That London. Yesterday.

Thanks to everybody who came to the January show at the Live Theatre. The place was rammed to the rafters and a great night was had by all. I felt that the second half of the show, the part in which I do the characters, went particularly well and I think I probably did the best Rick Kestrel and Jeremy Jitler I’ve ever done. I’m pretty sure now that for Edinburgh this year I’ll be doing an hour of the five characters, and calling it Simon Donald is Completely Hatstand. Your thoughts are welcome.

I’ve started a Facebook group to try and assess how many people in London would like to come and see the full Comic to Comic show. I know it’s already sold out at an incredible rate in Newcastle, but in London I’m as yet a new artist with little in the way of a following. I am asking people to join the group if they think they would like to buy a ticket to see the show, so hopefully I’ll get an idea of what demand is like before I book a venue. You can join the group by following this link FACEBOOK LONDON GROUP

This is just called St James's Park. Yesterday.

Happy New Year to one and all, and thanks to everybody who came to all of my shows over Christmas and New Year. The picture above is dedicated to all who attended the NUST gig at Gallowgate. The Christmas shows were all fantastic fun, and all went ahead despite the appalling weather. As well as seeing great crowds turn out, it was great to catch up with some of the other comedians who I’ve not seen for a few months and it was especially good to work with both Gary Delaney and Sarah Millican again. Sarah has always been hilarious and now seems to be on the cusp of the national celebrity that she so richly deserves. Gary, king of the machine-gun paced one liner, is still as relentlessly funny as he ever has been. Lovely to see so much new material from both of them.

Sorry I’ve been out of touch for a while on the blog front, I’ve been very busy and I’ve also been down for a few days with the Rangoon Crut. After my gig on the 20th I fell ill and spent almost all of the days leading up to Christmas on the sofa, managing only a two-hour slog around the Metrocentre on the 23rd to cover everybody’s Christmas shopping. This jaunt wore me out to such an extent that I wasn’t able to travel up to Northumberland on Christmas Eve, having instead to return to the sofa to recuperate.

Christmas successfully out of the way I’ve returned to writing my autobiography. I say writing, I’ve actually been reading and editing and compiling sections rather than actually writing anything. I was very happy to find that I’ve written more than I thought I had, and a lot of it still makes me laugh, which I hope is a good sign.

Leading up to Christmas I was working on the science project which I flagged up here a while back. It’s a documentary looking at stem cell research into treatment of multiple sclerosis. I’m working on it with my long-term colleague Alex Collier, and his animations for the show, created by his Oddball Media partnership, are looking fantastic.

It’s going to be a brilliant documentary, we’re having loads of fun with it by using animated cartoon sections, but it’s a really good science adventure at the same time. I’ve been recording the voice characterisations for the cartoon sections and I have to say that’s some of the most fun there is to be had in tv work. It took me back to recording the soundtrack of the Sid the Sexist cartoon in 1992. On that occasion I had to share a microphone with Bob Mortimer who did his absolute best to make me laugh whenever possible. Not surprisingly he made me laugh rather a lot. Needless to say the story of that day will be in my book.

If any of you use Twitter you may notice that a Twitter update section has appeared in the right-hand bar of the blog page. I’ve been on Twitter for some time but have never really seen its point, hence I hardly touched it. I’ve decided to give it a go and try to update regularly, but the last thing I want to do is be one of these people who announces to the world everything that they do via Twitter. There are people on there who share the most inane facts, for instance what they are about to eat for their tea and what they might watch on television. I’m almost tempted to go into graphic detail every time I visit the toilet, talking about the consistency, colour and smell of my stools. Instead, I’ll try to use Twitter only as a useful tool to share information, or to share any funny or interesting thoughts that I have, rather than which fucking shoes I have chosen to wear today. Anyway, I’ll give it a try for a while, let me know your thoughts.

I’d like to give a special thanks to everybody who has bought tickets for my Newcastle Live Theatre show Comic to Comic. The show, as many of you may already know, was scheduled for 10 December the exact 30th anniversary of the launch of Viz Comic. Much to my surprise the tickets sold out before the show had been publicised, and my spend on flyers and posters was completely wasted. I booked an additional date for 30 January for those people who’d missed out, and I’m delighted to tell you that I have wasted another packet of money on publicity posters and flyers for this show, which has also sold out before I could begin the distribution of said printed stuff. Thanks so much for wanting to see my show.

Accent yesterday

My thanks to Lola McEvoy for a fantastic review in Accent magazine. Lola visited the Edinburgh Festival on a mission to find the next big thing in comedy from the North of England. Unfortunately she just found me, but luckily for me she settled for that. I’m genuinely flattered to see that she singled me out against some amazing competition including the legendary Gavin Webster the very talented Sarah Millican.

The article is here below for you to read, my thanks to John Smith for sending it to me, Accent not being available here amongst the pearly kings and queens, jellied eels and gang-related gun crime.

I’ll be performing with Sarah Millican at the Lamplight Arts Centre in Stanley, County Durham, on 18 December, a gig which I am very much looking forward to. Also I’m with Gavin at the Blyth gig on 30th December and then New Years Eve at both Gateshead and Newcastle.

Accent article by Lola McEvoy:

Scouting out the best fresh talent from the toon, i talked myself in to virtually every venue – grabbing tip offs about the next big thing from countless competitors. It seemed to me though that it was veteran comic and northern gem Simon Donald that really stole the show…

…Last but most certainly not least was the superb Simon Donald and his bunch of misfits. Donald presented 5 different hilarious characters each one expertly highlighting political stereotypes and all too familiar members of our society. He so accurately adopted the physicalities and facial manuipulations of each one that I was completely enthralled by them all. I never once felt that they were being acted – and that is the true sign of a successful characterisation. There were no elements of cringe in each personification and they were all equally inoffensive and slightly appealing, Donald included just enough blue and enough social criticism to thrill. He is a must see and a northern gem all rolled into 5! As talented as Peter Kay’s interchangeable characterisations, Donald’s clan were all hilarious. A brilliant example of northern comedy!

BOOK NOW FOR NEW DATE 30th JAN

Well that’s it, after 30 years at the cutting edge of British humour I am now officially a sell-out. Fortunately enough this is a crazy and humorous play on words. I ain’t working for the man, or any of that shit, no way. What I am actually referring to is the fact that my show on 10 December at the Live Theatre in Newcastle has, as predicted, sold out.

Great news as this is, it left a number of people disappointed, so to rectify this an additional date has been added at the end of January. To be precise it’s the 30th and the venue, timing and prices remain the same. See the gig’s calendar for full details. You can link directly to the theatre box office on line HERE. Or phone them on 0191 232 1232.

I’m off to play football tonight with the comedians, I hope, unlike Tim Vine, I come away with both of my legs intact.

The Live Theatre have reproted that my show on 10th December is nearly sold out. It looks like I can put all my flyers and posters straight in the recycling bin.

Snap them up now if you want to be there…

TICKETS HERE:

http://www.live.org.uk/

Bingo from Benton addresses current trends in philosophy yesterday.

Just a quick blog post as I am extremely busy with work on a TV show, as with all of these things it may come to nothing, but it’s a fun project which I’ll tell you more about when I get a chance. Broadly it’s a science show with the subject matter being looked at by me in the role of presenter, with the aid of animations by my writing partner on and off for the last 15 years, Alex Collier.

I thought I would just post this link to those of you who haven’t seen it, now living in London I was only made aware of it yesterday. It’s a not-particularly-badly-written piece by my old chum Coreena Ford from Newcastle’s Sunday Sun. It’s about the birth of Bingo from Benton on the legendary Metro Radio show Night Owls, presented by the Northeast’s very own king of ginge Alan Robson. Alan says some very nice things about me  in the interview, which obviously was very disappointing for me.

ARTICLE HERE

Check out Gigs Callender, there have been a couple of recent additions with more to come in the next few days.

I’ll be up in Newcastle this weekend to promote my one-man show on 10 December. If anybody has a business that would take posters or flyers and would like some delivered please let me know via the contact page.

I had the pleasure of performing at a pub called the Camden head last night. A nice little room above a big bar on Camden High Street. Only on route to the gig did I discover that there are two pubs in Camden called the Camden Head. Yes, that’s right, the pub on Camden High Street where I was performing, previously known as Liberties, despite what any sensible person might consider the obvious downsides, has recently renamed itself with the name of another bar which stands only about half a mile away. This might be more understandable if the name of the establishment was the Red Lion or the White Horse or the Black Bull, but let’s face it the Camden Head does appear to be a quite specific name, not a generic British pub name that could appear on any high street.

The correct Camden Head yesterday.

So, I was booked to perform at the Camden Head. I advertised this fact on my website with the aid of a Google maps link. On being asked to find said establishment Google maps, not surprisingly, gives the address of the original Camden Head, so named since 1899. So, unfortunately, that’s the address I put on the site for the show. It wasn’t until I was en route to the pub that the penny dropped. It just so happened that earlier yesterday I had ridden past Camden Head on Camden High Street, so when I used Google maps on my iPhone to locate the place I realised that it was directing me not to the pub I had seen earlier that day but to somewhere quite a distance away. Naturally alarm bells rang and I went to the Facebook page for the event, only to discover, as you’ve probably already worked out, that the gig was on the high street, not at Camden passage as I had advertised.

The incorrect, yet original, Camden Head yesterday.

It only remains for me to apologise to those who turned up at the wrong bar. I know some of you have been in touch via e-mail this morning, sorry to you and to anybody else who hasn’t yet been in touch. I hope you will forgive me for what I think you will agree was a pretty easy mistake to make.

Of course it’s not the first time a unique name has been used by a business in the same trade, Sunderland’s football club famously decided to share the same stadium name as Benfica. At least when Sunderland gave their ground the same name as an existing club they had the decency to avoid confusion by making sure they were in different countries, as opposed to the same fucking neighbourhood.

Yesterday could well have been the most mental day in my entire life. I was invited to a meeting to discuss Vintage at Goodwood, a huge event taking place next summer at the Goodwood estate in Surrey. The organisers have asked me to contribute some ideas about the proposed comedy performances that they intend to include in one of the marquees.

I was asked to meet the event’s main protagonists, Goodwood owner Lord March and designer and fellow TV-list-programme-talking-head Wayne Hemingway, at the pits at the Goodwood race circuit at 9:30 AM. I thought I might be lucky enough to be shown around the pits and to see some of Charles March’s collection of vintage and classic cars. What happened next was beyond belief.

Against the pit wall was the most amazing array of sports cars I’ve ever seen in one place at one time. Pretty much everybody’s dream car was there. There was an Aston Martin DB4, an Aston Martin Vantage V8, a Porsche Carrera RS, a Porsche 996, a D type Jaguar, an E type Jaguar, a Lamborghini Diablo, a Ferrari F355, a Ferrari something or other and a pair of Alfa Romeo 159s.

Wayne casually informed me that I now got to choose which car I wanted to take around a circuit. “You are fucking joking?” Was my rather obvious, but completely natural response.

They let me drive this giant bus with a rocket engine. Quickly.

I will take time to write this story properly for my autobiography, but for now I shall leave you with the information that I got to drive all but the Ferraris and that the D type Jaguar, and the only reason I didn’t drive them was because we ran out of time. Oh, and one more thing, the instructor was happy enough with my driving to allow me to take a Lamborghini up to full throttle on the long straight. Having already played on the pitch at St James’s Park, it looks like the rest of my boyhood dreams were fulfilled in a single day, thanks to a designer whose dad is the legendary wrestler  Billy Two Rivers!

I've wanted to drive one of these all my life. Top banana.

If you choose to attend my Live Theatre show in December, please book your tickets on-line or by phone ASAP, as the theatre are expecting a fast uptake of tickets, so avoid disappointment by booking in advance!

TICKETS HERE:
http://www.live.org.uk/whatson/index.php?next=11&next=21

I’m currently in Italy, driving around in my solid gold rocket-powered car, eating Ferrero Rochers off the bare norks of top photo models.

S