Student stand-up comedy

Weekend was a bit of chore with a builder friend coming into to doing our hall and stairs wall plastering. Bless him for taking on the job but making us get up to let him in for a 8am start on Saturday morning then pissing off at 1:30pm, then promising to arrive at 9am, then turning up at 9:30am and then going at 3pm didn't put him high on the popular list. Still, he did a great job. Problem now is the condensation dripping everywhere until the walls dry properly - no wonder I'm feeling rough around the gills today.

With the early starts that weekend we resorted to TV based entertainment and rented the DVD of Sky Blue. I'd read reviews for this awhile ago, all praising the artwork but slating the story and pace of the film. Shame really as 7 years to produce 90 minutes of classy animation to be failed by a storyline so basic it made all the long brooding scenes of directed emotion drag into snoozeville. It either needed more violence and character building or made shorter and aimed at 12 year olds. This was the first Korean manga film I'd ever seen and had worthy moments of graphic gorgeousness but could never meet the unique weirdness, associated strong characters, style or adult slant of Japanese anime.

Sunday night was a personal work project coming to a climax with my own version of the BAFTAs. I've been running a competition with my University's student union clubs and societies to create the best online communities through the web portal called SUSSED. Bit nervous at how it was going to turn out as I didn't know whether any of them would turn up. Basically, the student union organises weekly quizes every Sunday evening so I asked if I could hi-jack it for 10 minutes and a mini-ceremony in the beer break. Everyone at my work made their excuses weeks ago so I had to drag poor Kerry out to provide support and act as press-photographer. It was your basic pub/bar lay-out and students sitting everywhere in huddled groups waiting for the quiz. After the 3rd round of 6 I took to the stage (well, next to it) and used the radio mic. Bit nervous at first but after reading out the first batch of nominated clubs I got a few responses from crowd and my confidence blossomed. More cheekiness and cheesy jokes got a few confince boosting laughs and cheers making my nerves disappear. After that I could have done analysed about relationships, told some sick jokes, dealt with some hecklers and sang 'Dannyboy'. Maybe it was the cheap beer or the cheesy jokes but something inside really kicked in that night much to the surprise of Kerry and myself.

Thanks to the Mighty Boosh e-mailing list I'm part of, I've come across this new comedy sketch show, Snuffbox. This link summarises the programme where as this is the official BBC webpage for it. Biased as I am loving the first series of the Boosh, its good to see the actors who played Dixon Bainbridge (Matt Berry) and Bob Fossil (Rich Fulcher) are doing this new show. Matt Berry also did Garth Merenghi's Dark Place - another comedy that, bizarrely and should be a hangable crime, has not been released on DVD. The second link gives you an exclusive sketch which is funnier than the whole of Hyperdrive put together (not hard). Anyway, set a date for next Monday 27th Feb at 11pm on BBC3.

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