mostly david ephgrave

Yesterday's Mostly Comedy was another good one, though this was pretty inevitable with Ardal O'Hanlon on the bill. Ardal at last night's show. It's only the second time he's appeared at the club, with his first visit being almost exactly two years ago to the day. What was evident from the off was how nice he is, as well as being generous with praise; the first thing he said as I walked backstage after Glyn's and my opening set was, "That was a very strong beginning; it was great"; kind words from a performer I've always rated very highly and looked up to since I first became aware of him from Father Ted back in the day. Daniel Cook in the blue. The other act on the bill last night is also a special one and a very nice chap - my former venue-buddy from two years' worth of Edinburgh Fringes, Daniel Cook - who's only ever appeared on a Mostly bill once before, when he shared a preview with me at The Market Theatre as part of ou...

While editing photos for July's Hitchin Mostly Comedy Festival today, I inadvertently turned the comedian Daniel Cook into the sleeve of The Miracle by Queen.   Maybe this is how album covers are invented: by chance events. Perhaps Freddie was fiddling around with a primitive version of Photoshop in 1989 (or an airbrush?) when he accidentally morphed all his band members’ heads into a monster four-person amalgam. Either that, or Queen genuinely started life as conjoined quadruplets that were separated by innovative surgery, and that’s in fact the miracle the album title’s referring to; let’s face it (or four-face it): they’d have to be incredibly fortunate to survive the operation when you consider the nature of their overlap; they've barely got a pair of eyes between them. I like to imagine it was Anita Dobson who performed the operation, as the waiting list was too long for it to be done under the NHS. Speaking of Dobson, I find it ...

Well, that’s my final 2017 Edinburgh show over with; stick a fork in me: I’m done. I'd hoped the last gig would be a busy one, but ended up only having three people in, which was strange as eight had booked in advance, and one person in the audience (the splendid comic Daniel Cook) was a walk-in, so six punters were missing in action; perhaps they were enticed into a different show instead? Either way, I’ve got their money. Despite the low numbers, it ended up being one of the most fun shows of the run, and a suitable way to draw things to a close. It helped that Dan's a big laugher, but the other two were great too. I was particularly pleased they were all firmly on-board with the ‘comparing my career to Sam Palladio’s’ through-line, as the reaction had been a bit muted for this for the last few gigs; prior to this, Sam’s secret video cameo at the end of the show would usually get big laughs, which always pleased me, as he’s very funny in ...

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...