This weekend just gone, I was making a guest appearance in London. Since I moved from there last year, there has been a drop in London house prices. Alongside this, Manchester has experienced the highest rising property prices in the UK during the past 12 months. Obviously, these figures are entirely down to me and my general aura.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t equate to me being able to afford to buy anywhere. But I might start approaching estate agents around the country, explain the effect I have and then see if they’ll give me a discount on a house in return for my presence significantly boosting business elsewhere in their area.
I wasn’t just there to cause a temporal shift in respective house prices; I had business to attend to. I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of the content management systems used by the business-to-business publishing sector, as I’m not allowed to under my contract. What a shame for you all that is.
For the night, I crashed at my mum’s cousin’s house in Tottenham. It was the same place I stayed pretty regularly in 2009 before I moved to London, when I was coming up for gigs and newspaper shifts. It was also the same place that I was house-sitting in 2011 that was then infested with fleas, when I took a call the morning after a night-shift from my current company to tell me that I was successful in my application. And at this exact time, I was sleeping in a bin bag to try and keep the fleas off me.
I did a gig for Gwilum on the Friday, but was really staying over as I had the opportunity for a meet-up with Parisian podcaster, Luke Thompson. Not only that, my old friend Moz was also there.
The three of us originally a met in a basement that smelt like toilets doing a comedy workshop in 2009, and I realised that we’ve actually done alright for ourselves through comedy and performing from those humble beginnings. Hopefully this won’t be the respective pinnacle for each of us, but it’s pretty good so far. Moz is doing a successful walking tour of Soho, Luke has an international audience for his award-winning podcast and is making a bit of money from it; and I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’ve done a sold-out run at Edinburgh Fringe. I’ll admit, most people aren’t aware of this and don’t seem to react well when I berate them for not giving me the respect I deserve, no matter how weak the new material I’m testing may be.
The missing member of the crew is Paul Langton, who was characteristically absent. But as regular readers will know, he has achieved nothing in comedy. If only he’d stuck with the mediocre Love and Langton sort-of-double-act, who knows which small venue we would now be struggling to fill?
It was a brief counter, as Luke had to go off to band rehearsals in preparation for his 40th birthday gig and I had to travel back up north as I had tickets the following night to see another band in Birmingham. As much as I’m a fan of Luke and all his creative endeavours, his band will probably never quite match Iron Maiden.
In Edinburgh news, I can announce that I will be doing How To Win A Pub Quiz with The Stand again this year, but am doing the full-run. I am very much looking forward to this. Tickets should be available now. Probably, I haven’t looked.
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