Skip to main content

Simon's Day.


Tonight’s Mostly Comedy had a very special headliner - true to form - in Simon Day and was a great gig all in all, though the last few hours before the show were a little frenetic, so we went into it pretty stressed.

June's Hitchin Mostly Comedy line-up: (clockwise from top) Simon Day, Spring Day and Lorna Shaw.


If there’s one thing I could eliminate from the whole Mostly Comedy experience it would be the tendency for a race-to-the-finish (or more accurately, a race to the start) with no backstage to disappear to to get your head together for it; just a dressing room would do, rather than slipping into the gents’ (which has the world’s slowest closing outer door) feeling sweaty and low status, hoping you won't first meet meet the main act when they burst in on you in your underwear.

Running the club means constantly switching hats, much like that old, chaotic Tommy Cooper sketch, and the lack of a proper backstage area is often the final straw that breaks the camel’s back, to mix metaphors. This evening wasn’t helped by my only remembering last-minute that the bulb in the angle-poise lamp we use for the hand shadows material we were doing exploded a few months back, with the bayonet part stuck inside it so you couldn’t fix a new one. This led to me poking at it with a pair of scissors (not the ideal tool to use, but it was off) while on speakerphone to Glyn to see if he knew of where there might be another lamp. In the end, my wife nipped home to get the nearest thing we had to replace it, which initially was too diffuse, until our techie Andy had the wise idea to remove the outer - for want of a better word - orb that surrounds it.

Once we got started, things settled a bit, but I still didn’t feel exactly on form due to the stress of it all. I barely had time to speak to all the acts, which was a shame, but I think they enjoyed it. Simon's set was great and I managed to at least have a quick chat about some of his other projects I’d seen and heard recently, but he seemed to keen to potentially come back. It’s funny, but it only just came into my head that I first saw him perform in person when I went to see 'The Fast Show Live' in the West End twenty years ago; where on Earth did that time go? I ASKED A QUESTION.

Popular posts from this blog

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...

Stevenage: A (Tiny) River Runs Through it.

If ever a river was mis-sold, it’s the Roaring Meg in Stevenage. I just walked past it on my way to the retail park that has taken its name. They’re similarly uninspiring. The river is less of a roar and more of a dribble; cystitis sufferers produce greater flow. The retail park is soulless. What was once a thriving enterprise is nearly devoid of atmosphere, save an underlying essence of emptiness and despair. With a Toys R Us. When it was first built I was excited. Back then, the thought of a bowling alley, an ice rink, a Harvester and a Blockbuster Video within a small surface area was enticing. I celebrated many birthdays on site. There was an indoor cricket pitch there for a while where I once had a joint party with a friend. Why someone with an almost pathological fear of sport would agree to such a venture is beyond me, but I did it. Now, there’s very little at the Roaring Meg of note. The river would be a metaphor for the shopping ce...

Comedy That's Worth a Letch.

Today, I nipped to Letchworth to meet with illustrator (and one-time - two-time - comedy poet) Mushybees, to discuss an event Mostly Comedy will act as surrogate parents to as part of Letchworth’s Arts Takeover in a couple of weeks. Months ago he got into contact to see if we’d be up for co-organising a comedy stage as part of Letchworth’s weekend of arts-based attractions in July; something I’d provisionally said yes to, before things got hectic in the lead-up to Edinburgh and we didn’t take it any further. Despite not getting down to the nitty-gritty straight away, we managed to pull a line-up together in a back-and-forth of emails yesterday, leading to me getting Glyn’s blessing and us deciding we’d officially go ahead with it (whatever ‘officially’ means in this context). In reality, it’s not complicated: from 12pm until 6pm-ish on the 22 nd July, Glyn, Mushybees and I will host four Edinburgh previews from four acts (including me), before Nor...