mostly david ephgrave

Today, I’m feeling the tiredness of a person who had very little sleep last night. To be fair, I kind of brought it on myself. While I had Mostly Comedy yesterday, I actually didn’t get home that late - say about 1am - but after staying up to write my blog over a cup of tea and a cuddle from the cat, one thing led to another and it was suddenly pushing 3am and I still hadn’t gone to bed. The thing is, I don’t like to go to bed straight away after coming in from a show. I’m usually too wired to sleep, so purposely stay up to unwind for a bit with a book or by watching an episode of The Simpsons; it’s important to have some down time, rather than just rushing from one thing to the next. Today, I’ve been paying for my stupidly late night. So, I won’t stay up too long now writing this. I cancelled my plans to meet a friend in London, as I knew I wouldn’t be exactly sparkling company, which was a shame, but we’ll hopefully reschedule for next week. It’s always best to not do too much the da...

I'm currently on the train back from a lovely gig at Guildford Gag House in - yes, you've guessed it - Guildford. It was nice to do a set in a 'club' club, having done a lot of open mic gigs recently, to work up new material. The place was run like a tight ship, which was refreshing, and the room (which was in the back of a pub called the Star Inn) had a decent stage and a proper tech set-up. I suspect it doubles as a music venue, but to be honest, I haven't done my research. I was on in the middle, between Tom Lucy and Mark Dolan, which was good for me logistically, as it meant I could nip off earlyish, which makes for a change after a week of late nights. I felt guilty for missing Mark's set, but I quickly said hello, to hopefully negate my inherent rudeness. I also had a good chat with Tom, who I haven't met before, and enjoyed his set; he's far to self-assured for someone I now realise is half my age; I'm officially decrepit. My set went well,...

This morning, I’m suffering from a unique kind of stress that only comes from learning that next week’s gala Mostly Comedy isn’t in the local paper. I can’t complain. The amount of coverage we’ve had over the years is fantastic. I also heard tell that the show was mentioned briefly in a piece on Hitchin Festival last week – but our ticket sales suffer noticeably when they don't write a feature about it. They have a catchment we could never reach on our own, and if we can’t spread the word sufficiently, we risk ending up with a sparsely populated and expensive gig. These days, our shows are sold primarily through Twitter and our mailing list. We’re lucky to have enough subscribers who are genuinely interested in the club to book tickets, plus a handful Twitter followers who repeatedly retweet our posts to push our line-up information about. This social interaction, however, soon reaches its limit, without a push from the local press. You need to reach the uninitiated to...