgh Festival, in a way which implies to the average novice Fringe-goer that that's the standard you could expect of a Fringe show? Why do these newbies come up with this stuff? Are they doing it because it makes them happy? or do they think that the audience is a keyboard full of buttons they have to press. Why post on YouTube a clip of your drivel with an audience almost entirely silent at each line? Why does it bother me even more when this filthy outpouring is actually quite well assembled... a polished turd of pointlessness? Moreover, why did I knowingly seek out the particular subject of this rant in order to wind myself up about their ineptitude? Is it because I know I'll run into them at the festival, and I'm trying to work out whether I want to kill them, lest they make my attempts at comedy seem more difficult?

Rant over.

Comedians should focus on what they find funny, rather than on stuff that bothers them. I think that may be a hidden truth in this article by David Lister, which I otherwise entirely disagree with.

Hmm... I'll now stop this rant and do a separate post on my gig from Friday night, and the weekend in general.

Make Something Happen

2010-07-23T16:48:00.001Z

There's a difference between the thing I do do and the things I want to do. If I had my way, I'd be a writer/performer of spoken word and music. There's a limit to what I, and anyone else for that matter, can achieve. As a result, I choose to put that aspect of my life into a second-life - a spare (and sometimes not so spare) time pursuit which both drives me down and fuels me up. I sometimes experience dissonance - a general feeling of disquiet that I'm in the wrong life. It usually happens in the day job, rather than a feeling, while on stage or making music that I should really be programming a computer.

The feeling comes as a sense of loss, a feeling of ennui, a sense that nothing good is happening and I just want something to stop the disappointment. I feel lethargic, unable to do even the simplest of tasks, inert... basically, it all feels crap. If I get going on something, then I can proceed, though sometimes with a short attention span. Then sometimes I can just absorb myself in what's happening and life seems fine.

To anyone reading who thinks they are about to successfully diagnose me with depression, don't bother. I'm a fully functioning human being at the moment - this isn't debilitating, just an emotional journey. To anyone going - "Yeah, but you comedians have a manic-depressive thing going on" - I would also recommend not jumping to conclusions. I think the very nature of being creative has a boom/bust sort of vibe. For all the up-time, you need the downs. My problem, I think, is that of context switching. I can only be committed to one thing at once. Everything else seems like a distraction. Sort of... maybe I don't know.

Today has been a really sludgy day. That said, I've achieved many of my actual objectives and the future plans I need to make have come together fine. Some loose ends have been tidying themselves up (with a little guidance) recently, so I should be happy. I think I need to make a concerted effort to put more of my ducks in a row in the next 24 hours. I think that would make me happier.

I got into various discussions over lunch about recent media events. I also managed to get my open letter to Keith Chegwin published, which is nice. I'm more and more motivated to stand up for what is either morally or logically right. I keep getting the urge to contact organisations and individuals whose behaviour I disagree with, so I can put them straight. Is this part of approaching 40 (still over 3 and a big bit years before that)? Or is this about taking a bit of responsibility in the world? I don't know. The jury is out.

Still, personal life things have been developing in a good way. I now know the constraints within which we'll be planning where to live within the next couple of years... or at least we've removed a lot of the major vaguenesses. This is a good thing. Progress will start after Edinburgh.

Perhaps I'm now having pre-Edinburgh blues. The feeling is quite similar to post Edinburgh blues except with less exhaustion and toxicity. I guess life is on hold until the shows start... which is, of course, ridiculous.

Despite having had a fairly light week, I'm still quite tired. I think that I'm slowing down through lack of gigs... there's one tonight... woohoo!!!!

Jolly Good, What What

2010-07-19T23:39:00.000Z

Never pre-judge an audience. I think I was expecting the Henley Crowd to be a bit arts centre-ish and stuffy - a bunch of telegraph reading middle-class sorts whose idea of heckling might be to go "well, really!". This, of course, was nothing like the lovely mini-mob who assembled to see what my show was about tonight.

In truth, maybe only some of them came for my show, coming instead, for whatever happened to be on. Still, they were lovely and that's what matters. We even had an 11 year old boy in the crowd, and I discovered that I'm less embarrassed doing some of the ruder bits of my show in front of an 11 year old than I am doing it in front of my grandparents.

Moreover, it seems I've run out of previews. That's it. I now have only stand-up gigs between now and the Fringe. Any sense of familiarity with the show will now start to fade, though I'm fairly sure I'll remember it all even with a 3 or 4 week break. In the next few weeks, I'm going to finish recording the CD of the show and I'm going to review some recordings and work out how to tighten the show up. There's some core source material that's core because it's either very funny or very important to share with an audience. The secret is going to be to throw away some of the supporting stuff, or find an isotope or allotrope of it which better suits what's around it.

Making the CD will definitely help, and I made reasonably good progress on that last week, even though there were aeroplanes flying over my house for most of Saturday.

Tired, so Tired
I have been a bit down on energy. I think I'm going to be perking back up, but the Wed-Sat gig night run pretty much knocked me out. We went to see a preview in Witney on Wednesday, I had Cradley Heath on Thursday, London on Friday, Southampton (well, Hythe) on Saturday and an earlier-than-sleeping-in wake up on Sunday.

We made Sunday lunch on Sunday, which is how it gets its name. We saw plenty of Italian foods for sale in Shipston-on-stour, and so they finalised the grand plan to make a risotto fit for, well, at least human consumption. It worked out rather pleasingly, but the post-prandial slump hit hard and I lost an hour or so.

I think I'm getting old.

Switcheroo
The gig on Friday involved watching a preview which would have gone down better with a filthier and less cerebral audience. My preview on Thursday turned out to be less filthy and more cerebral than my audience were expecting. If only we'd known... the old switcheroo would really have helped.

Twit storms
Hmmmm. Social networking sites are suddenly showing what would happen if everyone knew what everyone else was thinking. There's been the Gillian McKeith debacle, the Jemima Khan vs Jon Snow spat and even Keith Chegwin and his collection of jokes has caused a ruckus. I don't even know how to spell 'ruckus'. Perhaps everyone needs to get into the collective playground, line up neatly and say sorry to each other.

Training
I'm presently on a training course. This involves being talked at by a trainer. He is pretty good and has a good way of explaining to the uninitiated about the things we need to know on the course. As I'm doing the course to fill in gaps in my knowledge, this can be frustrating. There was one discussion today which was somewhat irksome.

Him: What is a null value?
Me: One that's missing.
Others: Erm? A blank? or An absent one?
Him: "Missing" is the closest, it's one that's "unknown".

Forgive me for being a semantic pedant, but there's no difference between missing, absent and unknown in terms of a data value. The only one that is "wrong" is "blank", which suggest that the answer IS "blank" as opposed to the answer being "NO ANSWER" - i.e. a missing or absent or unknown.... but apart from that it's all coffee breaks and lunch, which is what training is all about? right?

Next few days
Looking forward to some time at home.

De-Moat-Ivated

2010-07-16T14:48:00.001Z

(Nothing to do with the suicidal police killer)

It doesn't bode well that I've titled this with an awful pun. However, I've got this feeling today. I'm down. I know I'm down, so it's just one of those things. I shouldn't be down, but I'm tired and that's not helping. There's a gulf between me and the happy. I think last night was a real cause and also mirror of this gulf.

I sort of know why last night's gig wasn't the "carried on the shoulders of the audience and declared their new king" sort of a gig. I am not sure if I appeared in the venue in the wrong mood and it went wrong from there, or whether I was affected by the audience and it sent me into the doldrums I'm now in. What I do know is that there was a gap between what I was trying to do and the way it was being received. I also didn't feel quite in the present tense in the gig... like I was dribbling out an impression of my show, but with some vital element missing.

It's not that life is going particularly wrong. If anything, things are getting sorted out reasonably well. I've done a few little jobs that have been annoying me. I've also made some good progress with some audio projects that I'm working on, which is good. I've been feeling moderately creative, though not as intensely creative as i can be. It may be that I'm just tired. This is what happens when you're getting older and fatter. Sometimes the flesh just isn't willing.

There have been highlights in the last week. Wednesday night was great - we went to watch Greg Davies do what he considered to be an early preview of a show which he pre-qualified as a work-in-progress. It was an hour-long burst of high-octane joy which put my own long-laboured-over-efforts into some sort of comparative context that I won't dwell on. Still, there's always something one can aspire to achieving.

The feeling which is weighing on my shoulders, though, is what happens when one of your favourite gigs doesn't do what you're hoping it will do. This happens, and it's not to be gotten out of perspective. I drove home last night with choices. I could try to put my mind on other stuff. I could dwell on the failings of the performance and feel insecure. I could write a raft of excuses to protect me from the disappointment (by the way, it wasn't that bad, just not that good either). Alternatively, and I chose this route, I could listen back to some stuff I've done that I rather like.

Was this narcissistic? Well, isn't every act of a comedian in some way narcissistic? Perhaps. However, I have an excuse. I'd forgotten the words to one of my songs... and it's one that I've done a lot. A particular line had just left my head. I'm sure that I could have performed that song unconsciously, but the line wasn't in my conscious memory... given that this song is a bit filthy, it's an indication that I've rather cleaned up my act in the last year - I think I tired of using filth as a substitute for wit so much. So, I needed to listen to some of my old recordings in order to recall this line.

While I was at it, I may as well listen to and sing along with the songs from The Musical!. I don't listen to this much, and I also don't have an electronic copy of the CD we made of the show at the moment (I need to climb into the loft to get one to rip), so I made do with some live recordings made at one show we did towards the end of the run. When you strip away some of the over-broad acting, and shouting, and when you ignore some of the button-pushy lines and filler, there are some nice moments in that show, and it was joyful to relive them on the long road home last night.

Not only were the lines enjoyable, there was the structure - I'd probably have spotted it in someone else's work, but it was interesting to review it in my own work. The Musical! was about two guys trapped in a musical of their own devising. I'm not sure that the love song was meant to be the climax of the show's hilarity, but it needed to be funny. In script terms it was basically a role reversal joke. I started off trying to cajole Chris into playing along with the love song. He undermined it with every line he sang. Then, in the middle 8 (well, middle 16), I presented a more tender appeal for him to get into it. He started to try, got swept away with it, the harmonies kicked in, the lighting went pink, the mirror ball went on, and the audience were immersed in a surreal tender moment. In the final section, the lovestruck Chris delivered a delightfully homoerotic verse and the repeated "chorus" of the song "I'm beginning to see you in a different light" changed its meaning and emphasised what had just happened.

To sit in your car, 6 years later, laughing at some harmonies that you thought up in the bath... well, it's one of the pleasures of creating something that can be recorded and enjoyed.

I went on to look at a radio project that I recorded with Hannah. This still has loads of tightly scripted gags in it, and represented a rather more dry humour than I am known for. I think that we tried some of that in our collaboration last year - The Seven Deadly Jokes - and I think that I've progressed that further in my solo show this year.

The problem I have with this year's show - The Seven Deadly Sings - is that it will work with a thinking audience who are immersed in the show. It's very ideas based, and rather dies if I try to over perform it. It contains sarcasm and observational comedy which aren't what I do in my stand-up (which is basically a bunch of silly bits of merriment about genitals and grammar - the 2 g's), and so it doesn't quite come out the same way as the stand-up I'm more familiar with and known for. This could be good. I firmly believe it will find its niche in the arts festival that is Edinburgh. I firmly believe that it, and the album I'll be making of its highlights (and some other things in the same space), are something I should hope to be proud of in 6 years' time. I feel like there's still something missing. I think I know what it is, and maybe I shouldn't miss it.

I rather like clever lyrics. I like internal rhymes and tricks in the words. In The Musical! the love song has the line "Our love will be deluxe and fill me with delight" - it's a play on sounds, a nod to Cole Porter, and an interesting thing to sing. In the Amy Winehouse toast song, there's a line "My life's a mess, I'm at the stage, where I have hit the bottle and hit the front page", which is a neat metaphor switch. In general, I like messing with wordplay in songs. It's a comedy song trick. The Seven Deadly Sings is missing quirky rhymes and turns of phrase... or maybe it isn't. On the subject of Yom Kippur - "Everyone's in Synagogue/Sombre hungry faces/Eating nothing till the sun goes down/It's like Ramadan on a one day basis". Maybe I'm just too close to my own show to see what I've created.

Excuse the brain dump. I'm dwelling on a lot of uncertainty right now. To have a show which can either raise the roof, or struggle to get more than a giggle is a confusing entity. If I made value judgements on the audience demographic when it has worked and when it hasn't.... well, I'd be in a dark place. Could Robin Ince make his humour work in a pissed up nightclub gig? I bet he could, though he wouldn't try.

As usual, a lot of my self esteem hangs on the end of my perceived comedic capability - this is the dark side of using stand-up as the escapism and joy mongering part of your life. When it works, it works big. When it doesn't work, you feel a bit of a dick.

Again, though, I got laughs last night and I feel like there's some integrity in what I'm doing, which I must have somehow consciously taken on board, since my brain erased some euphemisms about arseholes, which is what I had to mine my iPod last night to rediscover. It may be worth forgetting, but I rather like having a memory. Mind you, if I am going to start forgetting my songs, maybe it's a good thing that I'm working on my comedy album right now.

If the album goes well, and I hope it will. I'll do a follow up in September and October (at a less pressured pace) of my stand-up classics. I'd like to have a couple of CDs to sell at gigs, and I'd like to immortalise my better material so I can proliferate it better. Hopefully I'll be doing a track or so a week, rather than being under pressure to do several each week.

Still, ambition is one thing and delivery is another.

I overcommit. There's another problem. I've agreed to make some music for someone else's show. It's only 3 minutes, but that'll be 3 hours or so's work. However, it may be something we can all be proud of, and it may also be the only thing I can record tomorrow when there are planes flying overhead, as I won't be able to use microphones, and I'm pretty sure I need microphones for all the other stuff I've got to do.

Tonight should be good, though. I've got a paid gig in London which should be a nice audience who will get anything I choose to perform at them. London seems so far away these days, but it's not. So I'll drive there optimistically.

Jerry's Final Thought
What's the take home message of this blether?

Record stuff
Be optimistic
Find the audience for your stuff
Challenge yourself to excel
Take failure on the chin
Never give up
Don't steal from Tesco (not really relevant, but good advice)
Sing songs about wheelbarrows...

Maybe I will record my wheelbarrow song for my album. I still like it.

Enough.

Stick it in the Family... Album

2010-07-12T13:13:00.001Z

A very wise man once probably said that you should keep records of your life so that you can look back on it when you're older and wiser and see what it was like. Why miss out on the nostalgia? Well, I'm sure a wise man will have said something like that. However, I also know for a fact that unwise people may feel the same. There's a benefit in recording 1st hand, what's happening. Posterity is a good thing to save things for. Conversely, you can't spend your life recording things, or you'll never have any 1st hand experiences, as you'll be too busy to do anything but record stuff.

I like to record my life and look back on it. I do a lot of stuff, and a diary is one way to keep track of "how it was". A quick look back on the archives for 12th July tells me this:

Last year, I was too busy to blog in July
The year before, I was "in training" for Edinburgh, and also managed a first date with my now long-term girlfriend
In 2007, I was blogging about 4 times per day (something to do with the end of a job that I'd run out of love for) and was obsessing about the Ukulele Orchestra
In 2006, I was gigging in Huddersfield at a weird gig
In 2005, I was still living in Newcastle, it was swelteringly hot, and I did my 250th gig.

Well, I found that interesting.

So, now I sit here, after gig 867 was performed on Friday last, with gig 868 coming up on Thursday. Gig 870 is a preview of my Edinburgh show in Southampton on Saturday, fact fans. With facts all over the place, I'll ask if that's what recording is all about? Well, no. In fact, the really important recording news is that I've started recording an album.

You're recording an album Ashley?
This isn't the first time I've recorded an album. I made a CD for The Musical! with Chris back in 2004. We recorded it pretty quickly and did a pretty ok job of it, all things considered. It was something we could sell after the show, and we sold quite a few of them. It was a nice thing to have. I made way more than we were ever going to sell, but you learn by doing.

As I've got a new show for this year, it's time to make an album of the soundtrack to the show or somesuch. As I write, I'm not 100% sure what exactly will be on the album. Let me think. The following tracks should be on there (the ones in bold have been recorded):

Introduction (Spoken)
Oh No, He's Started To Sing (Song - maybe live)
Songs Have Things In Common (Spoken)
Walking On The Joker (Song - maybe live)
Music is as old as mankind (spoken)
Even Cavemen Get The Blues (Song)
The catholic church bans a note (musical routine)
They Banned Bossa Nova (song)
Seven types of "sing" (spoken)
I'm Classically Trained (musical routine)
Not everything we sing is a song (spoken)
Song 1 (song)
Elton John does stand-up (musical routine)
You could sing the yellow pages (Song - probably live)
Story song intro (spoken)
Song 2
T.B.D. some sort of story song
How to write a love song (musical routine)
Heart metaphors and how to avoid them
Love is like... (song)
Complacency songs - watered down music (spoken)
Punk loses its edge (song)
Easy? (musical routine)
Pain intro (spoken)
Hotel Hell (song)
Elton John stands up again (musical routine)
Attitude and Nietszche (spoken with music)
RAP and how to neutralise it (musical routine)
Novelty intro (spoken)
Song 3
Christmas songs (spoken)
Christmas Song For Jews
Commercial intro (spoken)
30 seconds
Putting it all together (spoken)
The Seven Deadly Sings (song)
Bonus track: tbd
Bonus track: tbd

Streuth... Lots still to record.

Other things
I've now realised I have no time to do anything other than sort this stuff out... so quick list of facts from the recent past:

My piano's foot pedal broke, so I bought a soldering iron (mine is temporarily in locations unknown) and fixed it
Thursday last week saw a brilliant reception for the show in Reading - everyone was there
Friday last week saw me performing the show amongst a large amount of heat and road noise in Manchester, it was less engaging for the audience, who were immersed in the noise from the street as much as the show
I had some pictures taken - oooh
I need to lose weight
I had a nice weekend

Right - must get on with recording stuff.

Between Posts

2010-06-30T09:24:00.001Z

I'm in a strange place right now. Home life is good, so let's put that out of the equation for the purposes of this discussion. Life with kittens and domestic bliss is just that, homely happiness. However, in the other worlds I inhabit, office and comedy, I'm in a waiting pattern.

Office - WHY!?
I do an office job because it's an essential way for me to earn a living and make all the other things I do, and want to do in my life, possible. Simple as. I'm not motivated by the money - it's a life I've subscribed to. I feel a sense of loyalty to the commitments I've taken on, and the people I work with. The office is a sort of a community, and it's one of whose outcome I am invested in.

That said, the office is in a strange shape at the moment, figuratively and literally. I've just moved desk. As such I'm feeling a bit displaced. It's been a growing sense of displacement, really. The world was simpler back in November. Back in November, there were three of us sitting in the UK, backed up by a further six in Budapest. We set in a group in the UK and kept closely in touch with the Budapest people. Then things changed. The work didn't, but the responsibilities moved around. One of our UK three stopped working on our specific stuff, and we all stopped sitting together.

Desk move one had me sitting with some people who do something similar to me, but aren't working on the same stuff as I am. I'm still in touch with the other people in the team working on things, but we're not co-located. This breaks community. It's just one of those things.

I've just gone through desk move two. I'm only a few feet away from where I was. But now, I'm surrounded either by empty desks, or people doing stuff that's quite unrelated to what I'm doing. There are still similarities and areas of overlap. I will work with these people from time to time. What's the problem? There are two problems.

Firstly, I can't help but feel like I'm as far away from my community of like-minded people as I could possibly be. Secondly, I can't help but feel like the people in this part of the office consider talking loudly to be a higher priority than working. There's a lot of chatter and playing music loudly through headphones will not obscure it. I'm probably going to end up quite angry. I'm already rather pissed off, and I've only been at this desk for a few minutes today so far.

So, these will be interesting times. I've half a mind to invite the more loud-mouthed of the people to meetings in remote parts of the office, and then not turn up to those meetings myself, to at least buy myself occasional 10 minutes-es of quiet. Grrrr.

Comedically
I'm in a real down at the moment relating to my show. It's periods like this which sap your confidence. A part of me knows that I'll not improve any flaws in the show by using excuses to take away from the fact that the end hasn't worked for the last couple of performances. By the end, I mean the last 15 minutes. That's not good.

The official excuses are that I've done an hour-long set in a comedy club not used to such a length of performance, starting after 10.15pm in both cases, with a relatively small audience. However, why am I expecting the show to suddenly start working again just because the time may be earlier? Should I be guaranteed a larger audience in Edinburgh? Will I possibly be able to drum up a large audience if I'm currently worrying about the quality of the show?

Well, of course, there's plenty of time to fix things and rehearse it all a bit better and generally tighten it up. I'll be making running repairs to the show in Edinburgh too. Plus, it's really brimming over with ideas and invention, so why shouldn't I consider it good.

Tomorrow night's my next gig. A local MCing role in Cirencester. It should be a great night of comedy and I should aim to get some enthusiasm out of it. That should fix that.

So, if I recharge my comedy batteries and stick some batteries into the loudmouths I'm now lumbered with sitting with, then life should be back up to over 75% joyous in next to no time.

Myth Up

2010-06-29T13:49:00.001Z

Here's the quick version of this tale. I had a stressful day on Saturday. It involved a certain amount of driving around more than I had expected/required and I wasn't in the best of moods. Stressed and feeling like time was a weight on my shoulders, I decided to take a stop for a coffee/tea break in the Esso garage on the local dual carriageway; it has a Costa "in-shop", a licenced version of the popular coffee chain, run by the Esso people.

My girlfriend wanted tea and I wanted coffee.

Me: May I have a medium sized tea...
Her: We only do small. We're a coffee company, so we only do one size of tea.
Me: Can you give me it in a medium sized cup with a bit of extra water.
Her: No. Sorry. It's company policy.
Me: How about you give me a small tea in a small cup and give me a medium cup separately, with a little extra water in the bottom.
Her: No. It's not allowed. Company policy.

At this stage our "Hero" starts to lose his temper.

Me: Which company?
Her: Costa.
Me: But I've been into Costa and bought tea of this size before without ever being refused.
Her: They're the shops, though. We're just a licence. They won't let us do it.

Then I had a tantrum. I bellowed at her to stuff her fucking tea up her arse and get her jobsworth face up there with it. I screamed that she was being belligerent. I didn't need this sort of shit added to my day. There was no logical reason for this restriction and it sounded like a pile of bullshit that was either there to piss people off, or to avoid litigation that would never happen. That was my tantrum. It lasted about 8 seconds. The member of staff didn't experience any of the things I just described. This is because I just my eyes and my mouth and waited carefully until all of these thoughts and visualisations of unnecessary rage had abated. I'm not an angry person. I get crabby and irritable, but I don't perform acts of violent abusive behaviour on a Saturday evening in a roadside services. When I opened my eyes again, in a calm and measured voice...

Me: I'll have a SMALL TEA please.

I also had to explain to my girlfriend why she was getting a small tea. She, quite reasonably, next to me in the queue, described all the same "workarounds" I'd just asked for and I calmly, in a voice which warned her not to push because we'd both end up savaging the little old lady serving us, used sarcasm to explain to her why it was obviously NOT POSSIBLE.

After the aftermath
So, we got on with our lives for the rest of the weekend and I vowed to exact some sort of revenge on the people who had so smited us with their irritating behaviour. This morning I decided I was calm emough (and bored enough) to give it a shot. Here follows a description of the chain of calls I made in order to solve the problem. I should point out that there was something bugging me about this "policy". It seemed like a myth. It seemed very unlikely that Costa or Esso stood to gain anything from this belligerence - it seem more like a "cult of the no". So, perhaps I could actually fix it.

Call 1 - Costa Customer Services
Me: Excuse me, is there a policy which stops the licensee from providing me with tea in a medium sized cup?
Them: We just sell the Esso garage the cups and the tea and the coffee and the equipment and they can do what they like.

Call 2 - The Garage in Question
Me: Why can't you sell me a medium tea?
Lady: We're not allowed to. By Costa.
Me: Costa say that they don't prevent this. Where's this policy actually come from?
Lady: Not me. You'll have to write to head office.
Me: Can I have their number.
Lady: No. You can have their address, and this is it...

Call 3 - The Head Office
Google is quite good at giving telephone numbers for head offices
Me: Can I talk to the person responsible for coffee shops in Esso stations?
Reception: We don't give out names and numbers.
Me: I don't want their name or number, you can transfer me.
Reception: Are you a sales rep?
Me: No. I'm a customer. I need to talk to the person who made the policy where...
Reception: You should call customer services.

Call 4 - Esso Customer Services
Me: I was in a garage, I wanted tea. They were mean to me. They said there was a policy, where did it originate?
Her: I'll have to contact the area manager for you. Give me your name and number.

Call 5 - Area Manager Rang Me
Him: Hello, my name is something you can't hear because I didn't say it clearly. What seems to be the problem.
Me: You wouldn't sell me a medium tea, which isn't pragmatic.
Him: I wish it wasn't the policy, but it's not our choice. Costa dictated it. You're not the first to complain.
Me: But I spoke to Costa and they said they didn't care.
Him: They provide us with menu boards and brand guidelines. We can't deviate from those guidelines. We get audited, so can't put a foot wrong. We can't sell you a larger tea than small. It's not allowed.
Me: Your staff could just be helpful and provide a larger cup on the sly when requested. Why be so obstructive?
Him: We're not allowed, by Costa.
Me: Who at Costa? They said they were happy. Give me a name and number.

Call 6 - Costa Sales Manager
Me: Hello, I'm a customer, tea, medium, why can't I have one?
Him: But you can.
Me: What that's what I would have thought.
Him: You can have your drink however you like. The brand requirements are a minimum standard. If the customer wants their drink their way, it should be ok.
Me: Sounds like a myth about what they can't do then. Can you tell them that they're allowed to do it, please. I'll also ring the manager I spoke to and tell him.
Him: Sure thing.

This guy was a really laid back pragmatic fellow. I'd buy him a coffee any day.

Call 7 - The Area Manager Again
Me: Great news. I've solved the problem. Costa say that you can sell me a medium tea. It's a misunderstanding.
Him: Well, I'll have to hear it from them.
Me: Got it covered. The chap will be in touch to tell you. Isn't this brilliant, though. We solved the problem.
Him: ... general sounds I can't remember ...

Conclusion
If you ring enough people in the two organisations I managed to ring, you may get an answer. In general, though, people should use their fucking common sense and make me a fucking drink when I ask for it.

And now your "Reading"

2010-06-28T14:48:00.001Z

Dear Reader,

I have decided to do a psychic reading for you. Please read it carefully and feel free to email me on ashley at ashleyfrieze.co.uk with a description of how well it applies to you.

You are looking forward to an event in the next 14 days which has been a long time coming. It's been a bit tense recently, and you deserve a break from the tension. There are a few things on your mind that you wish the people around you could understand a bit better. You will find it easier to communicate about at least one of these things over the next few days as things develop.

The colour green has been significant to you over the last week.

You have been worried about money in the past, but things are looking a bit better right now, and you will be making plans for the future soon.

Someone whom you've not seen in a long while will be making contact soon, or may have just made contact.

Though you sometimes feel sad about the past, you will be able to bury it and move on.

Hope that's all good.

Lots of love.

Ashley

Shazam

2010-06-28T14:36:00.002Z

I'm listening to an album I bought. It's by an artist called Duke Special. Heard of him? No? Me neither. Well, obvious I have heard of him at some point, but how? Well, I was in a shop and I heard a track that sounded a bit like a Divine Comedy track - I was sure I could hear vocals by Neil Hannon. I'd never heard the track before and I didn't know what it was.

Shazam. That's the answer to that question - you point your mobile phone at the shop's speaker and capture a clip of the song. Then it's submitted to the internet and you get the title and artist of the track on your screen. This is almost a miracle. I've got theories about how you make a computer program like that. Only theories, mind. It's a brilliant tool to have. As a result, I've discovered a new artist. I bought the album which had that track on - it's actually a collection of B-sides and rarities. Subsequently, I bought the album I'm listening to, and I'm now able to enjoy something a bit different from the average music I find.

Strangely, in a world where I listen to my iPod more than the radio, I think the music played in shops, coupled with Shazam, may be more influential on the bands I discover than the charts. I don't even know what's in the charts. In fact, let's have a look:

As of 27th June - the official uk chart:

Katy Perry - California Girls - I've heard of this Russell Brand-infected buffoon, but not of the track
K'naan - Wavin' Flag - Football song? curry tribute act?
Shout - Shout (with James Corden) - I've not heard the track, I'm guessing it's a football song, with the ubiquitous-as-chlamydia Corden
Example - Kickstarts - huh?
Eminem - Not Afraid - used to enjoy some of Eminem's stuff, not heard this
Kylie Minogue - All The Lovers - so she's still making music then? Oh.
Eminem - Love The Way You Like (feat. Rihanna) - Not heard this. Heard of Rihanna, whose name annoys me. I think it's the spelling
Lady Gaga - Alejandro - sounds pretentious. I don't think I could sing or even name a Lady Gaga track I'd heard. Is she a man? Does anyone care?
Tinie Tempah - Frisky (feat. Labrinth) - there's a lot of people featuring other people, have all artists decided to form ad-hoc combination acts to sell more records these days? No idea who or what any of this is!
David Guetta - Gattin' Over You (feat. Chris Willis) - nope... you've lost me

I realise it makes me sound like someone's fuddy duddy dad. Actually, I'm quite happy with there being new music, but I'm clearly not being exposed to it. By the looks of it, I'm not missing out.

That's Fantastic

2010-06-23T14:41:00.001Z

A very sad news story turned into something else today. I am proud to have been involved, even though I can't claim any credit. The comedian Chris Sievey, who played Frank Sidebottom, died this week and was destined for a pauper's funeral, as there was literally no money to pay for his funeral arrangements.

Dying penniless is a tragic end to a life which involved providing entertainment to many people. It's not how I'd like to go.

The internet proves that you don't need to be a church to be a community. Some stuff happened on twitter and facebook this morning. Then someone, a writer called Jon Ronson, set up a PayPal account, and then people put a couple of quid in.

Apparently, £6000 was raised in a couple of hours. That's how to treat the departed with a bit of respect in the modern age.

The comedy website Chortle had to keep updating their article and its headline changed from "Pauper's Funeral" to "Fans Save The Day". It's like historical revisionism happening in the moment. This is what the internet revolution can do, and I'm proud to know I can be a part of it.

Why I Hate iTunes

2010-06-23T14:31:00.001Z

Ok. A quick rant. I don't like iTunes. I don't mean that I hate the idea of downloading digitally protected software from an online store; that's actually perfectly reasonable, and iTunes.com does a reasonable job of selling stuff to me when I want it (though why they pander to AOL users is anyone's guess).

I'm not even going to bleat on too much about Apple's deliberately proprietry approach to what is a generic sort of a problem - the management of mp3's. The fact that the iTunes program is a portal for buying music and managing your iPhone, iPad, iPod, iPoo or whatever, is a fact of life and one which I am not going to get too hot under the collar about. Thinking about it differently, they also provide iTunes, the program, for free for several platforms for all people to manage any form of music collection for listening on the PC/Mac/Whatnot.

So why do I hate the iTunes software? because I do!

A quick list of reasons:

I don't want my PC to look like a Mac - why give me the Mac user interface on my PC, comply to the desktop standards I expect, like where to grab to resize a window, and what title bars look like!
It's sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow! - I mean really really slow, it can take forever to start playing when I click on something - ultimately, there's a little mp3 file to play, why the delay?
You can't configure it to connect to the internet properly - it'll pick up the system defaults and that's the best it can manage, so if those defaults are a bit dodgy, you're screwed
It is HARD TO USE - I know! It's a Mac application and it has usability issues. Why hard? Because you never quite know what mode you're in. What will actually play next? It's hard to switch around from one context to the other, because it's not clear.
It's all things to all men and nothing specific - the fact that it manages devices, playlists, libraries, a store and a whole bunch of other stuff - it means you don't really know what it's doing at any given moment
Did I mention it's slow?
It's not that flexible when it comes to managing a CD collection - things like consolidating multi-CD albums into a single virtual album are just not there
It's also slow.

What makes all of these things worse is the simple fact that there are millions of users of it out there. Reports vary between 10 and 200 million users. I'll go for 10 million as a start. That's 10 million victims of Apple's quirky obscure software engineering mistakes. A bad problem, made worse through "popularity".

Rant over.

Inscrutable

2010-06-21T13:48:00.001Z

"No, you're not what I expected, either." It's one of my favourite opening lines when the comedian hits the stage and the audience applause dies down. A nice ice breaker. Sometimes an audience's perception of what they're going to get and what is laid in front of them are at loggerheads.

I did a show last night.

Let me quickly point out that I owe a big debt of gratitude to all who came, gave of their time, money and laughter, and that it was really really appreciated that people got each other to come along and generally filled a room in a way that other publicity and my name alone simply couldn't have done.

Now I'll give you a list of the sorts of audience members that any comedian would find difficult to play to. The reason behind this comes down to the lack of the audience-performer tension that needs to exist for the comedian to be funny. This doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with these people, it's more a transactional analysis of the situation. For the roles to work, the following archetypes can make things harder.

So, the comedian's perfect tough crowd:

Parents
Grandparents
Any individual who is two generations older
People who aren't sure what they've come to see
Those who are unaware of the cultural references
People for whom the language of the show is not their first language
Anyone who has seen the comedian naked
Anyone who has looked after this comedian when they were a child

This tough crowd would be magnified to unplayable if the audience were small in number, say under 10, and made up exclusively of the above.

I'm not describing last night's audience in every detail. However, it's fair to say that it was a most unusual crowd, with more of the above elements present than I'm used to playing. It was in a large arts centre, with a high raked seating. This also takes some playing - you need to lean backwards to play to the whole room. It was a big challenge.

And we got through it.

Just.

I've got plenty of editing to do of the show before Edinburgh, and last night showed me some of the strengths and weaknesses of the piece. This can only be considered a good thing.

The last few weeks of show-obsessed warbling have come at a cost, to my levels of energy, sanity, and stability. It's proving harder than I expected to do this. I think my ambition to really milk this opportunity to make the most of it isn't making my life any easier. It's the right thing to do. Doing it by halves, or treating it as a done deal, is too complacent a way to make something of a sufficient quality. But to quote Coldplay - "nobody said it was easy".

Why did I just quote Coldplay? Nobody knows.

Last year's show seemed easier. This may be because it was simply aiming at a lower standard, or that it was a less sophisticated show, or maybe it was that we had twice as many people in the writing and editing process, so it ended up being stronger. Maybe it was even the case that the other person was the strength behind the script and I can't do it alone...? Actually, I've no idea.

My instincts tell me that I'm close to a core show that I can be proud of. My instincts are also telling me to ditch various things which were originally what the show was built on... while other instincts are shouting "noooooo... not thaaaat biiiiit". It's an inner turmoil, for sure.

If I don't change some things quite drastically, Edinburgh won't work for this show, so there's work to be done. Last night's show overran because I waffled my way through it, trying to customise it to the audience and soft-soap them through the tricky bits. Tonight's show will have to be tight and polished, like Mr Sheen's wooden arsehole.

On The Brink

2010-06-18T13:57:00.001Z

So many things rattle through my brain and would be ideal candidates for sharing on this very screen. There is a lot of stuff happening at the moment and I could use a chance to put my thoughts into some sort of an order. A quick bullet list of events from the last week or so will get the juices flowing, so to speak.

I've been an awfully absent nursemaid to an ill girlfriend
I was on Radio Leeds last night
So I drove a long way
I had my car broken into
I did a gig in London
I did a couple of previews of my Edinburgh show>
I did various other gigs, including a Jongleus spot

There's enough there for a much longer discussion. On top of that, the day job still manages to challenge and befuddle. So, in some sort of structure, here are some thoughts on some of those things.

Poorly Girlfriend, Poor Service
As is quite apparent from the way I run myself ragged, I'm not the best of people to rely on if you need time from me at short notice. The gigging has me committed to doing stuff all over the place all of the time. I have limits in place to avoid overbooking myself and making it impossible to spend any time at home with loved ones. Sometimes I overcommit. In a normal circumstance, the overcommitting isn't the worst issue - it can be overlooked.

My girlfriend has had tonsilitis for the last 2 weeks (well, various illness and then being made better while still week) and I've been trotting all over the place, with a heavy heart, unable to do the right thing - either stay at home with her, cancelling a gig I feel I can't cancel, or go to the gig and neglect someone who's ill in bed.

I need to review the way I conduct myself. If this is the normal way I go about my life, then it's not victimless.

Sorry.

Luring Friends To See Shows
I feel a bit bad about it. I don't want all the people who've ever known me to think that I only see them as "potential audience". However, when you've got shows to do, you have to push your social network. So I've been pimping myself on various channels. Hopefully it comes across as reaching out across the years, distances, and whatnot. In short, I'll like these people if they don't come to my shows...

... just not as much as if they do. :)

Previews I Have Done
So, a couple of notable previews of . Firstly there was my own showing at The Hen and Chickens. I know a lot about this showing because I've watched the video I made of it, and I've also listened to the soundtrack of that video several times over in the car. It will very much be the reference point against which other shows are measured.

A lovely audience came specifically to see me and did their best to see the funnny in the material. This led to a number of laughs I wasn't expecting. It also showed me where the lulls are in the material and delivery. People seemed to enjoy themselves, and that's the pay back for them coming to see me.

I knew that the follow-up would also be a "tricky second album" and it proved to be challenging. That said, it went pretty well and was a great learning experience. I am clear in myself that this show needs a lot of performance energy to carry it off, and that I'll be slowly, but surely, trimming bits of the material to leave only the strongly strongest strong stuff.

For now, though I've had two London previews of a show, which I've already performed twice in Brighton and which I did an audience-present read-through of in Stafford. So, that's 5 shows down. The next show is good old "Show 6". This is the one where it re-gels. Probably.

To be honest, if I knew how this worked that scientifically, I'd be more in control of it. I'm enjoying the process of doing what seems best at each stage along the way. Bring it on!

The Bastards!
Returning to my car after Wednesday's gig in central London, where the car was parked in a reasonably well lit area in what should be a decent part of London, I found a police car parked next to my car. Broken glass on the floor. A break in. Bugger!

Flashback to earlier in the day. Shall I unpack the car? There's a piano in there, a piano stand, a PA system, mic stands, a case full of tricks, a box full of wires, a box full of props and other stuff. Basically, the whole of my show equipment's in there. What did they take? Shit shit shit.

I checked out the equipment, it was all there.

So I gave some details to the police and then arranged for the window to be replaced. It would have to be a temporary plexi-glass repair. They sent a man to central London at midnight. He constructed me a new window out of perspex and then fitted it into the frame, so that the car is rain proof and secure enough for a bit. Wow.

I had a late night coming up the following night, so I was feeling a bit sorry for myself for the loss of sleep that this incident had caused... then it struck me. The laptop bag? Where is it? Uh oh.

No laptop in the bag, so that wasn't lost. However, my recent purchases from Amazon were in there. Also, there were my notebooks. Words I wrote down to store them for later... gone for good. That's what hurts. I've had three car break ins now, for various reasons in various situations, they always take my notebooks.

The thieves also got my cheque book and some bills - let's hope they can be arsed to sort the bills out, because I'd been procrastinating.

It's a nuisance, but I'll live. Not even sure it's worth making an insurance claim. Sigh.

Gigs are...
Generally speaking, the stand-up is going well. I can't recall a "phoned in" performance of late, which is a good benchmark. I enjoyed my trip to Hammersmith Jongleurs. You get all manner of insecurities and forebodings playing to a larger audience than usual, especially in a massive room. However, I stood up there and did my thing, and felt like I was in control of the situation.

And when it works, you can sometimes slightly step out of yourself and say "will you look at that, I DO feel confident just being up here and doing this sort of a think like this". And that's probably part of the drug that makes you want to go back and do it. And you should start a sentence with "And".

In a more intimate situation, you can have more inspiration. I've done a bit of MCing recently, which requires more spontaneous material and witticism. You jump off the cliff and grab onto something funny as you fall.

I have a new resident MCship in Cirencester, the first of which I've done recently. It was good fun. Indeed, it was a nice gig from start to finish, proving the simple fact - if you put good comedians in a room with a good audience, great stuff happens (I'm excluding myself from this description).

I want to do a rant about pseudo-edgy comedians at this stage and how they don't understand how to make comedy (compared with funny edgy comedians who do), but not now. I'll rant about it another time.

So I love comedy still. Which is good, because I do a lot of it.

Looking Forward To Leeds
At the moment, my head is sort of jingling with the half-formed re-writes that came out of the show I did on Monday. I could really use a rehearsal, though I think I could get some of these things right pretty quickly. I'll make time to corral my thoughts into order before show time on Sunday, I'm sure. Small tweaks, only.

It's weird organising a show 200 miles away. I've done my best to spread the word. I've done the press. I did the radio (though I suspect that the radio won't turn out to have had a great effect on things - to not try would have been a guarantee of 0 effect). There's not much more I can reasonably do except turn up to the venue and do my thing.

On the one hand, I'm looking forward to another show where it's all about me - I'm the only one on the poster, and people are coming because they want to see what I'm offering. On the other hand, I'm utterly mortified at the whole self-promotion bit. What's the best way to feel like a fraud? It's to say "Hey, I'm really brilliant" and then immediately fail to live up to your own hype.

However, I've come to the conclusion that I've made something which is enjoyable and illuminating, so hopefully people will enjoy their hour with me on Sunday. I can't say more than that.

Clippety Doodles
I uploaded a couple of YouTube clips:

This is my "Writing a Love Song" routine from .

And with a song from last year's Seven Deadly Jokes, here's a pop video that Hannah George made of our Amy Winehouse Song:

Looking Forward to Edinburgh
I've been on the Edinburgh trail since February, when I decided to do this show. With the Brighton run in May as the first waypoint on the trail, the Fringe really takes over one's life. It's sort of a good thing. It's also a bit much from time to time. So much stuff to organise.

However, we're getting onto the final, very very long, straight. Basically, I'm about to pay the rent for the flat. We're at the middle of June. By the middle of July, I should expect my preview shows to be pretty robust versions of the show. The first half of August will be weird as the festival starts without me, and I have a few gigs to do before I go up there.

Then I'll be there, and I'm definitely over-committed. My first week may hurt. I'm doing three shows a day minimum in week 1:

My solo show
The stand-up show I do every year
A nightly MC slot at a gig

And I've got guest spots in other shows hither and thither.

However, assuming I keep my voice, and there's a risk there, I should hit week 3 with vigour. Hopefully I'll work up a nice lather and get into a health kick to knock away some of the excess flab that's making me a bit of an articulated lorry of and individual.

I wouldn't miss the Fringe without good reason. I'll also be glad when I can stop obsessing about the whole process of putting my show together.

The Seven Deadly Sings: Writing a Love Song

2010-06-13T11:36:00.000Z

Amy Winehouse: Toast

2010-06-11T09:43:00.000Z

Same Scam.... now on Facebook

2010-05-27T07:22:00.001Z

Nice to have you back Mr Scam.

Subject: FROM: Mr. AHMED KHAN
Hello Ashley Frieze,

I am Mr. Ahmed Khizer Khan a citizen of UAE .I have in my bank the existence of a very big amount of money that belongs to a customer , Mr. Daniel Frieze who happen to have the same surname as yours .The fund is now without any claim because Mr. Daniel died in a deadly earthquake in China in 2008 . I want your cooperation so as to make the bank send you the fund as the beneficiary and next of kin to the fund.
This transaction will be of a great mutual assistance to us. Send me your reply of interest so that I will give you the details .

Strictly send it to my private email account : mrahmedkhanuaei@hotmail.com or send me your email address to send you details of this transaction.

At the receipt of your reply, I will give you details of the transaction. And a copy of the Deposit certificate of the fund and also the incorporation certificate of the company that generated thid fund .

Best regards,

Mr. AHMED kHIZER KHAN.
mrahmedkhanuaei@hotmail.com

A Counter Missionary Position

2010-05-26T08:57:00.001Z

I want a copy of this:

so I can wave it at the missionaries in Bracknell.

How long

2010-05-26T08:12:00.001Z

How long before I buy this:

Eventful

2010-05-24T11:28:00.001Z

Even when I'm less busy than normal, life seems to be eventful. Let's discard landlord visits, misbehaving cats, days at work where things make sense, and days at work where things make no sense. Let's avoid the idea of publicising the various previews of the Fringe show, and somehow procrasting over certain aspects of the preparation for said show in terms of rehearsal and rewrites. Let's even avoid getting various bits of life in order for the upcoming trip to Budapest. What's left?

Well, plenty.

It's at this stage in writing a blog entry, that I write a series of titles for the rest of the post; these will become what I write about. Normally, you might just read ahead and discover them as though they'd always been there, but here's me pulling back the curtain on how this particular trick is done. I'll be writing the titles first, then filling it all in. It's not rocket science; it's not even interesting, but it's truthful.

Gigging in Leeds
Friday night was the night of a gig in Leeds City Centre. I don't gig that far up north very often. It's for a good reason; it's a bloody long way away. I thought I'd arranged a bed for a night at a friend's place, but I set off with the 75% intention of making it a round trip, assuming I wasn't too knackered.

We're talking a 4 hour car journey from here to Leeds. It's not to be pooh poohed on a Friday evening; Stuff could go quite wrong. Traffic can hurt.

As it was, the journey passed by ok. I felt fat... but that's because I am fat. That's not a feeling, it's a fact. A fat fact.

I made it to Leeds at quite a reasonable time. I'd not quite worked out where the gig was, but a bit of random circling of the one-way system, to the surprise of the Sat Nav, and it was soon clear where I was heading. I found a car park at around 8.15pm, and then I was on my way to the venue.

Now I'd been warned that it might not be especially busy. I hadn't been warned firmly enough. It was really really not busy. That's not to say that I "require" it to be busy. Gigs are what they are. I'm not going to object so much if there aren't many people in. That's how the cookie crumbles. It was very quiet, though. Enough said about it. Honestly. Quiet, though. Very. Quiet. Ssssh.

Anyway, we went ahead with the gig and I had a few moments of big hilarity, a few moments when I had to lean on them, a few drops, and the cookie was crumbled. I wish there was a highlight greater than when I got the giggles about my description of the stage curtain looking a bit like a man's perineum. Barrel. Scraped.

Then it was time to decide whether to go to my friend's house or whether to head home. I'd decided to head home. I'd also received some texts from my friend which I'd somehow assumed meant that he was heading to Leeds from Glasgow. This turned out not to be the case. I rang him to say something like "don't rush back on my account" to discover he was still in Glasgow. There'd been a mix-up on dates and I hadn't been especially well organised in reminding him of the dates. So, no apologies to make, I was going home and nothing was going to be affected by this. What could possible stop me getting on the road?

The Naughty Ticket Machine
The title gives this away. I put my ticket into the barrier gate of the car park and was told I needed to see a cashier. I assumed that the machine was faulty, so parked up again and went to a pay station. The pay station tried to charge me £30. It had decided that I'd been there for nearly 2 days. That's impressive. I know time flies when you're having fun, but I hadn't had that much fun. I had no option. I had to press the help button.

This is where a disembodied voice in a call centre started patronising me. It patronised me because I couldn't hear what it was saying and was trying to work it out by asking questions: "you want me to put the card in?" or "am I meant to press the button now?". The guy at the other end assumed I was an idiot. I assumed he was an idiot because I'd already told him I couldn't hear him clearly because the machine was distorting, and he was shouting even harder at me. In the end, he understood that I'd only been in the car park for a couple of hours and tried to charge me the hourly rate. I pointed out that there was a night rate... then he pressed some buttons, told me to press a button of my own, and the machine basically said "give me £4 and I'll give you a new ticket which will let you out".

What had been a £30 hostage situation eventually became a rather amenable £4 exit fee. Job done.

Sleeping until Ironing Time
I got home late. 2am. That's not too bad for a long-haul gig. I spent some time "decompressing" and then hit the hay quite late. I zonked out for a long time. I remember my girlfriend going to work, dumping a cat on the bed, which quickly disappeared, and telling me the other one was outside. I definitely remember waking up around 10am to go and find the other cat, who was shouting at me from the outside of the house, and bringing him in. At this point, I think the first cat came back to sleep with me for a little.

Then it was half past one. The day was largely gone. What should I do with my time? I decided to spend a little time hugging the cat... because I can... and then I took on the ironing pile. This took about 3 hours. It was good, though. I just stayed in and did some ironing. No stress, just me, the new iron, the clothes, and the TV.

A Glut of Doctor Who
It's been quite a Doctor Who based week. The best way to understand how much Doctor Who this is is to itemise it. On Thursday evening, I watched 3 of the 4 episodes of "The War Machines" - a 3rd series William Hartnell serial. I finished this off while ironing on Saturday. Then there was the two Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies, which disappeared under the ironing on Saturday - Doctor Who and the Daleks and Dalek Invasion Earth 2150AD. These were entertaining and cinematic, with some truly authentic Who traits, like a gorgeous blue box, and an ingenious and enigmatic Doctor. They were also 60's formula films where Roy Castle in the first and Bernard Cribbins in the second were both romantic lead and comic foil characters (mainly the second). Thing is, they had some lovely cinematography, which was really enjoyable, even if the characterisations and scenarios were lame in other respects. I'm glad I watched them.

Saturday night was part one of the latest Doctor Who two parter... and then we also watched both parts of a David Tennant story - Silence in the Library and The Forest of Dreams.

That's a lot of Doctor Who. But I like this programme and I'll watch it if I want to.

Doing nothing
Sunday was occupied with sitting around, doing nothing and having fun.

Joe ****ing Power
I couldn't sleep Sunday night. So I went to Channel 4's on demand service and watched the Derren Brown Investigates in which he met Joe Power. This led me to write a reasoned guest book entry on Joe Power's website, pointing out that Power wasn't actually stitched up, and that he seemed perfectly capable of claiming to do readings in any situation that suited him - i.e. not at someone's home, without apparently knowing who the people were - when he was performing in a theatre, but had to immediately blame Derren's Brown's experimental set up for the abject failure in his obvious attempts at Cold Reading at the end of the show. This, simply, is a charlatan being defensive because he got caught out. I found this individual to be a deeply unpleasant cynical manipulator of people.

Derren Brown's conclusion that mediumship might bring comfort to some individuals was a rather charitable point. I think the orange-painted mugs whom this man swindles are truly naive and credulous... but they don't deserve being ripped off.

Skeptics Galore
I'm enjoying the world of Skepticism. In my travels (and I spent about 9 hours in the car on Friday), I've been listening to Righteous Indignation, a podcast which casts its skeptical eye on whatever paranormal/non-scientific stuff is surfacing in the news. As I mentioned on Tuesday, this podcast sort of sets me off, as it contains the thought processes you need to see through the bullshit people peddle. Once you spot some of it...

Result!!!
As a final bit of news, I've discovered that my master plan to provide good software to provide genuine help to a real person... well, it paid off. Yay!

Updates Galore

2010-05-18T23:33:00.000Z

It's late Tuesday night and I've got a bunch of things I could possibly write about. It's either write this stuff or go to sleep, and going to sleep isn't something I do very willingly, I'm afraid. I like being asleep, and I hate waking up, but I only really willingly surrender myself to sleep when I'm already the walking dead and my body has given up. Right now, there's still energy in my system and my brain is still looking for stimulation.

I'll now work out the overall structure of what I'm going to talk about.

Post Brighton Slump
Last year's Brighton Fringe was such an exhausting process that I entered a major post-Fringe blues situation. This year's was slightly different. In some ways it was more tiring as the two sets of gigs I did were separated by a weekend, and I didn't get much down time, and I was thinking Brighton over a long period. Indeed, I still ended up with various amounts of voice strain and exhaustion, much as though I'd done a couple of weeks in Edinburgh, but with worse eating and more private accommodation, and more driving and... well myriad other differences.

However, Brighton Fringe is now over for me. It was successful in some ways and in other ways it was just a bit of a shot to nothing. I will (indeed, I have) publicise my appearance there as another string to my bow. See ashleyfrieze.co.uk for the full self-promo crap if you must. I think what came out of the experience the most was the camaraderie. We did some fun shows and had a fun time. As far as my Edinburgh show is concerned, the ability to run it through and then see it with a bit of hindsight is going to prove a vital step towards making it really fly in the next couple of months.

I needed some down time after Brighton, and it eventually came in the form of the weekend.

The Weekend
Of course down time is a funny old thing, before you can say "maybe I'll have a lie in" you're in B&Q buying a bizarre lawnmower that uses plastic "blades" which snap within 2 minutes. Then you're home using said lawnmower and generally overhauling a garden that was a wilderness and is now a bit more of a series of bare patches. I say you. I mean me.

Saturday was relatively busy in that regard. There was busyness during the day, following by some relaxing in the evening, followed by the glorious throes of sleep. To sleep perchance to dream, unless you're a labour party election campaign producer from the mid 90's when it's to sleep perchance to D:ream. I digress.

A big sleep in on Sunday is what the doctor might have ordered, but The Doctor was busy having an adventure with a ginger scottish lassie, which we watched on iPlayer on Sunday, again having missed it on transmission on Saturday. C'est la vie. A great episode, of course.

Sunday had a visit from my parents and then it pretty much ran to the end of its line.

Last Night's Gig Highlights
I love to gig. I love gigging. I like it when comedy is spontaneous. So I spent some time before the gig writing a new song. Then I decided not to bother trying it out. I was MCing, and I decided to just wing it... see which things wanted to be done. Play it by ear.

We had a nice gig. There were some good acts. There were a couple of flops. It's hard to get started in comedy, and sometimes your schtick doesn't ever work, and sometimes it's unreliable either because of your own ability to deliver it or because it will work with a nice sympathetic audience who would laugh at anything. It's not my position to judge how individual people did at the gig last night. I had my favourite acts, and I had ones whom I didn't enjoy in the same way. I think that self-hating needs to be done well to be funny, and I think that parading one's self requires a really defined version of that self to parade. These comments may or may not apply to anything that did or didn't happen last night.

Look at me, Mr Diplomacy!!! But there's no real benefit in being the experienced critical act at a new acts night, which I was doing my best to hold together with nothing much more than enthusiasm. If I want to make a new act look like they didn't do a good job, what would it say about me? It would make me look like a dick. I won a heat of a new act competition when I was about 4 or 5 years into stand-up. I'd done 300-400 gigs by that stage and some of the other participants were on their 10th gig. As my name was called as the winner, a little part of me shouted "Stand-up and receive the prize you deserve. THIS IS YOUR MOMENT!!!" and I moved a little and then another, more sane, voice said "Ashley! You've beaten a bunch of newbies, don't rub it in".

So there.

Highlights of the gig. I back announced an act by pointing out that she'd been in lads mags and had recently lost weight... then I pointed out that one should be careful what one posts for all to see on Facebook. This act was affronted. Was I stalking her? Was I prying? Actually, no. I Googled the title of the book she stated, on stage, that she'd written, to see who published it (noone yet) and what it was about, and the first hit was her facebook, with a bunch of stuff she'd told the world - ANYONE COULD SEE IT ON GOOGLE - how was I to know it might be private.

Of course, I Googled all the other female acts on the bill, just to be on the safe side. One of them works for an organisation called "S-T-R-E-T-C-H" which is something to do with widening. I know it's actually a really good organisation doing something socially relevant, but for me it sounds like they work on anuses. I'm sorry. I'm childish.

The backdrop fell down during the gig and I decided to fix it between acts. Aided by a member of the audience, whom I thought would help me hold it up, but who decided to do some "improvising" which I took as a cue to do jazz mouth-trumpet and he used as an excuse to try to be a comedian before a stunned audience, I turned the backdrop fixing into a bizarre performance piece. Yes, you had to be there. Imagine this, though. I'm blasting out the tune for "The Gallery" on my mouth trumpet, the man is trying to do some stand-up, when everyone's not sure how this can be happening, I'm interrupting to do little blasts of the trumpet into the microphone occasionally, returning to the back wall to merrily dance my way through putting the curtain back up. At one point he said something like:

"I mean, internet on the mobile phone, what's the point? I want my phone to be a phone, not have internet access..."

to which I interrupted with something like

"there speaks a man who's never had a wank on the toilet at work"

after which I returned to my merriment at the back.

At one point, I put my hand on his shoulder to pause his diatribe and declared "bass solo!!! ga dum dum dum dum dum dum dudum dum" and then let him continue. It was me having a lot of fun. I finished off the piece with a take it home style ending. Of course.

There may, one day, be a video. There was a camera crew in. It may be less funny than I remember it, of course.

Wooo Wooo Wooooo
I listen to skeptic podcasts when I can. I listened to the wonderful Righteous Indignation on the way to the gig. As such, I was in my full "show me evidence" mood last night. So when one of the acts declared that astrology was true, I'll be honest, I dismissed it, challenged it, and demanded proof.

Her How then, if it's not true, can I always guess people's star signs?
Me Ok, what's his?
Her Sagittarius.
Me (to him) Is it?
Him No
Her Cancer
Him No
Me So, not always then. Is it possible that maybe you prefer to remember the times you get it right?

We debated hard, and I'll be honest about this - she set off my "prove this person wrong" switch. I have that as a personality trait and it, no doubt with the podcast as a catalyst, banged into the "all systems go, we're at skep-con 1" position.

Her It is true. I've studied it all for years.
Me Just because you've studied it, it doesn't make it true - you could read all about holocaust denial, but it doesn't mean the holocaust didn't happen
Her It is true. There are four elements.
Me Earth wind and fire... and what's the fourth one? KC and the sunshine band?
Her You should read my book, it's all explained in there.
Me Ok. How does it work? What's the causation? What is the mechanism?
Her It's all to do with the alignment of the stars.
Me Yes, but what does that alignmentDO?"
Her You're putting me on the spot
Me Yes. You've studied this for years. You've written a book about it. Surely you know one reason that this works.
Her I've never been wrong.
Me You were wrong a moment ago.
Her I'll prove it. I can show you that your personality is dictated by your stars.

I'm not James Randi. I'm not going to offer her a million dollar challenge, but I agreed to an experiment. She would send me the personality profiling traits of each star sign, blinded from me via numbers, I would then send a reading of my personality to see which sign it reflected, and she would then reveal what she's expecting, which is that I'd come out Pisces.

I thought about it some more overnight and decided to blind the study further. I would randomise the order of all the traits, score every trait out of 5 for several people, and send her all the scores with a letter for each individual. One is me, the others are random co-workers. From the scores, she can work out who is which star sign and then send me a list of star signs. If she gets them all right, then she has given evidence that her system works under those limited conditions. If she gets one or two right, then it's really no better than chance.

If you're reading this, then I predict you're an Aries? Am I right? Maybe in 1/12 cases, I am. Right? Come on. It's the power of the mind!!!

This experiment won't change the beliefs of anyone involved, by the way. It's impossible to use direct argument to undo ingrained superstition. Still, at least we're enjoying ourselves, eh?

Jonathan Creek
Maybe I did buy the 4 series box set of this, and maybe we are working our way through it, and maybe they are almost just as good as I remember, with occasional deviation both up and down. So what!? Can't a man and his girlfriend enjoy a few hours of Alan Davies and Caroline Quentin pissing about with mysteries? I ask you!

Message ends, continue with your lives.

Worth repeating

2010-05-14T14:10:00.001Z

A self-diagnosis from an old blog post. This should apply to you too:

I always think I'm wiser than I was
I underestimate how much I eat and spend
I underestimate my size/weight
I overestimate my wealth
I overestimate the amount of time I have free for things
I underestimate the amount of time things take
I overestimate the effort I've put into things
I underestimate the effort things will require
I overestimate my abilities
I underestimate my failings
I overestimate my achievements

Musings on Amusement

2010-05-14T10:34:00.001Z

Obsessed
As my girlfriend would undoubtedly jump up and shout "Damn Right!" to, I'm a bit obsessed with comedy. By a bit, I mean a lot. By obsessed, I don't mean obsessed in the way that I am with something like Doctor Who or (less so these days) musical theatre. In some of my obsessions, I'm fascinated by the details, the minutiae, the relatedness of the details, the sheer amount of stuff there is to know. With musicals, I was additionally fascinated with "how is it done?". I suppose, in a different lifetime, I might have become an illusionist, as that's a world which I'd similarly enjoy learning the trickery from.

However, with comedy, the obsession is a lot more consuming. It's a combination of me being a fan, an analyst and a practitioner. As a fan, I look for a hit of enjoyment from my various comedy drug suppliers - Bill Bailey, Stewart Lee, Harry Hill... there's a long and diverse list that I won't go into. But, as a comedian and thinker about comedy, it goes a lot deeper. Being a comedian is about finding a way to create the sort of thing which causes laughter. Being a comedy fan, means basking in the laughter caused by a joke. Being both makes the whole thing very very personal. You're constantly looking to take the very personal feeling of enjoying a joke and find a way to force it on other people.

It's weird.

Done well
When comedy is done well - i.e. in a way that works AND is also worth the effort of doing, as it needs effort, as opposed to being facile and pointless - it's amazing. It's truly amazing. When comedy is done badly, it's a disappointment. When it's done badly with a bad attitude, then it's more tha a disappointment, it's worthy of getting angry about. When you're a comedian, when you've driven 3000 miles in a week to pursue the distant gigs, when you've lost sleep, played to small unappreciative audiences, but given your all anyway, when you've done all that, and you see someone else make a mockery of the craft with their attitude - it annoys you. It's even worse if they look like they're being successful with this dross. It's even worse if they're being more apparently successful than you are.

It's easy to hail an act as brilliant if they're doing well. Strangely, it's easy to brand them as brilliant if they don't do well, but you can claim that they were being misunderstood, or the world's not ready for them, or the audience were wrong... This is where the emperor's new clothes effect kicks in. It's received wisdom that a lot of people in the popular media and arts worlds are idiots who don't know quality when they see it. That may be true. It may also be true that they're fairly young, latte sipping iPhone slapping buffoons, looking for something to call fashionable, rather than looking for something which could widely be hailed as quality. There are acts out there, in pretty much every field, who have been brilliant-bordering-on-genius for many years, but that's not what "the kids" are looking for.

The King is not altogether any good
The emperor's new clothes story comes down to this single element. People couldn't quite see the clothes, but they were convinced that they simply didn't understand how to see them. They thought they'd better appear to see them because surely they were there. So it is, in my view, with certain comedians. There's nothing actually there, but there's the impression that something MIGHT be there, but you can't see it. It takes a small boy to point the finger and say "here's what I can see".

So far, this looks like it's a rant against bad comedians, or bad comedy with a sort of holier-than-thou attitude, as though I, perhaps, think I'm a better comedian that someone, or that I'm an undiscovered gem. That's not where I think I'm coming from (who knows what my subconscious is up to, though). I think I'm coming from the point of view of someone who really cares about the world I inhabit. I was buying a DVD last night and pointed out, more for my own interest than anyone else's, about one of the performers on it, "I know him". The till assistant took it as meaning "I know who that is". I didn't push the point as I didn't really want to be a celebrity name dropper... but inside I was proud. I get to meet and gig with people who are bloody amazing. That's brilliant. There are people pushing the boundaries all the time, and there are people whose mind works in a fascinating and enjoyable way.

As an intellectual snob (no point in doubting it), I get very uppity when I see someone with all attitude and no intellectual process. "I'm making a serious point", no, you're making a vacuous point as though it is serious.

How do you come to terms with all of these inner thoughts and conflicts? Well, I know how I deal with being a comedian, and I think it's partially right and has a few problems. In the rest of this message, I'll include some notes about recent me-Activities.

Rewrites
Since my comedy world is largely about what's in my head, it's rather neat that I'm involved deeply in the creative process for my show - The Seven Deadly Sings. This is not high art. It is a bit of fun, and has a few minor points to make, which I think are fairly lightly put and then we move on. Having performed it three times, twice as a fee-paying show, I think I can see where it is right now, and it's got a way to go before it's complete. But it's my baby and I care about it greatly.

This is the second hour-long stand-up show I've been involved in, my first solo effort. It's a big challenge and I've grown a lot while making it.

On Wednesday night, I sat down in Pease Pottage services, being disturbed by the noise from the TV and other users of the service area. I wrote the show plan from scratch again, including the re-writes and reworkings that I've decided to do based on feedback (largely in the form of laugh/no-laugh, though some was the sort of vaguely veiled criticism that people let slip when you ask them about it). Most importantly, if you think of a show as an attack on people's funnybone, then I've decided how to reconfigure my comic army to hit more consistently with bigger skirmishes. This metaphor has gone too far.

The rewritten show plan for a show with 7 in the title took 7 pages. Woooo... well, it was seven and a half... but still... woooo.

I feel positive about the changes, and I have a fair bit of rehearsing to do. I think I may also release an album.

The next performance is June 7th in London. Tell everyone. Box office details to follow.

Do you live here?
Understandably, since I've been away from home for 4 nights in the last couple of weeks, and have felt remarkably distant, my girlfriend has started to forget me. The cats may also run the risk of miaowing in my direction as if to say "oh, it's you, we thought you'd died". So, last night was the opportunity for a nice night in. It was an opportunity well taken up. I only did a little bit of admin stuff, which didn't take too long and was just the essentials.

We watched Jonathan Creek (original series) which is reasonably enjoyable still, even when you remember the secret behind each mystery.

New Material
It's important to write new material. I've got some techniques for material generation. Here are a few of them.

Write something that is the opposite of what you want to say and then reverse it
Write a series of individual ideas as quickly as possible, without stopping, keep them coming
Imagine you were doing a certain sort of gig - how would you explain yourself in that environment?

There are more ideas, and better bits of advice than that out there... one trick I like is the "write the opposite" trick. My "christmas song" is based on a generic christmas song I wrote without any jokes in, though I think it had a placeholder line of "throw fruit at the ceiling" which isn't a christmas thing to do at all. Once I'd written a template for the song as a straight song, it became clear how I could make an alternative subverted song.

The new bit of material I'm working on is based on an idea I had a while ago. It relates to the fact that albums often contain filler tracks, or, worse still, only the 3 singles you've heard of and then a bunch of non-descript other stuff. So, I want to write the perfect album filler track... it may not work live, but I want to make an album in the next few months, so it may fit. To write this, I'm working through a page of quips I threw together on the subject. Some of it may stick. If it's dilute, without artistic merit and over long, then it's the perfect album track!

Appreciating Others
A comedian, who shall remain nameless, is good. I contacted them today to tell them that I enjoyed their work. This is worth doing. If you saw a good comedian last night (or whenever), then google them and tell them how great you thought they were.

The Last Picnic In Brighton
I didn't realise it at the time, but the last show of the picnic in Brighton was my 850th performance as a stand-up comedian. If you're meant to celebrate that one, then I'm glad it was celebrated in the company of (among others) the following people:

The local hero - a comedian and gent whom one can have lunch with
The thrusting starlet - keen to be the life and soul of the post-match chat, and charming too
The insane-comic-powerhouse - never one to leave the room in any doubt that something special and funny is happening
The stalwart - solid, dependable, an all round good bloke, the man who could take the world on his shoulders, but doesn't need to
The non-cuddly curmugeon - a comedian who isn't even half of what he claims on his poster and rudely spoils the mood by abusing his free entry by being visibly miserable in the thick of the crowd
The three witches - a fee paying triumvirate of drunken women, who'd rather not be there, think it shold be free, like the last show, and refuse to enjoy themselves, resentful that they'd been asked to move into the middle of the room with the rest of the audience so they'd feel more involved
The silent majority - audience members who are rather enjoying themselves, but can't seem to put that into noise
The two live-wire front-row bellowers - they sole providers of all the laughs-in-the-right-places

I hit the stage determined to enjoy myself, and it was quite a silly experience. Financially, the show was a wreck, emotionally, I could have hoped for more, but it felt like it was fun at the time. Sometimes you just need a bit of inspiration and joie de vivre. I was going for a repeat of my personal record of singing a note for 16 bars on the last song, but at bar 13, I felt like I would either be sick or pass out, so I stopped... no point in spoiling the last show.

Still reading
Shame on you - this stopped being interesting ages ago!

An alternative?

2010-05-13T10:57:00.001Z

Don't read this... I'm just curious about whether "I Will Survive" has another story to tell, from the point of view of the other person. Here are the original lyrics...

At first I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live
Without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights
Thinking how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to get along

And so you're back
From outer space
I just walked in to find you here
With that sad look upon your face
I should have changed that stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I've have known for just one second
You'd be back to bother me

Go on now go
Walk out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried to break me with goodbye
Did you think I'd crumble?
Did you think I'd lay down and die?
Oh no, not I

I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
And I'll survive
I will survive, hey hey

It took all the strength I had
Not to fall apart
Kept trying hard to mend
The pieces of my broken heart
And I spent oh so many nights
Just feeling sorry for myself
I used to cry
But now I hold my head up high

And you see me
Somebody new
I'm not that chained up little person
Still in love with you
And so you felt like dropping in
And just expect me to be free
But now I'm saving all my loving
For someone who's loving me

Go on now go
Walk out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried to break me with goodbye
Did you think I'd crumble?
Did you think I'd lay down and die?
Oh no, not I

I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
And I'll survive
I will survive, oh

Go on now go
Walk out the door
Just turn around now
'Cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried to break me with goodbye
Did you think I'd crumble?
Did you think I'd lay down and die?
Oh no, not I

I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
And I'll survive
I will survive
I will survive...

Maybe one day I'll hilariously subvert them. Like a fox.

More later.

Someone Else's Schtick

2010-05-12T15:27:00.001Z

This is the second year that I'm going around the place telling everyone that there are only 7 original ideas. So maybe it's expected that there should be similarities between things. There's no doubt that unintentional similarities come up and that some things are innately similar. However, sometimes you spot what is either intentional copying, or just supreme "being influenced"itude.

I watched a YouTube clip. That was my story - did you like it? (That's modified from a nicked gag from Jim Jeffries). Anyway, I watched a YouTube clip of a comedian that I seriously don't rate. If anything I non-rate this guy. What I saw him do was imitate the idea of being a comedian and do something which seems like it was meant to sound as powerful as the work of one of the great comedians like Stewart Lee, who can impose the mood of comedy on the audience in that particular sort of way. It didn't work. It was the equivalent of a conspiracy theorist making himself look insance while telling you his ideas, as though he was being as effective as a great leader compelling his troops. If this doesn't make sense, then maybe my schtick is also nonsensical and ill-defined.

So, it's important to find your own voice. It's important to avoid other people's modes and try not to make any one thing your own. We're all unique (even twins, though less so), so we have to find the combination of all permutations of styles that fits who we are.

I sometimes feel like a bit of a chameleon. I stand on a twig and eat flies... I mean I feel a bit like I adopt and blend into myself various influences. I don't think I come across as a pale imitation of other stuff, but perhaps if you could spot certain influences, then I might. I don't know. I do know that last night I sort of came across as a pale imitation of myself. I'm a bit "gig blind" at the moment. Too many gigs in a short period with the proper build up to being funny. As a result, I think I'm sort of doing a workman-like version of myself, rather than having massive hilarity...

...but even after 7 years of doing it, I'm still finding my George and Zippy from Rainbow bit to be funny. Why oh why oh why is this pale imitation of some childhood puppets so funny. I think it's simply because it's ludicrous, and I like ludicrous things. When it works best, it's a poignant earnest rendition of a dumb song, using silly voices.

Sorry, this is not really a coherent post, just a brain dump. I keep returning to my imitation chorus, like a bad Stewart Lee impersonator might.

Anyhoo. Last night's two shows were quite contrasted. There was a fairly full room, which I felt I'd failed to gel with a bit, then there was a fairly empty room, where some seriously mental stuff happened. I can put the seriously mental stuff down to one individual - our closing act. It was one of the most wonderfully insane performances I've had the pleasure of seeing in a while. I'll never tire of this man. It's almost worth putting on the same loss-making show, next year, for the pleasure of being sure of seeing him again!

My new song, last night, didn't work. Perhaps it's not funny. Perhaps I need to do the musical comedian trick of subverting an existing song to get laughs. This is maybe where I can help myself. What if I take some insipid bollock and subvert it, but what if that dross is actually something I wrote myself, like my 2003 entry into the Eurovision song contest...

Here's a song I wrote. You might want to sing it note for note... or not

Was an empty shell before I fell for you
Was a hopeless case; you came to my rescue
Had no song to sing, no words until you came to me.

There's a song inside of me a whole new sound
and it's shouting out about the love I've found
and I can't believe that this is happening
I can find the words to sing

I can tell the world that you are mine
I can tell them you are everything
Everything is different since I fell in love with you
I can find the words to sing

Now I've found my voice I'll never let you go
I have seen the sun and I've begun to grow
and I can't believe that this is happening
I can find the words to sing

I can tell the world that you are mine
I can tell them you are everything
Everything is different since I fell in love with you
I sing
I sing (key change)

I can tell the world that you are mine
I can tell them you are everything
Everything is different since I fell in love with you
I can find the words to sing

If I could mess with that song, it has a musical structure which might lend itself to mockery... be thankful you only had to read the lyrics, rather than hear my reedy whine on the demo version.

Looking Back

2010-05-11T12:13:00.001Z

I really enjoyed some of last night. I enjoyed it from the moment that we were doing the gig. Before then it was a bit, well, stressful to be honest. It needn't have been stressful, and I had been reasonably well prepared. Unfortunately, a few things got in the way.

I got to Brighton in plenty of time, parked for free right opposite the venue, taking a 15 minute risk on the arrival time (since the free parking started a little after when I stopped the car). I wandered over to the venue, and then problem 1 started. No posters on display. Shit. They must all be on the walls of the other venue; I'd seen some there.

I walked over to the other venue and it became apparent that my posters, which I'd ordered to be delivered to the right venue, had been co-packaged (even though I pay packaging individually) with the ones for the other show which was at the other venue. D'oh. I had to wait until a show had finished so I could collect the remainder of my posters and then take them over to the right venue to put them up. This sort of dampened my spirits.

Then the show before ours didn't happen. This was caused by an accident/injury, so I feel bad for the person who was injured. That said it gave me stress, since there was an hour of nothing happening in the room, which is an hour during which people could leave the venue thinking it's all over.

Then I went into the room and found the PA system was neither working, nor obviously located anywhere I was expecting to find it. I returned to my car for my torch, and then quickly located the PA system. I got it working. It was a good PA system. I was pleased... I like PA systems. That's how I roll.

But I'd left the CD in the car... back to the car. The CD worked. Job done... still 45 minutes to show time. Time to pace and stress.

I did a run around the venue and drummed up some potential trade... then it was show time...

People actually came. That was impressive. I hit the stage and quickly changed gear from "stressed promoter" into "act". The rest of the show was a lot of fun. Really. I hooted with laughter. It was great to be a part of.

The audience were nice. Even the people who forgot to pay on the way in came along and gave me their money. It's not about the money, but that's going to help with the show accounting. That's for sure.

On top of that, I found the missing review for the opening show of The Seven Deadly Sings. It was, overall, a positive review. That's nice. It's not that quotable, but it seemed to get the show and sort of confirmed my own opinioin, which is that the show seems to have a reasonable foundation in terms of message and information, but needs a bit more comic pacing; exactly what I'm trying to do in the re-writes.

So, I ended the day relatively happy. Just a quick 90 minute drive to my hotel on the outskirts of Reading and then we were done.

Unless there's been a secret massive blunder, I'm finally a landlord again. I have 12 months' worth of tenants, which really requires celebration with champagne or some-such. It's been a long bloody journey!

That was the past. Now let the future commence. Two shows tonight, one tomorrow and then a bit of R&R.

A Hard Weekend's Work

2010-05-10T10:56:00.001Z

Highlights of the weekend seem to be things which cause lack of rest and relaxation. Given that this week involves 4 gigs before Thursday and that last week involved me performing in Brighton at great effort (keyboard hoisting included), I would have hoped for an easy start to the week, but it wasn't to be.

Saturday
Here's the challenge. I have a house. It's supposed to be rented out. I provided it unfurnished. I was talked into renting it out, at no higher rental amount, furnished, on the basis that most of the furniture could be provided cheaply by a contact of the estate agent. This fell through. After a lot of chasing about what the next steps were, we got to a single day for me to sort everything out. Saturday. Sure, I can magic up 4 beds, two wardrobes and a dining suite. Of course I can.

Well, I can.

I organised the beds from the same people who fitting a house full of carpet for me last Februrary. I was worried about getting divan beds up my rather narrow stairs - that's the thing with divan beds - they divan't gan oop the stairs... So I also worked out a contingency plan where I could get some metal bed frames by driving round three bed shops and picking up a frame from each.

Luckily, plan A worked out after all.

I went to Argos and bought the dining suite and canvas wardrobes in flat pack format.

Then it was back to the house with my magic power drill. There was a lot of assembly to do. The beds arrived around lunchtime and the company who provided them also took them upstairs, fitted them, and charged me over the phone. Neat.

The dining suite was relatively easy to assemble. The wardrobes were a bit of a challenge, lots of screws. However, I'm a nice guy and I thought I could reasonably spend £10 to get a 2-piece wardrobe set for each room. The second piece was a shelf unit. This came in 22 pieces. Each shelf was three slats screwed to two ends by 6 screws in total, and then screwed to the sides of the unit by 8 more screws. So to assemble the shelf required inserting 56 screws... aaaagh!

But I'm the magic furniture pixie. It all got made.

I even dropped off some post on the way back out of Reading.

I had hoped to watch Doctor Who when we got back, but it had already started. It also refused to be available for download until way too late. So we watched some other crap and then went to bed. Exhausted.

Sunday
Not really as much effort as Saturday. I had to be up early as we had someone visiting. This mean the restorative crash-out-sleep didn't quite happen as long as I would have liked.

Then we had to drive over to Bath for my girlfriend to take a professional assessment test. This wasn't much effort, and it left me in a hospital atrium, with music playing in the background, to inspire me to do the re-writes of my show. The re-writes promise some extra highlights... I hope.

Then it was a wander around Bath, limbs still aching from the previous day's efforts, and then a stagger home to watch the now-downloaded Doctor Who - and other stuff on TV, which I accompanied with ironing. And that was that.

Putting My Foot In It

2010-05-10T10:42:00.001Z

It's a good trick. I often say the unsayable. I often say the foolish. I act in a way that's intentionally going to cause an unusual reaction. I do this because I'm filled with glee regarding the illlogical. I've got this book called "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat", which is a lovely engimatic title. However, I love referring it it with a bewildering array of silly alternatives. I don't quite know why, but the following make me laugh:

The man who did a poo on a dog
The man who put jelly in a shoe
The man who coughed on a bus
The man who kept beetles in his fridge
The octopus who knitted a dolly

I could go on...

Anyway, the good thing about deliberately being outspoken is that you get to spot the emperor's new clothes. There's a quote from Bill Hicks, I believe, which is a favourite of mine, and I don't quote Bill Hicks very often - "Once you start spotting some bullshit, you start spotting it all". This is interesting to me. I am relatively credulous, but I'm also a kidder - a joker - and you can't kid a kidder. So I'm getting better at spotting the game, the racket, or whatnot, and either ignoring it, or gaming it.

I like that.

However, sometimes one can get wrong-footed. Sometimes this is a metaphor.

On Friday I did a gig in Rawtenstall at a music venue. I was the opening act. I wasn't quite getting much response from the audience, so I picked on a guy in the front row who had a beard and tried to do this gag:

I've done it before. It was spontaneous once. It's not something I use very often. I did a reasonable job of it... but... the audience were not ready for reacting to it... and on leaping back to my start position, I went through the stage.

"It's just a stage you're going through" is a classic line used by comedians when someone cuts across the stage. I got to use it on myself in a weird subversion of the cliche. The stage didn't quite give way, it was carpeted and the wood under a square section of carpet, about 2 feet on each side, was no longer there. I had to somehow work around the hole. In the end I put the microphone in it... It was silly.

The last act, Steve Royle, an excellent comedian when it comes to physicality, did about 5 minutes of mime surrounding the hole, and various tricks of appearing to sink into the hole, or go up and down in lifts, escalators etc. I felt like my initial embarrassment was set up well for his later messing about opportunities.

It wasn't entirely my fault. Apparently, the venue had had "Fat Elvis" the Elvis impersonator, and he'd weakened the stage. They have these cover bands, including, at the end of the month, "Guns or Roses", the Guns 'n' Roses tribute act, which sounds like an American deciding what to buy his girlfriend as a gift. Get it wrong and you get the valentine's day massacre. Whe the compere explained that the hole was "Fat Elvis's fault", the audience looked at me as though I'd just been nicknamed. Cheeky!

So I went through the floor. Worse things happen at sea, especially on icebergs.