mostly david ephgrave

What else can be said about tonight’s University Challenge other than “MONKMAN WAS BACK”? This manic perplexed-eyed man is the gift that keeps giving; even he appears to not quite believe he’s a person himself. I found myself laughing nearly every time he spoke which I’m aware isn’t pleasant, but his timing is extraordinary; if I were a TV producer, I’d sign him up for a twenty-six part series without even considering the content; just hearing him read from the dictionary would be enough. See below for my Twtter coverage of tonight; every time I say Monkman, feel free to pour yourself with a drink.   Edinburgh Vs. Wolfson - Cambridge (27.02.17 8:02pm: Boyle should be in team Wolfson, as he looks like the son of a Wolf. 8:03pm: I liked Boyle's dramatic turn to the camera before he said his name. 8:03pm: MONKMAN! 8:04pm: Monkman gets a rat to knaw at his fringe in lieu of a haircut. 8:06pm: Monkman sho...

It wasn’t until I posted a Facebook st atus yesterday rounding off my last performance of Mostly David Ephgrave (not to be confused with my blog of the same name) that I realised how many places I’d performed it. This matches closely with my constant assumption that whatever I've done is not enough. For some reason, I easily forget things that offer credence to my work and push examples of what I haven’t achieved to the forefront. I’ve been lucky when it comes to acting and actor / muso work over the years and pretty active with my comedy stuff - both with Glyn and on my own - yet I regularly enter shows thinking I’m not the ‘real deal’ (whatever that is). I’ve written this many times here before, so I won’t over-egg it now, but I often feel like a blagger, and take what others might see (to some degree) as versatility as an example of not being good at just one thing. Whatever the case, seeing the list of places I performed my second solo stand-up show (a...

Tonight, I ‘Mostly David Ephgraved’ for the final time at the Leicester Comedy Festival, at the lovely Lightbox venue at Grays@LCB Depot.  Me, being aggressive at tonight's show. This was my third visit to the festival, but my first time on my own. Every year I came with Glyn (and tonight as well) I had a great time; something about the way the festival works - with most comics only doing one show - means the competition is evenly spread, so nearly everyone gets the luxury of an audience. When I arrived at the venue tonight, the guy who ran it apologised for the lack of punters (saying how much busier it had been for the rest of the festival), but when it came to it, he needn’t have worried; a few minutes before 8pm, lo and behold, a load of people arrived, which was great as comedy works best with an audience. The gig was fun one. I was conscious of the heat and the fact people began to look a little tired towards the end, but it zipped by...

This morning, Glyn, Glyn’s son Max and I went to the Broadway Cinema and Theatre in Letchworth, to have a look at the auditorium ahead of next Thursday’s Mostly Comedy and to check a couple of technical things for it. It’s fair to say they’ve done a good job transforming what was once just a cinema screen to a functioning theatre, with a stage, wing space and dressing rooms, by extending the back of the building to create more depth. It will be a good night, what with an excellent line-up (Arthur Smith and Norman Lovett) and more material than usual from us. It should look very smart; the main techie point we wanted to check today was whether the in-house projection would be suitable to run our slide show on. It turns out it is; with the right lighting, it should make for a slicker, more high-end version of the usual club night, with more of a sense of a show to it. It’s just a shame that the local papers either haven’t given the event any coverage at all ...

Much of today was split between meetings to discuss next Thursday’s Letchworth Mostly and doing some preparatory work for my show in Leicester on Saturday. The meetings were useful, as they allowed Glyn and I to discuss what we’ll be doing performance-wise during the show, and to solve a couple of technical issues that we hadn’t had time to properly discuss yet. We then met a second time in the evening with our techie assistant Paul to let him know what his role will be next week, when he’ll essentially Company Manager the show. The only sticking point were the are a couple of technical issues we won’t be able to check until we see the space, which we’d hoped to have done before we’d passed information on to Paul. We’re now going there tomorrow morning, when hopefully we’ll be able to quickly check the reliability of the connection to their projector, which if there are any problems with it - as has been suggested by email - we can’t do the show. We’ll save that drama for ...

Tonight, I met with a friend for what ended up being a very comical evening. It’s nice when you can know someone for such a long time and still find topics to discuss and things to be amused by. There aren’t many with whom this sort of relationship can continue, seemingly indefinitely, with scope for endless material. We regularly prefigure points of conversation with “I may have told you this before”, yet impressively, we still find things we haven’t brought up; having known each other for over twenty years, I can’t help but wonder when the well will run dry and we’ll have to resort to sitting in silence. It seems as you get older your friendship group diminishes, or perhaps this is just the case with me. I have a lot of acquaintances, but there are only a tight handful who are truly close friends; some I see more than others, yet when we do meet up, very little has changed. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping your community small. We weren’t designed to f...

Tonight, I caught the train to Finsbury Park to talk to a pubful of people about Noel Edmonds and gloryholes - which are one and the same thing - before catching the train home again, to sit on a sofa with a cat on my lap and write this. The gig was fun; one of the most enjoyable I’ve had so far this year. There was a sense of finally getting back on the horse after what’s been a slow and uncertain start to 2017 as regards confidence and direction; finally, I’m beginning to find faith again, and am enjoying talking to an audience about something new ; the fact the content is starting to be well-received gives me the push to work on more. Before I forge too far ahead, I've still got my last performance of Mostly David Ephgrave to go, at the Leicester Comedy Festival on Saturday . I’m looking forward to this too; it will be nice to give it a final airing and then draw a line under it for a while; I’m going to treat it like the last day of term an...

Tonight’s University Challenge had a nail-biting, close -to-the-wire finish, with Bristol being pipped to the post b y a last-min ute right answer from Warwick, which turned the final scores on their head. As ever, I covered t on ight's events on social media. See below for tonight’s Twitter critique:  Warwick Vs. Bristol (20.02.17) 8:03pm: I'd rather watch the #UniversityChallenge quarter finals than the first leg of the fifth round of the FA Cup. 8:04pm: To give you an idea of the UC filming schedule, Hobbs arm hasn't had time to heal yet. 8:04pm: Alice Clarke feels disdain, disdain, disdain, disdain, DISDAIN. 8:06pm: Van's surname is also his preferred method of kidnap. 8:07pm: Van's comfy jumper (name for a prog band). 8:10pm: Everything withers in the spotlight of Bristol Clarke's disdainful glare . 8:12pm: Rolleston's name is also his preferred deodorant applicant. 8:14pm: Idea for a musical adaptation of M...

Today I met a woman in a pub car park to discuss going on toad patrol in the coming months. Yes, you read that sentence right: anyone driving through the country lanes near where I live this Spring may just see me standing around in a high-vis jacket, looking for toads in distress. I was coerced into this by my wife, who’d responded to an advert looking for volunteers to help assist the toads’ journey across a busy road to a pond on the other side, and felt it was a good cause to be involved with; it’s also an excuse to get out and do something, which is always good if you’re naturally reticent like me; the fact it’s for a excellent cause makes it all better, though forgive me if I burst into We All Stand Together while I’m doing it. The woman took us on a little wander to where the toads usually cross and explained the whys and wherefores of a usual patrol. The organization started in 2001 with a fair few volunteers, which - like the toad numbers ...

Two foods I have no cut-off point with are biscuits and grapes. The former option is obviously far less healthy than the later. If somebody started selling grape-flavoured biscuits, I'd never leave the house (providing whoever baked them delivered; if not, I’d have to pick them up in person or make them myself, which sounds like too much effort). Today’s a case in point: my breakfast consisted of ASDA’s crunchy nut cornflake-( con flake?)-substitute, a mug of coffee, an episode of Frasier, followed by biscuit after biscuit after biscuit after biscuit. My alibi for the lack of exercise and the multi-biscuit intake was I was trapped under a sleeping cat. I had to eat what was in arm’s reach to survive; thank God I wasn’t sat next to a Bounty or I would have starved; those bars are the Devil’s fruit. Speaking of Bountys, Wikipedia describes them as consisting of a coconut filling “enrobed in chocolate”, which sounds too grand for my liking...

Last night saw another of those surreal Mostly Comedys I've grown accustomed to expect. February 2017's Hitchin Mostly line-up: Jenny Collier, Glyn Doggett, David Ephgrave & Ardal O'Hanlon (left to right). It’s reached the stage where we’re fortunate enough to have big names at the club as a matter of course, with the odd leap occurring at regular intervals. Only four months ago we had Rory Bremner on the bill, which was both ridiculous and ridiculously good ; the dust had barely settled from this to be kicked up again by yesterday’s headliner: Ardal O’Hanlon. Ardal O'Hanlon at Hitchin Mostly Comedy (16.02.17) It’s no exaggeration to say we’ve been after him for years. While I’d hoped our diaries would eventually sync, there was always the stumbling block that he lived in Ireland, which made it less likely we’d find a time when he happened to be in England and free. David Ephgrave at Hitchin Mostly Comedy (16.02....

One way to try to make your life more pleasant is to let things go. While I try not to let the same negative points play on my mind time and again, it’s easy to forget this. It’s the bad stuff that’s always the worst, as it can hit you with the same force every time you think of it; however much you feel you’ve resolved something in your mind and moved on, if you’re at a low ebb, it can come right back to the surface, creating the same irritations and upset it created the first time around. I talked yesterday about my general dislike for Facebook. My biggest problem with it is how it can be an instant reminder of things I don’t like, or I thought I’d forgotten. Only tonight, I logged into it to see a writing season that Glyn and I used to run being promoted in our absence and it needled me. “Why did they never appreciate the work we did?” I thought, which led to “Why does no-one take any interest or help me with the work I’m doing now?” All...

Since returning to Facebook largely for work reasons, I can truly see why I decided to come off. Maybe it’s my perception of it, or maybe it’s down to a few people within my network, but browsing the social media Goliath usually only serves to make me feel bad about my life. From behind the rose-tinted filter of Facebook everyone’s having a better time than you. They’re happier, better looking, more successful and more financially solvent and their friends a lot more interested in what they’re up to. You’re the sweaty Gollum-like outcast peering through a steamed-up window at the party you weren’t invited to; with a bit of luck you mind find a bit of cake in the bin around the back that hasn’t been tainted by other rubbish. I’ve written about my distaste for Facebook more than once here, so you’d think I'd have learnt my lesson. Sadly not; it drags you in like the misery porn of a road traffic accident, leaving you lonely and maladjusted to the...

Tonight’s episode of University Challenge was the first I’d seen as it went out in weeks. In the interim, every time I’ve missed the show, I’ve covered it here after the event, in a ‘see what I would have tweeted’ stylie. While this suits my OCD to a point, it’s never quite the same feeling of spontaneity I get when tweeting along with the show , as there’s something less - dare I say it - exciting about it. There’s no sense of opening a dialogue when you’re just writing it on Word to please yourself; it’s nice to have the Internet to bounce off of. See below for tonight’s Tweets; brace yourself for the inevitable thrill. Emmanuel - Cambridge Vs. Corpus Christi - Oxford (13.02.17). 8:01pm: Paxman looks weary. Oh so weary. 8:03pm: Tom Hill's borrowed Joe Brown's hair for the evening. 8:03pm: Homer's Odyssey: D'oh. 8:05pm: Venkatesh's smile is reminiscent of an unrepentant Bates. 8:07pm: ...