HeadSpill

The Manchester Comedy Festival kicks off this week and I’m not in it because I missed the deadline and didn’t get a venue for my show sorted. Event’s have a funny way of conspiring though, and as it happens the Literature festival runs on exactly the same dates, and I’m doing two things for that, and even have my face in the brochure for the Poetry Slam Final that I’m mc’ing at the Northern Pub. During the fest I’ll be compering a Doctor Who convention (see previous post) on Saturday and doing the late night Asylum next Wednesday. As well as that I’ve got a whole new night kicking off in November, ‘Northern Humour‘, a sunday new material/character/wacky stuff night in the Northern Pub which promises to be proper fun.

The fest appears to be a lot more low key than in previous years, which is a bit of a shame for something that really needs to be as in-yer-face as it possibly can. With no sponsership this year it’s hard to can as much exposure when all the work being done to promote it is more or less being donated by the organisers. Hopefully next year it will be bigger, but that’ll only happen if more people get behind it, promoters and comics alike.

I did my first Leeds tryout at Jongleurs last week, and if I’m honest a previous week of no gigs made me rusty when I needed to be ‘gig fit’. It’s a tough gig at the best of times, and worse if you’re in comedy for the art. This was swiftly rectified the next night when I did my first gig in a Jewish synagogue doing a half hour for the Jewish new year. Not the easiest of crowds either, but a good few of them recognised me from the comedysportz gig the previous week at the Comedy Store, which made the whole thing immediately more enjoyable. Someone commented on my big nose. Racist.

I got to meet one of my all time heroes this week too. Neil Innes, he of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band, at Bury Met. He’d didn’t play as much Bonzo’s as I’d like, but then I’m sure he’s pig sick of playing the same requests all the time. I was in proper fan mode and got my 40th anniversary bonzos tour t-shirt signed.

September has been incredibly quiet for gigs, almost like Edinburgh didn’t happen, my poor little ego going unloved and feeling sorry for itself. There’s a shedload in the pipeline fortunetly, including a return to the glorious Edinburgh stand in late october and a Darlington run out for my show in November.

Utter Joy. If you were to list my favourite things in order they would pretty much be comedy, Doctor Who, cider,  comics and animation. So when I’m asked if I’d like to mc a Doctor Who Convention all about comics in a pub, I had to check I hadn’t fallen through a whole in my own mind and mistaken reality for a wish list.

Meeting the organiser Gareth I hoped I did’nt come over as a gob*****, as everything he spoke of I knew something about,  but it’s just true.  Doing my small press comic back in the 90’s I’d been to comic conventions and met some of the artists who are coming. Doing flash animation for the ‘Get Happy’ show a year back, I’d bumped into Firestep, the guys who did the WHO infinite quest animation, and been to their studio. And of course Doctor Who itself, I’d only just rewatched some vintage McCoy the previous night. It’s like it was meant to be, weird.

It’s great news too as ‘forgot’ to put my show in for the Manchester comedy festival, but I am in the Literature Fest Brochure twice, so I can’t complain.

Got up at 5.30am. Drove to Newcastle and picked up an Amp for the free Fringeand after seeing my folks in Sunderland, arrived in Edinburgh at 2pm . I set to work putting up some posters at the free fringe venues (I’m at canons gait). I’d over loaded the pockets of my ill fitting cut off combat pants with flyers and on reaching up to apply the publicity piece, they fell down in full view.

bought a new belt.

The flat is ace, and  I can see carl sagan’s massive face from my window (in a shop front advert).  Went to the free fringe meeting where PBH stated quite literally. ‘If the public come, we will kill them’. He rocks.

Went to see Longleys show. It is late, I am knackered.

People I met:
Kevin Gildea
Paddy Monahan
Don Moses
Paul Kerensa
Gav Webster
Matt Tiller
BethanyBlack
Longleyman

People I saw at a distance:
Mark Watson
Simon Munnery

People who I created an awkward showbiz silence with:
Teddy

First show tomorrow, hurray!

(Submission piece for The Scotsman)
August is fast approaching already I’m packing and racking my brains to make sure I’ve covered everything. clean underwear, check. Digs, check. Multimedia bells & whistles, check. Tightly written hilarious Show, check (I hope).
I’m taking my first full stand up show to the fringe, and to be honest the thing stressing me out the most isn’t submerging my brain into the all encompassing creative din of sound, colour and taste. Or my show, which still needs work, but is robust enough to set sail on the sea of competitive mirth. The cause of my furrowed brow is the multimedia elements that go with the show. Also being the control freak I am it’s all triggered by remote control instead of having a tech on hand.

Comedy and technology aren’t exactly a marriage made in heaven, one is born of sponteneity, adaptability and  tangents that creates humour, the other is about order and numbers, and safe predictability. Arriving at a recent preview show, loaded with AV gear like an powerpoint terminator, one of the others comics, armed with only a handful of written notes made the comment ‘how can I compete with that?’ and as much I as I understood the question, it’s a bit of a moot point.

Multimedia Bells and whistles are exactly that, and shouldn’t be a distraction. If anything he’s far better equiped, and purer to the art form of stand up. Good writing is the core of any show, and if the show can’t be done without multimedia, then arguably it’s not straight stand up.

Increasingly comics at the fringe are using projection and multimedia elements to enhance their shows, and I’m biting off a sizable of in mixing character comedy, stand up and multimedia together in a themed show about eczema. Did I mention my show was about eczema?

The previews I’ve done so far already I’ve pressed the wrong button good few times. Ironically pressing the wrong button is getting a big laugh, which is a result, but not what I’d planned at all. As long as I don’t do it too much, I might just keep it in the show.

‘John Cooper: The 30 Year Itch’ is on at the Canons Gait at 7.15pm from 2nd - 25th August and is free.

June and July have been pretty eventful. Most notably the nightmare that was logging in my PC to check my bank balance and finding £350 had disappeared out of it care of some gambling website and I’d become the victim of card fraud. Having pedalled it into town to go to the bank and get it sorted, one stressful ranty conversation later I came out to find my bike had been nicked. Joy. I decided to cheer myself up by picking up a copy of the fringe festival brochure to see my name in print only to find the show, but without my name in fromt of it, which on further examination was my fault. I went a bit mental and put some stickers I’d found on my face in an attempt to show the world my bellicosity.

In brighter news I went camping twice in the space of four days set foot in Maidenhead, Bracknell, Windsor, Newquay, Truro, St Austell, Cardiff, Coniston and Sunderland. First with wor lass, then on ‘Man & Nature 4′, the 4th Annual North West Comedians comedy camp, 2 fine days worth of drinking, bitching and riding motor boats on lake coniston while fishing and drinking and bitching. I put my tent up in the p****ng rain, the high wind tipped it over but after a couple of bottles of ‘Cornish Rattler’ bought fresh from a Cyder farm the previous day, I was half nakedly hammering the pegs back in with my bare hands and thinking nothing of it. Class.

Wor lass went away to the USA on sunday, so I’m is a bit sad. As evidence of just how accustomed I’ve become to living together, last night in her absence I drew a face on a balloon. Oh dear. (not that she looks like a balloon or anything). With loads of room and time to myself now though I can focus on banging my Edinburgh show into shape ready for August, and I’ll do another video blog for that shortly.

My first preview show went well, still needs a lot of work, but to be honest I more impressed myself driving slap bang through through the centre of London. Stopping at some lights I looked to my left to see big ben and the eye and let out an odd maniacal laugh.

I did cockup on a couple things in the show, as well as forgetting to turn my dictaphone on to record it (fail.) and the ‘aftershow report’ video I recorded for 4laughs was far to dark to be or any use. Generally though, I’m quite happy with the shape of it, just need to tighted a lot of the material up without strangling the funny.

I got the chance guest on the new Alfie Joey afternoon show on BBC radio Newcastle on friday, so I took it. We talked about the Edinburgh show, and it’s the first time I’ve tried to succinctly leap the verbal hurdles of ‘yes, it’s a comedy show about eczema’ and ‘eczema’s not funny’ its more about the experience of living with it and growing pains.

Before all that however, I remember I went to school with one of the presenter’s at the station, and on Alfies’ questioning, called Gilly Hope ‘posh’, which was probably not entirely true. I think I meant to say ’smart’, as she always had pig tails in, but then I had a big basin cut. Anyway, after the interview I called in on my mum, who as well as being a teacher at the school we both went to way back, was all to happy to dug out some embarassing old photos at my request.

If you’re reading this Gilly, it’s just a bit of fun.
Here you are behind and to the left of me. twice.

BEFORE.

AFTER.

oh yeah, my mum thinks Aflie is one of the ‘more sensible’ DJ’s on the radio.

Brainstorming/Mind mapping/Spider diagram, it’s all the same thing.

I have a new gig to mc. hurray!

I can’t complain even though I’m already too busy with Edinburgh stuff, but I had been eyeing up the Carlton Club, a gig venue just down the road, since I moved late last year.  I’d been put off as it said on the sign outside ‘member’s only’, but then when I passed the other there was a big banner out front advertising the ‘Celebrate Whalley Range Festival and the ‘members’ bit was covered up. It was all but over by the time I went for a nosey, but a few enquiries later, and I was having a meeting discussing a comedy night, which they were after. There’s work to be done promoting it, and time will tell if it works out, but first impressions, and seeing that they’ve got a newsletter and roster of events, suggest that this very established venue is having a bit of  a renaissance. Today is a good day.