mostly david ephgrave

Much as I’m loath to admit it, the time may have come to retire the envelope I keep my Edinburgh setlist in. The problem is I’m a strange balance between being slightly obsessive-compulsive and gently superstitious, and once I’ve started doing things a certain way, I hate to change them. It’s not so bad that I can’t leave the house without flicking my bedroom lightswitch off and on twenty-seven times while singing Mad Dogs and Englishman in a Glaswegian accent - I managed to knock that on the head - but altering things at this stage still makes me a little uneasy. I didn’t have any problems with last year’s envelope as it was made by Tyvek (which is probably the dullest sentence I’ve ever written on my blog in its four-year history). Tyvek envelopes are far more sturdy than conventional envelopes as they’re technically not made of paper (which is my second dullest sentence); they consist of high-density polythene fibres that have been flash-spun, or at least that...

Today saw another day of busying myself with press stuff, though this time, the focus was this month’s Mostly Comedy. I got bored of putting together press releases long ago, if I’m honest, as there are only so many cut-and-shut versions of same information you can take before you want to stave your own head in with a pickaxe. Some may say this is an extreme attitude, but I’d like to hear them say it to me when I’m wielding a mattock. It's particularly frustrating when you can no longer guarantee the event will be covered in the local papers anyway; it’s become an exercise in pleasing myself without pleasing myself at all. I didn't go into performance to become an unpaid PR. Still, it’s a means to end, as if the press pick it up, there’s a reasonable chance it will make for good copy. Now I’ve clarified my disinterest in doing it, the thought of reading today's has probably left you salivating. So here it is; when you’ve finishe...

I'm currently hurtling from Finsbury Park to Hitchin on my way back from a gig, but I can't get comfortable because THE TRAIN I'M ON IS NOTHING LIKE THE TRAINS THAT NORMALLY RUN THIS ROUTE .  I've been travelling from Herts to London on and off for twenty years, and in all that time, the journey has never been serviced by a train like this. It's the kind I'd expect to take from St Pancras to Brighton or from Vauxhall to Leatherhead; not from Finsbury Park to Hitchin (seasoned travellers of the South East will know what I mean). The colour-scheme and seat design is completely wrong, and the adjustable shelf in front of me isn't the right shape. I feel like I'm having the dullest outer-body experience ever: everything around me is wrong - and what I don’t get is no-one else seems fazed by this. Three paragraphs into this blog post and I’m safely home, but still shaken by my commuting experience. All the way back I was ...

The downside to writing a blog every day is when you haven’t been up to much you don’t have anything to report. I really wanted to get on with some writing, but it didn’t happen, mainly because I started too late. There’s not much point in trying once you get to the afternoon, as you don’t have the sharpness of mind to see it through. It’s not so much that I need to necessarily write stuff from scratch - I’m talking about stand-up material here - as remembering what I’ve already written blogs about already that might be of use. I’ll often stumble across some note or other that’ll remind me of something I wrote before that might work in a live context; it’s just hard to keep hold of these thoughts for long. (Thankfully, I have six notepads full of ideas and reminders to work through, though the only snag today was that five of them were at the office and I didn’t have time to go and get them.) One thing I did do was eat a lot of biscuits. I...

...and so another month passes.  I can't believe it's nearly June. Where does the time go (and all those other such things that old people say)? May's a key month for me, as both my wife's and my birthday fall within it. It's also when the Brighton Festival takes place, which I usually rock up to; either on my own or with Glyn. It's a month I'm very aware of and never expect to actually be, in the same way a child might think Christmas won't come around.  I should go to bed, but my cat's sleeping on my lap as I write. She's been a little edgy all day, so I'm loath to move her, now she's finally settled down. She often brings me comfort, so I like to give her comfort too. Having said that, she just yawned and leapt off me in the direction of the kitchen; so much for comfort: she just wants food.  I should go to bed before it gets late. So long May 2016; you were fair-to-middling. Let's make June a little better, yeah?

Yesterday, my dad - being the technical genius he is - fixed one of Doggett & Ephgrave’s most important pieces of kit: our slide-show remote. Sexy beast. The catchily-named Logitech R-R0001 2.4 Ghz Cordless Presenter has been an invaluable, yet silent companion to our live work since we started using a projector to do our two-man stand-up back in 2008. It’s been on stage with us at the Edinburgh, Brighton, Camden and Leicester Festivals, during all of our Leicester Square Theatre dates (and a fair few at The Soho Theatre), plus gigs at various other London venues (including the 100 Club), in Hitchin – and in the lighting boxes of every theatre our musical show ‘Glad All Over!: A Sixties Celebration’ took in during its bijou tour; the little battery-powered chappie gets about. Our live act revolves around a Keynote presentation running on an off-stage computer, that I control from the stage with the remote in my left hand, while I hold my mic in my ...

Storing squeezy honey next to barbecue sauce is an accident waiting to happen. This photo is a waste of web space. I never used to think they looked alike, but in the dingy light of my food cupboard the similarity is striking. It would only take a momentary lapse in concentration for my mug of redbush tea to end up with a distinctly South American tang, or my plate of chips to taste like a swarm of bees have sicked up on it. I’m all for experimenting with flavour, but there's a limit. Every time I reach for one or the other, I intend to put it back on a different shelf, but then forget about it. It’s like my subconscious craves living on the edge. The risk of calamity makes it all worthwhile; you should see me on Heroin. Don’t let it be said that I didn’t have any warning. Only with a foul taste in my mouth will I finally learn my lesson. Then I’ll make one of those foreboding ‘never retrieve a Frisbee from an electrical substation /...

I'm in love with my dehumidifier. Perhaps I've pitched my appreciation for my most recently acquired household appliance too highly. I don’t want my affection to be misconstrued; you need to be careful about what you put on the Internet. I’m not attracted to my dehumidifier. I don’t crave intimacy with it. I’ve never dreamt of us growing old together; both living off my comfortable pension (ha); me, surprisingly sprightly in my late nineties, and my beloved EcoAir ECO DD122 Desiccant Dehumidifier still fully functioning, despite having long been rendered obsolete. When I say I’m in love with it, what I actually mean is it's extremely satisfying to use. There’s something strangely rewarding about emptying its two-litre reservoir at the end of the day, even though the only part I played in the deal was switching it on. Still, it couldn’t have done it without me. What is this new-found fascination with moisture removal? It’s like my Window Vac obsession all ov...

Tonight’s episode of In Your Inner Ear was the most relaxed one to do. Maybe it’s because our chosen topic for the evening – being dull – is very close to our hearts, be it intentionally or unintentionally. Or perhaps, now we’ve reached our ninth programme, we’ve got into the groove of what we doing enough to not be flustered by it. Whatever the reason, it felt good to do. It was less like making a radio show, and more like having an enjoyable conversation, without tipping so far off the scale as to become self-indulgent (though I’ll confirm this when I’ve listened back to it). The only frustrating thing is the quality of the broadcast, which is very variable. This is something the owner of the station is aware of (as I’ve mentioned previously) and is trying to fix. The studio moves to different premises shortly, possibly before next week’s broadcast, which will allow the chance to look at the set-up from scratch, and improve it. Either way, the st...

Sometimes, a thought will enter my head that is so mundane that when I catch myself thinking it, I realise just how dull I have become. I had two such moments yesterday, both in quick succession. I was making leek and potato soup (one of my few specialties) – and as I chopped up a leek I thought about how it clearly a member of the onion family. I mulled over the similarities for a good few minutes before I realised what I was doing. I’ll usually also chop up a couple of small potatoes to put into the soup, but as I was making a large batch, I decided to use just one big one. I couldn’t believe how much easier it was to use the peeler on it; I made a mental note to remember this for future reference. I guess this is what happens as you get a little older; the small things start to get you through the day. My life is littered with these moments; I daren’t list too many, for fear of tarnishing my public image.   Oh, go on then: just one more. The other day I was...