mostly david ephgrave

I'm grateful for the little light that came on today, metaphorically speaking*, while playing a few old songs on my acoustic. It was like a gap in my DNA was filled** to complete me. I felt comfortable despite being out of practice, and for once, I didn't question what I was doing; it just felt right. I had a brief moment of clarity that wasn't undercut by my mood or sense of self-worth. If I can tap into this, it might give me the impetus to start something new. It probably helps that I've been revisiting the songs from my 2018 standup show, 'David Ephgrave: My Part in His Downfall', by posting video clips of them on social media as a placeholder until I start my next project (whatever that is). In truth, it's hard to know where to begin with that. The combination of Mostly Comedy's closure after so much difficulty and my long, drawn-out route back to the Fringe has left me burnt out emotionally, creatively and financially, and I need a chance to regrou...

Today proved how much better my show works with a bigger audience, something that's probably not that surprising, though it was lovely to have it confirmed. I didn't have that many in - probably about twelve, though a few more were shown through about ten minutes before the end when it was far too late to do a recap so God knows what they thought I was on about - though the impact on the atmosphere was huge. Suddenly, there were laughs to ride and the chance to have fun with the material, and I felt like a standup again too, which was a bonus. That's one of the positives to doing a lot of shows to small audiences on the Fringe: by the time you're back in front of a more substantial crowd, you quickly see the benefit of all those gigs when you had to work for a reaction. This was the case when we filmed my last show, 'David Ephgrave: My Part in His Downfall', a month after the 2018 Fringe. Putting it in front of a packed crowd felt like a treat, and the fact I wa...

The other day, I watched a rough cut of the performance of my show we filmed at The Market Theatre in Hitchin last month and Glyn has done a splendid job with it; I look set to be in the uncharted territory of being both almost happy with a representation of me doing stand-up and looking forward to sharing it. I’m not saying it’s perfect - it wanders off a bit towards the end, but it did as a piece anyway - but the vast majority is a good quality reading of what I was trying to do that the audience were really on board for; I hope that by having a solid copy of my stuff to give to industry people, I may be able to end the stand-off between trying to book dates for them to come to and them being available to see it. In a way, the video is like having evidence: proof of the fact I’m not as bad a comic as my inner monologue tells me or like a handful of misunderstanding reviewers might say. I was actually quite proud of what I wound up with this year,...

The song on the radio as I left today's therapy appointment was 'I'm Still Standing'; anyone who saw my Edinburgh show will understand the significance. For those of you who didn’t see it - who must surely be in the minority - there was a sequence in which I talked about my weekly appointments at the mental health unit in Stevenage, which has to be one of the bleakest addresses on the planet, and of how my mood there would genuinely be affected by the songs that play on the radio while I’m waiting to be seen, that seem to be allowed to play through with scant regard for the state of the nervous systems of some of the patients there. While I don’t want to steal the thunder of my own material (and my God, it’s thunderous) some of the songs I’ve heard whilst waiting to be seen at the mental health unit are pretty much the last thing you’d want to hear when you suffer from depression; some of the favourites in Jive Bunny’s depressive megamix include All By Myself, Fre...

It’s very seldom something like filming a show goes well without question, so I was extremely fortunate and grateful for how last night’s recording of my solo show at The Market Theatre went. For starters, I was amazed we sold out, as that only tends to happen when we host an act at Mostly Comedy that’s a big pull. I’ve cancelled countless performances through the years (admittedly primarily in London) due to poor - or no - turnout, so I’ve grown to expect people won't come; each time this happens chips away at your self confidence despite the many perfectly justifiable reasons for it, so I was genuinely surprised and delighted when ticket sales suddenly picked up last week. Admittedly the venue has a small capacity, but last night’s crowd were responsive enough to be an audience three times its size. I was pleased with how easy our get-in was too. Glyn, Paul and I began at around 2pm (though to be fair Glyn had been there earlier to prep the s...

Today was spent getting ‘My Part in His Downfall’ back into some sort of vague shape to be filmed at the Hitchin’s Market Theatre on Thursday. It’s strange running it on my own again after a month of doing it in front of an audience; when you write a stand-up show you spend a lot of time talking to yourself, but it doesn’t truly come alive until you have a room of people to tell it to; it’s then that it starts to make sense. I felt that with this show particularly as it’s ostensibly quite different to my other ones, though this might not be obvious at first glance. While the format’s the same, the subject matter is a lot more personal and my approach to the material is lighter than my first three shows, which were more aimed at the outside world than at me and had more attack. I wasn’t even aware of this myself really until I started doing it with an audience with the songs added to the mix. My only concern about Thursday is that I’ll end u...

It's a time for press releases right now as I set to work on promoting the various forthcoming Mostly Comedy dates and rather crucially (as it's being filmed it to showcase my comedic ways) a performance of my recent solo show at the Market Theatre in Hitchin. In the case of Mostly Comedy it's working out nicely, as the last-minute edit of a press release I'd originally written for St Albans' aborted October line-up (which has since moved to Hitchin) and sent to The Comet on a whim on Monday has resulted in some excellent coverage in today's edition; this should help boost sales for the show, which is perfect as it only went on sale last weekend. Herts-based fame. The press release for my show hasn't been taken up yet, but there's still time, although I did use part of it in an email I sent to our nearly 900-strong Mostly Comedy mailing list last week (who are all these people?) See below for the press release, then join us on the 11th ; the s...

It’s almost worth doing the Fringe for the feeling you get as you travel away from it: ideally at speed. At time of writing I’m on the train to Peterborough, where I’ll meet my connection to Hitchin and not a moment too soon (unless I'm early). That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the last month - although I’m not entirely sure ‘enjoy’ is the right word for it - but nevertheless, it will be a relief to be home; taking a show to Edinburgh’s always a grueling experience, so it’s best to give yourself a little distance from it (both literally and metaphorically) before you reflect over how it went for you, for good or for bad. One thing’s for certain: I don’t ever want to do a show at midday again. My two previous solo Fringes were at the same time too, but this year, the downturn in numbers was painfully evident, which was such a shame when I think the show was my best, in the sense that it had a lot more depth. On the plus side, I felt the p...

To end my run with a cancelled show because just two people showed up was a bit of a damp squib, but at least it meant I could pack up in a more leisurely manner. The only shame was it meant turning away the technician from Glyn's and my first Fringe run, Craig and his girlfriend - as they were the people who’d come to see it - though they of course understood it couldn’t go ahead, particularly when they were shown through about ten minutes late, when we were about to pack up. Frustratingly, it was their second attempt to see it too, but that’s the Law of Sod, which follows me around, though I’m very grateful they persisted. The point is I need to be on at a better time if I’m going to do this again, as midday's far too early to do me any favours. I knew this before I came up, but despite being prepared for it, it was still a blow, particularly as my numbers suffered this year more than ever and it probably had a bearing on me getting reviewed too. Once we’d decided we ...

It was good to get back on the Edinburgh Fringe horse today, metaphorically-speaking, after a nearly week-long hiatus, which was finally rectified by having my ear syringed so I no longer felt like I'm living under a bell jar. When I left my appointment yesterday, everything sounded so clear on my walk through Princes Street Gardens it was as if my soundtrack was being provided by an award-winning Foley artist (who won the prize for Most Convincing Recreation of a Scottish Tourist Hotspot). This return to normality put me in an inordinately good mood for someone at the latter stage of an Edinburgh Fringe run, probably because I knew I’d finally be able to do my show again, which is the reason I’m here after all. The only slight setback today was we went up a good five or ten minutes late due to a tech issue, which meant I was behind on time from the get-go, though it still managed to be a fun gig irrespective of that. The audience was tiny admi...

Today was the second show in a row I’ve had to cancel due to being unable to hear, which is very frustrating; not least as - what with the audience arriving late on Tuesday - I haven’t actually had a show this week. At least this time I made the decision before leaving for the venue and setting up, but it will still late-in-the-day enough for me to have less than an hour to get the message to the venue, my technician, my flyerers and a friend who was coming to watch, plus it was also the performance my mum had specifically come up to Scotland to see. I know I had no choice, but it’s still not the most auspicious way to end my run, plus it'll make it harder to settle the remainder of my venue hire-fee from ticket sales too. No sooner had I cancelled the show than I set to work at trying to book an appointment with a hearing specialist, but unfortunately the earliest I could be seen was tomorrow afternoon, which leaves it up in the air as to whet...

I was surprised and amused to discover one of the three jokes I make a point about being the only gags I’ve ever written at the top of my show made it into the i Newspaper’s 50 Best Jokes at this year’s Fringe; what with my line about Anne Boleyn getting into last year’s Telegraph and Comedy Central rundowns, I’ve now got just one joke left to feature somewhere notable to achieve a 100% success rate. I don't get it. Joking aside (no pun intended), it was a relief to have something like this happen, as prior to it, I only had a single disappointing review to speak of as the sum total of this year’s coverage - save a couple of Q&A interviews - and I didn’t want that to be the legacy of what’s otherwise felt like a successful run, at least regarding show content; while it wouldn't be the first time, it’s frustrating when you only have an unrepresentative write-up as the online legacy of your run. It’s funny to be included in another Bes...

Today I reached that inevitable point of the Fringe where frustration and exhaustion bubbles to the surface and you feel irritable and - put simply - want to go home. That’s not to say I’m not enjoying being here or that I'm unhappy with my show - it’s actually quite the opposite - but however you feel about what you’re doing or how it’s going, bringing a self-produced solo show to Edinburgh is pretty much the dictionary definition of testing your stamina and everyone has their boiling point; I’m glad I have a day off on Monday, so I can regroup for the metaphorical final push. My negative mindset was kicked off by today’s show, which was one of the busiest I’ve had, yet didn’t gel. There were some nice moments and a few happy faces, but try as I might, I couldn’t get much of a vocal reaction, so I was left with little time to breathe. It’s not that people weren’t enjoying it; they just weren’t an audience for big laughs, which was badly timed ...

Today’s show had an air of the last day of term about it, largely because I knew at least two of the three people in had seen it before at some stage other, and therefore we could all benefit from relaxing the parameters a little bit. By rights, doing a show in such circumstances shouldn’t be fun, when the amount of people in the audience only narrowly outnumber those on stage, yet it was, with me veering off what I’d now regard as the script (not that I ever formalized it that much) to venture into unknown ground. This was particularly helped by an adlib I delivered, which I can’t for the life of me remember now, but was rightly timed at the moment. It’s a shame I can’t call it to mind now; all I can hope is it will come back tomorrow, as I think it was something that would benefit the show if it was kept in, though I may be wrong as I've no idea what I said now. Prior to the show I got a taxi to the venue with my replacement screen in tow to ...

Today’s show was a world of difference to yesterday’s, with a lovely reaction from beginning to end, which was very heartening. This was helped in no small way by the presence of fellow Hitchin-ites Adam and Charlotte Astill in the audience, along with a group of their friends who, for whatever reason, were suitably relaxed to just enjoy the show for what it is, without questioning the audience size or the subject matter. It was also assisted by everyone sitting towards the front in one bank, rather than being spread disparately around the room to accentuate the low numbers. Once again, I find myself considering the psychology of comedy and why things sometimes work so perfectly to fall flat the next day. There have been times, for example, when my little playlet at the top of the show where I act out what it's like waiting to be seen at Stevenage’s Mental Health Unit grabs people from the beginning and they laugh all the way through - like today - and yet occasionally, the r...

While yesterday’s day off left me feeling ready to go home when I woke up this morning, today’s show was bolstered by a lovely audience and some unexpected energy bubbling to the surface, which is proof why having a rest day is very necessary. It was a welcome surprise how much better I felt thanks to a day off, as I’d spent yesterday evening feeling pretty ropey and sick, though the triple threat of a ginger beer, ginger tea and a few ginger biscuits seemed to stave off my gippy stomach. I felt particularly reinvigorated during the songs today, thanks to a fractionally rested voice and having more energy to call on; just call me Mr Vigorous. My guitar sounded better too as I changed my strings yesterday for the first time since I got here, so things were janglier all round. To be fair, yesterday wasn’t a complete day off as I got up reasonably early to record an interview for Fringe Festival Support’s daily-filmed podcast at the Pleasance Dome. This was so relaxed it was easy to...