mostly david ephgrave

I like Noddy Holder's music, but I can't abide his staff payment policy. Topical. To say, "We're living in unprecedented times" is an understatement. The day-to-day escalation's anxiety-provoking to the extreme. As a self-employed actor, I'm hugely worried about my livelihood, and the irony that now's a time when I would have expected to feel more secure than usual - because of the money I inherited when my dad passed away - isn't lost; the truth is that once I've bought a relative out of my dad's house and settled as much debt as I can manage, there'll be nothing left; it would help if this relative would consider an amount more representative of the fact they're dealing with an immediate family member, but they won't discuss it, so that's that. Yesterday, a good friend lost their job with zero notice as a byproduct of the circumstances. It's frightening how things can change so quickly. As for me, everythi...

Of the many – some might say too many – projects me and Glyn have set up, the one I’m proudest of is 'Glad All Over!: A Sixties Celebration ’. (c) Tim Parker The show came into being in a pub; the Spice of Life in Soho, in fact. We met with our friend Rob Maskell to discuss the idea of putting together a show to raise money for one of our Edinburgh Festival runs. Me and Rob had gigged together a lot in the past, and often expressed an interest in setting up our own actor / muso show, in an attempt to put right a lot of the self-perceived wrongs of the various shows we’d worked on previously.   Suddenly we had an excuse to do it. We booked a date at The Queen Mother Theatre in Hitchin that Summer and put together a band. The premise was simple; the show would be a two-hour gig built around a four-piece band who were all singers and multi-instrumentalists, plus three additional female singers. We wanted to cover as broad a selection of Sixties music as possibl...

Today, I became what I most despise: a name-dropper .   I promise it wasn’t intentional. It was also justified within the context of my conversation. This doesn't matter; I still did it.   I was discussing my least favourite episode of Doctor Who (the one that features Peter Kay) when I mentioned, without irony, that Noddy Holder told me he was lovely. The reverberation as his name hit the ground would have stretched as far as Guernsey. It probably had more impact than when Noddy shouts, “It’s Christmas”. It’s worth clarifying that I’ve only met him once; it’s not as if we have each other on speed-dial. Paul McCartney has also called me “man” on two separate occasions, but that’s another story. Thankfully, I have enough self-awareness that this won’t become a habit. If I ever do it again, you can slap me in the face. (Though Dave Hill might step in to break things up.)