mostly david ephgrave

Today I continued the work I was doing yesterday, whittling down a jokes’ list to send to my PR before we meet on Friday, and watching the video of my extended work-in-progress set from May’s Hitchin Mostly while making detailed notes. It felt good to be working extensively all day, knowing I’d squeezed as much as I could out of the time. The most pleasing aspect of my set that night was it was surprisingly relaxed considering the circumstances, with a good percentage sitting comfortably together in a way that related to the show’s title. Watching it also reminded me there’s nothing wrong with taking your time over a story without trying to race to the next laugh - and while some of my delivery was rushed, a lot of it landed well. My only concern was a lot of the positive reaction at the gig was fed by the ad-libs that came about from moments specific to that night alone, and while this was as much a part of the performance as the prepared material...

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...