mostly david ephgrave

And so Mostly Comedy has closed. Our closure statement (26.04.2022). Arriving at this decision was difficult. It went against my natural-born instinct to keep things going at all costs. My brain has an annoying habit of defining what I do on the times when it isn't plain sailing at the exclusion of any evidence to the contrary, and this was no exception. But the fact is the circumstances we found ourselves in thanks to the pandemic were unprecedented and extremely hard to fight, particularly when you have so little money to start with and are constantly calling in favours from friends to make the shows run smoothly on the day. Pre-show audience at a Hitchin Town Hall Mostly Comedy (June 2019) The sad thing is I had visions of it carrying on long into the future, though if I could find a way to outsource some of the admin, that would've helped. I liked the idea of reaching our twentieth anniversary - we were already close to our fourteenth - as, for some reason, the idea that it...

Tonight's preview was very useful.  It felt bizarre to be back in a space I knew so intimately, after so long. Tonight's venue was The George in Hitchin, which was where Mostly Comedy started life back in October of 2008. While I'd only been in their upstairs room once since our final gig there in July 2010, in many ways it was like I'd never been away. The moment I had my biggest flashback, strangely, was when I went to the loo; as I stood in the cubicle I remembered the countless times I'd hidden there before shows, frantically going over whatever the Hell I was about to talk about. Happy memories.  The show went well, with a small yet nice crowd who weren't perturbed in the face of an hour of work-in-progress, despite being reasonably well-lit themselves and being eyeballed by me throughout. My one mistake was getting repeatedly drawn into conversation with a man in the front row, who I could never quite tell was enjoying the show or not. He kept reacting...

What I could really do with at this stage of putting my Edinburgh show together is an editor. I have so many little bits and pieces and ideas flying around that I can scarcely keep track of them, let alone decide what’s best 'in' and what’s best 'out'. This is partly thanks to my blog, which has been a fantastic source to call on, as I wouldn’t remember half of the things that crossed my mind over the past few years if it weren’t for it, but it can also be an overwhelming record to get to grips with; it can be luck of the draw as to whether I’ve picked the right entries, or whether there are some far better ideas that have been lost, under the weight of it. Yesterday was a case in point: before I started a run, I noted down a couple of rough ‘new’ ideas – i.e. old blogs that I hadn’t yet looked at in a stand-up context that had popped into my mind – to have a quick look. In doing so, I stumbled across a piece I’d half-worked up for ...

Whilst sorting through some paperwork this morning, I stumbled across mine and Glyn’s original notes to decide a name for Mostly Comedy. I’m not surprised I still had them, as I’m a natural hoarder. It takes me years to get rid of anything. If it weren't for the obvious hygiene implications, I’d have every piece of toilet paper I’ve ever used, neatly filed away. I say “neatly”; they’d be festering in a bin bag in my garage. (Let’s move away from that train of thought.) It struck me how quickly we'd settled on the name. It only took one side of A5 paper. Mostly Comedy was clearly the best choice; Mad Half Hour Comedy Club sounds like something presented by Pat Sharp. I’d been toying with the word 'Mostly' for a few years. It started life as an adlib at the end of a solo acoustic gig. I'd signed off my set by saying “I’ve been mostly David Ephgrave”. If the show hadn’t been recorded, I would have forgotten the phrase. Mostly David Ephgrave becam...

Today, Glyn and I went to have a look at the room upstairs at The George in Hitchin, where we originally launched Mostly Comedy; the first time we’ve been back since our last gig there in July of 2010. It was strange to return. The venue holds a lot of happy memories, except for the constant heavy-lifting we would do up the precariously slippery fire escape around the back. We would often climb this in complete darkness. I remember once carrying a full-scale electric piano up there; being watched and mocked all the way up by a gang of underage drinkers sat at the bottom. “Tell us a joke”, one shouted as we mounted the stairs; every ounce of strength leaving our bodies as we wrestled with the unwieldy instrument. I think we may have told them to fuck off. Actually, knowing us, we probably didn’t. (The piano didn’t make us any funnier.) The George was responsible for a lot of good things. If it hadn’t been for the screen rigge...

Last night I had less than four hours sleep. Doesn't matter; I'm still buzzing. This is partially due to the two large black coffees that have already filtered their way past my oesophagus (not an enjoyable word to spell after a late night, nor a pleasing mental image). T he main reason for this morning's heightened sense of excitement , however, is that I’m still riding on the coattails of last night’s Mostly Comedy.  For those of you who are not in the know, Mostly Comedy is the monthly comedy & music club I run with my comedy partner, Glyn Doggett (no affection). We set it up on a whim, after taking our first show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2008. It was called ‘The Balloon Debate’; a comedy three-hander set 2000 feet above East Anglia in the basket of a hot-air balloon (a basket we had to set-up and strike in less than seven minutes every night; such is the quick turn-around at the Festival).   ‘The Balloon Debate’ was Dogge...