mostly david ephgrave

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...

If you’re stuck for a suitable Christmas gift for your nearest and dearest, what could be better than an outsized wooden ampersand? I spotted them on sale in Wilkinson at the weekend. The shelves were chock-full of the product; presumably in anticipation of the festive rush. I shouldn't have been surprised by this: surely no household is complete without a teak-stained, ornamental conjunction. Now's a good time to stock up, while their price has been slashed to £4; it would be foolish to ignore a 50% discount. There’s also no harm in indulging in a bulk-buy; a plus point of wooden wording is its slow degradation rate. They also make the perfect gift. Don’t tell Glyn, but I've got one earmarked for his Christmas present. It can be the ‘&’ of Doggett & Ephgrave.

Rather intriguingly, one of my tweets about last night’s Strictly Come Dancing semi-final was included in The Telegraph’s Strictly Liveblog (which you take a peek at here ). I’m amongst illustrious company, including Gaby Roslin and ex-Strictly contestant Denise van Outen; I’ve either finally achieved fame, or small-scale notoriety. It was nice to be included. I sometimes worry that I tweet too much about Strictly; I know Twitter shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but I don’t want to clutter up people’s feeds with uninteresting content. That said, I follow plenty of people who tweet frequently about programmes I don't watch, such as The X Factor or The Apprentice -  and can easily filter the inapplicable out. As it goes, the tweet that was included wasn’t exactly my funniest work; if I’d realised that the UK broadsheets scoured the SCD hashtag I would have tried a little harder.      It turns out that it wasn’t jus...

Would it be weird if I started carrying around a shoehorn?   Thanks to earning my living as an actor (this being a joke in and of itself), I seldom have much in the way of additional funds. As a result, I only own two pairs of decent shoes; one of which used to be my dad's. (One of the two pairs , that is.) I don’t want to paint a picture of myself as being destitute. At least not literally; my artistic skills are limited at best. I have other footwear, but these are mostly ‘show shoes’ – or showoes – and not the sort of thing I’d wear out on the street. I’ve worn my dad’s shoes so many times that the soles now have about as much grip as a snail on a heavily-vaselined window. If you’ve never put a snail onto lubricated glass then your childhood was evidently less deprived than mine; only-children are forced to make own entertainment. This lack of purchase with the pavement has led to two separate incidents, both of which I’ve covered on this blog (click here ...

I’ve come to the conclusion that the loneliest person in my home town of Hitchin is the man who runs Carpetright. The store has been there for as long as I can remember. I used to walk past it every day when I was a student, as my drama school was on the opposite side of the road - and even though it’s been on my radar for all of this time, I can count the amount of customers I've seen in there on the fingers of one finger. What makes it worse is the store is massive; encased in a wall of windows on two of its four sides. It screams the fact it’s empty; they only need a couple of lizards and a tumbleweed to make the illusion complete. Maybe it's a Mafia front; they'd certainly have plenty of material to dispose the bodies in. They’ve only ever had one member of staff, whose desk is situated at the rear of the store; brightly lit and in full view of the outside world. It’s no wonder people seldom go in there; c overing the...

What more satisfying way is there to end your day than using a pair of tweezers to pull a large, painful splinter from your finger?  (Don’t let it be said that I don’t know how to live .) It got stuck in there about an hour ago, when I lifted the lid off the wooden staging we use Mostly Comedy, after the gig, to replace some of the equipment that we store beneath it. It went straight in with no messing about, then proceeded to give me gyp for the rest of the evening. (People don’t use the word ‘gyp’ enough these days. Perhaps I can bring about gyp resurgence, though I'd better double-check the correct spelling before I do this.) I quite enjoyed tonight (splinter notwithstanding). I wasn’t looking forward to it beforehand, mainly because myself and Glyn haven’t been able to work together much over the last few weeks; you can easily fall out of the natural rhythm you have as a double act when you haven’t spent much time in each other...

I have a bit of a guilty pleasure. Well, I say that it's guilty: I’ve only prefaced it with this because I’m afraid of what you might think. I’m a bit of a fan of Diagnosis Murder. Actually, I’m quite a lot of a fan. So much so that I own a couple of the DVD box-sets. They're not mine, technically: they were presents for my girlfriend. It’s a good job she likes it too; if she didn’t, I doubt I’d find a member of the opposite sex who’d be prepared to see past it. Don’t get me wrong: I know it’s not exactly gritty . That’s part of the appeal. It isn’t challenging – but has enough of a storyline to keep you interested. It’s straightforward entertainment; not afraid to play for laughs when necessary. The thing that always draws me back is its central performer, Dick Van Dyke. I think he's truly underrated. He’s the physical embodiment of versatility: the sort of performer who could never look out of his depth. He comes fr...