Comedy Café

On Friday about 40 of us from work headed down to the Comedy Café for what turned out to be a hilarious evening.

Ninia Benjamin and Paul Zerdin were the only acts I could find webpages about. Apparently, the MC was one Drew Barr, but not that one. Also, the first act was listed as John Maloney, although I don't think this was the guy. He's not black, for a start.

Anyways, there was a good mix of styles from the acts, and the final ventriloquism was fantastic. The audience was involved a good amount, and the few hecklers that tried their luck were destroyed almost instantaneously.

When the post-comedy discoteque ended and we had to find somewhere else to carry on the party, I found myself following the crowd to El Paso, seemingly for its free entry and being open until 3am.

Not long after 4am I finally crashed out at a mate's flat somewhere near Liverpool Street. Soccer am provided suitable wake-up material the following morning, before venturing out through the empty city for a fantastic brunch at Smiths of Smithfield [arty photo]. I can recommend the "Number 3" with poached eggs. And if you do go, make sure to check out the trendy toilets.

That was my Jerry Springer moment

Last Thursday about 20 of us from work left training and headed to Maxwell's in Covent Garden. The food was pretty good, and during the course of the meal I discovered a fellow Monkey Dust fan.

Well, the Opera was absolutely ridiculous, but in a good way. Totally outrageous with a blatently high shock value, the show was executed very cleverly, although it's probably more of a musical than an opera. Well, I say so anyway. The interval drinks were £4 each, and the toilets had novelty Jerry Springer toilet paper
with the musical score on them! Oddly enough, I only found out just before the show that Stewart Lee was invloved in the production, which was the sole reason one of our group actually wanted to come along, normally avoiding musicals like the plague.

Afterwards we moved on to the suitably stereotypically named Nag's Head pub for a drink and try to work out what the hell we'd just been watching.

Not Enough Hours In The Day

I left the pre-work social (Matt and Matt bar for drinks, Cuba Libre for food) on a high. The people I'd met so far were a good laugh and was hopefully a sign of things to come...

When the first day at work came around, it turned out I'd only met about a quarter of the entire start group. Since then it's been a tight mix training, information overload, and socialising, so that now I feel that I know a lot more about the company I'm working for and the sort of people I'm going to be working with. For now, this has pretty much taken over my life and leaves me little time to do anything else, but that's understandable in the exciting circumstances of something new and no doubt things will become a little more normal after the inital 5 weeks of training are over.

Needless to day, this self-indulgent weblog has suffered from a severe lack of posts in the last few weeks, so I'm just going to have to do a brain dump of what I've been up to, in quasi-chronological order:

Meal at Baltic.
Random encounter with Mono from Gin Panic.
Regular drinking at The Goose.
Fun Saturday night out at The Warwick.
Learning VB. Yeuch.
Footy at Maida Vale. I'm so unfit.
Flat-warming party at onese8.
Wondering about the randomness of a castle climbing center.
A curry on Brick Lane, then onto the excellent Vibe Bar.

This coming week I'm off to see Jerry Springer, The Opera as part of a lastminute.com meal / show combo, and Friday should be a large one as some of the start group on have 3 weeks of training so it will be the last day for them.

In other news, I'm going to be moving house again within the next few months. Oh, the joy of house-hunting.