mostly david ephgrave

Yesterday, controversially, was the first day in nineteen months with a Mostly Comedy at the end of it, which is the longest gap between gigs in our nearly thirteen-year history. Sharing a showbiz stance with Phil Cornwell. It's fair to say we had no idea how long we'd be closed when we cancelled our show planned for March 2020. If anything, we felt we might be being over-cautious. But little did we know what lay ahead. And while that still applies today, to an extent, it was at least good to take baby steps towards pre-pandemic normality. Now, we just need public interest and confidence to build to the point that we start to pull in enough punters to make a profit while being as Covid-secure as possible. For the most part, the show was like putting on a pair of comfy shoes once we got past a couple of tech issues which meant we opened late. While we only started approximately fifteen minutes after our advertised kickoff, the mad dash to the end of our soundcheck left me feelin...

It was great to see Alan Partridge return to his much-longed-for home the BBC tonight. I've loved Alan pretty much since the beginning, when tapes of his early appearances in Radio 4's 'On the Hour' and 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' would pass between a few select friends who were in-the-know. I can still remember the first time I saw his face, in a trailer for the TV version of 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' - I didn't get to 'The Day Today' until a little later - and how excited seeing it made me; I was so obsessed, I recorded the audio of his ABBA medley with Rebecca Front with a tape recorder and would often sing along to it in Alan-style. The first series of 'I'm Alan Partridge' was a revelation, coming at the time I'd moved to college to do a BTEC in Performing Arts. Each week, I'd disappear to the upstairs bedroom where we kept our spare telly to watch the latest episode in near-religious style, to then pick it apart rev...

According to Twitter wisdom, twenty-five years ago today, the satirical send up of the media 'The Day Today' first aired on BBC2; a programme that had a huge influence on me as a teenager and I still love to this day. Until recently, I was sure I was introduced to the work of Chris Morris & Steve Coogan et al by a friend from the drama group I used to go to at the Gordon Craig Theatre, when he lent me his copy of the radio version of 'The Day Today' - 'On the Hour' - along with radio episodes of 'Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge' as a kid. I was absolutely certain of this and would have staked my life on it until I happened to see this friend again when he came to one of my shows a couple of years ago and asserted afterwards that I introduced them to him . Now I don't know what to think: it's as if the very fabric of my existence has been metaphorically ripped at source; that, or I've just got a shit memory. Ultimately it d...

Personally, I found the best way to cope with the shitstorm beginning in U.S. today was to avoid it entirely. If it were feasible, I’d switch off the news for the next four years and hope for the best. I can’t bear the thought of seeing his ignorant orange face. How was it even possible for a man barely capable of finishing a cogent sentence to end up in the White House? How many faux pas (to put it lightly) must he be responsible for, for the people who voted for him to see sense? Well done, America: you out-Brexited Brexit. Thankfully, outside of the odd post on Twitter and on the BBC News website, I managed to avoid the inauguration. My day was spent doing banking for Mostly Comedy, meeting my mum and watching the Partridge film Alpha Papa. The latter was just what the doctor ordered, to use a tired cliché. When things are bad, it pays to scale it all down and seek enjoyment in the little things. Speaking of little things: I hope his hands are t...