John & Jen: Part I...

Just in case you didn’t know… I'm back involved with a new theatre company in Guildford, namely Guildford Fringe Theatre Company. I'm onboard as an associate producer and director and we've got some very cool stuff coming up this year.

Our first show is the musical, John & Jen, which is on at the Star Inn at the bottom of Guildford High Street. It starts Thursday 8 May and runs until Saturday 17 May 2014.

It's a cracking show and there’s additional information below if you fancy an evening out:

John & Jen, the acclaimed and moving American musical, will be Guildford Fringe Theatre Company’s first show of 2014.

John & Jen is a two-hander set in the USA and follows the funny, tender and moving relationship between a brother and a sister, and a mother and a son.

Written by Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald, the show opened Off-Broadway in 1995 to rave reviews, and this staging, from 7-17 May at The Back Room of The Star Inn, will offer a rare chance to see this little-performed modern classic.

And, in something of a coup for local drama, two acclaimed actors are joining Guildford Fringe Theatre Company to take on the title roles.


John is being played by Martin Neely, whose previous work has included Les Miserables (West End) and Mary Poppins (UK Tour), while Jessica Sherman, whose previous work includes Lend Me A Tenor (Vienna) and Batman Live (World Arena Tour), will play the role of Jen.

The show runs from 7-17 May 2014 at The Back Room of The Star Inn, Quarry Street, Guildford, GU1 3TY. Tickets are available by phone on 0844 8700 887 or from the Tourist Information Centre, High Street Guildford.

So, if you’re kicking your heels and you fancy a night out, give us a try.

Marital advice...

It's not very sexy for a married man to come home after a full day's drinking with a kebab, then to climb into the marital bed reeking of lager and smelling of the aforementioned kebab. Apparently...

Why David Cameron is an Awful Man...

This is a dream from last night: In it, I have a missing cat. And, as many of my friends know, I love my cat more than I love most people.

But I am fortunate because Prime Minister David Cameron, who has lost one of his offspring after leaving them in a pub, kindly mentions my missing cat in his press statement asking for the return of his missing child.

The Cameron child is returned and there is much relief. Then my cat is returned... But Prime Minister David Cameron realises my cat is beautiful and decides to keep it for himself. And there is nothing I can do.

This is one additional reason to despise David Cameron and everything he stands for... because even in a bizarre dream he just doesn't care. He simply takes. Because he can.

Sticking Point: Part III...

My tahn bong training continues at hapkido and today I learnt the first blocking moves. Then my teacher picked up her bamboo sword and told me block her strikes.

I utterly trust my teacher and I know she has absolute control over what she's doing with a sword, but it was still a really bizarre moment to see a big bamboo sword coming at you.

The tahn bong blocks, like the tahn bong strikes, are multi-directional and seem to be an extension of how you'd normally block with your hands. And, like blocks with your hands, you need to have the confidence to let the strikes come to you before you parry them at the last second.

This is new and difficult stuff for me and it has the requirements of time and patience written al over it. But like anything else I've done to a decent level, I'll simply stick at it and at some point will improve. I just need to make sure I put the hours in...

Love and Understanding...

It's been a rough week for all manner of reasons. But The Missus has a solution... 

'Go hit the punchbag. Or do some martial arts stuff. You'll feel better. You're always better once you've hit things, or done some martial arts stuff...'

On such understanding a great love is built.

The Full Batman...

The Missus once did a Q&A test on me to see if I was borderline OCD. And, apparently, there is no 'borderline' about it. I am so far entrenched in the land of OCD that it would take the medical equivalent of a SAS strike force to rescue me and return me to any lands resembling normality.

In an attempt to break my obsessive habits of order and neatness and always double- or even triple-checking anything, from whether I've locked doors behind me or saved work on back-up drives and back-ups of back-up drives, the Missus bought me socks with the names of days of the weeks on them for Xmas.

At first, I genuinely found it quite hard to not wear the correct socks on the correct day. But I've been slowly weaning myself away from this habit, and now I no longer return home when I realise I'm wearing the wrong socks on the wrong day.

At this point, I should explain that I know this behaviour is utterly insane. And it drives the Missus completely crazy. On the plus side, it does mean our house is incredibly tidy.

A few weeks ago, however, I was getting changed after a martial arts class and congratulating myself on breaking the sock-day pattern compulsion. I was even thinking that I may be getting control of some of my more obsessive patterns of behaviour.

Then I caught sight of myself in a mirror: Batman socks, Batman boxer shorts and Batman t-shirt. I like to think this synchronisation of apparel happened by accident. But I fear it didn't. I'm only relieved I don't have a cape. The fight continues...

The Krankies...

It is 4am in the morning at From Beer to Paternity Towers. The Missus has woken up, put her dressing gown on and gone to the loo. I am likewise awake and I go to the loo as well. 

But we have an actress guest staying at the moment so I have to 'cover up' and not wander around the house half-naked. This, sadly, also means that I cannot do my favourite joke for at least a week. This involves the Missus waiting for me to join her if we're going out somewhere and me appearing naked, uttering the words: 'Right. I'm ready to go!' 

Apparently, after 17 years together, this is no longer funny.

So I dress and head to the downstairs loo and eventually make my way back up to the bedroom to undress before climbing into bed. 
'Where have you been?' says a sleepy but curious Missus. 
'The toilet,' I reply. 
'But you went downstairs. Why did you go downstairs?' 

The real reason I went downstairs is because I was very farty and I didn't want to potentially wake the actress with loud farts at 4am in the morning. But I didn't tell the Missus this. 
'What are you? The Wee Police?' I ask defensively.
'I just thought it was odd,' says the Missus, dropping back to sleep. 

I lie awake for a few minutes then prod the Missus. 
'Who'd be the boss of the Wee Police?' I ask. 
'I don't know,' growls an exasperated Missus, wanting to get back to sleep. 
'Chief Inspector "Wee" Jimmy Krankie,' I answer. 

There is a pained sigh. 
'You've brought images of the Krankies into our bed,' says the Missus.
'If we're renting rooms to actors, then it may only be a matter of time before they're here in the flesh,' I add.
'Go to sleep or I'm leaving you…'

I wanted to say 'Fan-dabby-dozy'. But I didn't. I don't think she'd leave. But you never know...

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle...

Hurray! Stewart Lee's back with series three of his award-winning Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.

For my money, Lee's the best comedian in the business and, as an added bonus, this series also sees Brass Eye creator Chris Morris take over the Armando Ianucci role for the interview segments between the stand-up routines.

The opening show is fabulously funny, while the second sticks the boot into UKIP. It's brilliant. Watch. Enjoy. Daily Mail readers need not apply. You cunts...

Old...

I'm desperately trying to train at least three times a week at the moment and I'm also working hard, both in the office and on several other personal projects.

I'm consequently exhausted. I'm so exhausted I was in the shower this morning and I let out a fart, and a little bit of wee also came out. I genuinely couldn't control it. 

Maybe this is how 'getting old' feels. Or maybe this is how it starts... 

Valentine's Day...

I really got into the Valentine's Day spirit today by making a Rose for a colleague at work...

Other Woman News…

The Other Woman’s Father has remained a constant source of amazement and exasperation in equal measure to the Other Woman, the Other Woman’s Long-suffering Boyfriend and the Other Woman’s family for many years.

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s several years ago, the medication for his condition has prompted spells of fascination with internet pornography, impulse purchasing of both a pool table and a bar billiards table, and a fascination and subsequent ownership of the type of fireworks reserved for use by civic authorities, which usually require a specialist from Nasa to launch them.

His recent foray to watch an Olympics football match in his wheelchair, and his subsequent belief that he no longer needed a wheelchair during a lucid moment, almost saw the Other Woman and her family lynched by supporters who suspected he was lying about his disabled status in order to secure front-row tickets at Wembley.

In many respects, he’s remained something of an underground hero to me, deciding to carry on as normal wherever possible and not accepting there are certain things a seriously ill man should not do.

Recently, his health has taken a turn for the worse and, now in a minimally conscious state, it’s a matter of when rather than if he finally says goodbye. It’s tough for the Other Woman but she remains amazingly level-headed and stoical about it all.

We were discussing a suitable tribute/epitaph and decided a large-scale display involving a naked woman made out of fireworks with Catherine wheels for nipple tassles was one possibility.

‘Large-scale fireworks, a bit of smut and spunking a huge amount of money on something totally pointless but also quite touching,’ I suggested.

‘It’s what he would have wanted,’ agreed the Other Woman.

Uncle...

BBC3 has produced many excellent comedy shows: The Mighty Boosh, Him and Her, Cuckoo and Bad Education... But the new kid on the block may be the best yet.

Uncle stars Nick Helm as Andy, a perennial under-achiever and wannabe rock god who last romance ended in disaster. About to end it all, he suddenly finds himself having to babysit his young nephew, Errol, while Errol's mother, Sam, pieces her life back together after drug addiction and divorce.

The combination of man-child looking after child-wise-beyond-his-years is not a new one. But there's something incredibly funny and also very touching about the combination of Helm and young actor Elliott Speller-Gilott, who plays Errol. At turns, it's convincing, touching and hilarious without ever being mawkish, saccharine or crass. Both actors give beautifully balanced performances.

Daisy Haggard, from Man-Stroke-Woman and Episodes is also excellent as Sam, mum to Errol and sister to Andy. She also has some of the best lines and, in my opinion, remains criminally under-used by most comedy producers.

Thrown into this set-up is Andy's ex-girlfriend and two potential new love interests, plus various musical numbers penned by Helm, whose stand-up comedy persona is also a frustrated wannabe rock god who performs very sharp satires of different rock-music genres. Check out his work on the inter-net-web if you're in any way curious. It will be time well spent.

Uncle is genuinely heartwarming and genuinely funny. It could well be the comedy of the year. And it's only January. It is that good.

New York: Guggenheim...

The last time me and the Missus were in New York and we visited the Guggenheim, we saw an exhibition that was a retrospective of the work of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

It remains one of the most amazing art exhibitions I’ve ever seen. But with modern art, you pays your money and you takes your chance… and our return saw us visit while a Chicago artist named Christopher Wool was having a retrospective.

Wool’s work has something of a punk sensibility to the way it seems to be constructed, with the messy and almost agit-prop way that his canvases are constructed, with images from old work being used as the basis for something new and worked over so the squiggly lines and the images they produce are quite textured.

There were also lots of quite patterned prints with splodges where the ink or paint had run as he’d recreated what looked like wallpaper patterns or geometric shapes by hand.

Some of his paintings were word pictures where he’d used sentences or words stacked over several decks and broken up at irregular intervals. I quite liked those. I also liked his stark B&W photo sequences where he’d made photocopies of the photos then hung those to distance the image and make it look even more distorted.

But, as with much modern, it either connects with you or it doesn’t. And I struggled a bit with Wool and his work. Much of his work was also untitled so you didn’t have much to go on to extract meaning.

‘He’s been deliberately enigmatic,’ said the Missus.

‘He’s just been lazy,’ I replied.

One thing I did see that really blew me away, though, was an art installation called Impenetrable. This was by an Israeli artist called Mona Hatoum and it was constructed of hundreds of thin lines of barbed wire about three metres in length that were hung vertically about two inches apart so they formed a three-dimensional cube. 

It was utterly stunning and strangely moving.

New York: The American Natural History Museum...

The last time myself and the Missus were in New York and planned to visit the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), we were with the Boy and we got as far as buying tickets and going in through the entrance hall... before he started throwing up and we had to leave.

Five years later and the Boy is off living his own life with his girlfriend, so myself and the Missus were back in New York and determined to visit. And it started off as quite an odd experience.

A chunk of the ground floor is taken up by the diorama rooms, which are essentially painted scenes populated by stuffed and mounted animals. The information attached to each diorama is succinct and the staged scenes are fascinating to see, but it does feel a bit of an anachronism in the age of 3D nature documentaries. There were times it felt like a glorified version of the Stuffed Animal Museum at Tring.

But the thing about the AMNH is that it's a vast building with loads of other stuff. The art gallery houses an amazing collection of work, the Native American Indian rooms are stunning, and the collection of gemstones and the meteor gallery are fabulous.

The star of the show, however, is the dinosaur gallery, which is brilliantly staged and blends both old-school displays of skeletons with film and other hi-tech, on-screen information.

We spent about four hours there and didn't even scratch the surface. It was fab.

New York: A Bit Cold...

Me and the Missus are in New York and it is winter. To be fair, it is quite cold and one of the days apparently breaks all sorts of records for winter in New York.

But I then remember that Americans love a statistic. Weather, sports, politics, telly viewing figures, money… The nation seems to be obsessed and everything seems to be chronicled and understood in numbers.

Added to this is the phrase 'Polar vortex', which all the news channels seem to have grabbed hold of and run with to describe the cold snap. New York is in the grip of a 'Polar Vortex: Disaster Imminent', etc. I also recall Americans love a bit of drama.

The problem with 24-hour rolling news channels is that the beast needs constant feeding. And, because New York is one of the major cities in the world, anything that happens there becomes major news. So the beast is fed then it feeds other beasts. It's a frenzy of mutual news masturbation.

Me and the Missus, of course, are seasoned hacks with a healthy cynicism for such news-based doom mongering, so we wrapped up warm and walked 30 blocks, taking in Central Park along the way, to visit the American Natural History Museum.

I'm remind myself I'm from Yorkshire. We sunbathe in weather worse than this. But not much worse...