mostly david ephgrave

   I bet I know what happened.   There's only so many common faults a batch of maracas* can have. Either the stems all snapped or the innards burst forth. The latter is an amusing image. I can picture each maraca-buyer** skipping home, delighted with their purchase and desperate to try them out. I said ‘them’ then rather than ‘it’ because they’d never be sold singly. Owning one maraca is weird. Imagine the glee on the purchasers’ faces as they stand in their respective kitchens, taking their big scissors to the plastic packaging to free the percussion that lurks within; their happy looks soon switching to frustration when the shrink-wrap puts up a fight. I just wish I hadn’t discussed these people in plural as it confuses the image. How many shakes did it take to release the beans? Was it enough to constitute a rhythm? It would turned their kitchen floor into a death trap. You don't get that with castanets. I once saw this when I was out wal...

Yesterday, I threw out a bin bag full of underwear. North-Herts-based fetishists, take note. This wasn’t a 100% commitment to commandoism. I didn’t dispose of every pair I own. The reason for this pants purge was simple: I’ve recently acquired a tumble dryer, and the sudden upsurge of fresh laundry has led to a battle for drawer space. There I was, squeezing all of my favourite boxer shorts into a non-existent gap, when there were so many pairs sitting untouched beneath them. Removing the detritus was a victory for common sense. I wasn’t particularly hesitant about the job in hand. Anything that didn’t meet my basic criteria went in the bag: if they looked too big or too small, they were out . I was surprised by how many I didn’t recognise. I must have bought most of them myself. I found one pair covered in Christmas trees, which had to be a gift. What better way to mark the festive season than covertly, beneath your trousers. One pair that would never be resign...

Even though it happened twenty years ago, I still vividly remember the time my parents said the Wings song Magneto & Titanium Man was shit. (Not their exact wording, but the sentiment.) We were speeding down the A1 on our way back from Weymouth, returning from a holiday I’d won in a talent show. I was obsessed with magic as a child, and would carry a few tricks with me whenever we went away. I'd entered the first heat of the competition on a whim, while on another family break to the Isle of Wight. It only took a coin trick, a rope trick and a quick burst of the linking rings to secure a place in the final in Weymouth, where I sank without a trace. So I wasn’t in the best mood in the car to start with. My parents let me choose the soundtrack for the journey home, to keep my spirits up. I handed my mum a C60 of Venus & Mars that I’d taped from the LP (I had eclectic tastes for a child of the 80s). We were just five songs into side A when the atm...

When you work in theatre, the Front of House staff sometimes like to keep you in your place.   I have a lot of examples seared into my memory. They're my personal Vietnam, without the flashbacks. Take, for instance, the time I was on tour with Buddy Holly and the Cricketers, playing a venue in deepest, darkest Ireland, and one of the ushers came up to me in the green room mid-interval, jabbed a finger in my chest and said, 'Well, I couldn't hear you '. She seemed to labour under the misapprehension that, as well as playing Buddy, I was also in charge of the sound mix, and had given myself insufficient level as some kind of personal affront. The dressing down wasn't over yet. With her accusatory digit still extended, she proceeded to go around the rest of the room.  First the bassist. 'I could hear you.'  Then the rhythm guitarist. 'I could hear you.'  Then the sax player. 'I could hear you.'  Then the drummer. 'I could ...

I’ve spent the last hour staring at my screen, trying to think of something to write. This is frustrating, as I wanted to finish two blogs today: one for now and one for Sunday. I’d planned to hold one back to allow more time at the weekend to work on my stand-up. It’s easier to do that then, as the building our office is in will be empty, and I feel less of a dick talking out loud. I’ll still feel a bit of a dick – that goes with the territory – just not as much as usual. Of course, nobody’s insisting I write every day except me. This self-enforced deadline is arbitrary. But you can’t get over a year into something and then stop. That would be defeatist. I’ve been really enjoying it lately, despite today’s blip. It’s been invaluable, both in keeping my brain ticking over and giving me the confidence to tell – and sell – a story. The last year has been an exercise in trying to find my voice. I think that's forming. Now, I’d like to do the same thing in a live context...

Pray silence for the world's worst tagline. How is that a boast? You don’t get kudos for simply doing the thing you do. You need to do it well . I know that Domino’s Pizza do pizzas. It’s there in the title. I don’t need them to tell me twice. I can’t decide whether ‘It’s What We Do’ sounds lazy or defensive.  How often have people accused them of not making pizzas for them to need to assert that they do? I don’t recall there being a backlash. Or could they not be arsed to think of something better? On the flipside, I spotted my favourite tagline of all time about a decade ago in Blockbuster Video. Despite the long-forgotten Pukka Pie connotations, it’s still genius; Domino’s Pizza, take note.

From early on in my life, my dad tried to impinge on my musical taste. I must have been ten when he offered to buy me an album as a treat. I’m not sure what I'd done to earn it. I remember being given a Paul Daniels Magic Set when my pet rabbit died, so perhaps the circumstances were similar. My parents' gift-per-grim-reaper-visit technique gave me a distorted sense of mortality; it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I accepted I wouldn’t be rewarded every time someone or something close to me shuffled off this mortal coil. Thus ending my killing spree. We were walking through Stevenage Town Centre when my Dad put forward his offer. He said I could have any album I wanted. ‘Anything?’ ‘Anything.’ I searched my head for ideas. A band came to the forefront almost instantly. I’d spent most of my childhood flicking through my parents’ record collection; when you haven’t got siblings, you take your entertainment where you can. When it came to choosing my favourite art...

I sometimes question my past Google searches. Thankfully Gmail trumped stigmata for the top spot. If the latter had been more popular, it would have called my entire internet history into question. I suppose it could be worse. I could have been looking it up on NHS Direct. Which no longer exists, by the way. Bloody Tories. (Which is not a reference to stigmata in Government.) At least I wasn’t looking up something inappropriate. You won’t be arrested for researching stigmata. I don’t think so, anyway. Not unless you’re scanning the internet for ‘stigmata teens’. I’d like to hope this isn’t a real fetish, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Either way, I’d sooner remain in ignorance. In reality, I was just checking my facts for a joke. I search a lot of incongruous subjects for this reason. As a result, I’m a mine of useless information. Still, it keeps me busy.

There’s a point in the early hours of the morning when jeans become noisy. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment, but it tends to be when you sneak into your bedroom after a gig, at 2am, in pitch darkness, trying to be quiet so as not to wake your wife. It’s at this time that denim is at its swishiest. It doesn’t make that much racket during the day. When I walked through Hitchin town centre this morning, the streets were packed. Most of these people were wearing jeans. Despite their abundance, I didn’t hear a single example of thigh against thigh. Perhaps I wasn’t listening hard enough. What is it about the dead of the night that makes walking in jeans so dinful? Maybe it’s a sound we’ve got so used to during the day, we just blank it out. It’s like Hoppípolla by Sigur Rós: it’s on television so often we never hear it. Thank God I wasn’t wearing cords. Then I would have worked up some serious friction.

I find myself in a bit of a stand-up material-based quandary. I’ve written a short routine about my dad that I’m quite pleased with. I tried it out at last Wednesday’s London Mostly Comedy and it was the most well received part of my set. Now, thanks to an act dropping out of tomorrow’s Hitchin show last minute, I may do a little solo stand-up to fill time. I’d like to do the skit about my dad, but he’ll be there, and I don’t want him to be offended by it. I shouldn't think he will be. There’s nothing malicious in it. I’d just sooner not do something that references him directly the first time he watches me perform on my own. He’s very supportive of what I do and I wouldn't want to upset him. I could put something else in its place, but that would be risky. I plan to try out five minutes of new solo material at our London show each month and then do it again in Hitchin, to solidify it before I move on to the next bit. There are a few other stories I could tell, ...

Of the many – some might say too many – projects me and Glyn have set up, the one I’m proudest of is 'Glad All Over!: A Sixties Celebration ’. (c) Tim Parker The show came into being in a pub; the Spice of Life in Soho, in fact. We met with our friend Rob Maskell to discuss the idea of putting together a show to raise money for one of our Edinburgh Festival runs. Me and Rob had gigged together a lot in the past, and often expressed an interest in setting up our own actor / muso show, in an attempt to put right a lot of the self-perceived wrongs of the various shows we’d worked on previously.   Suddenly we had an excuse to do it. We booked a date at The Queen Mother Theatre in Hitchin that Summer and put together a band. The premise was simple; the show would be a two-hour gig built around a four-piece band who were all singers and multi-instrumentalists, plus three additional female singers. We wanted to cover as broad a selection of Sixties music as possibl...

While on the bus today, I spotted a small black plastic bag on the seat opposite with the top tied up, and was worried that it might contain a poo.  Nobody laid claim to it. No-one wanted to sit next to it either, though the bus was almost full. Each time we stopped, the people boarding would make a beeline for the empty seat, then shun it when they saw its ominous luggage. Or should that be “loggage”? A poo bag is the ultimate space-saver.  It was the tied-up top that made it suspicious. It was too small to contain a bomb, yet big enough for bum-product. The colour of the bag only added to its sinister atmosphere; black polythene can mask a multitude of sins.  No-one picked it up by the time I got off. It sat there, enjoying the benefits of an empty double seat. If I catch the same bus back and it’s still there, I may be tempted to loosen the knot.  UPDATE:   There was no sign of the excretal sack on the journey back. It was just full of teen...

Every Strictly Come Dancing audience member that groans after the judges give their feedback is a professional choreographer. That must be the case. How else would they have a sufficient understanding of what Craig, Darcey, Len and Bruno are about to say to boo before they’ve finished their sentence? They’re all experts. Either that, or they’ve watched too many pantos through the years. I sometimes wonder if they’ve even seen the show before. It took me minutes to spot the pattern to Craig Revel Horwood’s comments. He starts with the bad and ends with the good. It’s not hard to get to grips with. What these on-beat-clapping mouth-breathers don’t realise is you seldom get positive feedback in the performing arts industry. A director or choreographer will usually only tell you when you’ve got something wrong, not when you’ve got something right. You work at such a lick, there’s little time for affirmation. If you get no notes, you're doing well. That said, I know...

Last night, I dreamt I was having a chat with a musician who, as far as I know, doesn’t really exist. When I woke up, I started thinking how incredible it is that the brain will make up faces. That’s if you believe it does. A quick Google search brings up plenty of websites suggesting it doesn't. One popular theory is that everyone featured in dreams are people we’ve seen in real life, however briefly, and then subconsciously stored away to play the bit parts in the soap operas that form in our minds while we're in a comatose state. That seems unlikely to me. If we can invent places and situations, both consciously and subconsciously, what’s to say we can’t do faces? Or is everything that enters our head based on personal experience? That would suggest it’s impossible to have an original thought. But then the brain is an incredible and unfathomable thing. I’m often surprised when memories that were long forgotten suddenly pop back into my head....

Don’t you hate it when a car drives past you with Beat It blaring from the radio and you try not to match the tempo with your feet? This sort of thing may not happen to you, but it certainly happens to me. Yesterday, in fact. There I was, innocently walking down the street at 139bpm when a Rover-driving Jacko fan appeared alongside me with his window wound down and his bass turned up. Try as I might, I couldn’t break from the rhythm. Thank God he wasn't listening to Billie Jean, or he would have expected the paving slabs beneath me to start lighting up. The speed of the traffic was such that he was next to me for ages. The awkwardness went on far longer that it should. It felt like my own personal mash up of Motown’s 25 th Anniverary special and Saturday Night Fever’s opening credits. I should have been wearing flares or white socks. I was relieved when he eventually pulled away. The next track on Thriller is Human Nature which is in half-time, and I don’t think I’d...

At last night’s Mostly Comedy, Phil Kay complimented us on our material. He also briefly referenced it in his set. That's something I'll store in my head for a rainy day. Having him on the bill still excites me. The first time I watched him (in 2008, during our first Edinburgh run), he blew my mind. It was painfully funny. Literally. I laughed so hard and uncontrollably that my whole body ached, and I felt like my soul might escape through my mouth. It was the cleverest, most intelligent, most perfectly-constructed-while-being-off-the-cuff set I’d seen in my life.   His Hitchin Mostly Comedy debut was a turning point. He was the only big, established act we’d approached up to then who we didn’t know personally. Just the thought of him arriving was intimidating. Thankfully he's lovely. He performed to one of our first sold out crowds for well over an hour and left them wanting more. He’s been back many times since. We’ve also interviewed him for our pod...

It’s hard to earn a living as a self-employed performer. So much so, it helps to have a nest egg. Thankfully, I do. Here it is: I received that bank statement in the post this morning. Reading it made me breathe a sigh of relief. It’s good to know that my future is secure. I can age, safe in the knowledge that I’ve got something to fall back on. There’s a lot you can do with 72p. I could buy four tins of Tesco’s Everyday Value new potatoes and still have twelve pence to spare. Three tins of their own-brand spaghetti bolognese would give the same change. If someone leant me 3p I could splash out on a 800g loaf of white bread. They have twenty-five slices. Pop it in the freezer and defrost it a piece at a time and you could eke it out for three and half weeks. The one thing I haven’t considered is inflation. The average life expectancy of a man born in 1981 (like me) is 71. By the time I retire - if I can ever afford to - the prices will ...

I sometimes indulge in little jokes for my own benefit, or to entertain – or irritate – my wife. Take this shopping list, for example: This morning, I made a few additions: It now looks less like a collection of items we need for the house and more like an assassination list. Perhaps I should burn it. I’d hate it to be used as evidence in a future court case. For the record, I haven't got an issue with that three-man hit factory. Their music isn't to my taste, but that doesn’t mean I want to wipe them off the face of the planet. Provided they don’t move in next door and keep me up all night with their distinctive backing tracks, we needn't have a run in. Earth's combined population of 7.1 billion people should be enough to ensure our paths never cross. I don’t know why I persist with these jokes. Living with me must take a lot of patience. If my wife isn’t mentioned in the New Year’s Honours List, something’s...