mostly david ephgrave

Tonight, we broadcast our first live episode of ‘Doggett & Ephgrave: In Your Inner Ear’ in three weeks. As with our previous live show, the lead-up was frenetic, due to a last-minute problem with our mics; these technical issues seem to follow us about. Once they were ironed out, the show was a lot of fun. The topic of conversation was ‘school’, which gave us the chance to vent plenty of deep-seated frustrations on the subject that have been pent up for twenty years; I suspect we’ve enough material on the theme to fill an entire series. Glyn mentioned how being hit in the eye by a bouncy ball led to the school-wide bouncy ball ban, while I discussed my first ever live performance: a one-man dance to Hale & Pace’s 1991 Comic Relief single The Stonk on a desktop in an assembly. I also revealed my heated argument with a boy at infant school, because I was sure that babies came out of women’s bums; sex education at St. Nicholas JMI left a lot to be desired. For mos...

Don’t let it be said that I harbour grudges, but the fact a guy in my class at secondary school once called me Ned Flanders still pisses me off. It doesn’t matter that it happened twenty years ago. It’s still raw. You may think it sounds like a tame insult, but it wasn’t. It was said with venom. I was the butt of his ‘hilarious’ joke and he didn’t care that I knew it or how I felt about it. What a cunt. He announced it in a Maths lesson like he’d stumbled across a witty, undeniable truth. “David’s just like Ned Flanders.” I wouldn’t have minded if it was accurate. I wasn’t a Christian zealot with a tache. I didn’t have a surprisingly muscular physique. I still haven’t, more’s the pity. My only similarity to Ned was that we were both big fan of The Beatles, but the boy in my class wouldn’t have been armed with this information back then. Bart and Milhouse didn’t stumble across Flanders’ secret Fab Four shrine until 2003, which was nine year...

Of the many assemblies I attended in 1995, one sticks in the mind the most. Occasionally, someone other than our head teacher would take the stage. These instances offered alleviation from the usual monotony. By far the most entertaining, often for the wrong reasons, were those lead by a particular teacher who shall remain nameless. His stints at the mic were the funniest. The chief source of the humour, I'm ashamed to admit, was his obvious nerves. His fear of public speaking would alway made him trip up verbally. It didn’t help that he had a lisp. On one occasion, he told the harrowing story of a pedestrian who was trapped 'under the lorries of a wheel'; a linguistic misstep that undermined his account instantly and left us stifling laughter. He’d clutch each side of the lectern for dear life, like it would offer protection from the swarm of 800+ pre- and post-pubescent students glaring up at him. It never did. Secondary schoo...

'Sport'. No word instils more fear and trepidation in me than seemingly innocent collection of letters. Except for ‘De Burgh’, when it closely follows ‘Chris’. I was awful at all sport as a kid. Just passing the school field would result in a football in the face and subsequent winding. My games teachers grew to expect the twice-weekly note from my mum, excusing me from taking part. We'd use every excuse over time, save paralysis or death. Eventually, we settled for the suitably vague 'personal medical problem'. God knows what they thought the problem was; presumably, that I didn't have a penis. I’m not sure why this would prevent me from participating. Perhaps the cock acts as a rudder. A lowlight of the few Games lessons I partook in was the Bleep Test. For those unfamiliar with this evil practice, it works as follows: the unlucky participants run from one side of the sports hall to the other in-between two bleeps, which get gradually closer t...

Recently, I caught the train into Central London with the express purpose of holding a fish.  I walked to my local station, bought a peak-time Travelcard (£31.00), took the train to King’s Cross and then the tube to Farringdon, located the right address, pressed the buzzer by an unmarked door, walked up four or five flights of stairs, held the fish (a mackerel) - and then reversed all of the above (minus buzzer and Travelcard) until I was back where I started. All-in-all it took about two hours, and the key moment – the fish moment – was filmed for posterity. Why? I was after a job, that's why. I've recently signed with a new agent who specifically represents me for commercial castings. As a result, for the first time in about nine years, I’m often to be found trudging my way into town with a similar objective to this dangling of a mackerel in front of a high-definition camera. Imagine the detail it must have captured. All those shiny, tessellating scales...