"Sad c****" is actually "sad clown", but I thought the asterisks were more on brand.*

 Well, there is absolutely, positively no way I'm going to let myself stage Jonah Non Grata again for the first time in nearly ten years, without getting round to plugging it on here with at least twelve hours' notice, so here is that plug, and HERE are the tickets. It's on for one night only this Midsummer's Saturday, at the Soho Theatre on Dean Street – a venue I've always hoped to infiltrate – as part of the London Clown Festival, a scene I've always similarly nursed a pang to crash.

 

 Me crashing clowns. Hi Dan. Hi Neil. Hi Ben. Hi Dan again.

 

 After that one night only, the old bag of tricks, fish, and creamed rice – older even than this blog – will head up to Edinburgh for loads more nights in August, as threatened, and I do plan to bang on about that a lot more on here in future, so don't worry, but for now I'll just say that the Assembly Rooms tickets are HERE, and that I have a lot of people to thank for this happening but mainly one person. That person's precise attitude towards being so much as even mentioned on this blog, however, is currently unknown to me at half past one this morning, so I'll just – for anyone who doesn't know what PR is – post this helpful and unrelated video from 2012:

 

 

  I didn't know what PR was either, but looking at the Metro, it... seems... to be... working... Does the writer below even know me? I don't think so. No reason they should, either: no explicit promise is actually made about the quality of whatever funny bones I may have, just that they'll be mine. 'An exciting biblical adventure'. Great. That's the "Why now?" taken care of too, I guess. So there I am, in today's paper. Being picked in the Must-Sees. Easy as that. Type discount code "FLIGHTRISK" for a fat fifth off tonight's tickets! 

 

 * on brand for Lucy, I mean. Keeping it ****

Lucy McCormick Draws a Spider Diagram

  So. In other business this week, I'm lucky enough to have been invited by old London Dungeon cohort Lucy McCormick to come on board with the excellent Hannah Maxwell (also pictured) as "actual actors" (Lucy calls us this despite being on a break from playing Cathy in an international tour of "Wuthering Heights" – THAT Lucy McCormick) to help her with a few days' research & development on an as yet unwritten play she was commissioned to have a think about by the Soho Theatre. Lucy's a hero of mine – I want people I know to see her, and I want people I don't know to know I know her – but this is the first time I've ever collaborated with her theatrically, and the couple of days' fun we've thus far had has reminded me of working with Shunt in two quite specific ways.

 

 

 Firstly, most of the exercises Lucy asks us to do turn up something sustainably entertaining which might be the basis of a whole show by itself. And secondly, none of these exercises seem to have anything to do with each other – despite there being nowhere else I'd rather be, I've no idea what's going on. No, that's not true; while I was dragging myself along the floor yesterday singing harmonies on a Billie Eilish number before tearing into the salad Lucy had gaffer-taped to her legs, I knew exactly what was going on: That. What I mean is, I've no idea what Lucy wants to make. But that's fine, because Lucy does and she says this is exactly what she's needed, so that's great. (That spider diagram was my idea by the way. Its centre was never filled.)

 

Also, THIS Lucy McCormick