mostly david ephgrave

Pulling together a couple of composite images to summarise Mostly Comedy 's 2020 act roll-call - as I do every year - served to underline what a great bunch of people have either appeared at the club or guested on our podcast since January. Stills, taken from some of our Zoom-based More Than Mostly Comedy Podcast interviews this year. ...plus a few more. Of course, the year was nothing like we'd planned, with just two proper live dates in January & February thanks to COVID-19, but at least we managed to make a virtue of adversity by dipping more heavily into the podcast than usual, with ten new episodes already released and another three waiting to be edited; that's far more than we would have done had the club been open, so that's good. And even if we'd gone ahead with the onstage interviews we'd intended to do at the club this year, it's unlikely we'd have had such an impressive roster of guests; that's the advantage of being interviewing peop...

There was a point about halfway into Friday's ZOOMostly Comedy interview with Bobby Davro when it suddenly hit me how special the whole thing was. Bobby Davro, joining us via Zoom for our More Than Mostly Comedy Podcast (12.06.20) It was probably partly because Bobby's such a giving performer who throws himself into his work wholeheartedly, jumping from impressions to gags to anecdotes with a scattergun approach. And I mean that positively. It also helped that we were joining him live through the magic of the internet as he sat at the stool of his baby grand piano in his glamourous house, like he was giving a remote award acceptance speech or a prerecorded message for This is Your Life. That - and the fact the conversation was packed with great stories and a lot of laughter - put us in a privileged position, and one we would never have been in if it weren't for the current lockdown; you've got to find the positives, however small they may be. Me, during the ...

Billy Joel's ‘Lullaby (Goodnight My Angel)’ is one of the most heartrending songs I know. I have a theory about music that touches you: it has the power to stop time. There are a handful of songs I give my full attention to any time they come on and this is one of them; it’s searingly honest without a trace of artifice and that’s what’s so special about it; Joel’s love for his daughter as he tries to answer her question, “What happens when we die?” whilst in the midst of divorce from her mother glistens from every note with no word or sound out of place; it's perfect. The song came up in an unlikely situation only last month: while I was chatting to Bobby Davro before we shared the bill at Mostly Comedy. He was telling me how he’d recently learnt the harmonica part to 'Piano Man'; painstakingly going over it repeatedly until he mastered it, much to the frustration of his daughter (it’s not the nicest instrument to listen to when y...

I never thought I’d say this but chatting to Bobby Davro is such a calming influence. Bobby Davro storming it at Hitchin Mostly Comedy (23.05.18) I shared the bill with him tonight at Mostly Comedy, marking the first time I rolled out an extended set of the material that will eventually become my new show, which I had expected to be a little difficult, what with me being such a comparatively unknown entity. While I was genuinely delighted when Bobby agreed to do the gig, I didn’t know if I’d painted myself in a corner by adding him to same bill as me, as I didn’t know if his crowd would be attuned to a younger act trying out some sketchy work-in-progress. The afternoon was inevitably stressful as I watched the time I’d set aside to run my set disappear into a vapour in favour of the endless admin that goes with setting up the club. However hard you try to take it in your stride, there comes a point where the day starts to proverbially bum you...

Within minutes of getting up this morning, I had decided to set to work on putting together a press release for this month's Mostly, if only to make the most of a spare moment. As I've moaned here countless times before, a backlog of admin always means I spend the tiniest amount of time working on my actual shows, so I was determined not to let this be the case today, hence the reason I was writing so early. It's all about using pockets of time that almost feel like they don't exist and thus making the most of them; so it was that I was busily Googling Davro over my Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. See below for what I bought together, then why not book to come and see the show?    Press Release – 09.05.18 mostly comedy a monthly comedy club, at the sun hotel in hitchin 23 rd May’s installment of DOGGETT & EPHGRAVE ’s popular monthly club Mostly Comedy at Hitchin’s Sun Hotel features a guest appearance from the legendary BOBBY DAVRO alongside ...

As I write, 1450 pieces of 170 gsm-thickness A5 paper with my face on are wending their way through the letterboxes of 1450 homes in St Albans, just like 1450 pieces of 170 gsm-thickness A5 paper should. The reason for this is advertising, more specifically for our forthcoming St Albans Mostly Comedy dates, which start at the Maltings Arts Theatre this week. We’ve paid for this leaflet drop in the hope it will help spread the word and increase interest in our shows, or at the very least to act as a breakwater between all the usual fast-food menus. In an ideal world we would have opted for a bigger delivery, but this was the most we could afford initially. While our flyers are only going to a fraction of the city’s homes, I’m optimistic they’ll have a positive effect, as we only need a little take-up to make a difference, plus the line-ups are more than good enough to entice the odd comedy fan to a venue that's practically in their same postcode...

Today was long but productive, even if was filled predominantly with admin. What pleased me most was I managed to do a little work on some material that, while brief, felt promising; at least I seem to be slowly and gently heading in the right direction with it. I’m trying to do just the right amount of tinkering with ideas without working for so long I become stale and frazzled with it, which suits my currently slightly battle-worn brain. My main mission today was to try and settle an issue regarding medication that had been prescribed to me by the specialist I saw about my constant dizziness a few weeks ago , which ran out yesterday, but I couldn’t get a repeat because the write-up for my appointment hadn’t been forwarded to my GP yet and I had no clear record of what had taken place. While all parties concerned were extremely helpful it still took two phone calls to the hospital where I had my appointment, two calls to 111 to seek authorization ...

Today was another day of note for Mostly Comedy, with the mailing list pre-sale for Bobby Davro's appearance at the club on 23rd May - sharing the bill with work-in-progress from me - beginning at 9am this morning, with me keeping an eye on proceedings, as always, making notes as I watched. I'm often tense on these occasions, particularly when it's a slightly unusual line-up, as you never know for sure if it will grab people's interest; our pre-sales are quite a good indicator of how an event will do, so when thirty tickets were snapped up in the first ten minutes today I relaxed a little bit. It's still selling healthily as we speak. I quickly knocked together a press release for our first St Albans date too, which I've included below; hopefully the more I can clear the decks of any admin over the next few days, the sooner I can devote time to work on new material, which is very important to me. My life feels like a sea of press releases and pre-sales and I...

My stress levels were pretty high yesterday, but all tension was soon brushed aside when I confirmed the comic legend Bobby Davro will play Hitchin Mostly Comedy in May . I’d been gently working on the booking for a few days after being given Bobby’s number by a mutual friend last week. I sent him a text with all the details last Wednesday and chased it up a few days later, but didn’t want to push too hard, as I was using his private number and didn’t want to pester him unduly. I resigned myself on waiting until the weekend had passed before trying again so I didn’t encroach on his downtime too much, but this plan was soon put to bed when I checked my mobile on Sunday evening to pick up the following voicemail: “Hey David, it’s Bobby Davro calling you; give me a call regarding doing your show. Thanks sir.” With each passing year, my life gets more surreal. If you'd told Childhood Me that one day I’d be fielding calls from Davro, I’d have given you a weird look and cr...

Last night I tweeted that a contestant on BBC1’s popular game show Pointless looked like a tiny-faced Bobby Davro. It was just a silly little joke – a prerequisite of my job: making silly little jokes – but within the space of a few hours, that silly little joke had been spotted, commented on and then retweeted by the contestant in question. Now, I think it’s safe to assume he wasn’t particularly offended; the smiley face and subsequent retweets by him and his fellow teammate would suggest as much. He may even be enjoying the novelty of the temporary fame that appearing on a game show has given him. However, Davrogate does serve to illustrate that the nature of modern social media means you’re potentially just a few short internet steps from direct contact with the person you may be commenting on. This is not the first time I have been stung by this - though thankfully, each incident has been fairly innocuous. A year or so ago I watched an excellent BBC1 d...