mostly david ephgrave

Tonight’s Strictly Come Dancing was another evening of top quality performances, if you managed to blank out Tess Daly’s links. I sometimes worry my tweets about her are too bullying, but then hear her speak. It’s like listening to an automaton, who somehow manages to be physically close to the action on the dance floor, yet mentally distant. It’s as if she saw a terrible road accident on the way into Elstree that she can’t blank from her mind, or she’s recovering from shellshock. Thank God Claudia Winkleman’s there to raise the standard. See below for tonight’s Twitter ramblings (unless you’re Tess, when you’d better skip it): 6:58pm: If anyone isn't wearing a poppy on tonight's #Strictly , at any point, I'm kicking off. Even if it falls off mid-dance. 6:59pm: Tess Daly's dress is a mystery to me. 7:05pm: Daisy Lowe and Aljaž danced in front of a VW (a camper van) and Bruno Tonioli (a camper man). 7...

One thing I hate, but seem to spend much of my life doing, is self-promoting. Today’s a case in point. I’ve only been home from my holiday for a few hours, yet the time's been devoted to spreading the word about next week’s Leicester Square Theatre gig , both to agents and our Mostly Comedy mailing list. If you scan your eyes over the last sentence, you’ll see I never miss a trick, as I’ve included a booking link within it. If you hold the internet-enabled device you’re reading this blogpost on up to the light, you’ll see a sneaky watermark of my face mouthing the words ‘COME AND SEE ME NEXT TUESDAY’. Don’t ask me how I did it, as I haven’t thought the mechanics through. Despite being a self-advertising monstrosity, I feel desperately uncomfortable with it. I hate the idea that people think I’m always doing it, or that I only get in contact when I want something. Facebook's a good example: I left the social media platform a couple of years ago because I didn’t like...

Tomorrow see the end of my holiday and if I’m honest, I don’t want to go home yet. There’s something peaceful and comforting about waking up in the morning and looking out of the bedroom window to be surrounded by trees. That’s unless you fell sleep in a treeless environment, wh en this would just be unnerving. The rural atmosphere has aided my meditation by giving it a calming backdrop; before you know it, I'll be so 'back to nature' I’ll be wearing pants made from leaves. Today, we embraced Center Parcs activity-driven manifesto by doing a spot of ten-pin bowling, playing pool and having a round of Adventure Golf (the word ‘Crazy’ being dropped in the interest of being PC). I haven’t got around to running my show but then I did do it yesterday; as long as I do it on a day-on day-off basis, it should be okay. I did do a twenty-five-ish day straight run in Edinburgh in August, so it’s not as if it's unfamiliar; if anything, a little time away from it has b...

On a day like today, with political developments as they we re, I was very grateful to start my morning in a forest, catching a barn owl as part of a bird demonstration. We took part in Center Parcs’ Encounter with Owls activity last year too and had such a lovely time we had to do it again. With affairs taking the depressing turn they did today, the diversion couldn’t have been better timed. I barely slept last night what with worrying about the election; checking the news intermittently to catch wind of the way things were shaping up. When they turned out as badly as they did, doing something as simple as getting back to nature was the perfect short-term antidote; I may even go feral in protest. I won’t harp on any more about that now as we’ve all read more than enough on the subject. Instead, I’ll share a slow motion video of an owl and me . The owl's name was Marmite, but there was no love-hate going on here. I just wish I could be as graceful at that rate of f...

Tonight's of those nights when it’s worrying to check the Internet. I can't bear the thought of waking up to the news that Trump is US president. I can’t even understand how we’ve reached the point when a man with such obvious glaring faults and ignorance could be the best Republican candidate. I watched all three presidential debates and it was painfully evident that he’s incapable of making a cogent point; his sentences veer this way and that without reaching an end that relates to their beginning. He’s a bully, a sexist and a fantasist, who needs to be told that the true meaning of the word ‘rigged’ isn’t just 'something you don't agree with'. I only hope the people of America see sense, but then I’d hoped the same with us during the EU referendum. That happened to land on the same day as a Mostly Comedy with the left-leaning Norman Lovett and Stewart Lee on the bill, which lulled me into a false sense of security, only to wa...

While much of the hype online (and on Twitter particularly) was regarding the sudden death neck-and-neck end to tonight’s episode of University Challenge, I was far more struck by the return of Team Edinburgh; particularly its male contingent. As I said in my final tweet tonight, they looked like they could have a sideline as a prog rock band, particularly with Boyle’s striking resemblance to the well-known blues and soul bass player Duck Dunn. No self-respecting adult in 2016 should have his or Dale’s facial hair. This game show is just about the only place these sort of people turn up. See below for my Twitter ramblings about University Challenge tonight; they’re not big, nor are they clever. Open University Vs. Edinburgh (07.11.16) 8:01pm: Jeremy Paxman sees every episode of #UniversityChallenge as a contractual obligation. 8:02pm: "Hi, I'm Rob Mitchell, and I have fifteen corpses in my garage." 8:02p...

Tonight sees the first night of my few days' break to Center Parcs , and as it's a suitably middle-c lass destination, I've decided to play a game of Count the Gilets. I’ve been looking forward to this for months, following a stressful year, with my first solo Edinburgh Fringe sitting dead-centre like an ominous, foreboding summit, peeping every so often through the clouds as I trudged my way to the top and then back down the other side. This, combined with some non-work-related bits and bobs made for eleven months that alternated between being difficult and settled, with a few peaks and troughs along the way. I have my wife to thank for booking the holiday early this year, giving us both something to set our sights on as a little time for us to relax. We visited the same site (and stayed in the same cabin) last October and had such a lovely time we decided to do it again - and though there were occasions when I thought the break would never arrive, being over...