mostly david ephgrave

It’s so hard to get any interest in my previews at the moment. It doesn’t help that they’re all organised by me, so the onus is always on me to drum up an audience. If I had the luxury of previewing on other people’s nights this wouldn’t be solely my job. This is what we offer acts who come to Hitchin Mostly Comedy and we always deliver, but sadly no-one returns the favour; I know this is largely because most other acts probably see me more as a promoter, but it’s hard to not take it personally, much as it’s hard to not let the uphill slog to coax people to come and see you get you down. There will be plenty of other acts who are in the same boat to be fair, as the scene is saturated with previews at this time of year. The fact Mostly Comedy does consistently so well is an anomaly. It’s hard to get much comfort from this however, when you need these gigs to go ahead so you can pull your show together in the first place. That said, it’ll be...

One thing you're often asked in the lead-up to Edinburgh is to put together short written-to-order pieces to act as promotional material for your show. A couple of weeks ago a publication got into contact with me via my PR to ask if I could supply a short article relating to this year's 70th Anniversary, speculating as to what the festival will be like in seventy years time. Here's what I said:   In seventy years, the Royal Mile will have been renamed the Royal Fifteen-Thousand, Eight-Hundred-and-Forty Hands to acknowledge Scotland’s post-Brexit acceptance of this ancient form of horse measurement. A hand’s equivalent to four inches, so here’s my workings: The castle road will be so chock-full of contemporary dancers, the Fringe will attempt a leotard amnesty to curb numbers; likewise, anyone staging a youth musical production will be asked to leave town immediately or face the wrath of the Elaine Paige Society; it only has six members, b...

I did quite bit of work on my show today, both in terms of running the material and orchestrating the admin that goes with it, but I'm finding it hard to make improvements - or to even know that's what they are - without a director to steer me through it. Sadly, it all goes down to personal judgement at the moment, as it’s next-to-impossible to get someone to commit to helping me out and - even if they were to - they’d have to be just the right person for the job. What I could really do with someone to tell me what’s already right as I’m naturally hypercritical, and I don’t want to replace stuff that works with stuff that doesn’t, if things evolve that way without the benefit of an outside eye to put a lid on it. I was surprised to find a fair amount already worked when I did my work-in-progress dates in Bath in April and Brighton in May; I don’t want to lose the essence of what I did there through over-thinking and over-editing it, but at the same time, I still w...

Tonight was one of my much loathed putting-together-a-press-release-for-Mostly-Comedy nights. It's not strictly true that I dislike writing them and more the case that I'm a little tired of doing it. To be honest, it gets easier over the years, particularly when a lot of the acts featured have been to the club before so I can just copy the information from a previous press release, but it's still hard to see the wood for the trees when you've done this so much. See below for today's cut-and-shut instalment; hopefully it makes sense:   Press Release – 27.06.17 mostly comedy a monthly comedy and music club, at the sun hotel in hitchin July sees two installments of Doggett & Ephgrave’s popular monthly Hitchin comedy club Mostly Comedy at The Sun Hotel in so many days. While 20 th July’s show with HIGNFY , Buzzcocks and Mock the Week star MARK WATSON and Dara O’Briain’s Go 8 Bit ’s BEC HILL is officially sold out, there’...

This morning, for the first time in a good few years really, I got my acoustic out and sang a few of my old songs - and get this: it felt great. It’s mad that I’ve not done it for so long, when music was what defined me for so many years; there was a time when all I wanted to be was a songwriter and musician, recording with my band or on my own, yet somewhere down the line, my priorities changed and I moved on to different things. I’d still sing and play - the various actor / muso gigs I did made sure of that - but the actively creating musician inside me was obscured, which is a huge shame really. I’m not sure what it was that made me do it today, though a combination of the music I listened to while getting ready and the fact that Mark Morriss played at Mostly Comedy last week (thus inadvertently reminding me of what I used to do) saw me extricate my jumbo acoustic from its dusty lair* and run through my old repertoire. It was not without pain - the tips of the fingers o...

While last night didn’t involve much sleep, it did feature an exciting dream in which I helped build what would be best described as a cross between an intricate slide and an epic theme park ride with a small team of people made up by my subconscious. (Time to get the psychiatrist from Return to Oz on speed dial.) The twists and turns were so intense I can still picture its complexity through the fug that comes with waking up to find what made sense while unconscious was almost completely wiped from my memory. Like many others, I’ve had dreams in the past that were so thrilling, the writer in me thought they would make a great film even when in the midst of them, only to find my mind's recycling bin had been emptied when I woke up; what a bastard the brain is. I don’t know why I was involved in the building of the thing, other than to say that in the dream I didn't question it ; this, despite the fact the plotline seemed to suggest ...

Today I stumbled across a picture my wife took through the window of a caravan that acted as the backstage area for a gig in what essentially amounted to falconry display venue in Liskeard back in 2009. Glyn didn't get the memo. It was a memorable gig as the audience were up on their feet and dancing throughout (probably because they were surprised we didn’t all have Kestrels and Tawny Owls balanced on our outstretched arms); the set certainly made it feel like a bird display. The sound wasn’t great for that one, as we had someone different to usual behind the desk, so it was a little ropy, but the audience loved it. As ever, they didn’t really seem to mind or notice. I quite like doing outdoor gisg for the novelty value, but there was a red alert when I noticed’ all the signs where just a step away from saying “Puppet Show and Spinal tap; be that as it may, I still had a great time, primarily because my wife came down to join me and we s...

I committed a musical crime at last night’s Mostly Comedy. It was as I was clearing Mark Morriss' guitar, pedal and leads from the stage in the interval after his excellent acoustic set that I was struck with the idea to do it. On posting the video to Twitter (and tagging him in it) I instantly regretted it; the last thing I wanted was him to think I thought that song was the sum-total of what he’s about, particularly when we’d booked him as a solo artist, but he’s a good humoured chap, so I thought, “Sod it”. Doggett, Morriss, Monkman and Ephgrave at Mostly Comedy (22.06.17) Outside of stealing Bluetones’ members' instruments, it was a splendid night. I was pleased that the atmosphere was nicer than at Mark’s last appearance, which was very early into us running the club at the venue, when a late start-time, a boiling-hot room and an hour-long show in front of his set made things feel a little tense. This was our fault as we ha...

Listening to the final part of 'Paul Merton’s Beatles' today in the midst of the UK's current heatwave brought to mind one of my favourite renditions of a Buddy Holly song, Wings’ ‘Love is Strange’. Well…all right (to quote another Holly record): it isn’t technically a Buddy song so much as a track that’s often connected with him because he covered it too, but it’s fair to say neither the original by Fifties R&B act Micky & Sylvia, nor Buddy’s version instantly lend themselves to be reinterpreted with a loose reggae groove, but that’s the route Macca chose to take with excellent results. In my opinion it’s by far the most enjoyable performance on Wings’ much maligned first LP - and while that’s fairly shallow praise, it is by no means meant to be taken as such; it’s just about as summery a recording as you can get. It’s fair to say that Paul had a bit of a soft spot for reggae in the early Seventies, something Wings' 1972 s...

I booked my train tickets for Edinburgh today, so it must be happening. I also managed to fit in listening to the first three parts of BBC Radio 2’s four-part series ‘Paul Merton’s Beatles’ around working on my show; I wonder if you can guess what band the programme was about? More specifically, it's built around the fictional premise that - after putting aside their business differences - The Beatles briefly reformed in 1974 to release a new album (called ‘All Made Up’) and stage a reunion concert. The first two episodes consist of solo live performances from John, Paul, George and Ringo that have been edited together to sound like a single gig (with Merton supplying the excitable commentary of a journalistic witness) and the final two are built around studio recordings from the post-Fab Four that have been collated to sound like the album the group might have made. Paul Merton is famously a big Beatles fan so I knew it was likely to ...

Today’s been too hot for its own good. I met Glyn briefly this afternoon in Hitchin Market Place to discuss plans for Thursday’s Mostly Comedy over a couple of mint choc-chip ice creams, which were tax deductible because we were discussing work. It was more of an administrative meeting than anything, as we’ve had no time to consider any double act material together lately on account of our current lack of availability. That said, it was also a chance to have a bit of a general catch up, as we haven’t really seen each other since last month’s gig; as I said above, chances to get together are rare. Meeting allowed me the chance to pass on the frustrations of my recent cancelled previews and Glyn the chance to fill me in on the challenges of juggling two young children (not literally). We tend to start most of our get-togethers these days with a general chat about where we’re both at before we look at work - even if time is tight - as it’s all part of...

Today is Paul McCartney’s 75 th birthday; a fact which seems to have slipped below the radar despite the furore over the fiftieth anniversary of Sgt Pepper of late. Sadly, his constant presence at high-profile events in recent years seems to have resulted in a dip in popularity (and an increase in cynicism) particularly in the UK. He still sells concert tickets by the bucket-load, but there’s a sense this is purely because he’s the only living Beatle who co-wrote the lion's share of their material - which he trades on heavily live - but perhaps that’s where the interest in his work should end. As someone with huge respect for him as an artist, this makes me very sad. Only today, I stumbled across an internet poll that deemed him the third-best Beatle; the man who wrote Eleanor Rigby, Yesterday, Let it Be, Hey Jude, Blackbird, She’s Leaving Home, Here There and Everywhere, Helter Skelter, Golden Slumbers and You Never Give Me Your Money to name just a sizeable few; for...

I just read that June Whitfield and Julie Walters were made Dames in the Queen's Birthday Honours List, which is excellent. While Julie Walters is commonly regarded as an exceptionally versatile actress, June Whitfield is perhaps a little underrated. The breadth of her career since the 1950s is pretty astounding, and she always stands out in whatever she’s in, whether playing the uptight nurse in The Blood Donor or Edina’s mum in Absolutely Fabulous. She radiates class and never pulls focus; the consummate comic foil to the likes of Terry Scott, Jennifer Saunders and Tony Hancock. She also still looks fantastic. She’s - get this - 91, but you’d never believe it, as she’s as energised and as sharp-as-a-pin as ever; yes, that’s right: she’s my old-lady crush. That said, I also love Julie Walters. It’s the spark behind her eyes when she's performing comedy that gets me, like she's taking her performance to the edge of anarchy and dares...

Thursday morning’s a time I look forward to, as the episode of Hancock’s Half Hour that was broadcast that week becomes available to listen to on iPlayer, and consequently becomes the soundtrack to my bath. Today was no different, with this week’s instalment being the frighteningly appropriate ‘The Election Candidate'. In the episode, Tony is convinced to stand for parliament as a celebrity candidate (*cough* Donald Trump *cough*) and while it’s definitely one of the best - though let’s face it, pretty much all programmes that exist have stood the test of time wonderfully - my favourite moment has to be when Hancock is asked who’ll he’ll vote for, before he’s convinced to through his own hat in the ring. “Neither of them,” he replies. “I shall show my contempt by going down to the polling booth, taking my form, crossing both their names out and writing ‘get knotted’ in”. (Some things never change.) The episode was first broadcas...

Unfortunately, I've had to cancel tomorrow’s preview in Winchester with Norman Lovett as the take-up hadn’t been as much as we would have liked - and while I could have left it a little longer to see if we sold more, it made sense to call it now, to allow time to inform ticketholders and to save the hassle of getting there tomorrow to find we're just as quiet. It’s very frustrating, but ultimately can’t be helped, and it feels better to make the decision today instead of leaving it hanging, particularly as most of the day was spent going through the mechanics of cancelling it, leaving me no time to work on the show itself. All this does is echo how I’m sick of being the one doing all the organising and how I'm seldom, if ever, the one previewing my show on someone else’s night with them doing all the booking and promotion. In fact, now I think of it, in all the time I’ve worked with Glyn or on my own, we’ve never previewed a show at someone els...

I went into London tonight to attend a Classic Album Session in Elephant & Castle (as you do) celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sgt Pepper, which was cancelled for unspecified reasons, but this wasn't the end of the world, as it gave me the chance to catch up with my friend Paul, who'd invited me along in the first place.  We've been trying to arrange a meeting for months, but our plans have unfortunately been scuppered each time without fail, so it was ironic that the one occasion the stars aligned for long enough for us to be in the same postcode, the hosts of event we were going to decided to pull the plug. It was okay though, as we're adaptable, and headed for the nearest pub instead.  Our conversation began inevitably with The Beatles, and more specifically Howard Goodall’s excellent recent BBC documentary on Pepper, which dealt with the well-trodden subject perfectly; so much so it reinvigorated the album in my mind, so ...