The forever strange world of comedy continues to impress and worry me. The fairy tale dimension of stand up in London has the circuit over populated with small time promoters, usually because they either can’t get stage time any other way or they want to exploit the enthusiasm of new talent by paying them nothing and pocketing 100% profit. That’s not to say that there aren’t any good promoters, but you have to kiss a few frogs before finding any Princes of promotion.

The more worrying thing is that there are so many of these little league promoters taking advantage of eager and naive talent, having little care of putting on a good show. Filling the bill with any Tom, Dick or Harry that will do a gig for free, then (sometimes) pay a headliner to close. It means that new talent gets stuck on the hamster wheel of open spots and forever struggles to get out. Even worse is the fact so many delusional people think they have talent, surrounding themselves with like minded less than middle of the road talent and no responsible promoters there to offer guidance. It’s becoming like the x-factor auditions without a Simon Cowel there to bring people back to reality.

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It’s horrible when you don’t like to think of yourself as a sheep, but then find yourself starting one of these damn things because everyone else is doing it baaaaaaaa.

But hey ho, it has begun and whilst I will probably fail to crash the network with people clambering to read my words of boredom, it will serve me for documenting my pitiful existence and hopefully inspire me to do more interesting things to give me something to write about.

My plan is to just talk about what’s in my head and introduce people as they star in the action series of my life (so dramatic oooooooooo)…

For those of you that don’t know, I do stand up comedy in my spare time and am doing a gig at Jongleurs in Camden on Friday. It’s a 15 minute spot and the promoters are going to be there to give the red or green light for me doing full weekends on the national circuit. In order to get myself match fit for it, I decided to ask a few of my comedy brethren if they knew anyone that needed an act on the Wednesday or Thursday, help me iron out the creases.

So thanks to Janice Phayre who helped me out with the Casa Blue gig and to Bobby (and Broderick) who helped me get the gig tonight (will report on that later). I turn up at Casa Blue to find a very bohemian room full of young trendy people, click click click cooooooool. If you’d been allowed to smoke inside I can imagine this lot smoking on big appletobacco shishas. The stage was against the wall and around 20-30 people were crammed in to the mixed seats amongst the eclectic sofas, floor matts, wall hangings and bottles of san Miguel.

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After waking up with an unapologetic and relentless hangover on Friday, I proceeded to hibernate for Friday and Saturday, pretty much wasting the first two days of the Easter weekend, but that was all to change.

My antipodean friends, knowing how single I am, invited me over for lunch, to which I dutifully accepted. Armed with 3 bottles of red, I arrived at 230 (was supposed to be there at 200, I’m never on time) they had started on the Easter beers already. They being, Hostile Bruce, his girlfriend Ginger and their flat mate General Story.

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