mostly david ephgrave

Tonight’s Mostly Comedy was a great way to kick off the New Year for the club, particularly thanks to the amount we raised on the door for the charity Mind , to mark Time to Change’s Time To Talk Day , which takes place on 1 st February.   I think a comedy club’s the perfect place to spread word of the importance of not shying away from the topic of mental health, nor dismissing clinical conditions such as depression as some kind of active choice, or weakness. It doesn’t seem to matter how much publicity there is for the subject - it’s certainly in vogue for political parties to promise to devote more money to tackle the lack of parity between mental and physical health - the misconceptions (and lack of actual funding) are rife. The statistic that’s often bandied around is how 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem in any given year, yet despite everyone knowing this, so much still has to happen for the stigma attached to be lifted; one of the bigg...

Today I completed easily my least favourite task to do with running a comedy club (or putting shows on full-stop) and wrote my first press release of the year for this month’s Mostly. Actually, while it may be the first press release I’ve written this year (not "may be"; it is ) it’s not the first copy I’ve put together, having already supplied blurbs for Brighton, applications for Edinburgh and mailing list mail-outs for the club (and all the associated website listings and ticketing links that go with it), so I’d already done as much in all but name - so it’s no wonder I find it so tedious, when it’s the least satisfying and most time-consuming part of what I do. While I don’t enjoy it, I'm fortunate that it’s a job that hasn’t been so pressing recently (no pun intended), what with how often our dates sell out in advance, though I still have to write them even then, as you can’t run an event without promoting it, however well it’s ...

One of the things I did today, besides meditating, visiting ASDA and running my show (I didn't do it in the supermarket), was write the press release for this month's Mostly Comedy.  See it below, in all its promotional glory; what a cop-out for a blog post. Press Release – 01.11.16 mostly comedy a monthly comedy and music club, at the sun hotel in hitchin Following on from last month’s sold out eighth anniversary show headed by the multi-BAFTA-winning comedian and impressionist RORY BREMNER, Hitchin’s stand-up duo DOGGETT & EPHGRAVE will host another cracking Mostly Comedy line-up in their hometown this month, featuring two performers who are perhaps better-known under their character pseudonyms than as themselves. “Top Ten Foster’s Comedy God” TOM BINNS will appear as his comic alter egos IVAN BRACKENBURY and IAN D MONTFORT . Tom’s an award-winning character comedian who’s made a huge impact on the scene since his first TV ap...

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...