COAT TAILING

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45 years ago this month, and for most of the year 1979, the act I was part of was on its way to getting almost famous. It all came down to befriending someone who was on his way to becoming a megastar, and we had a clever manager who recognised it, who made sure we […]



DOING COMEDY WHEN LIFE ISN’T FUNNY

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Today we go back in our time machine to 15 years ago this month. I wrote earlier this year about working in South Africa and the nightmare of my return, how I was unceremoniously tossed out of my house by my wife, who declared she was in love with someone else. That turned out to […]



HOW DID I DO IT?

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I have saved my diaries from 2004 up until the present day, and I sort of wish I had been saving them from further back. I would love to see how I notated a specific day in the 1990s where I did seven gigs in one day. It was 20 years ago this month, February […]



15 YEARS AGO THIS MONTH

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In what may have been my last dive into a truly foreign culture, I was booked for two weeks in the last week of January 2009, in Johannesburg, South Africa. This was an education for me since I was American and thus had very little idea of all that had gone down there over the […]



PARTYING LIKE IT WAS 1999, BECAUSE IT WAS

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Tomorrow, to ring in the New Year, Maggie and I will be at home dog-sitting while her daughter is away, and for the most part I’m relieved to not be dealing with the rigamarole that New Year’s gigs can be. I’ve detailed my past history with those gigs, good and bad, and ultimately the only […]



SHOULD HAVE BEEN A LONELY CHRISTMAS, BUT WASN’T

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A couple Christmases ago, I pissed and moaned about the loneliest Christmas I’d ever spent, which is now exactly 50 years into my past, in Anchorage, Alaska. I talked about how it was the first time I had been away from family at Christmas, and there would not be another such Holiday season until 1999. […]



HOW TO GET TIRED OF YOUR ACT IN A SINGLE DAY

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Doing the same 20 minutes eight times in one day is one way. And somewhere around this day 30 years ago, that is what I had to do. The gig was in downtown San Diego, and was a fairly large indoor venue overlooking a street fair. I don’t remember if it was an annual event, […]



HALLOWE’EN MEMORIES

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It’s amazing to think that 60+ years ago, when I was in primary school, on Hallow’en I could go trick or treating, be out for 2-3 hours, come back with a shopping bag full of assorted candies, and not be worried about any consequences. This was before any stories emerged of sickos putting razor blades […]



END OF AN ERA

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Yesterday I got the news I was expecting to get, which was that my eight-year run as vinyl DJ at The King’s Head in Crouch End was done. Granted, because of the Pandemic, there was a gap from March 2020 to New Years Eve 2022 that got in the way. Even so, my actual return […]



SOMEHOW I SURVIVED

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This past weekend saw the annual Reading and Leeds Music Festivals, which always features a comedy tent where the most prominent comics as well as up-and-comers get 30 minutes to prove themselves. I had a look at this year’s lineup, and there was absolutely no one whose name I recognised. That may be because the […]