Skip to main content

The Handy Handheld Handyman.


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 right. I’ve put the specifics on record to ensure accuracy if they ever make a Doggett & Ephgrave biopic. Not if: when.

Our remote was reliable until early last year, when it would occasionally fail to trigger the slide-show. It then died during my solo run in Brighton in May. We looked into replacing it to discover it had been discontinued, and that all later models didn't have a volume control, which was essential to our act. Without it, I can't adjust the level of the audiovisual clips that regularly feature in our material. Functioning versions of our original remote now sell on Amazon for over £300.

(I bet you're hooked on every word.)

We’ve tried various brands since, but none live up to the job; they either don't have the range or the reliability. I was starting to panic, until my dad stepped in with his soldering iron to repair the first one. This means we can eke out the Star Trek Porn Letter for another decade; the audience's loss is our gain.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...
Read more

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.
Read more