mostly david ephgrave

It's probably not surprising I feel largely devoid of comedy right now, what with all the difficult things going on within my family, but today has been a tough day when it comes to my mental health. One of depression's nastiest traits is its relentlessness, and its tendency to make you forget how far you've come when you're in a trough. It's evil like that. So it was for me today, and I would have kept this to myself instead of mentioning it here if I had the energy to filter it. But it took up too much of my day for me to feel able to do that. I'm not usually one for exhibiting the common symptom of lethargy, but I found it hard to lift my head today. I did get a brief hiatus when listening to my old band Big Day Out's 'Seven Heavenly Lemony Lemons from a Seven-Eleven in Devon' CD from 2002 for the first time in years. The recordings are by no means perfect, but I still enjoyed it, and it still made me laugh in the right places; we were definitel...

Jim Bowen was only forty-four when he started presenting Bullseye. Bowen, Series One. Yes, you heard me right: forty-four. That’s just ten years older than me. While I’m a fan of Bowen and see him as an institution, that doesn’t mean I’d want to look like him a decade from now. If I do, my degradation rate will be similar to Walter Donovan's after drinking from the wrong grail at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. (Classic reference.) Jim, Circa 1981 To hammer the point home, I’ve compiled a list of famous people who are the same age now as Jim Bowen was then . It’s right at the time of going to press and is pretty comprehensive. Strap in… David Tennant, Matt Damon, Ewan McGregor, Gary Barlow, Susanna Reid, Lisa Snowdon, Tamzin Outhwaite, David Walliams, Pete Sampras, Ethan Hawke, Jamie Theakston, Tess Daly, David Coulthard, Melinda Messenger, Mary J Bl...

I recently reached the conclusion that when it comes to getting irritating music out of your head, the theme from The Krypton Factor is the perfect palate cleanser.  I discovered this by chance whilst watching the Freeview channel, Challenge. I’d had the theme from Minder stuck in my head for days; it seems that my only prerequisite when listening to music is that it must feature in the opening or closing credits of an Eighties TV programme. Dennis Waterman was the soundtrack to my every waking moment. I couldn’t walk the street without subconsciously keeping tempo with the theme. It was like being constantly shadowed by an aging ginger cockney, a jaunty pianist and a small, tight, brass section. No sooner did Gordon Burns - texture like Sun - appear on my screen, than Dennis Waterman sprinted out of the building. The building of my mind, that is. I was free at last. What made it even better was The Krypton Factor theme didn’t seem to hang about. ...

I cannot put into words the joy I feel since Challenge TV have started to repeat Les Dawson presenting Blankety Blank. I’m a bit of fan of quizzes and game shows, so will often head in the direction of Freeview Channel 46 when I’m at a loose end. These shows are a good way of killing time without expending many brain cells; perfect fodder for a man of tiny mind and empty diary. The vast proportion of the programmes broadcast by Challenge are game shows from the Eighties and Nineties; the sort of material that was never intended to be repeated after their first broadcast. They’re fascinating in their own way, offering a surprisingly detailed snapshot of the entertainment and fashions of our recent past. It’s frightening how dated even the more contemporary programmes have started to look: rediscovering these repeats (and remembering when they aired first time around) acts as a sobering reminder that I’ve been around longer than I’d like to ...