mostly david ephgrave

Tonight’s Mostly Comedy had a very special headliner - true to form - in Simon Day and was a great gig all in all, though the last few hours before the show were a little frenetic, so we went into it pretty stressed. June's Hitchin Mostly Comedy line-up: (clockwise from top) Simon Day, Spring Day and Lorna Shaw. If there’s one thing I could eliminate from the whole Mostly Comedy experience it would be the tendency for a race-to-the-finish (or more accurately, a race to the start) with no backstage to disappear to to get your head together for it; just a dressing room would do, rather than slipping into the gents’ (which has the world’s slowest closing outer door) feeling sweaty and low status, hoping you won't first meet meet the main act when they burst in on you in your underwear. Running the club means constantly switching hats, much like that old, chaotic Tommy Cooper sketch, and the lack of a proper backstage area is often the ...

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 ...