Skip to main content

Giving Bobby a Bell.


My stress levels were pretty high yesterday, but all tension was soon brushed aside when I confirmed the comic legend Bobby Davro will play Hitchin Mostly Comedy in May.

I’d been gently working on the booking for a few days after being given Bobby’s number by a mutual friend last week. I sent him a text with all the details last Wednesday and chased it up a few days later, but didn’t want to push too hard, as I was using his private number and didn’t want to pester him unduly. I resigned myself on waiting until the weekend had passed before trying again so I didn’t encroach on his downtime too much, but this plan was soon put to bed when I checked my mobile on Sunday evening to pick up the following voicemail:

“Hey David, it’s Bobby Davro calling you; give me a call regarding doing your show. Thanks sir.”

With each passing year, my life gets more surreal. If you'd told Childhood Me that one day I’d be fielding calls from Davro, I’d have given you a weird look and crossed to the other side of the road, just to be safe; I should explain I pictured this fictional conversation outdoors, hence the suggested getaway, but feel free to scrap the last bit if that’s not how you imagined it; the point I'm making is: I wouldn’t believe you. 

While I would never have anticipated the strange route my life seems prone to take, I do enjoy these little junctions, as they make the bad bits more bearable; who cares if your bank balance is in near-permanent minus figures if you take the odd call from a comic legend? That’s my mantra and I’ll stick to it (until the bailiffs take my mantra away).

Spin forward an hour and I had rung off on one of the easiest twenty-minute phone conversations I’ve ever been a half of; Davro's just a thoroughly nice chap. Out chat covered everything from our mutual love of Les Dawson (who he told me had taken him under his wing when he was new) to the importance of good stagecraft, with both of us openly sharing what had led us both to current creative point. I told him how lovely the Mostly Comedy crowd are and how pleased they’d be to see him and he said he’d love to come down.

When I told Glyn about the booking - having kept it quiet until then for the surprise - he was in stitches with excitement, and said how much he'd loved Davro's sketch shows as a kid. It looks set to be a great night. Now forgive me for dashing off, but I just received a fax from Les Dennis.

Popular posts from this blog

Not The Bayeux One.

The Carole King album Tapestry has been my 'getting-ready-in-the-morning' soundtrack for the past few weeks.  It's been a favourite album ever since I was a student, which makes for a pleasantly gentle way to usher in the start of a day. I've always been a fan of a well-crafted song, which is something of a Carole King hallmark, ever since she started writing with her first husband in the early Sixties. Tapestry may be an unimaginative choice for a favourite LP, as it suggests I haven't delved that far into her career, but it's still an undoubted classic; anything with '(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman', 'Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?' and 'You've Got A Friend' on it can't really fail; if nothing else, it proves she likes writing songs with long titles.  Next month, she's set to perform the album live in its entirety for the first time at a gig in Hyde Park, which I would have loved to have gone to, if it weren...

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...