mostly david ephgrave

As it stands, we're currently sixteen days away from playing host to the legendary comic actor Ardal O'Hanlon , which is very exciting; it's like waiting for a Dougal-Themed Christmas. See below for the press release for the gig, which I've included in lieu of a propery blog post; Exciting times are definitely ahead and I want to make the most of them: Press Release – 27.01.17 mostly comedy a monthly comedy and music club at the sun hotel in hitchin While February’s Hitchin Mostly Comedy is officially sold out for the third month running, there’s still a chance to snap up return tickets on the night. This month, the club’s custodians DOGGETT & EPHGRAVE play host to ARDAL O’HANLON (best known as Dougal in Father Ted). Son of the Irish politician Rory O’Hanlon, Ardal was born in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, in 1965. After attending school there, he enrolled at Dublin City University, where he stud...

The sudden rush of air as I stood on the escalator yesterday, combined with the strong smell of weed, turned the exit of Camden Town tube into a massive bong. You don’t expect using public transport to lead to an impromptu forced drug-ingestion, but apparently in NW1, that’s the way it goes. It calls to mind when Shredded Wheat used to have a factory next to Welwyn Garden City Railway Station; passing through at speed would result in the distinct odour of Ian Botham’s favourite breakfast cereal clouding the air. It was akin to balancing a thin line of crushed wheat on the side of your index finger and snorting it like snuff. (…the things you do when you’re a student.) I wasn’t particularly happy about the sudden hit of the dreaded herb. Being stoned is the last thing you want when you’re about to do a show, either in the smoking or the rock-based punishment sense; both add an extra, stressful layer to proceedings; I have enough of an intern...

Tonight saw the final performance of last year’s Edinburgh show in London, or at all, outside of my date at the Leicester Comedy Festival in February . The venue was the Etcetera Theatre, which is one of my favourites to work in, both for what it feels like to play and for its tech set-up. It’s a home from home really, as I’ve been there so many times on my own and with Glyn that I know just what to expect, which is helpful when your get-in is likely to be a little rushed. There’s a projector and screen rigged too, which is great as that’s two less things to take, plus they’re both good quality, which is something of a rarity in Fringe venues; two spaces instantly spring to mind with projectors with lamps so old they barely reach the wall they’re meant to hit. The Etcetera screen’s also huge, which makes my stuff work so much better. Another thing the Etcetera is great for is its support. They constantly retweet and promote your show and are very h...

Today, I mistook my cat’s snores for my mobile vibrating; I lead a lonely life. (Just like the woman in the Ace of Base song.) I heard it just as I’d finished running my show, and assumed it was my wife calling to say she was on her way home. It turns out it wasn’t, unless she now communicates by channelling her thoughts through the sounds of sleeping felines, which would be weird as well as difficult to orchestrate. What gave the game away was the fact my phone is almost always on silent, particularly when I’m working. I like to assert control over when I have to deal with anything the real world throws at me, as it makes me feel less stressed; I’d recommend this technique to anyone who suffers from anxiety, or is simply too busy, as it helps you to take your foot off the metaphorical gas (which I mean in the American sense; not that I want to dwell on the goings-on in that country at the moment). Maybe my cat was trying to fuck wi...

Yesterday, I met Glyn briefly to go over business related to March’s Mostly Comedy at the Broadway Cinema & Theatre in Letchworth. The gig is less than five weeks away and we’re pretty much up-to-speed. It should prove to be a nice optional extra to our Hitchin shows, with a gentle nod to our occasional   - for want of a better word - upgraded Summer Specials. Every so often, we’ve staged a version of the club at a bigger venue to wherever we were based at the time, which have always been a successful, slightly posher alternative to the usual gig. This will be the biggest room to date, in keeping with the club’s gradual growth over the last eight years, and the fact it’s in a theatre (instead of the studios and ballrooms of the past) should make for a well-earned, slick, higher-grade event. (No pressure.) There are a few challenges. The main one is seeing if the fact the venue has only just been reworked from a cinema into a theatre...

If last night were a horror film, I’d call it 'Night of the Insomniacs'. Admittedly, it would make for a dull movie, as it would just consist of me not sleeping for the duration, which isn’t really a spectator sport. It went on for so long - and with no let-up - that on more than one occasion, I considered calling it a write-off and just getting up. My breaking point in the end was 6:30am, as this felt close enough to a reasonable time to call the night a day; if I hadn’t fallen asleep by then, I clearly never would. To be fair, this hasn’t happened to me in ages. For the past few months, I’ve kicked off most nights listening to a ten-minute sleep meditation that has knocked me out without fail. It’s been so effective as to almost be mystical in its success. Prior to using it, I’ve never been one for falling asleep easily and certainly never so consistently quickly; it’s truly been a godsend. I know what the problem was. I met my friend Stephen yesterday afternoo...

Today, I did the first run of my show since I performed it at Leicester Square Theatre last November, to start getting it back up to speed for my gig in London next Monday. I intend this to be my penultimate outing with it, with the last one being at the Leicester Comedy Festival at the end of next month. It was interesting going back to it today after such a long hiatus. I took a little while to get in the swing of things and forgot a few bits here and there, but once I got going, I enjoyed it. There’s a definite point just before halfway in where the energy of the material picks up and it becomes more fun; while I don’t intend to do much tweaking of the show so late in the game, this is something I’ll try to keep in mind when I start piecing together the next one. The next one; now, there’s an intriguing thought. It’s high time I got on with it. While there’s been a palpable sense of anxiety around it since the summer, this has started to morph i...

It’s hard to stay positive when so much of the news at the moment is so very grim. This evening , I stumble d across a video of an interview Donald Trump gave in March last year in which he stated that women “should receive some form of punishment” if they were to have an abortion if th ey w ere banned in the US. I know th is subject is contentious in America, but I still found the clip chilling; how anyone can be so detached from reality to believe such a thing - even if they retracted the ir words soon afterwards - is beyond me. The fact he reinstated the Reagan-era policy banning foreign aid to any organization that offers counselling on abortion or discusses it as a n option on his first day in office sets the tone of his Presidency for me. That this took place days after millions marched worldwide in the name of women’s rights only reiterates how little he was listening ; s adly, this is probably the tip of the iceberg. He’s not the only white middle-a...

The end of the current series of University Challenge is sneaking ever closer and inevitably, the faces of the contestants have grown very familiar. We’ve already dined out on Venkatesh’s keenness that masks a slight murderousness and Clarke’s disdainful venom. That’s not to say we can’t enjoy them again, particularly in the case of the latter; my God, did Clarke have a cob on this evening; even Paxman must have approached her tentatively. See below for tonight’s tweets: Bristol Vs. Corpus Christi - Oxford (23.01.17) 7:33pm: Rolleston's wearing a surprisingly narrow waistcoat. 7:34pm: Venkatesh has a murderous resting face. 7:35pm: There's no substance thicker than the lenses of Fleet's glasses. 7:36pm: With a waistcoat like that, it's no wonder Rolleston will end up teaching history. 7:37pm: Mess with Bristol's Clarke at your peril. 7:38pm: Bristol's Clarke is a woman wit...

Is it weird to visit a barbers' you’ve never been to before to request a guy who used to run the shop next to you, but moved without warning to this other business, which you only happened to notice the other day when you saw him in there as you walked past? For most people, the answer would be, “No”, yet for me, the answer is, “Probably”. I don’t live in the same dimension as the rest of the planet; I exist in a world where any case of awkwardness is ramped up to a hund red-and-ten and I’ll always be the one to take the brunt of it; I’m one of the privileged few who could be given a strange look by a passerby who'd just shat themselves willingly and still come out worse. The sticking point that will make me take the risk is the fact he ‘gives good haircut’. He takes his time and barely needs any guidance. I can just sit quietly, knowing I’m in as safe scissored hands as if I were in the chair of Johnny Depp (when he’s playing Edward and not Sweeney). I know it ...

Over the last few days I’ve been rediscovering Phil Cornwell and John Sessions’ low-fi filmed-on-a-camcorder BBC2 comedy series Stella Street. I came across the programme when it first aired, thanks to the recommendation of the lead guitarist of my then band. We become friends through a mutual love of Police Squad, which we’d discuss a lot at school, so when he pointed me toward Stella Street, I was likely to enjoy it. The basic premise, if you haven’t seen it, is that a handful of celebrities have moved into a street in Surbiton, and are adapting to a more sedate pedestrian life. Most of the humour comes from seeing these people - who are mostly Hollywood A-listers - in incongruous mundane situations. The famous people are brought to life by just Cornwell and Sessions, who play most of the incidental characters as well. It’s a brave choice which pays off, though filming the series must have been a time-consuming affair, when you consider how many ...

Personally, I found the best way to cope with the shitstorm beginning in U.S. today was to avoid it entirely. If it were feasible, I’d switch off the news for the next four years and hope for the best. I can’t bear the thought of seeing his ignorant orange face. How was it even possible for a man barely capable of finishing a cogent sentence to end up in the White House? How many faux pas (to put it lightly) must he be responsible for, for the people who voted for him to see sense? Well done, America: you out-Brexited Brexit. Thankfully, outside of the odd post on Twitter and on the BBC News website, I managed to avoid the inauguration. My day was spent doing banking for Mostly Comedy, meeting my mum and watching the Partridge film Alpha Papa. The latter was just what the doctor ordered, to use a tired cliché. When things are bad, it pays to scale it all down and seek enjoyment in the little things. Speaking of little things: I hope his hands are t...

Despite being Glyn-less, tonight’s Mostly Comedy was a lot of fun. Mostly Panoramic. Apparently, it’s impossible to get us both in the same room when Richard Herring’s on the bill; I missed our inaugural (don’t mention Trump) Sun Hotel Mostly last January - which Richard also headlined - due to illness, and Glyn missed tonight's as he was Company Managing the Market Theatre’s Adult Panto on the road (which isn't an illness). While all went well last year, it was bound to be a little fraught as it was our first proper show at the venue (excluding the 'Sun-mer Special' the previous summer); for me there would have been less of an excuse. Thankfully, I needn’t have worried as everything was slick and no-one died, thanks to the hard work of the staff, Paul, Gemma, Lisa, Stephen, Clive and Glen, who all stepped up-to-the-plate; while I refuse to include their surnames here, I’m eternally grateful. (I haven't learnt their surnames.)...

My life often feels like a catalogue of wasted time...as it did today, when I spent a few hours editing a poster for my Leicester Comedy Festival show to the most of a special one-day-only printing offer, only to find it wasn't applicable unless you went to their shop in Brighton to pick the artwork up. (Fuck’s sake.) To be fair, it wasn’t my fault, as the email I’d received from the company made no mention of this caveat until you clicked through to their website to commence your order. While this wasn't a disaster, I wouldn’t have made the poster yesterday if it weren’t for the mention of the special deal, as I had a lot that needed to be done for tomorrow’s Mostly Comedy instead; it’s not as if I can excuse myself from being funny at the gig, because I’d been limping through some primitive graphic design on Photoshop. (The programme I was using was Gimp, but I didn’t mention this above, due to the word's negative connotations...