£43.74 - Prostate

Well done to performers and audience at last night's Foragers show - £43.74 raised for The Prostate Cancer Charity.

On dates

Dates - so important and still so so easy to get wrong. The wrong day with the right date, the right day with the wrong year; the list would go on and on if it wasn’t confined to a combination of day, date, month and year - the mathematicians amongst you making the quick jump to a possibility of 16 permutations of wrongness. Only yesterday yet another e-mail arrived about a comedy night with the date wrong; either the day or the date information, making the gig either last night or tonight depending which fact you decide is the correct one and discounting the other. In situations where you are compelled to go to something this adds the great news that you have an instant excuse that is unchallengeable. Unless of course that nemesis of the wrong date excuse arrives - the e-mail with the right information. This poisoned arrow is likely to appear somewhere between 1 and 24 hours after the original if the mistake has been noticed or pointed out - back in the dark days of office working I have been that fiend to make e-mail replies, short and ladled in sarcasm along the lines of:

• do you mean the Friday?
• do you mean September?
• can you tell the time properly yet helmet head?

Among peers at the time you could tell who was always on-line, or more likely with little to do, by how fast a reply about your mistake comes back; there was some short lived status to be had from pointing mistakes out to people you either disliked, were your senior or, joy of joys, people who’d done the same to you.

TWO FOR THE SHOW (26/1/10) update

places filling up quickly; so far colours nailed to the two minute mast by...

Richard Massing, Aidan Goatley, Phil Dukes, Matthew Tarran, Jenny Lorimer, Lee Hume, Molly Malone, Jason Blackwater, Gerry Bernstein, Lana Garth, Vicky Nangle, Dan Blunt, Tony Gaston, Kev Heritage, Jo Public and Steve Pepper.

Are you a local comedian? Have you got two hot minutes?

Next Tuesday looks Hairy - The Foragers, Hove, 24/11/09

MOvember spawned a MOustache. Oh yes it's all hands off the razors for next Tuesday's show. Raising money for The Prostate Cancer Charity through facial hair (check http://uk.movember.com/), please please please wear a moustache and bring a quid for the cause, the stage will be graced by the following five-o'clock shadow of comedy:

TONY GASTON

GAVIN INSKIP

IAN RIGBY

DAN BLUNT

SUE GEE

SUZANNE WOOLF

DANIEL HARVEY

Tickets are on sale until Monday 23rd at the pub for £2, then you can pay £4 on the door.

If you fancy trying out stand-up comedy then you can inhabit the 'balls of steel open spot', available every last Tuesday of the month.

I'm looking for a sponsor for the comedy nights, if you have any ideas then drop me a line.

TWO FOR THE SHOW

Calling out to all local comedians who've got "2 hot minutes" in them.

30 comedians, two minutes each, Tuesday 26th January 2010 at The Foragers, Hove.

please e-mail if you want to take part

RUE BARRATT - Stand up comedian and street fighter

Got to send out some love to Rue Barratt. The local boy, quickly becoming the new pin-up of the Brighton comedy scene, was in a stand-off with 5 'geezers' defending a ladies virtue as I fell out of Moksha on Saturday night. He gave me his scarf too, which I think makes me Guinevere to his Lancelot, nice.

Check the act out when you can, he's got a co-writer and everything.

Moksha 31st October 2009 - an unusually intimate gig and a new experience for me

I've been close to pulling gigs before, I spend a lot of gigs worrying about where the audience are, but I'd never ever taken the decision to not go ahead until Saturday. It's a hard one because you have, it feels, so much to lose - reputation - and previously an audience always turned up.

It turns out that reputation is no reason to make comedians perform in front of a handful of people and I'm happy with the decision I made. It isn't fun to play to a room who can't really respond and it isn't fun to put a small audience through it either. That seems really logical now but it took a long time to realise it. Ironically the 'call of the wild' for two wonderful performers - Jo Public and Daniel Harvey - was too great and we had a funny, intimate 30 minute show after all.

There will be one further show at Moksha on November 28th, 7:30pm, before I will be taking the opportunity to evolve the show for January 2010. When the unexpected happens it gets you thinking in other ways.