Today is my Livejournal's 6th Birthday. It's certainly not used as much as it used to be (only a few posts so far this year), partly because of newer, shinier sites like Facebook and Twitter but also because most people that I used to follow have stopped using it. Anyway, enough of that, here's something more interesting.
Yesterday I went to benefit gig for Bletchley Park (the WWII code-breaking station) which was really rather excellent. It opened with a talk by Simon Singh on the Engima machine and code breaking in general. The rest of the show featured stand up sets from Dave Gorman, Punt & Dennis, Robin Ince and Richard Herring. All of these guys were excellent, although Dave Gorman did wobble in the middle of his set. The show also featured a rather ramshakle comedy panel show with Robert Llewellyn as chair, Robin Ince and Richard Herring as guests as well Johnny Ball. If you were a child of the 80s you'll know how exciting it was to see Johnny Ball. He was great.
The show finished was a sketch based on Radio 4's show that's set in Bletchley Park, Hut 33 featuring Punt & Dennis, Robert Llewellyn, the voice of Stephen Fry and others.
All in all a excellent way to spend £25, and it was all for charity anyway!
Links
Wed, Nov. 4th, 2009, 01:02 pm
6 Years Old Today
Wed, Jan. 14th, 2009, 01:25 pm
Comedy Nightmare
Last night I went to a benefit show for the Free Fringe starring Sean Lock, Robin Ince, Dave Gorman, Lucy Porter and several others. The show was a mixed bag, as you'd expect with so many performers. All the big names were great though.
The show was compèred by Daniel Kitson who, as compères tend to do, chatted with members of the audience. We were almost in the middle, on the front row. Guess who he picked on first? Me! Argh! I can't say I engaged in witty banter which had the audience in stitches, but compared to the other three people on the front I probably came out of it the best. Bizarrely there was another Andrew who was a computer programmer on the front row, and we ended up have an argument over which was best, Java or C++, with Kitson acting as the intermediary. Fortunately my "Java is slow" argument beat his "It's used by hundreds of people". One nil to me!
Being picked on has always been a concern of mine, but it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. I'm not sure how I would cope if I were ever asked on stage though...
The show was compèred by Daniel Kitson who, as compères tend to do, chatted with members of the audience. We were almost in the middle, on the front row. Guess who he picked on first? Me! Argh! I can't say I engaged in witty banter which had the audience in stitches, but compared to the other three people on the front I probably came out of it the best. Bizarrely there was another Andrew who was a computer programmer on the front row, and we ended up have an argument over which was best, Java or C++, with Kitson acting as the intermediary. Fortunately my "Java is slow" argument beat his "It's used by hundreds of people". One nil to me!
Being picked on has always been a concern of mine, but it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. I'm not sure how I would cope if I were ever asked on stage though...