Monday 26 July
12st 9LBS (see mum, I told you I was eating properly); alcohol units quaffed at party in my house over weekend: 38 (including several large slices of Smirnoff-saturated melon); cigarettes puffed over weekend: 100(ish); calories: haven t a clue; number of sexual encounters since emigration day: 63; number of sexual encounters with other people since emigration day: 0.
This diary business is turning me into the male equivalent of that appalling harridan, Bridget Jones. Both of us keep diaries, both of us occasionally think we re pregnant and neither of us is half as funny as we like to think we are. Or so I thought, until a recent gig in Islington s Comedy Brewhouse resulted in some severe swelling in the Glendenning cranium.
I was second last on the Saturday night bill and had a blinder of a gig. Everything went perfectly, to the extent that a member of a New Zealand hen party in the front row had to excuse herself halfway through my set on the grounds that she was about to, quite literally, piss herself. Such was my elation, that after replacing the microphone in the stand, I floated back to my seat looking forward to a well-earned pint and the next act.
The beer went down a lot better than the next act. After approximately five minutes of playing to a cringe-inducing silence he received an unmerciful pecking from the Kiwi hens, who began shouting repeatedly at the compere to bring the Irish bloke back on! . And while I felt for my colleague (few experiences are as lonely, humiliating or sadly inevitable as the comedy death), I was secretly thrilled when the entire audience struck up a chant of Barry! Barry! Barry! The only other time I ve been smothered by such blanket enthusiasm was back in March, when approximately 1000 pissed-up DCU students told me in no uncertain terms that I was shit and I knew I was. Knowing the game was up, he of the top billing graciously made way for the Irish bloke , who bounded happily back onto the stage for his third ever encore.
Two satisfactory gigs and three sunny days later, I headlined at my first performance on London s West End. Granted, it was the stuffy basement bar of a West End restaurant and I was only headlining because all the other acts wanted to get home early, but the fact of the matter is that I headlined at a comedy show on London s West End.
Still on a high after the aforementioned stormer, I went on after seven inexperienced newcomers, resolutely determined to revitalise a very hot, sweaty and tired audience with the rapier wit which had served me so well a few days previously. I unleashed my opening bankers nothing. I waxed lyrical about being Irish in London nothing. I mused about the complexities of golf nothing. I cracked wise about my knob a few titters. I japed about the differences between London pigeons and their Dublin counterparts nothing. Eventually, I gave up and walked off to a smattering of polite applause. Demands for an encore were conspicuous by their absence.
The spring was returned to my step thanks to an unexpected telephone call from controversial rock critic, George Byrne. The Controversial One was in London on official business and had a thirst on him that needed slaking. We agreed to meet in Covent Garden, but with neither of us were particularly well up on the geography of the region, we decided to convene in the first pub on the right once you leave the Tube station.
I alighted from the Tube, veered right and noticed two pubs, one on each side of the street, both equidistant to the station. One of them contained a controversial rock critic, but which one? I checked the signs above the doors. One was called The Nag s Head and the other was called . . . well, it doesn t matter what the other was called because one was called The Nag s Head. I marched in confidently, to be greeted by a controversial rock critic sporting a grin the width of a Smirnoff-saturated melon slice. The Nag s Head, he guffawed. I d have confidently staked every single thing I own that you d look in here first, Baz. Fair play, you didn t let me down. Good old reliable Baz consistency in a world gone mad! n