mostly david ephgrave

You know you’re overtired when you find yourself so drowsy from dozing that you speak to someone who isn’t there as you return to consciousness, loudly and confidently as if you were mid-conversation. “Yes”, I said to no-one in particular as I woke up from my brief snooze, proving that whatever it was I was just dreaming, I was very sure of it.   I’ve been feeling extremely shattered since returning from Edinburgh as the exhaustion of a month away catches up with me. as I write, I’m literally struggling to stay awake and should really just go to bed, though this probably wasn’t helped by the combination of a couple of glasses of wine I’ve had this evening and the medication I’m taking; either way, this paragraph has taken far more persistence than it really should have done and to what end? I sometimes have quite skewed priorities, though then again I’m probably just overdramatizing because of the tiredness; either way, my time would be...

I hadn’t realised how exhausted I feel post-Edinburgh until it hit me today. Thankfully I haven’t got much on for the rest of the week, but I’m still in a strange halfway house between deciding what to do next and needing a break. So much of the past year has been dictated by preparing for Edinburgh, and now I’m beyond it, it’s hard to know what’s the best move to take, though I think I’m entitled to a few days to recover as I currently look and feel like a poor imitation of myself. I haven’t completely rested on my laurels, and have already booked a couple of dates at Leicester Square Theatre in October to try to capitalise on my show while it’s still firmly in my head. I’m sure it will be the usual battle to get punters and industry in, but I intend to do my best, particularly as I’d like new representation that reflects me properly. Outside of confirming October’s London dates, I’ve been keeping a low profile today. I popped to my friend...

Not only is there only one Jasper Carrot; there's also only one more show to go. Today’s show was quite a fun one, although as I write this, I’m struggling to remember which gig it was, through overtiredness. I know there weren’t any incidents and I seem to remember laughter, but as for the detail, it’s temporarily slipped my mind; that’s what happens when you do twenty-four-plus shows in a row with only one day off. When Dan - the act who follows me in the space – came into the room after my show, he looked genuinely jealous of me for having just one left, while I no doubt looked at my techie Fraser with a similar expression when he did his last show this evening, which I tech for him. Each and everyone of us up here are shells of the people we were when we started the month, and all of us could do with a break. That’s not to say that this year’s Fringe wasn't a rewarding and enjoyable experience – I’ve had a great time – but even the best...

We recorded the 24 th episode of ‘Doggett & Ephgrave: In Your Inner Ear’ tonight, ready for it to go out on Sunday. I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind for it this evening, and consequently felt it didn’t really gel, for the first hour at least. Somehow, we weren’t quite in the same mindset. It didn’t help that I foolishly started with a piece that relied on Glyn recognising the artist responsible for an audio clip, but hadn’t pre-warned him about it. This was unfair, as he was busily multitasking while running the desk and couldn’t remember the band’s name, which meant the segment fell flat. Things gradually picked up pace from that point, but it felt a little forced, though perhaps it won’t sound so band when I hear it back. To be fair, it’s not always going to be perfect (not anyone would say it ever is). Reaching our twenty-fourth programme and forty-eighth hour is pretty good going, and there has been lots of good stuff amongst it....

It’s nice to be at home tonight instead of doing a gig. I haven’t been in of an evening all week. I’m glad I’ve been productive, particularly when I want to get as much material run in as possible before my work-in-progress dates at the Bath Comedy Festival, but I also need a break. A consecutive run of late nights takes it out of you and make it harder to focus on writing when you need to do it. Consequently, tonight has been spent catching up on a little television, and having a long chat with my wife. You’d think we’d have run out of things to talk about, but it seems we haven’t; we haven’t consulted my Big Book of Icebreaking once. I like that we still have so much to talk about and are by no means bored of each other’s company. This bodes well for the future; I mean…imagine having to live with me. The smell alone is bad enough. I'll keep it brief this evening, as my bed and book are calling. Night night all; be good.

Tonight I did a short walk-in spot at the open mic gig Touching Cloth on Folgate Street, though by the time I went on, I was so tired, I’d lost faith in what I’d gone there to talk about. I went armed with a new five minutes, which, when it came to it, I did for the most part; though the room had lost interest by the time I took the stage. I got laughs out of dissecting what wasn’t working, as often seems to be the case, but this can be frustrating as the more you rely on this, you start to feel you haven’t enough good quality material in the first place. I’m being hard on myself, to be fair. Open mic gigs are tough, however well they’re run (and this one’s run splendidly). There’s just so many people on , and an audience can only take so much information. You end up with a distorted reading of what lines worked and what didn’t. At least I managed to for the most part get across the genesis what I’d written, and remain true to the ethos of the gig, which is all about tryin...

I'm absolutely shattered today. I don't know what's going on. I don't seem to be able to catch up. I even had to have a little power-nap in the afternoon, before meeting up with my friend Steve for a truncated ve rsion of one of our 'Old Man Pub Crawls'. I probably made for quite a sight, asleep on the sofa with the cat on my lap. Seldom will one creature snooze on another in the wild, so I don't know why it's acceptable in my house.  Thankfully, today hasn't been particularly busy, save the frantic tweeting of pictures to accompany this week's episode of In Your Inner Ear, which we recorded on Thursday. I started out with the intention of doing some housework, but that didn't happen. My power-nap helped me perk up a little bit, but I'm now back to my exhausted self. I'm struggle to stay awake as I write this, so I can't imagine it will make riveting reading.  ‎ I enjoyed listening to tonight's In Your Inner Ear...