Since I got back from Green Man Festival a couple of weeks ago, there is a story about me that my girlfriend, my sister, my mum, various other friends and God knows who else, are gleefully spreading around the place, all of them delighted at how stupid it makes me sound. The story is that […]

I’ve finally decided to get into Gipsy Kings. I’ve loved Gipsy Kings since I was about six years old, but only in a sort of “That live album by Gipsy Kings we used to listen to in the car is an absolute classic” kind of a way. I’ve never listened to any of Gipsy Kings’ […]

Well firstly, hello to all these new subscribers! There’s quite a lot of you this week, and after a bit of digging it seems that most of you are here on Richard Herring’s recommendation. That’s a little awkward, as I plan what each newsletter will be about a couple of weeks in advance, and this […]

A few years ago John Kearns and I invented a game. The way the game worked was that you ranked the years of your life from best to worst, then used their position in the ranking as numerical data points to plot them on a graph. You would then plot a line between all the […]

In a classic case of forgetting that the rest of the world does not always operate following the exact same rhythms of my own brain, it has reached my attention that the Edinburgh Fringe has somehow begun, despite the fact that I don’t get there until the end of next week. The nerve! Anyway, many […]

I am currently in Berlin, which is very nice, and I had an absolute ball bringing my new show You Wait. Time Passes. to the Comedy Cafe last night – thanks to all the good folks at the Berlin Fringe for having me! Because I’m here for a few days, this week’s newsletter will be a film […]

Over the last year or two I’ve been expanding my identity from the admittedly broad and vague perameters of “someone who makes things” to the slightly more specific and compartmentalised “someone who makes things, and also helps other people to make other things.” This sounds a lot like nothing, so let me elaborate. In practise, […]

As I said last week, I’m gonna have to write about my trip to see Starlight Express because otherwise I’m never going to process it. And again, as I mentioned last week, Zoe Paskett has already explored this territory on her Substack incredibly well, so anything I write will merely be a pale imitation of what she wrote […]

An old housemate of mine used to get really annoyed with me whenever I uttered the words “Make a thing.” Every time I said “I’m making a new thing,” she would sigh and tell me I was being obnoxious again. She would remind me that my co-opting of the use “make,” with all its connotations […]

My girlfriend and I recently attended the BBC Comedy Festival in Glasgow, where the BBC organises various panels with legends and experts talking about the current TV comedy landscape, helping to demystify elements of it for other creatives finding their way through the industry. By and large, the legends (Armando Iannucci, Jennifer Saunders etc) would […]

In July my new show, You Wait. Time Passes. (“explores pet themes of creativity and the abnegation of self in service of art” – Chortle, really selling the show’s laugh-out-loud qualities) is coming to the Berlin Comedy Cafe as part of the Berlin Fringe. Perhaps you live in Berlin? Perhaps you know people who live in Berlin? Perhaps […]

I never liked the Guinness “Good things come to those who wait” ad. I thought it was quite boring. I was fairly young when it came out and hadn’t learned to appreciate black and white films yet. It was only relatively recently that The Spy Who Loved Me had made me realise that live action film was an acceptable […]

At the end of Withnail & I, Withnail comes to terms with the fact that he will never play Hamlet. This week, I have finally come to terms with the fact that I will never play the Phantom of the Opera, and I feel reborn. It may come as a surprise to some of you that I’ve […]

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold *** I stared at the post-it note, dumbfounded. This was the last straw. Richard had been giving me a hard time about William for weeks now, and […]

A few weeks ago I wrote this newsletter about the idea of writing about real people, with little idea that that subject was about to become a headline news story thanks to the brouhaha (never use that word, just wanted to use it, had a great time doing it, would recommend) arising from Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer. Just […]