"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 ****

Themepunk Roundup: My Life as an Action Butler

 

Thanks to Gerard Giorgi-Coll. 

 

 This year, unlike last, I've been doing jobs. They've been jobs I've enjoyed, and sought out, but also what you might call out-of-work-actor jobs. There should be a better name for these though, not because I fancy arguing the toss about what counts as acting, but because, ever since I worked at the London Dungeon I have actively enjoyed performing improvisation-friendly, site-specific shift work with a regular band of friends in front of as broad a demographic as possible – Tourism jobs, if you like – and "out-of-work-actor job" doesn't really do that justice. A lot of performance work won't guarantee these things. Themepunk, as I'm going to try calling it for now, hopefully does, although you might get less time to rehearse. Here are Neil Frost and I finalising the route of The Classic Tour back in July:

  

  Press my tummy to view.

 

 I was definitely surprised when Big Ben – below with Neil, both fellow Dungeon alumni – got in touch to say the two of them had been asked by the Ghost Bus Tours to come up with a new, family-friendly, two-handed blockbuster alternative cabaret, complete with songs, costume changes, and a light dusting of Eat The Rich for its open top bus route, and to ask if I'd like to help develop the tour for actual money, and maybe perform it with Neil too, but it was a nice surprise. I figured doing a show on a bus with Neil would be an excellent way to spend a summer without having to go up to Edinburgh, and so it has proved. It's called "The Classic Tour" because that's what was written on the buses. Here's where they keep them:

 

All the other actors Neil brought on for this gig are beautiful too, although audiences have also been pretty Edinburgh-sized as well – appreciative twos and threes until tours were cut – but I'd spent long enough doing Time Tours not to be surprised by this, and I'd heard the Ghost Bus Tours was down to one actor a show as well now, hence my orginal surprise at Ben's call. But this is the bus tour I've always wanted to do, and I'm doing a few in November too, so if you fancy it, HERE.

 

 Yes! This was a plug all along! I'm also going to plug a beautifully written, handsomely received Big Finish Audio Drama I recorded last year: "Torchwood: Art Decadence", in which, as you can hear from the trailer below, I inadvertently play exactly the same character I do above. Don't tell Big Finish, They think I've got range. But I'm in, readers! I'm IN! ACTUAL ACTING JOBS! Available HERE.

Unposted Photographs of October 2022 in Chronological Order

 On the first, I left Trafalgar Sqaure in bloom, happy with the city I lived in, and crossed the river to get a better view of it:

 

 In the basement of the Royal Festival Hall, three dancers had found a space outside the toilets:

 

 I've lived in Notting Hill a year now. I finally found the quickest route to the park, but it still feels like I'm finding routes, rather than walks:

 

 Trellick Tower, its green heart still commemorating Grenfell. It always appears in view suddenly, and to the right of where I expect:

 This was the first time I'd revisited the Victoria and Albert Museum since moving up the road:

 

 I suddenly remembered seeing Jennifer Tilly here, and hearing her, and tried to recall the plot of Slipstream:

 Neil and I went to see Big Ben break his News Revue cherry. Their six week run outlasted two Prime Minsters, and Fred Strangebone in a blonde wig turned out to be a very serviceable Keir Starmer. He was the only one to do a silly bio:

 In Tate Britain, I stayed in the box with the racist language for the whole video (I can't find who's this was or what. It was wonderful. Does anyone know?) Others entered the box, and left very possibly because I was in there, but I don't know how better to screen it:

 

 Over the escalators in the tube, adverts are now screened an angle, tampering with my balance over the duration:

 Here, outside the vault of the Ned, it occured to me that on Saturday we should all wear robes:

 

 Then we moved on to Greenwich peninsula, to rehearse the counting of rice:

 Our rice in situ:

 Suddenly, October was beginning to end. I mean, to finish. I caught Ilona's exhibition just as it was being taken down:

 This Flying Tiger model could have got more into the spirit of the season, I felt. I bought nothing:

 On this stage, I saw David dance and speak lines from King Lear. A good block:

 Outside on Regents Street, they were beginning to put up angels:

By this point, my phone had crashed. Everything was harder to record on Badphone, particularly Maxfield Parrish light. Why was it still Summer?

 On this stage, I saw Natasha dance and speak lines from King Lear. I was not expecting that in a production of Henry the Eighth:

 My balance tampered with, I was still happy to have to caught the last matinee, and celebrated with a walk on the beach:

 

 On this stage, I saw my former rice wife Julia cast her own legs as her parents, and her hand as her dog. I'd missed her rumbling, threatening giggle. It got messy:

 

 Rehearsals started for the Love Goddess in Marylebone. Working in daylight suddenly:

 Opposite Alfies Antiques. Everything a walk away:

 And last Saturday, like the first, saw Trafalgar Square in bloom again.

THE YEAR IN REHASH: DECEMBER - Door Number 3. (This is going to be a drum.)

Source.

 

 Here's my mate Neil Frost (and a reflection of Dan Lees) giving a hint of what clowns have been up to in the Plague Year. And, rounding off this review of my favourite or at least more conspicuous posts from the last twelve months, below is the door to my own socially-distanced December nonsense, and the last video I made this year. All things considered I've had a very lucky Twenty-Twenty, or as the French would say "happy", and regularly putting something out has definitely helped the happy happen so thanks, ole unattendees, for your kind attention, and here's to Twenty-Plenty-Fun. Party responsibly. Let's all keep behind our panels. Tomorrow there might be a quiz. 

 I hope you're all doing tremendously.

 From December the 3rd...

 

 A nice plug in the Guardian yesterday for Gemma Brockis' Oddvent calendar, and thanks to Gemma for allowing me to grant all of you ole unattendees Very Important Person access, as we say in the threshold business, through today's door. Click here to open it and witness my contribution – possibly inspired by the Cosmic Shambles' many show-and-tells – there's more information about the calendar here, and if you need one the password for today is "help". (My first idea was to giftwrap an egg, but I'm not doing that now, so giftwrapping an egg is still going.) Enjoy! 

 

UPDATE: Now the Calendar has vanished, my contribution's up on youtube.

Fancy Party and 4 Oz. of Furlough

 Sorry this is only going up now, but I was catching up with my fellow Ripper Walkers last night, in the actual flesh in an actual pub, and it turned into a tiny, tiny stag do. Yes, we all got married! Not really. Neil noted it felt a bit like being in a pub on the telly; busy enough to fill the seats, but no busier, and we all looked like background artists.

 I remember most of what happened. I think of Ben - author of our Walks, and founder of the Ghost Bus Tours - very much as one of the keepers of London. He always knows what to point out on a ramble, like the Duke of Wellington's replica noses poking out of the concrete on Great Windmill Street. Oh god I've just remembered the toilets. They were magical, they lit up, where were they?

  Here's something else I remembered, and it contains spoilers: I've been using the last week to start reading again, watching less television as a result, binge-watching less, switching more between shows. I put on an episode of Parks and Recreation, series three, episode nine, this one:

 And here's the spoiler, it turns out that the party April and Andy are throwing is actually a surprise wedding, and they get married. I then put on an episode of Orange Is The New Black, series two, episode nine, it was this one, literally the very next thing I watched on television:

  In which Piper gets furlough from prison to attend her grandmother's funeral and, here's the spoiler, at the service her brother throws a surprise wedding, and he and his girlfriend get marrried. I have nothing to say about this coincidence, except that I wish I'd been able to share it. I don't mean share it on the blog, because as you can see I have nothing to say about it. It wasn't even interesting enough a coincidence to share with Neil and Ben. I just noticed it would have been nice to share the oddness as it happened.

Goodye, Diana Rigg. You kicked arse.