mostly david ephgrave

Pulling together a couple of composite images to summarise Mostly Comedy 's 2020 act roll-call - as I do every year - served to underline what a great bunch of people have either appeared at the club or guested on our podcast since January. Stills, taken from some of our Zoom-based More Than Mostly Comedy Podcast interviews this year. ...plus a few more. Of course, the year was nothing like we'd planned, with just two proper live dates in January & February thanks to COVID-19, but at least we managed to make a virtue of adversity by dipping more heavily into the podcast than usual, with ten new episodes already released and another three waiting to be edited; that's far more than we would have done had the club been open, so that's good. And even if we'd gone ahead with the onstage interviews we'd intended to do at the club this year, it's unlikely we'd have had such an impressive roster of guests; that's the advantage of being interviewing peop...

Today’s show had an air of the last day of term about it, largely because I knew at least two of the three people in had seen it before at some stage other, and therefore we could all benefit from relaxing the parameters a little bit. By rights, doing a show in such circumstances shouldn’t be fun, when the amount of people in the audience only narrowly outnumber those on stage, yet it was, with me veering off what I’d now regard as the script (not that I ever formalized it that much) to venture into unknown ground. This was particularly helped by an adlib I delivered, which I can’t for the life of me remember now, but was rightly timed at the moment. It’s a shame I can’t call it to mind now; all I can hope is it will come back tomorrow, as I think it was something that would benefit the show if it was kept in, though I may be wrong as I've no idea what I said now. Prior to the show I got a taxi to the venue with my replacement screen in tow to ...

The most striking moment of last night’s Mostly Comedy that I can’t get out of my head was Jan Ravens’ extraordinarily moving tribute to Victoria Wood; I don’t think I’ve applauded harder to anything I’ve seen at the club in ten years (and we’ve seen some amazing things). The sentiment behind the song rang true to whole room, but then it would, as Jan was performing to a crowd that knew their comedy. While we've lost some inspirational people recently, Wood was one of the hardest to come to terms with and accept; she brought so much energy and heart to everything she did and was the definition of a one-off with a glorious gift for no-nonsense earthy wordplay; there was a kitchen-sink reality to the pictures she’d paint in her stories that Ravens channelled perfectly, somehow underlining the enormity of what we miss in her absence. I don’t know what it is about humanity, but we never appreciate what we've got until we lose it. Such is the case with Victoria Wood -...

My God, it’s been an epic, yet satisfying week. It’s Day Five of our first week-long Mostly Comedy Festival and it’s been so hectic - what with running the Festival and keeping up-to-speed with my Edinburgh prep - it's pushed me horrendously behind with my blog posts; the God of Social Media will be livid, if such a thing exists. It’s fair to say both halves of Doggett & Ephgrave are now running on empty, though the fatigue is a sign of time well spent. The Festival's been a resounding success with three of the five nights sold out, and the other two were well-attended too. What’s particularly pleasing is how many punters have taken advantage of our special Gold & Silver Ticket deals, with a handful of people attending every gig; that, ladies and gentleman, is a festival defined - and let’s not forget last week’s gig at Hitchin Town Hall with Harry Hill and Simon Munnery too; we’ve had a stream of exceptional line-ups. We we...