mostly david ephgrave

Trump's right about one thing: if you inject yourself with disinfectant, you won't die of coronavirus. I just watched a three-minute chunk of his recent COVID-19 task force briefing, in which he expounds his homespun, yet dangerous theories, then when called out by a journalist on the risk his riffing presents, jumps straight to his fake news bullshit and, frankly, I'm terrified. I know we know he's a fantasist with little aptitude for connecting his brain to his mouth before speaking, but for fuck's sake. He's the president of the most powerful country on the planet, and yet his recklessness doesn't border but crosses over to insanity, and this arrogance and ignorance could kill. Three years he's been office now, and it's beyond a joke. He's unstable, and he certainly isn't a genius. I wouldn't be surprised if someone cuts up his dinner for him, and forks it into his tiny, tiny mouth with a cry of, "Here comes the Air Forc...

My wife said some words of wisdom to me before I left for yesterday's gig (and they weren't "Let it be").  I told her which material I was planning to do as I said goodbye and asked, " Will that be all right?", to which she said, " Tell them it's all right".  (I'm married to Yoda.)  That's stand-up in a nutshell. There shouldn't be doubt. I'm in control of my stories; I own them. So why apologise for what I tell?  It's amazing how easy it is to forget the essentials. I've spend a heck of a lot of my life on stage, as an actor, a musician and a comic. I've played nearly every major theatre in the country, and most of the minor ones too. I've even been in a West End musical, which considering my distaste for the idiom is frankly ridiculous - so why do I still frequently feel I shouldn't be there? To be fair, it's usually only just before I go on. When I'm performing, it suddenly makes sense, and o...

Though it happened sixteen years ago, I still vividly remember the time my dad’s friend told me that my band should be like Shed Seven. It was actually worse than that. He said, “You want to be more like Shed Seven”, which implied that we already resembled the band a little bit, but could do with sharing more of their traits. It also suggested that he knew my feelings on the subject better than I did. He couldn’t have been further from the truth. If we’d showed even slight similarities to that nondescript Indie rock band, I’d have wanted to knock them on the head. If anything, we needed to be less like Shed Seven. It seemed an odd band to aspire to. I can’t remember any of their songs. It would be like deciding to be a politician, then modeling your career on Lembit Öpik. (Though he isn’t bad on the harmonica.) My dad's mate also said that we needed only one lead singer, as bands with more than one frontman didn’t work...