mostly david ephgrave

While writing my new show's progressing reasonably steadily, in my heart, I know it needs to be the last project I do alone for some time. I guess it was my choice - though it often doesn't feel like it - that most things I do now are self-generated, but they all leave me needing to draw on a reserve of self-belief that's fragile at best. I have to ignore so much negative reinforcement to keep going, which is hard when the personal problems I've suffered have much the same impact. The truth is that what I do is increasingly lonely, and isolation triggers the false narratives my past can dredge up. I think my abandonment issues are understandable, but it doesn't stop them from dragging me back. And recent events in my life have reinforced my lack of self-worth, making it harder to ignore them. I didn't deliberately set out to be a solo performer. I was in a band and a double act and sought healthy collaboration. And while being an actor inevitably requires forgin...

Today, I finally finished compiling my 2017/18 tax records (with my wife as my unpaid assistant), which makes for depressing reading unless you're a fan of minus figures. (If so, then get ready for  this : -4922.679232) (I know: phwoar) I find myself at a crossroads over what to do next. The past four years have been primarily about performing stand-up to fringe audiences to work up my solo chops, having always performed comedy as one half of a double-act up to that point. While I've taken shows to London, Brighton, Bath, Leicester, Hitchin and Letchworth over that time, there's no doubt Edinburgh was the biggest underlying factor, with the other dates being either a warm-up for or a cool-down from three consecutive Edinburgh Fringes, with me writing another solo show in 2015 that I didn't take to Scotland, but was still put together with going there alone as my motivation. There's no denying the experience has been challenging, both creatively and financial...

The other day, I watched a rough cut of the performance of my show we filmed at The Market Theatre in Hitchin last month and Glyn has done a splendid job with it; I look set to be in the uncharted territory of being both almost happy with a representation of me doing stand-up and looking forward to sharing it. I’m not saying it’s perfect - it wanders off a bit towards the end, but it did as a piece anyway - but the vast majority is a good quality reading of what I was trying to do that the audience were really on board for; I hope that by having a solid copy of my stuff to give to industry people, I may be able to end the stand-off between trying to book dates for them to come to and them being available to see it. In a way, the video is like having evidence: proof of the fact I’m not as bad a comic as my inner monologue tells me or like a handful of misunderstanding reviewers might say. I was actually quite proud of what I wound up with this year,...

One of my favourite moments of last Thursday’s show was revealing Jim Bowen was 44 in this picture for a guy at the back to shout, “Fuck off’. It’s easily the best reaction the photo has ever had as it perfectly mirrors what I thought when I first discovered it. It’s shocking enough to want to trace Bowen’s birth certificate in case he’d been rounding down his age considerably or had a similar ever-present existence to Pennywise from Stephen King’s It. If Bowen was genuinely in his early-to-mid forties he must have seen some truly terrible things in his lifetime akin to what Winston saw in Ghostbusters II; that or he never troubled his local chemist in search of moisturizer. I don’t mean to cast judgment so much as register my disbelief; you could add twenty years to his age without flinching. I can only hope that when I reach Bowen’s age in seven years I won’t look as old as him; it’s not too much to ask for, is it? I keep myself rel...

It's a time for press releases right now as I set to work on promoting the various forthcoming Mostly Comedy dates and rather crucially (as it's being filmed it to showcase my comedic ways) a performance of my recent solo show at the Market Theatre in Hitchin. In the case of Mostly Comedy it's working out nicely, as the last-minute edit of a press release I'd originally written for St Albans' aborted October line-up (which has since moved to Hitchin) and sent to The Comet on a whim on Monday has resulted in some excellent coverage in today's edition; this should help boost sales for the show, which is perfect as it only went on sale last weekend. Herts-based fame. The press release for my show hasn't been taken up yet, but there's still time, although I did use part of it in an email I sent to our nearly 900-strong Mostly Comedy mailing list last week (who are all these people?) See below for the press release, then join us on the 11th ; the s...

The soundtrack to my day today, inevitably, what with it being released this morning, was the new Paul McCartney album ‘Egypt Station’, and to paraphrase one of its lyrics, “It’s been a blast”. Listening to new material from an artist you’ve followed your whole life can be a tense experience, particularly when - like McCartney - they’re eternally teetering toward inevitable comparison with their own past. Paul’s one of a tiny handful of people who somehow manages to be both hugely respected for his work with The Beatles while also often being derided as a figure of fun who supposedly hasn’t done anything to rival his early days for an eternity. Now, the latter half of that sentence is bollocks and is something that - at least in the eyes of the music press - has been refuted so often by reviews of his recent work, which has generally been seen to have hit a bit of a purple streak since the late Nineties. Yet despite this, the cliche's a difficu...

I’m aware time is ticking regarding this year’s Fringe, though I’m trying my best to be measured in my response and not be overwhelmed by it. I’m finding it hard to get in the right frame of mind this year, and while there’s a sense things are moving forward at my work-in-progress shows, I’m weary of talking myself up. I hate it when the process starts to feel so serious as that’s the worst frame of mind for writing comedy. This is why I’m not going to labour the point today as I’ll only blow smoke under the harder parts of what I’m doing; sometimes I don’t want to be asked about it, by myself or by anyone else. The best approach is to be gentle and delicate and only dip in and out of it as much as is necessary. It’s been a hard few years of working alone from which I’d like a break. The good news is now able to pay myself more for the effort I put into Mostly Comedy, but the bad news is it still takes up too much energy. I’m hoping I can begin to strike a more healthy balance, t...

One thing I’m finding hard to get my head around as I approach another Edinburgh is ignoring the loneliness that goes with putting together a solo show again. (This will be my fourth in three years, or my difficult fourth album.) I don’t know what it is - it’s probably just cumulative - but I’m finding it difficult to work up the requisite energy. I think it's partly due to the lack of an outside influence to coerce me into doing it. Most of what I do starts and ends with me, and with each passing year, this self-sufficiency becomes boring; I long for the time when someone else brings something to the table that excites and inspires me and becomes a kicking-off point for something creative, but that's not really an option now I'm no longer in a band and my double act's been on a low pilot-light for a few years. Despite my despondent tone, today's actually been a good day creatively, after a thorough sifting through my blog (...

Yesterday saw the second sold out Mostly Comedy in a row, though this time we were playing host to a line-up who’ve all performed at the club in the past; one of them, very regularly. (The bill - in case you're wondering - was Lucy Porter, Phil Kay and Brodi Snook.) I think it was inevitable yesterday’s show would be more relaxed than the day before, as we had less to prove by nature of the fact we knew everyone on the bill, and the gig hadn’t had the same dramatic ‘selling out in fourteen minutes to be cancelled and then reinstated’ lead-up. That said, there’s always a risk you’ll keep telling yourself it will be easier for you to be too laid back and make mistakes. Phil Kay, on top form last night (23.11.17) The glaringly big difference was I was hosting alone, as Glyn was in Wimborne, kicking off the adult panto tour he company manages every year. On paper, this shouldn’t have been too much of a challenge, as I was turning up t...

Well, that’s my final 2017 Edinburgh show over with; stick a fork in me: I’m done. I'd hoped the last gig would be a busy one, but ended up only having three people in, which was strange as eight had booked in advance, and one person in the audience (the splendid comic Daniel Cook) was a walk-in, so six punters were missing in action; perhaps they were enticed into a different show instead? Either way, I’ve got their money. Despite the low numbers, it ended up being one of the most fun shows of the run, and a suitable way to draw things to a close. It helped that Dan's a big laugher, but the other two were great too. I was particularly pleased they were all firmly on-board with the ‘comparing my career to Sam Palladio’s’ through-line, as the reaction had been a bit muted for this for the last few gigs; prior to this, Sam’s secret video cameo at the end of the show would usually get big laughs, which always pleased me, as he’s very funny in ...

Today’s show was another fun one, which was just what I needed after arriving at the venue this morning feeling very tired and lacking in energy. It started a little awkwardly, with just three people in who were all sat on one side of the room, leading to me christening the performance early on as the Crick in the Neck Experience, before another couple snuck in a few minutes into the show and sat on the other side, thus giving my eye-line a greater sense of balance; no need to call a chiropractor just yet. Without wishing to tempt fate so early on into the game, I’m really enjoying the show at the moment; I’m happier with it than I was with last year’s at this stage and I think the content’s stronger. I’m using the projector more and I think there’s a little more variety to it, what with the songs and the like. One thing I did like was last year’s ending, which tied a lot of the material together; while this year’s ending’s simpler, it's okay t...

This morning, for the first time in a good few years really, I got my acoustic out and sang a few of my old songs - and get this: it felt great. It’s mad that I’ve not done it for so long, when music was what defined me for so many years; there was a time when all I wanted to be was a songwriter and musician, recording with my band or on my own, yet somewhere down the line, my priorities changed and I moved on to different things. I’d still sing and play - the various actor / muso gigs I did made sure of that - but the actively creating musician inside me was obscured, which is a huge shame really. I’m not sure what it was that made me do it today, though a combination of the music I listened to while getting ready and the fact that Mark Morriss played at Mostly Comedy last week (thus inadvertently reminding me of what I used to do) saw me extricate my jumbo acoustic from its dusty lair* and run through my old repertoire. It was not without pain - the tips of the fingers o...

One thing I like Paul McCartney for is his b-sides and his lesser-known work. Sadly, a clichéd view of his solo material has formed over the years that does no justice to his huge back catalogue. At best, people tend to rate Wings 1973 album Band on the Run as a near-return to form of his unparalleled Beatles period, but after that, critique tends to fall silent, save the easy - and unreasonable - allusions to twee granny musak made by Lennon during the bitter early Seventies. In reality, the last twenty years have seen a surprising array of top-quality albums that are regularly described as “his best work since Band on the Run”, whilst forgetting this same comment has been applied to nearly every release since 1997’s Flaming Pie. It’s normally his choice of singles that cloud the water, by not always being reflective of his current output. While there are many songs I’d site as favourites, one popped in my mind that’s worth a mention: the ...

Despite being Glyn-less, tonight’s Mostly Comedy was a lot of fun. Mostly Panoramic. Apparently, it’s impossible to get us both in the same room when Richard Herring’s on the bill; I missed our inaugural (don’t mention Trump) Sun Hotel Mostly last January - which Richard also headlined - due to illness, and Glyn missed tonight's as he was Company Managing the Market Theatre’s Adult Panto on the road (which isn't an illness). While all went well last year, it was bound to be a little fraught as it was our first proper show at the venue (excluding the 'Sun-mer Special' the previous summer); for me there would have been less of an excuse. Thankfully, I needn’t have worried as everything was slick and no-one died, thanks to the hard work of the staff, Paul, Gemma, Lisa, Stephen, Clive and Glen, who all stepped up-to-the-plate; while I refuse to include their surnames here, I’m eternally grateful. (I haven't learnt their surnames.)...

So 2016 draws to a close, and what a year it’s been. I’m not going to delve into the political upheaval of the past twelve months as, if I did, it would dominate this blog post and bring the mood down. I also won’t dwell on the sad loss of so many influential figures in the public eye; a list so long, it's very easy to miss people off. On a personal level, the year has been mixed. The biggest step was taking my second solo show to my first solo Edinburgh Fringe. This was a huge leap of faith that was terrifying to comprehend as it drew closer, yet I came out the other side of that 24-date run largely unscathed, having genuinely enjoyed it. I can’t thank my wife and family enough for their unflinching support as I cycled in and out of confidence, and my friends (and Best Men) Glyn Doggett and Stephen Halliday for their advice, time and feedback; they’re all in my Last Will and Testament, though my estate is such that they won’t wind up with much...

I just watched back my set from Wednesday’s Mostly Comedy (which Glyn edited down and sent to me) and was pleased with how it came across. It featured a mix of new material and a routine from my first solo show, which I haven’t touched since that particular show’s last performance. It’s a bit ridiculous really, but I scrapped pretty much all of it immediately after the last run, and have seldom performed any of it again, mainly due to one negative (and frankly not very professional) review that I received, that nearly made me give up hope as far as doing solo comedy goes; such is the potential impact of a poorly timed critique for your confidence. With a bit of distance, I’m starting to feel this decision was too overzealous on my part. Looking back on some of the bits and pieces in my first show, I’m actually quite proud of the writing. This has only really occurred to me as a result of dipping into a few videos of my early solo gigs and realising...