mostly david ephgrave

The most striking moment of last night’s Mostly Comedy that I can’t get out of my head was Jan Ravens’ extraordinarily moving tribute to Victoria Wood; I don’t think I’ve applauded harder to anything I’ve seen at the club in ten years (and we’ve seen some amazing things). The sentiment behind the song rang true to whole room, but then it would, as Jan was performing to a crowd that knew their comedy. While we've lost some inspirational people recently, Wood was one of the hardest to come to terms with and accept; she brought so much energy and heart to everything she did and was the definition of a one-off with a glorious gift for no-nonsense earthy wordplay; there was a kitchen-sink reality to the pictures she’d paint in her stories that Ravens channelled perfectly, somehow underlining the enormity of what we miss in her absence. I don’t know what it is about humanity, but we never appreciate what we've got until we lose it. Such is the case with Victoria Wood -...

Tonight’s Mostly Comedy had a very special headliner - true to form - in Simon Day and was a great gig all in all, though the last few hours before the show were a little frenetic, so we went into it pretty stressed. June's Hitchin Mostly Comedy line-up: (clockwise from top) Simon Day, Spring Day and Lorna Shaw. If there’s one thing I could eliminate from the whole Mostly Comedy experience it would be the tendency for a race-to-the-finish (or more accurately, a race to the start) with no backstage to disappear to to get your head together for it; just a dressing room would do, rather than slipping into the gents’ (which has the world’s slowest closing outer door) feeling sweaty and low status, hoping you won't first meet meet the main act when they burst in on you in your underwear. Running the club means constantly switching hats, much like that old, chaotic Tommy Cooper sketch, and the lack of a proper backstage area is often the ...

Some days, you inevitably use a press release you put together for the next show at your comedy club as a blog post; well, today is one of those days: read it and weep (as long as you also factor in booking tickets...) Press Release – 07.03.18 mostly comedy a monthly comedy club, at the sun hotel in hitchin March sees two instalments of Doggett & Ephgrave’s Hitchin comedy club Mostly Comedy at The Sun Hotel: while 30 th March’s performance of PHILL JUPITUS’ tour show JUPLICITY is officially sold out, returns can potentially be snapped up on the night; tickets for 22 nd March with Red Dwarf’s NORMAN LOVETT , however, are still available at time of going to press. NORMAN is a veteran of the stand-up circuit. He played the original Comedy Store on countless occasions - once supporting The Clash, which he sees as a personal career highlight. Television credits include his BBC2 Sitcom 'I, Lovett' and Paramount Comedy's '...

Last night’s eighth birthday Mostly Comedy was pinch-yourself ridiculous. Doggett, Bremner & Ephgrave at Hitchin Mostly Comedy (20.10.16); photo by Gemma Poole. If you’d told me when we started we would eventually play host to Rory Bremner, I would never have believed you. He was one of my comedy heroes growing up (without wishing to make him feel old), who played a (John) major factor in my awareness of current affairs. It was largely thanks to his sending up of the cut-and-thrust of the news that I learnt about the key players in world politics. While Glyn and I were hugely excited about having Rory on the bill, neither of us were prepared for just how lovely, low-key and undemanding he was. Meeting your heroes can be risky, particularly when you book them at your own event and have to shoulder responsibility for their evening. It turns out we had nothing to worry about; from the moment he arrived and we helped him park to when he left ...

I've very excited about Mostly Comedy's latest coup: the fact that Rory Bremner will the club in October.  He's another act I've been a fan of for a long, long time - like with Paul Daniels, though their remit is hugely different - and someone Glyn and I hoped would play the club one day. You'd think we'd be used to high profile acts darkening our door, what with us having played host to so many, but the moment I received confirmation that Bremner would do it, I practically fist-pumped the air; if you're going to have an impressionist on the bill, you may as well have the very best.  It's amazing how far Mostly Comedy has come since it first started. I've said this before in reference to other acts, but if you'd told me at the club's first gig in 2008 (whose line-up consisted of close friends) that someone of Bremner's calibre would join us one day, I would have called you a liar and then slapped you in the face (I'm very 'handy...

This morning, I met with Glyn to plan this week's Mostly Comedy; both in an administration and a 'what will we perform at it' sense.  We resurrected and rehearsed a piece of material that's perfect for Thursday's gig, which takes place on the day of the EU Referendum; you can't let an event like that pass without making reference to it. I won't disclose too much about what we'll be performing, in case anyone coming to the show reads this - it's nice to maintain a little mystery - but it's suitably European in theme. We watched a video of the material, recorded at one of the first Mostly Comedys before we ran it over ourselves. it was nice to rediscover some funny lines and moments we'd forgotten about, and while it's not new to us, it will be new to most of the audience. That's the best we can manage at the moment, when we don't have time to come up with anything else.  After Glyn left the office, I set to work at finalising da...

I’ve just got home from recording this week’s ‘In Your Inner Ear’, which goes out on Sunday. The theme for tonight’s show – episode twenty-three, no less – was ‘No’. While my last sentence may sound like I’m channeling Frankie Howerd, I assure you I’m not; if I were, I would have followed that ‘No’ with a ‘Now, listen’. It was nice to record a new episode, as this was something we didn’t think we’d be able to do due for a while, due to Glyn’s and my lack of shared availability. This has now changed, meaning we have a little more time at our disposal. Tonight we tried out a new mixing desk that we’d bought primarily to enable us to record the show with us both in separate locations, should we not be able to find a time when we could both be in the same room (we haven’t fallen out). As it stands, don’t need this option as much as we did, but it was still nice to use better and smaller equipment than the cumbersome desk we’d been using to date. The so...

One thing that particularly pleased me about last night’s Mostly Comedy, as dull as this may sound, was the slickness with which we got the audience in. This can be a challenge to orchestrate, particularly when the demand is as high as it was yesterday for Stewart Lee. The show sold out in four hours back in June - and the emails, phone calls, texts, tweets and Facebook messages asking for tickets didn’t stop from then until a few hours before curtain up. We’ve never had such a constant demand, except for last September’s show, which also featured Stewart Lee; I think I detect a pattern.  Stewart Lee at last night's Mostly Comedy (photo by Gemma Poole ). The reasons it can be difficult are (1) we’re in an adjoining space to a small-scale theatre, so usually have to wait for a show to finish next door before we open the house, leaving us a tight window to get everyone in without starting too late, and (2) we’re often sold to capacity and, be...

Tonight, we broadcast our first live episode of ‘Doggett & Ephgrave: In Your Inner Ear’ in three weeks. As with our previous live show, the lead-up was frenetic, due to a last-minute problem with our mics; these technical issues seem to follow us about. Once they were ironed out, the show was a lot of fun. The topic of conversation was ‘school’, which gave us the chance to vent plenty of deep-seated frustrations on the subject that have been pent up for twenty years; I suspect we’ve enough material on the theme to fill an entire series. Glyn mentioned how being hit in the eye by a bouncy ball led to the school-wide bouncy ball ban, while I discussed my first ever live performance: a one-man dance to Hale & Pace’s 1991 Comic Relief single The Stonk on a desktop in an assembly. I also revealed my heated argument with a boy at infant school, because I was sure that babies came out of women’s bums; sex education at St. Nicholas JMI left a lot to be desired. For mos...

I really enjoyed tonight’s Mostly Comedy. Me, at April's Hitchin Mostly. Photo by Gemma Poole . We had Kevin Eldon on the bill for the first time, which we were both very excited about. His CV is exceptional; it’s harder to think of the programmes he hasn’t been in than the ones that he has . I’d hazard a guess that wasn’t in Bergerac, but wouldn’t want to be quoted on it. Kevin Eldon. Photo by Gemma Poole . I’ve been a fan of Kevin since his Fist of Fun days. He’s someone I always noticed and enjoyed. Tonight was no different; his performance was rammed with energy, confidence and commitment. He was also lovely; we had a nice chat with him for our podcast before kick-off. It was a lovely line-up all round. The gig was closed excellently by Bec Hill. We first met Bec back in 2008, when she manned – or womaned? - the front door of the Gilded Balloon during our first Edinburgh Festival. She’d enthusiastically...

Tonight’s Mostly Comedy was easily one of the best. I normally wouldn't say this so unreservedly, but it really, really was. Running a comedy night can sometimes feel like wading your way through endless admin, but tonight things really fell into place. It helped that Phill Jupitus was lovely. Glyn and I have have been to a few of his gigs in the past, but never had much direct contact. It turns out that he's incredibly easy to talk to. We sat down to interview him for our podcast during the interval and ended up so engrossed in our conversation that we nearly forgot to start the second half. I don’t think anyone in the audience really minded. They were all just delighted to see him. Barry From Watford also played a blinder. It’s fair to say that Alex - the man behind the prosthetics - has the same love / hate relationship with performing stand-up as us; he also knows first-hand how your attention can be split when you also ...

One song that never fails to get me in a good mood is ELO’s Mr Blue Sky. It evokes very specific memories of mine and Glyn’s first Edinburgh Festival in 2008. We wrote a comedy three-hander play set in the basket of a hot-air balloon, titled ‘The Balloon Debate’ – and every night we used Mr Blue Sky as our playout. We had a very tight get-in and get-out for the show, in which we had to build and then dismantle our faux-wicker basket. The technician would leave the song playing while we packed up; all of us singing along as we did it. The show was well-received by our audiences, but less so by critics. We also lost a lot of money. Despite overwhelming odds, the song still brings back happy memories. It is written in the style of the late-Sixties Beatles, ‘Peppered’ with references in more ways than one. The “everybody’s in a play” lyric of the first verse gently paraphrases Penny Lane, as does the fire bell a few bars later. The song is irresistibly upbeat; little won...

Yesterday, my umbrella bit the dust. I bought it in August of 2008; just a few days into mine and Glyn’s first Edinburgh Festival. It was purchased out of necessity – anyone who’s experienced a Scottish summer will know what I’m talking about – and stuck with me through thick and thin ever since. In all that time not a single bad word has passed between us. I probably shouldn’t be surprised by this: after all, it’s just an umbrella . But what an umbrella. I bought it in Boots at the foot of the Royal Mile, during a brief respite from a depressing day of flyering (there were plenty of those). Glyn got one too - though our third cast member, Cal Tumminello, decided to opt for just a plastic bag instead. It was the wettest summer the city had seen in years; consequently, Cal soon became the wettest Italian. Our matching pair of brollies was a source of constant confusion; the handles were a slightly different colour, though I co...

I’m really enjoying the process of recording our More Than Mostly Comedy Podcasts. One of the downsides of running your own night is you spend so much time concerned with admin that you seldom have the chance to chat properly with the other acts. From the moment you arrive your attention is split between trying to appease the staff and the audience; dealing with technical problems and customer queries – worrying about whether performers will arrive, and constantly keeping one eye on the time so the show doesn’t overrun, leaving them stranded in Hitchin before the last train. It becomes an exercise in multi-tasking, with so much emphasis placed on what goes on behind the scenes that little or no time is spent thinking about your own material, or talking to the rest of the line-up. A couple of years ago, while we were still at The Croft, we had the idea to record our own podcast. We thought that if we made a point of interviewing every act, w...

Anyone who follows me on Twitter will probably have noticed that I have a bit of a fascination for overhearing snippets of conversation. There’s nothing voyeuristic about it. I’m not snooping. I just enjoy the confusion that often comes with hearing a statement entirely out of context.  For a split second you are let into someone else’s world – and just as you’re getting comfortable, the door slams shut, with you left on the outside, trying to suss out the circumstances. The best ones often involve mobile phones. Hearing just one side of the conversation only adds to the confusion. Sometimes, you are left intrigued: ...and other times, the mundanity captures your imagination: One thing all these overheard conversations serve to illustrate is: none of us know what we're doing. We all stumble our way amateurishly through life, trying to make the best of our circumstances. Nothing is rehearsed, and as...