Comedy Night- Done!

It's the day after the Comedy Store fundraiser and my few minutes in the spotlight seems an eternity away as I sit at a desk adorned in tracksuit bottoms whilst adolescent boys are told how best to get their heart working anaerobically.

The night appears to have been an unequivocal hit. Not only did we raise 6k for charity but all of the comedians had absolute stormers. I will give a very quick summary of the show; emphasis on very quick as most readers will have been there. Howard was brilliant as usual despite saying he was trying new stuff out, Jarred Christmas had me absolutely wetting my pants with his Ninja joke as well as his material getting his unborn child to pronounce Guacamole incorrectly. Benny Boot the languid Antipodean was top quality as usual and Lloyd Langford who has the world's greatest Welsh accent smashed it with his effortlessly amusing stories.

Now I guess I should give a bit of self analysis of my own performance. Admittedly I was in an unfair environment as a lot of punters knew me but I still had to not be crap. ITN were filming for London tonight so I had been wracking my brains trying to think of cricket material and I opted for what, no matter how you glaze it, was a pretty cheesy pun. It should hopefully entertain the old dears watching the news at 6pm.

Kyle Bubbly just about managed to follow my wake :). No in all seriousness he was hilarious-not just material wise but also his face, hair and pseudo African American voice with a geezer twinge had everyone in pieces. Matty Grantham's slow paced punchy delivery was a welcome change in pace before Mr Jack Whitehall closed the show brilliantly even if he does wear skinny jeans. it was all hosted by the lovely hobbit geezer that is Rich Wilson. I just hope it has a knock on effect and helps boost interest in the send off party on 19th March, which should be a top quality bash.

I imbibed a few beverages last night for almost the last night. And for anyone who loves slightly well known people, I ended up drinking in this private members bar in town where Mathew Horne and Kathy Burke were drinking. I didn't actually talk to them I just said, "Gavin and Stacey' & "Kevin and Perry Go Large" really loudly near them. As soon as I can get my mug on the TV it's private members bars ahoy!

Update

I write this blog sitting in my friend James's room in Bristol having been made to go out drinking in a Casino till 5am: a backwards step in my training has occurred. I had hardly been drinking till last Friday, however, going to visit my old Uni buddies in Newcastle is not a good idea if you want to continue a path of temperance. It's pretty safe to say that the fact Gazza is an alcoholic and from Newcastle is not a monumental coincidence; more of an inevitability. I'm the worst person in the world at saying 'no' to my pals hence the reason I went up to Newcastle, spent money on drinking and the horses (aka lost almost all my bets) and then after doing a gig in Bristol last night couldn't resist the orders of my friend James 'the imbibing bison' Gibb. He is 23 years of age and still drinks like a 14 year old supping on a bottle of 'White Lightning', desperately trying to seek the approval of other equally socially awkward adolescent gimps.

On a more positive note, the compere at the gig last night introduced me as Chris 'buff' Martin, so perhaps aesthetically I look in shape even if currently I don't feel like it. I now have less than 3 weeks till the Bath Half Marathon so I definitely need to stop getting on the smash and start getting on the track- that should be on the back of a 'No Fear' t-shirt.

The comedy night line up is sorted. We have Russell Howard and Jack Whitehall from the TV plus loads of other top notch rib ticklers, including myself (hopefully I'm not going to let the side down). So if you want to know more about this google 'Stand Up on Everest' and book tickets for 9Th March. It should be a cracking night for one and all.

yours guiltily...

Dartmoor Weekend 30Jan-1st Feb

As BJ, Kirt and I progressed smoothly down the tarmac gateway that is the M4 I knew that it was going to be a mirth filled weekend. Not just because of the company but because BJ handed me a piece of paper with the Bloomberg top 25 funniest names in the world: my personal favourites are Donna Bumgardener, David Moron and Dario Diklik. Incidentally I'm not swearing, I'm simply quoting people's names. If you consider these to be swear words then you are in fact deriding the innocent people who live with these names every day of their silly named lives.




We arrived in Dartmoor late Friday night despite the Sat Nav's best efforts to thwart us by sending us to a field. Just a field. Luckily we bumped into Kiwi and Glenn who were also lost but had the foresight to bring printed instructions of how to find the Dartmoor centre we were staying at. Without them we would have genuinely had to drive into a patch of vegetation and shout the names of our team mates and hope for the best.

The weekend was a real cliched male team bonding experience. It turns out that no matter whether you're 22 or 32 it is inevitable that somebody backside will try and show off in front of a room of other males and generally your audience will oblige by giggling like little school boys. We seemed to only talk about hackneyed male experiences, which I can't really divulge over the Internet as it would possibly lead to me being locked up or at least cautioned by the cyber police. Let's just say we joked about rambling and walking!

Between all of the churlish behaviour we managed to do some walking...actually walking. I managed to 'break mine boots in', which is the technical term for wearing some boots. It's a needly aggressive and euphemistic expression: I prefer to tell people that 'I popped their cherry'. We ambled around the moors and tors for most of Saturday, which must have been just under 20 miles.I would have loved to have taken in the picturesque Dartmoor scenery but for some meteorological reason which I don't fully comprehend, the land was caked in mist. The range of conversation during 8 hours of walking with different people is phenomenal: you go from one conversation to someone about their job to anopther one with someone else about the funniest name for a pornographic video. Eclectic, best describes the day; maybe smutty.

Sunday was also great fun as we split into 3 teams and got ruthlessly competitive like greyhounds chasing a stuffed rabbit around the baron moors of Devon. The challenges involved carrying 20kg fertilizer bags up a hill, carrying cooking equipment then making fried eggs up a hill, running up a hill dressed as a gorilla (I pulled the short straw on that) and carrying buckets of water from ages away...over a hill. The general theme was doing tiring stuff on hills. Having been comfortably in the lead after the first 3 challenges we choked like all British athletes and ended up tied with the other teams. I guess you could say the overall winner was team Hillary! You could then also say that I'm a cheesy man who needs somebody to dip some bread on my fondue like body to remove that stench of melted Jarlsberg.

No ranting this week. Just thought I would thank James Peterson for his organisation of the weekend, although he could have done something about the mist; at least we missed the snow storm, so well done for that. On that note, I think it's hilarious how in the current economic climate where 90% of the population are desperately grasping onto their jobs and trying their up most to save their pennies, that that same percentage of people looked out their windows and thought, 'I definitely can't go to work today because it's a bit snowy'. Special thanks go to London's bus drives for legitimizing everyones' excuses for bunking off. My faith is restored in humanity.

Peace, Love, Save the children

General Training and Fundraising

In about 3 days I'm taking part in the Grim Challenge. This is something I only have a vague knowledge of. From what I can gather it consists of 8miles of running in off road army terrain including big puddles/ rivers, which is pretty handy because luckily on December the 7Th it should be really warm so a quick dip will be really refreshing. I am of course being sarcastic, it's going to be fat and shit!

I have no idea how I will fair fitness wise. I've started using the cross trainer. Despite previously hating any mechanical indoor aerobic machine I've been favouring the Cross trainer as it's indoors and warm, which is really good preparation for what is essentially an outdoor expedition.

I have also been doing some serious weight session with the people at the school I work at. I don't really like lifting weights as it is the most cliched male thing to do. The good thing about it is the 30 minutes afterwards where you genuinely feel like the Incredible Hulk. Sometimes I go out starting fights on people because of all the adrenalin and the 0.1mm larger pecs I have sculpted. I think I can beat up a bear but in reality I can barely take down a Chinese door mouse.

I also have severely cut down on drinking so now after about 3 pints I'm an absolute shambles. After 5 I want to fight people, which never happens. I worked out that the worst scenario would be if I have 5 pints whilst doing the bench press; I would start trying to smash everyone up and fail miserably.

Last thought for the day why do people make waistcoats for their pet dogs? Utterly pointless.

Touching each other for Charity

Any new readers out their put on some protective goggles because otherwise you might get some of the gold dust below in your peepers.

Me and BJ's touch rugby tournament has just finished. The slightly self indulgently titled Jarman-Martin Invitational.

The day seemed to go really well. Everyone seemed to have a smashing day out and me and BJ's 100 odd sandwiches ranging from marmite, ham, cheese and ham&cheese seemed to be much appreciated.

In terms of results the teacher's team beat by old friend mat and nick's team in the final after a questionable decision by the referee (me). I have a new found respect for refs as it is really hard especially when your adjudicating your friends. I was respected about as much as a Russell Brand giving a speech on phone etiquette (topical? not funny. but topical). I did receive a volley of verbal abuse so when I played in a couple of matches I thought that I would not question any of the ref's decisions, however, I still complained the most showing what a hypocritical Henry I really am.

Also something I always knew about men which got reaffirmed in my mind that no matter what the occasion if there is a trophy to be won they will always be over-competitive and take everything too seriously. It's in a our nature. I genuinely think you could have a £5 trophy up for grabs at funeral for the most upset person and men would rub onions into their retinas, stab themselves in the chops, burn money just so they can win.


anyway me and BJ should have raised about 200 snakes each (you can say almost any word and it means money) e.g. droplets, pies, sheets, boys, badboys, snickers, twigs, knuckles etc

special mention to The Sherpas (Kirt, Tom, Neil, JC, Jules, Blinky). Also to Jules for helping by kindly giving us such wonderful prizes. Steely and Gemma for representing the females in the tournament. Is that patronising and sexist? probably