mostly david ephgrave

The big news is I'm taking a show to Edinburgh this year, and I'm trying to get as much of the admin sorted as swiftly as possible so I can clear time to write it. As it stands, I'm creaking toward that kicking-off point. The show will be about my dad (the one slated for 2020 until Covid hit and put paid to that), and I'm excited and apprehensive about the task ahead. There's so much I want to get across - as my pages of scribbled notes already testify - but primarily, I want to capture my dad's character so that the audience leaves the room feeling like they just met him, which is no mean feat. And I want to tackle what's it like to lose a loved one without forgetting that the show's a comedy (which, as far as challenges go, is worthy of fully spandexed Anneka Rice). What's helped so far is the groundwork I did in 2020. For example, I already had a blurb that just needed tightening up. And I've also got a lot of material about him already, which...

I spent much of today registering this year's Edinburgh show, although I kept being sidetracked by other things that need doing too. I was mainly distracted by the renewal of Glyn's and my public liability insurance, which expires at the end of March. We're in a frustrating situation as regards cash flow, which is being exasperated by a long line of bills that need or needed settling over the last few weeks. The main culprit that's made everything so tight was the hire fee for the Town Hall for July's Dr John Cooper Clarke date; a show that's selling excellently, but the fact the venue costs had to be met in advance long before we receive settlement hasn't helped us. Add an accountant bill, web space and domain-name renewal, a string of extra expenses for last month's Mostly Comedy plus the usual office rent and act fees, and suddenly we're brassic; everything will ultimately settle, but not without carefully moving some money about. The fine art...

I started my day by trying to get the press release together for the next Hitchin Mostly, which takes place in a fortnight with Kate Robbins and Jay Foreman, so I could send a campaign to our mailing list about it and forward it to the local press. I’ve written here before of how tired I am of the process of putting together press releases particularly for Mostly Comedy, as it’s such a tedious time-consuming practice I’ve done so often. It’s a necessary evil to help push sales, but it’s so unsatisfying and about as far away from creativity as anything is likely to be. It’s particularly frustrating when you can’t find a solid act bio to work from as it takes so long to draw together a few paragraphs that cover enough to rouse interest while also being well-written. Thankfully my wife gave me a hand this time by writing a rough draft based on the recent press releases I’d sent for the John Thomson Mostly and my show so I had something to work from, which hel...

Today’s been a day for mass admin, and while that normally makes me frustrated I’m not using the time to be creative, I can at least rest safe in the knowledge I’ve done my best to clear the decks so I can work on my show next week. Next week’s a busy one, with a couple of hospital appointments and a blood test and to contend with, interspersed with a special one-off Mostly Comedy at London’s RAF Museum on Thursday (because comedy loves planes) and a work-in-progress date in Camden on Sunday. Out of all of these things, Sunday’s gig is my personal priority as I don’t want to waste any chances to get my Edinburgh show together, but I suspect it’s going to be the thing I spend the least time on, once everything else gets in the way. That’s why I worked so hard today to tie up any lose ends, in the hope I’ll be able to focus my energy on writing next week, though I find days with a medical appointment in their midst become more about the appointment than anyt...

If I were to sum up my life at the moment, it would be very much a case of ‘having something I really need to do, but never getting to it due to another fifteen things that end up in the way’. The thing I need to do is work on new material ready for next week’s Brighton shows, but instead, today inevitably became about preparing for tomorrow’s first St Albans Mostly Comedy date. This was unavoidable, but it was still frustrating, as by the time I finally got to running the short set I’m intending to try out tomorrow, it was getting later and later, so I could only give it a handful of goes before I had to the leave the office and go home. I long for the day when the thing that’s my personal priority is the thing I work on the most. It’s always the same; I’m constantly giving the tiniest fraction of my time before any gig I do to running or tweaking my set, so the chance of me doing it well in performance is left in the lap of the gods, plus I’m us...

Today was a day of pragmatically working through a list of admin that needed to be done to essentially clear the decks for me to get on with some writing. I’ll often check things off a list when I have a few deadlines as it helps concentrate my mind on what needs doing, as well as giving me the sense that things are moving forward. Today I was particularly insistent and stuck to the list without deviation, even if it felt like, as ever, I was drowning in a sea of everything but the creative side of what I need to do; I knew that ultimately I’d thank myself for keeping at it, and I genuinely feel doing so will stand me in good stead for the next few weeks. Much of what I did today makes for dull reading, but it was still worth it. I pulled together a blurb for the back of our St Albans Mostly Comedy flyer, wrote a press release for the middle of our three dates there, finished the artwork for my Bath Comedy Festival dates - as well as ordering it - ...

I sometimes feel like most of my life is spent staring at a computer screen, doing something I don’t want to do. I suppose that’s not an alien concept for many, particularly if you work in an office, which, to be fair, I only do in a self-employed sense. But it’s still frustrating, particularly when more time is spent on admin related to work and not on actual, useful content, such as writing new material. This afternoon’s a case in point: I kicked things off (in the dullest sense of the phrase) by editing copy for the work-in-progress dates I’m doing in Brighton in May , before spending far longer than necessary editing artwork for the last outing of ‘Now Who’s a Comedian?’ at the Leicester Comedy Festival next month . The problem with the latter job is I’m (1) not as adept at Photoshop - or Gimp, to be more accurate, as that's the software I use -  and (2) it isn’t the sort of work I even want to do; other performers have people doing this st...

Annoyingly, after some consideration, I had to cancel tonight’s Leicester Square Theatre show too. The reason for this is my labyrinthitis has come back with a vengeance over the last few days. I’d hoped taking yesterday off would help - it certainly did in the sense I didn’t have to go into London and throw myself about while doing my show - but if anything, I’m more dizzy today than I was then. It hasn’t helped that the last few weeks have seen a lot of staring at my computer screen or my phone, primarily to settle details for Jack Dee and Ivo Graham’s appearance at Mostly Comedy next month. It’s a great coup for the club and we’re both very excited about it, but there’s been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between us, their agent and our venue to finalise details, along with setting up the pre-sale and general sale links for the event so they were all ready to go. That, along with the admin for tomorrow’s show at the Market Theatre and my aborted sh...

My Edinburgh prep is now at the manic, multitasking stage. It's been an exercise in juggling from the beginning to be fair, with too much attention given to the administrative side of proceedings, but things are approaching their most difficult. Next Wednesday I somehow have to orchestrate checking out of the hotel I’m staying in for one night as my digs won’t be ready yet (hopefully leaving a month's worth of luggage behind) to get a taxi to a depot on the outskirts of town to pick up my screen, projector stand and a suitcase full of gear; bringing them back knowing I may not have a place to store them until I can get into my digs after 4pm (which I have to pick the keys up for from an office that’s another taxi ride away). I also have to collect my posters and flyers, meet my flyerers and my technician and do a technical rehearsal in the evening; I’ll be lucky if I end the day on top of everything and still in one piece. Today was stressful enough in itself, when...

Today’s been another day of admin, followed by admin, followed by admin, followed by a tiny bit of writing. Amongst other things, I booked a few gigs in April and two previews at the Etcetera Theatre in July. I could still do with more of the latter in the diary, and would particularly like some at shows I don’t organise myself. For someone who offers other acts work all the time - he says like a comedic martyr - I don’t get many back myself, which is frustrating, as it would be nice to have a little of what I constantly give everyone else: the chance to try new material out to a sizeable guaranteed audience; if you enter people’s lives as a promoter, they’ll never see you differently. I’ve also spent today tinkering with artwork for my Bath dates next month, which are getting close enough for me to have to get a wiggle on with ordering the print for. I won’t need too many posters and flyers as hopefully the location of the venue and the nature of ...

Today was one those days when admin conspired to get in the way of the writing I’d hoped to do. Despite this disappointment, I managed to get a lot done, including the press release for this month’s Hitchin Mostly and the mailing list mail-out on our forthcoming dates with Mark Watson, Richard Herring, Hattie Hayridge, Angelos & Barry and the rest. I very nearly had to abandon everything this morning though, when my coffee grinder refused to work when I tried to facilitate my all-important first caffeine hit of the day. As a man who can barely function without a mug of coffee with his breakfast, I was a strange mix of sleepy and livid. All attempts to trick the machine into working came to no avail, leading to a trip to Caffè Nero and a hasty online reservation of a new grinder from Argos. I’d actually intended on going to Caffè Nero today anyway to do my admin, as I thought it would make a change from doing it at home or in the office, so I co...

One thing I’ve been busying myself with today is registering the three work-in-progress dates I’ll be doing at the Brighton Fringe next year. …and so begin my thoughts on how to follow this year’s show. I haven’t put the current one to bed quite yet - I’m back at Leicester Square Theatre next week , and will be doing it as part of the Leicester Comedy Festival in February - but I’m trying to gently set the wheels in motion for what I write next. At the moment, I’m mostly concerned with the admin - booking the dates etc - but I’ve also been loosely thinking about what the content of a new show might be. At the moment it’s all very vague. Sadly, you can’t do anything like this on a whim; venues need to be found and applied for and blurbs and pictures need to be submitted before you get down to the nitty-gritty. It’s quite intimidating to think I have to start again with a solo show for the third time around. On the whole, I’m proud of what I pulled...

Yesterday ended up turning into a bit of a mad-panic-dash, as I rushed to register my show 'Mostly David Ephgrave' as part of next year’s (Mostly) Dave (Ephgrave) ’s Leicester Comedy Festival in time to meet their final deadline. I’d pretty much written off taking it to Leicester next year, having applied very late, so was pleasantly surprised when a slot came up last-minute. This was the reason for my sprint to-the-finish to get everything submitted. Thankfully, it wasn’t too much of a bind, as most of the promotional copy already existed, but I would still have appreciated a more leisurely pace than the the twenty-four hours I had to meet the final call of midnight tonight. Still, I’m pleased to be doing it, as it was very much a part of my plans for next year until I'd nearly scuppered it. The Leicester date (Saturday 25 th February 2017 at The Lightbox at Grays@LCB Depot: more details to follow) will almost certainly be the last ti...

Today has been about logistics.  It's now exactly a week to the day that I travel up to Edinburgh. This decampment has snuck up on me like a...thing that sneaks up on you...a velocirapter? That'll do.  One of the biggest stumbling blocks I'm coming up against is how to get everything I need to Scotland when I'm travelling alone. In the past, I've always gone up in a hired vehicle with Glyn, with the boot and backseat packed to the hilt with luggage and equipment. That's not an option this time, as I don't drive. Consequently, I'm trying to streamline the amount of stuff I take with me, while aware that there are certain things that  have  to get there; by hand or by courier; by hook or by crook. It doesn't help that the space I'm in doesn't have a projector and screen rigged. Last week, I ordered a new projector as ours finally gave up the ghost at my preview at The George, after eight years of good service. The new one made its debut at l...

I confused a Norwegian city with a new town in Hertfordshire today, with embarrassing results. It was in the midst of a chain of emails between a comedian's assistant and me that my idiotic mistake took place. I was trying to plug a gap in a forthcoming Mostly Comedy line-up when, within minutes of suggesting the date, I got the response they weren't available, as they were gigging in Stevenage that night. “That’s strange,” I thought, "as I've got tickets to see them in Stevenage the following month. Perhaps the assistant's got their dates mixed up.” (I think in full sentences.) I checked the venue’s website to see if an extra show had been added, and it hadn’t. This left me in a quandary: should I just leave it at that, or find a gentle way to suggest they may have made a mistake? You can guess which option I went with. I tried to make out the error was mine, without realising I’d made a different gaffe...

I’ve been concerning myself with admin today for a couple of work-in-progress dates that I’m doing at the Bath Comedy Festival in April. As is always the case when you’re self-producing a show, getting the paperwork done is part-satisfying, part-frustrating; you can’t help but feel that the time spent filling in forms, choosing promo pictures and writing blurbs would be much better spent deciding what you’re actually going to say on stage when you're up there . This becomes a small, yet important background detail. I remember chatting to a well-established comic who was previewing one of his Edinburgh Fringe shows at Mostly Comedy a few years back, and remarking on my frustration with this admin / writing balance. He’d recently been taken on by one of the country’s biggest comedy producer / agencies, and told me how for the first time since he’d started out, he hadn't had to consider the organisational side of things once; everything was in...

Today's been a day of juggling admin (as in ‘switching jobs’, not ‘stocking up on balls’). First thing's first, I sent off my application for next year’s Brighton Fringe Festival. I’d been feeling edgy about this since registration opened on Monday, which is ridiculous, considering how late I got in this year, but I didn’t want a repeat of my recent Leicester Debacle , which meant I won't be taking part in their festival next February. It's a relief to get my form in early, as it's good to chalk another task off the list. All I've got left now is the small matter of writing the show, but there’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind. (Not that I’ve been accepted yet. Word may have spread.) I also continued emailing acts in an attempt to pull together some equally exciting line-ups for Mostly in the New Year as those we’ve been having of late. This is no mean feat, in and of itself, as the standard has been high (...