This week I got my hair cut, which is something I do periodically in order to make myself look slightly less shit. For this particular haircut, my barber wordlessly summoned a nervous-looking young man to his side, to which he stuck assiduously for the entire duration of the process, never once tearing his eyes away […]

Hail, friend! Well met! (I didn’t receive a single piece of negative feedback in response to my opening last week’s newsletter with the phrase “Well met!”, so I intend to continue doing it for at least another week, until I think of a different phrase I could use. If you strongly object to my continued […]

Hello, old friends! Well met! (This is a thing I’ve heard people say, I’m trying it out. So far, I don’t think much of it. Sounds a bit silly to me). Hope you’re all doing well! Apologies for the lack of a Therapy Tape last week – things got a bit busy. I’m back this […]

Those of my readers who follow the news about the creative industries, specifically film and TV, will know that everything feels quite perilous over in Hollywood at the moment thanks to the total stalemate over the WGA and SAG-AFTRA writers’ and actors’ strikes. For those not clued up, in a nutshell – writers and actors […]

I’m back! I had such a nice break. Thank you for all your warm wishes! I feel refreshed and creatively engaged and on top of the world. Nice feeling! Anyway, while I was away I read Roger Kneebone’s excellent book Expert: Understanding The Path To Mastery, which is about the psychological process of becoming an expert in […]

I’m a workaholic and, ironically, I’m trying my hardest to work on that. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions around workaholicism and what it entails, and to people unfamiliar with it, it maybe conjures up very corporate imagery – Robin Williams in the first act of Hook, maybe, someone constantly walking down corridors in sterile office […]

A few weeks ago Miranda and I were walking back from the White Cube in Bermondsey, where we’d seen an exhibition called Finnegans Wake by Anselm Kiefer (very spooky, like Tom Waits had gone mad in an apocalypse and started collecting things and piling them up real high), and came across an artist on the South Bank called Brad […]

Shhh. Can you hear it? Put down your cups and pens and saucers, and put your ear to the wall. Do you hear the rumbling? Coming up from the earth? It’s almost that time again. The Edinburgh Fringe is coming. Yes, in a week’s time artists around the world are bundling off to Edinburgh to […]

It is truly the end of an ear (or of an era, if you prefer to use the original phrase rather than its funnier counterpart). I have performed my most recent two live shows for the last time! I filmed Blink and Joz Norris Is Dead. Long Live Mr Fruit Salad. at Moth Club on Sunday for the […]

Howdy! How are you? No really, how are you? What’s new? How are your creative projects developing? I’d love to hear! In all seriousness, since moving the newsletter to Substack I’ve noticed that post views and subscriber numbers have gone up, but I don’t get as many replies from readers, and I miss the replies a bit […]

Oh boy, has it been 3 weeks? I’m so sorry! I normally let readers know if there’s going to be a period of time without a new newsletter, because I usually know those periods are approaching, so apologies for disappearing into the ether without warning. I didn’t anticipate quite how busy I’d get in June, […]

A couple of weeks ago I went to a recording of BBC Radio 4’s comedy-and-medicine discussion panel show, Best Medicine, hosted by Kiri Pritchard-Maclean – huge thanks to the brilliant Tashi Radha for inviting me along to it! Tashi works on the show and wanted me to come to one particular recording so I could see and […]

Certain corners of the UK comedy community were in uproar last week when it was announced that the future of the Edinburgh Comedy Award (formerly the Perrier back when it had a name that was synonymous with itself, since then, by turns, the if.comeddie, the AbsoluteRadio.co.uk, the Fosters, the Personally-Funded-By-Nica-Burns-This-Year-Due-To-Lack-Of-Sponsorship, the lastminute.com and most recently […]

I’m back! There was no Fruit Salad Therapy Tape last week because I was away in Wales for a couple of festivals – first the BBC Comedy Festival in Cardiff, then How The Light Gets In, a philosophy, music and comedy festival in Hay-on-Wye. I had a lovely, albeit very intense, week at both and have come back […]

In last week’s Therapy Tape I briefly mentioned that in July I’ll be part of a day of comedy show recordings for Go Faster Stripe at Moth Club (tickets and more info here – isn’t it weird that what we call a “comedy show” becomes a “comedy special” as soon as it’s being filmed? The content’s exactly the same. Mad old business). […]