mostly david ephgrave

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...

I’m currently on the train back from Brighton to London, after the first of our two shows on the Brighton Fringe . Tonight went well, with a better turnout and response than we’d expected. It can be hard to know how a show will go on the Free Fringe; the fact that the audience hasn’t paid can often lead to a stilted reaction. They haven’t invested in your performance – and may not even see a flyer before they come in. People often assume that a free show will be shit. They’ll sometimes even say this to your face. This happened once when I was flyering for our 2010 Edinburgh Fringe show, ‘Big in Small Places’. It was towards the end of the run and I’d lost the will to live; there’s nothing quite like repeatedly handing out photos of yourself for lowering morale. “So, you’re a comedian?” slurred the pissed potential punter. “Allegedly.” “Tell me a joke.” “Come and see our show later and I’ll tell you some then.” I hoped he...

Today, myself and Glyn spent the afternoon putting the finishing touches to our Leicester Festival show, Doggett & Ephgrave Project Stuff.   I think it’s in pretty good shape. We’ve made a point of cutting out a lot of the waffle that was slowing down the show the last time we performed it. As a result, it’s running a little under time (clocking in at about 45 minutes), but it definitely feels better for it. We’re also not taking the audience reaction into account, which should hopefully add a couple of minutes. If we have an audience, that is. If we don’t, we’ll be sure to leave an appropriate length of silence after each joke, to take the place of any potential laughter. In the past, we’ve found it difficult to make the show come across as a cohesive whole. I think we’ve finally managed to address this. The joins between material have been smoothed over – and nothing feels too out of place. We considered putting in another chunk or two of material to flesh ou...

I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do today. I’ve got a number things I should be doing, but can’t really get started until I receive either an email or a phone call. As a result, I’m just sitting, waiting for something to happen. A lot of my life is spent doing this. This time next week, Doggett & Ephgrave perform our show at Dave’s Leicester Festival for two nights. I feel like we’re on schedule; I just hope that we have an audience. We did quite well for sales last year, amazingly, considering our relatively low profile, but that was on a Thursday and Friday. This time we’re performing on a Monday and Tuesday - so I’m expecting this to have a knock-on effect. We’ve also got our first London Mostly Comedy of 2014 next Wednesday, with Phil Kay and Sam Fletcher joining us on the bill. It will be nice to have a three-day run of gigs (we’ll also be doing our Leicester show in the second half), I just hope we have a sufficient...