mostly david ephgrave

Unfortunately, I've had to cancel tomorrow’s preview in Winchester with Norman Lovett as the take-up hadn’t been as much as we would have liked - and while I could have left it a little longer to see if we sold more, it made sense to call it now, to allow time to inform ticketholders and to save the hassle of getting there tomorrow to find we're just as quiet. It’s very frustrating, but ultimately can’t be helped, and it feels better to make the decision today instead of leaving it hanging, particularly as most of the day was spent going through the mechanics of cancelling it, leaving me no time to work on the show itself. All this does is echo how I’m sick of being the one doing all the organising and how I'm seldom, if ever, the one previewing my show on someone else’s night with them doing all the booking and promotion. In fact, now I think of it, in all the time I’ve worked with Glyn or on my own, we’ve never previewed a show at someone els...

Frustratingly, I’ve had to pull out of a gig I was doing in Winchester tomorrow night, due to an evil engineering work / rail replacement bus service situation on the line back to London. This is annoying on three counts: firstly, I could do with the stage time so I can cement some new material; secondly, I don’t like to be unreliable; thirdly – and most importantly – I was looking forward to exorcising the demons of my last visit to the city, back in 2004, when I slipped a disc in my back whilst doing a one-man Chinese Dragon dance. My oriental undulations had a point. They weren’t just for recreation. I was rehearsing for a pantomime at the Theatre Royal Winchester at the time, and was loving every minute until my spine threw a spanner in the works; so much so that for a while I fooled myself into thinking I could still do the show, despite the fact I could barely walk, let alone give anything approaching a performance. If only I'd had more e...