mostly david ephgrave

Today was a day of low-level admin, including finalising the first line-up for St Albans Mostly Comedy (which is good news), putting together a mailing list mailout for next week’s show (in which I mentioned the news of our soon-to-be additional venue, without actually revealing where it was) and generally not doing a great deal, save a little reading, as I hadn’t slept particularly well last night, so writing wasn’t an option. Within the mailout I mentioned the fact that Red Dwarf celebrated its thirtieth birthday yesterday - something I hadn’t realised until Norman Lovett tweeted about it - which felt pertinent, what with us regularly playing host to both Hollys, which we’re doing again over the next few months. Without double-checking due to laziness, this must put Red Dwarf alongside The Simpsons as one of the longest running sitcoms, though in the case of the former, it’s been a little more off-again on again instead of going straight through. ...

My wife made an illustrative prediction of the scene she’d come home to when she finished work yesterday evening, which was unsurprisingly spot-on. A Study of Man with Cat (© 2017 ‘Her Indoors’)   We have a running joke between us based on the episode of The Simpsons when Bart gives a drawing to Lisa in a sealed envelope, prophesizing the carnage they’d stumble on when they returned home from a Sunday drive with Marge, while Homer cleaned out the garage. “Time to open the envelope I gave you”, Bart says as they pull up to find Homer being repeatedly crushed by the garage door; Lisa does so to reveal a perfect representation of the scene with ‘THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN’ scrawled across the bottom of it. Thankfully, the situation my wife expects to walk into is a lot less catastrophic, though it does involve a cat. Pretty much every day, about an hour before my wife's d...

Tonight's been mostly 'off duty', catching up on recorded episodes of The Simpsons and The X Files, with a cat on my lap. My cat, to be specific; not just any old cat. If it weren't for the technology I'm using to write this, you'd be fooled into thinking it was the early 1990s, thanks to my viewing habits. I may be behind the times, but I don't care, as I enjoy it. It's nice to switch on my TV and switch off my mind. I'd hoped to work on some new material today, but try as I might, I couldn't get into the right mindset. It didn't help that I didn't get started until mid-afternoon, as I met parents for lunch. I'm not complaining - I had a nice time - but I'd hoped to get more done. Frustratingly, it wasn't until minutes before I left the office that I had a small burst of inspiration, which I quickly made note of before I walked home. At least this gives me a checklist to work through over the weekend and into the week. I...

Tonight, I treated myself by watching the film version of The Odd Couple. If you ever want to see an actor in complete control of his performance, who manages to be both tragic and truthful while displaying impeccable comedy timing, then look no further than Jack Lemmon as Felix Unger; if this tour de force portrayal isn’t enough, (1) you’re out of your mind, and (2) you should watch him in Some Like It Hot. The man was incredible, though the same can be said for Walter Matthau and the rest of the supporting cast. The script and direction are razor sharp and surprisingly modern in style and presentation, and the score is perfect ; i t’s a bloody good film. I’d like to go into more detail about it, but it’s late and I won’t be able to do it justice. All I can say is that if you haven’t seen it (or Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot for that matter), you’ve missed out, but there’s still time to rectify it. These are my two gifts to you; use them wisely, my son (or daughter). Fo...

If it wasn’t for The Simpsons, I wouldn’t know what one of my kitchen utensils did. For years, I'd washed up the offending item whenever it appeared amongst the dirty dishes, oblivious to its purpose. ‘What the hell is this for?’, I’d think to myself. I’d never seen my wife use it and I’d never used it myself. If I had, I wouldn’t know if I was doing. For all I knew, I could be holding it the wrong way up. It wasn’t until Marge Simpson name-checked the implement in the episode ‘A Milhouse Divided’ that I came out of the dark. In it, she plans a dinner party, in an attempt to reunite recently separated Van Houtens. While shopping for it, she panics about not being suitably prepared, saying, “It's just not a dinner party without a melon baller - and we'll need a citrus zester, a ravioli crimper, ooh, and an oyster mallet”. As she spoke, she held a perfectly drawn replica of my mystery apparatus in her right hand. Suddenly, it all became clear: I owned a...

Tonight, I told a friend that he reminds me of Lenny from The Simpsons. I think it backfired. I watch the programme daily; it’s a good way to unwind. Each time Lenny Leonard comes into frame (or ‘onto paper’) I think of Ollie. Their Christian names even have a similar twang. Ollie doesn’t wear braces, nor does he worry about getting things in his eye, but other than that, the resemblance is uncanny. You need only paint him yellow for the image to be complete. I’d been meaning to tell him about this for ages. I wanted to get it off my chest. Carrying it around had become a burden. Tonight was the night: mere minutes after he’d walked into a birthday party I was at, I dropped the bombshell. It provoked confusion at first. He thought I meant Carl. His girlfriend thought I meant Otto. I delved into my coat pocket for my mobile to provide evidence (via the internet. I don’t have pictures of either Lenny or Ollie saved onto my phone). I showed his girlfriend first and she la...