Well anyway, we have been on holiday, me and the old man popped down to our mates bungalow in Rock, leaving the girl back at base. I didn’t want to go, I wanted to go to The Maldives, I was in a dreadful ungrateful mood and I deserved to have a shitty time. But I didn’t I had a GOOD time, hooray.

We had a posh night at the Fowey Hall hotel in Fowey, where, if you know where to look, you can see Dawn French’s massive house/estate. Fowey Hall hotel is ace, it’s the kind of place that supplies wellingtons and fishing nets for children, hens strut free-range stylee across the lawns and there is an indoor pool and an out door trampoline. I used the pool and had the best scallop starter ever. We discovered the hotel last year when I was gigging at The Daphne du Maurier festival – one of those gigs you only really get invited to once in a blue moon, it’ll be on again this May, check it out if you live nearby.

Fowey Hall

Chairs in Fowey Hall

Painting in Fowey Hall

Then we stayed with friends in Zennor, which is right down the tippy old tip of Cornwall where there are no trees! And from there we journeyed to Rock, did the ferry to Padstow thing, the St Ives thing, the St Michael’s Mount thing and ate fine victuals, including glorious squid overlooking St Ives bay.

Padstow Ferry

Misty St Michaels Mount

Squid and Chorizo overlooking St Ives bay

I also bought a numbered Ben Nicholson print from the St Ives Tate, I will post a photo when Ive got it framed, I love Ben Nicholson, he was married to the sculptress Barbara Hepworth, I love her too, she had triplets, I’m intrigued by triplets, twins are mad enough, I can’t really get my head around quads or beyond.

Since I last blogged, I’ve been trying to write a new stand up show, I can’t tell you how vile this is- so vile that when I did do a gig I bottled out of trying anything new and kicked myself all the way home.

I’m still on the Loose Women rota, which kept me pretty busy last month when we had the chicken pox/shingles outbreak/scare, when anyone with so much as a shaving rash or a pimple was sent home ‘just in case’. Its all back to normal now (!) and I’m usually just in on Fridays, which means I’ve got no excuse not to get on with this bloody new show- if only I didn’t keep getting distracted by Twitter, or Phoebe’s box set of 30 Rock and Made in Chelsea (Ch4 OD). Onwards……

THIS MONTH I HAVE

READ The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright (Booker prize winner) a beautiful, elegant and sad tale of sexual attraction and the consequences of an affair.
Also- ‘Wicked Girls’ by Alex Marwood, a real page turner… what happens when your past catches up with you?

SEEN British Design at The V and A, a badly put together exhib of fabulous things, go and see it and try not to get cross about how it has been set out. Looking at the tiny golden suit that Marc Bolan wore, nearly made me cry, he was so small and now I am so old!

WATCHED Birds of a Feather- live on stage, in Richmond with my lovely old mate from the Grumpy Live shows, Linda Robson, plus her son Lou, whom I adore, plus, the uber ace Lesley Joseph and of course Pauline Quirk. A night of much love and laughs for the ladies.

Hello, well this weather needs to make it’s mind up – I’ve even had to buy a mack, a delicious yellow mack from Jigsaw which I have been yearning for for two months – ha, come on rain, come on hail, I’ve got a mack, I don’t care.

I also bought some chocolate brown desert boots my first pair of Clarks shoes for a hundred years!

So, apart from having a spend, I’ve gigged and been on Countdown and written a telly review for The Mirror – ironically as it turns out, since the day I filed the copy all our tellies conked out and I know there are many more exciting things to do, but when you physically can’t – all you want to do is watch The Voice.

Talking of doing other things, the old man and I went to the ballet, we were guests, it was ace, we went to the Colliseum, look at these pictures

It’s the most beautiful theatre and the ballet – ‘Anna Karenina’ was wonderful too, maybe because I read some Wikipedia notes before I went so I vaguely knew the story and maybe because they simplified it beautifully and so it was really easy to understand. Anyway, we had a ball and we shall attend more dance!

Ooh yes and we have seen the Hirst, you have to see the Hirst if you can, its hilarious and touching and mad and over the top. People can slag him off all they like, but he put Britain on the art map at a time when no-one else was making any waves, he’s our Warhol, it’s not just about whether you can draw some fruit in a bowl, sometimes it’s whether you can figurehead a movement and create a path for a load of other new artists.

His massive ashtray still stinks just as much as it ever did.

God, I used to love smoking so much!

Anyway I’ve managed not to get shingles in the recent Loose Women chicken pox/shingles outbreak, which ended up being more hysteria than reality, at one point it looked like the entire panel was crashing down, with people being send home with dodgy shaving rashes and the merest hint of a temperature but in the end only Andrea and Janet S.P had the dreaded shingles and just one of the bosses was off with the pox. The day Jane McDonald was wrongly diagnosed I was motor-biked over from another job in Chiswick to take her place at the last minute whilst a DO NOT USE sign was hung on her dressing room door, turned out she just had tiny spot on her chin!

Right that’s your lot, I need to go downstairs and loll with the Sunday papers… Laters….

THIS MONTH I HAVE

BOUGHT – the yellow mack and the suede boots – yey!
READ – Jo Jo Moyes duvet wetter, ‘Me Before You’, seriously, I cried so hard I nearly had to change the sheets.
SEEN – Art and ballet oh and the British design exhib at the V and A, a messy show but with some fab bits, we weren’t allowed to take photos so I took a pic of a pillar in the V and A’s most beautiful café in the world.

BEEN – to Bromsgrove to do the very final ‘Old Dog New Tricks’ touring show, this has been my favourite show to perform and I’m terrified about having to write another, arghhhh, on that note.. I’ll let you know how I’m getting on in a couple of weeks…

BIRTHDAY FLOWERS

Hello all, well I’ve done 52 and it’s ok, it feels pretty much like 51, but with a bit more cellulite.

I got some lovely presents and have been very badly spoilt so that’s good.

In other news, I’ve mostly been at home trying to write some new stand up, this is the most torturous part of the job, it’s just miserable and you can’t believe it can take a whole day to write one measly joke, which you then try out on stage and dies on its arse.

Thing is, there’s a huge amount of stand up around at the moment, heaps of really good people doing really interesting stuff, I was reminded of this when me and the girl went to the Chortle Awards – a good natured do at the Café De Paris, lots of old faces, lots of new faces, lots of talent. I also had a night out with my old panto pal, Kellie Shirley who took me along to Kings Place to see the all female sketch group ‘Lady Garden’ and friends, I’d heard of the girls over the last couple of years but I’d never seen them live, they were great, so were their guests, a mixture of more sketch groups plus some straight and some character stand up. I don’t think anyone on that stage was over thirty that night and they all had something, apart from the girls, I particularly liked Sheeps and Totally Tom for fabulously detailed writing and performing.

I also went along to BAC to see ‘You’re Not Like other girls Chrissie’ which Phoebe and I had seen a couple of Edinburgh’s ago and wanted to see again. Caroline Horton is a great little actress/writer, I’m really keen to see what she does next.

Enough about other people, back to me, I ‘ve been eating out loads, now this isn’t like me as I’m far too mean to enjoy restaurants, but I have to say Goodmans on Maddox St with Dom Joly was a great treat, we ordered three portions of lobster tails and I had a whole roasted onion with mine, because I know how to live. Mr Joly was on fine form.

I’ve also had a light lunch and the new and fashionable Delauney on The Aldwych, a sort of sister restaurant to The Wolsley, lovely room and if you choose carefully, its not too pricey for eg the old man had a sausage sandwich!!

Less successful was a dreadful meal at Indigo @ Number 1 The Aldwych, just dreadful expensive food, fortunately I was with an old school pal so we were talking too much for the food to matter, but it was awful.

Enough restaurant critiquing – work wise, its been the usual mix of Loose Women, writing and the occasional gig. Ooh I had a hideous moment on Loose Women – Alex James from Blur was on talking about rock and roll and cheese and he was witty and charming and right at the end – when the cameras stopped he turned and said ‘we have met before’, well dear reader, I thought, ‘ooh when and fancy you remembering when I don’t’ and he said ‘I saw you at that cheese gig’. At this point I could have crumbled into very fine parmeson, the cheese gig was my nemesis, it was one of the worst corporate events of my career and one where I had to leave via the kitchens and hail a cab down a back alley, such was my embarrassment. I slunk back to my dressing room, beetroot, I will never be able to look Alex James in the eye again.

GLASGOW DAY

Apart from that I have been to Glasgow and back – I did the Citizens theatre, its one of my favorite venues for stand up so it was worth the trip even though the train journey home (5 carriages instead of 9) was pretty horrendous.

GLASGOW NIGHT

Oh and the sunshine, what glorious sunshine, what a wonderful bare feet week, all about to break on us, apparently as the the bank holiday weekend approaches, so does the snow!

You couldn’t make it up…

Cheers

THIS MONTH I HAVE

READ – Jo Jo Moyes, ‘Me Before You,’ a book that made me sob, if this isn’t made into a film, I shall eat my hat/or another meal at Indigo.

BOUGHT – Just a t shirt from Cos, I’m taking it easy on the clothes front.

SEEN – Apart from the theatre stuff me and the old man went to see the Ben Nicholson/Mondrian exhib at the Courtauld gallery, no photos allowed though weirdly you could take pics of the permanent collection and what a collection!

VAN GOUGH AT THE COURTAULD

This is where the famous Van Gough ear painting sits, plus a load of Cezanne’s and Matisse’s, basically, all your favourite A level Art birthday cards are in this space.

CEZANNE AT THE COURTAULD

I’m also watching a lot of old Otto Preminger films at the moment, the ones I can remember off the top of my head, all of which I would totally recommend are, Laura, Angel Face and Anatomy of Murder, you can’t go wrong with a bit of old black and white movie now and then. I’m going to watch all Premingers films in case I ever need to do Celebrity Mastermind , sometimes it’s good to have a plan.

Hello, I’ve been a very bad blogger since we got back from Miami, maybe I felt nothing was as exciting as the Ocean Drive photos and I didn’t want to bother you with just a load of everyday boring crap.

I don’t know where February went, but now it’s March and maybe things feel a bit more exciting, I’ve been gigging, gigging is good for me, it gets my heart racing, it’s cardiac, a bit like rowing, maybe I should do the Olympics!

To be honest I’ve only done three gigs, a charity in Brighton for my old pal Henry Normal in aid of Amaze Brighton a charity that offers support to parent of kids with physical and behavioral problems and a couple of Art Centres down South, Exeter and Dartmouth to be exact.

SOMETIMES COMING HOME FROM GIGS CAN BE LONELY!

So me and the longsuffering Mr George (the tour manager), hit the road in a hire car and spent a couple of nights in a self catering pad in Exeter which is only an hour or so away from Dartmouth – all v organized.

We were so organized we even snooped round the Cathedral, which is like being in a massively ornate rib cage – followed by a quick pilgrammage round the shops and lunch at Wagamama – well done Exeter, nice trip.

However Dartmouth managed to top Exeter by having a ferry to get from one side of the Dart to the other, is there anything more exciting than a three minute ferry ride… at night?

Anyway, good gigs, nice to be back in the saddle, so much so that we have announced the Autumn tour ‘Eclairious’ which will head off at the end of September and roll round the country ‘til mid December

In light of this yet to be written show, I did a shoot with an ace photographer Sarah Dunn – the new images will be splashed all over this site very soon no doubt, I have to say, Sarah and the make up girl Paola Rekabarren did a fantastic job, if only I looked like I do in the photos in real life!

In other work related stuff, I spent a few days on a secret job, which I will tell you about once I’m allowed to open my fat gob!

Book wise, the new novel, ‘Life, Death and Vanilla Slices’ will be out on the 5^th of July- which is v exciting indeed, though I have a feeling that’s the dates all the summer books get pushed out, so I have to make sure mine doesn’t get lost under a tide of ‘Holiday reads’.

Ooooh, off work now and onto CULTURE, I have seen stuff, the old man and I saw The Pyjama Men at The Charring Cross Theatre – which I liked but didn’t love (ace perfromances, muddy story telling) dinner after at Byron – (excellent top endish burger chain).

A few days later, I saw Toby at the Soho Theatre with my old mucker Julie Balloo, a real life sister double act, playing out their warts and all relationship on stage that had me howling – loved it. Can also recommend the food at Soho Theatre – yum, I am horribly greedy at the moment.

Art wise, I have seen the Picasso and the Hockney, the Picasso is great, but in a lousy set of bunkerish rooms at Tate Britain, whereas at The Royal Academy the Hockney just sings. Its possibly one of the maddest, most full on things of home grown beauty I have ever seen. The man is truly great and anyone who doesn’t agree can simply fuck off!

Anyway – just to finish off on the work front, I’ve just got back from a couple of nights in Manchester doing five eps of Countdown with Nick Hewer who is a telly mate and a man who makes me laugh a lot.

I’d never even seen the show before, it was a hoot, despite having to stay in the crappy Marriot V and A Hotel over the road, which was truly awful in just about every way!

Fortunately the old man and I managed to escape the  hotel restaurant and trot around the corner for a shared T bone at Carluccios after filming on sat night and sloped off for brunch at The Corner-house (devilled mushrooms on toast) before catching the train back to a ridiculously sunny London today.

I will never ever stay by choice in a hotel that charges £15 for a days use of the internet – which is what Marriot’s charge!

THIS MONTH I HAVE

BOUGHT – some khaki jeans that make my arse look enormous and a black shirt – yawn, not exciting.
A couple of cocktail rings from Accessorise – which look a lot more exciting that the Ten pound price tags suggest!

SEEN – The Artist – haven’t we all? Very sweet but not much else!

Ok gang, that’s your lot, I’m fifty two this coming week, so I shall probably be too busy sulking to blog for a while…

x

Jenny has just annoucend a new stand-up tour for this Autumn – Jenny Eclair Eclairious. The 38 date tour starts on 29th September and you can see a full list of the shows by visiting the Live Dates Page.