HeadSpill

Day 30 - Derry/Londonderry
At Manchester airport I am frisked twice at security, maybe because I’m wearing Danny’s large brown duffel coat to keep the baggage costs down. I’m not sure what to expect arriving in Belfast, but arrive at the Malone Hotel without incident.
One of my best mates is Irish and I lived with him for 3 years, so I should know the appropriate naming convention for the city in which we are playing tonight. I think Derry, but Charlie is calling it Londonderry and on the way there all the signs say Londonderry so I start doubting my knowledge and think I’m getting it confused with a brand of butter. So I start calling it Londonderry, then as we’re almost there the road signs are all de-faced saying just ‘derry’. Oh Dear, I sense an ill-formed faux pax on the horizon. The gig is well attended and the venue is lovely. I avoid hassle by simply asking who is “local” and “not local”, I’d later find out that even the BBC have protocol for Derry. In the first instance it’s ‘Londonderry’, in the second it’s ‘Derry’ and after that it’s refered to as ‘the city’.

Day 31 & 32 - Belfast
For the few days in Belfast we are staying in an apartment thanks to Charlie - so we can do amazing things like use an oven or microwave. Charlie cooks an awesome steak, Kristina makes mashed potatoes, and I buy loads of ex-rental dvd’s for 99p to watch, which is almost helpful. I meet up with Phil Topping who I’ve not seen in years and he takes me on a great tour of Belfast city taking in the town hall, the Crown Inn (where we meet some american tourists on a cruise) and the catherdral quarter. There is a church with a big metal spike instead of a tower. This is becuse some of Belfast is built on marshland, so anything really heavy sinks into the ground. Phil tells me Belfast is a new city in the last few years, and it certainly feels like a place on the up. Busy, pleasant and the venue we’re in at the Waterfront Theatre is a big glass building with loads of venue spaces. We’re in the studio which we’ve almost managed to fill on both nights playing there. Friday’s gig is great, Saturdays is even better. Afterward, Phil and his mate take us on the drink around town, we hit a bar with a band playing, it is very loud and the drink is addlestones. I don’t remember much after that, a top few days.

The greenbelt festival on Saturday night was an absolute belter. Danny Pensive closed, and despite the gig being called short - the gig being in a tent venue, they had to wrap at eleven - the crowd were awesome. I had new dvd’s made from Danny’s video diaries, I’ve never sold anything at a gig before, and only took five, but they all went like proverbial hot cakes straight after. Top night, and lots of new facebook friends too, nice.

The Edinburgh festival finishes this week, and I’m starting to put together ideas for next year. Some comics go up every year with a new show, some never go at all. I think I’d quite like to the former, but a new show every year? I feel I’d lack consistancy. Not quality - just consistancy, I get too excited by too many things.

I had a conversation over a curry with comic chum Dan where we banged on about having loads of ideas in different forms (scripts, stand up, character stuff, etc), but then which ones do you ultimately give your time to in order to follow them through and do ‘em justice? The more you spread yourself over multiple disciples, the less time you’d have for each, and at the creative sharp end of comedy you can’t really afford to take you’re eye off one ball, let alone three. I have three balls.

Ahem. There’s Stand Up, Danny Pensive - character comedy, and Comedysportz  and I believe in them all equally, they’re like a comedy triumvirate of disciplines.

Danny Pensive is all about the writing, use of language and lack of compromise. As I am now, locked away in a room, fathoming out what I find funny and presenting it to the world. Simple, beautiful, and I refer to him in the third person, which while I appriciate is quite odd feels perfectly normal.
Comedysportz is all about the moment. No writing, just instinct being bounced around making brief wonderful moments that can’t be recreated.
Then there’s me, a combination of the two. I love stand up and writing, but it’s the hardest part of the whole. Writing is comedy, if it doesn’t jump off the page, it probably won’t dance out your mouth to the sound of laughter, and once written and delivered stand up evolves in the telling, a combination of written word,  improvised flourish and repetition.

I’ve spent most of this year doing repetition. And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s what promoters pay for when they book you, your best stuff. While at the same time writing new stuff for Danny and on occasion taking Danny tried and tested stuff as my own, which feels like stealing, but really isn’t, though I do feel guilty, which is probably my fault for invoking the third person. It’s more evidence of decent gags, and a very long winded round-the-houses way of not getting bored with a ‘club set’ while cultivating new gags in a parallel dimension.

I’m looking at taking a Danny Pensive show to Edinburgh next year. Wish him luck.

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’ve always wanted to go to Brighton, so it was a polite surprise when my highly organised and forward planning female partner informed me we were going there, in the car on the way to London mere hours beforehand.

Girls are great aren’t they? I have a tremendous affection for mine, however, as I’ve mentioned before, with my experience of ‘proper relationships’ only coming after the age of 30, my brain is full to bursting of habits, theories, cod philosophy and happy bobbins, that until now has remained far outside the direct burning gaze of female scrutiny. Under this new light of experience I have learned a lot of things quite quickly, like not to just say ‘yes’ if you haven’t fully heard the question asked.

I was expecting a foursome. As in my lass meets her mate, and I meet her bloke, they catch up and we find stuff in common to talk about, which would have been comparing the merits of Call of Cthulu and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons having found a large framed map of a fantasy kingdom in the lounge. Alas he wasn’t there, having devoted his whole weekend to said pastime (, and before condeming us both as geeks, you’ve got to respect a guy who’s negociated himself an entire weekend of pure escapism with his mates).

We also shot some footage of ‘Danny Pensive’ my character creaton/alter ego which Bron is working on. It’s one area of our relationship I can’t fault, she loves pointing cameras and recording everything the moves, and I’m an attention seeking egotist. It just works.

Brighton was in the middle of it’s Fringe festival, the venue where we saw two plays venue was a bit small, but the plays were good, Rachel (Bron’s mate we were visiting who wrote one of them) clearly has a good ear for dialogue, and giggles a lot.

Sunday consisted of wandering around London looking at landmarks and filming, then going to see the comedy store players. It’s the second time I’ve unintentionally seen Phil Jupitus, and despite not being a bad improviser he did suffer from some proper stagemongering, a trait which I myself suffer from.

K800, Aye.

I have a new phone. It’s terrible. I’ve only had my last one a year. Despite my loathing for disposable technology as fashion accessory, my last phone was a ‘motorola sliver’. To be honest I didn’t care what kind of phone I had, I just wanted one with a camera on it. And the camera on it was rubbish, My new phone is a sony ericcson with a proper 3mpx camera on it and loads of other gubbins that I’ll probably never use. The golf game is highly addictive though.

God I feel old, I can remember in my Student gaff at Uni having to go round the corner to the phone box in the rain with a stash of 20 pences to see who was doing what on friday night. We did have a land line, but between the four of us only two were paying for it, one was never there and the other guy whose name escapes me as he was such a recluse openly stated he didn’t like the idea of paying for anything he ‘couldn’t see’.

This led to a metaphysical discussion about how to quantify the electrical implulses that came down the phone line into the phone and I explained that yes, although the telephone handset itself was paid for, it was the conduit for the energy and was the nearest thing to a solid object there was. He tried it a couple of times, but it’s hard to justify phone use to a recluse with no friends.

Anyway it’s a nice phone, but I feel I’ve already damaged the enviroment beyond repair simply owning the thing. Still, if the radiation melts the ice caps tomorrow and we all drown, I’ll be able to compose some nice photographs of the world collapsing.

Danny Pensive visits Brighton