mostly david ephgrave

Tonight I had a moment of solidarity when I looked up on the tube to see Stewart Lee sat opposite me, looking through his notes on his way to do a show in the same venue, but in the other space. It’s times like that when you briefly put into perspective what you’re doing and the privileged position you’re in. There were only three people performing at Leicester Square Theatre tonight: Stewart Lee, Jason Byrne and me - and while I’m under no illusions about my position is in the comedy food chain, it’s nice to be a part of that scene and to acknowledge the achievement, however small it may be. I obviously knew he was going to be at the venue tonight and that I might bump into him, but there was something pleasingly coincidental about winding up in the same tube carriage to both be looking through our notes. I’m more than aware of how much of a grafter he is - much like his former comedy partner Richard Herring - but it was still lovely to see him me...

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...

When I woke up today, I logged into the Mostly Comedy ticketing system on the off-chance, to see how sales were faring for next June’s show with Stewart Lee and Norman Lovett (which went on pre-sale to our mailing list subscribers at 9:00am this morning), and was amazed to find forty-seven tickets had already been snapped up in the first five minutes. The day started as it was set to go on. By 9:10am, we’d sold sixty-nine; by 9:20am, the tally stood at eighty. Within an hour, we’d sold slightly more than the capacity of our soon-to-be previous venue The Market Theatre, and minutes later, we had completely sold out; by far the fastest tickets have gone for any of our events to date. We had expected demand to be high, based on Lee’s last two visits to the club, but not as high as this; particularly when the gig is still seven months away. It was extraordinary and very exciting – and bodes well for how things will go in our new venue in the New Year. ...

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...

Today, in an extraordinary turn of events, we watched Stewart Lee’s appearance at September’s Mostly Comedy sell out in four hours. It's the quickest that one of our shows has sold to date; the previous record being held jointly by Phill Jupitus and Stewart Lee (again), whose tickets were snapped up in under a week. We had expected the gig to sell fast, but not as rapidly as this. The signs were evident from the off, when twenty-five tickets went in the first five minutes. It made for an exciting day, checking in every half an hour, to see how many had gone. Now that there are none left, I don’t know what  to do with myself; perhaps I’ll take up fishing. Sadly, it's not always as easy as this. If you book the right headliner though, and you run a gig in an unsaturated area, you should do all right. It helps that our tickets are cheap, and that we've built up a good mailing list. It's still amazing that just an email, a tweet and a Facebook message can result ...

Tonight, we had our second and final show on the Brighton Fringe. While it was slicker than Thursday, it felt a little low on laughs. It was a small house – and I got the impression that most of them hadn’t necessarily wanted to come up the stairs to watch us. We had a friend in - the super-talented artist, actor and musician Kludo White - plus an agent. Kludo did an excellent job of coercing a small crowd from the pub downstairs, when it looked like no-one was going to join us. A few minutes before ‘curtain up’ (there weren't any curtains), it looked like we might be performing just to Kludo, his girlfriend and the agent. The audience would have outnumbered the performers by just one person, which would have been a very depressing prospect. Thankfully, this wasn't the case. Though the reaction was quiet, they were enjoying it. Despite this, I still managed to convince myself very early on that they didn’t want to be there, and c...