This weekend I’ll be doing three shows with the wonderful comedian and songwriter Paul Silky White. ON Friday we’re in HUSTHWAITE, Tickets here. ON Saturday night we’re in Settle, Tickets here. And on Sunday afternoon we’re performing at Glasgow Comedy Festival, Tickets here.

I appreciate that a lot of people are advising to stay indoors and to not take part in mass gatherings, but hopefully I can allay your fears by reminding you that I have spent most of my life singing traditional folk songs and playing the accordion, which, surprising as it may seem to you, doesn’t tend to attract the hoards. In fact, depending on the size of your family, it might actually be safer for you to come to our gigs than staying at home.

Tickets and details of all my upcoming gigs can be found on my gigs page here.

Hope to see you soon. Come and say hi, and we can elbow bump.

Last night I was interviewed about my comedy on BBC Radio 4. It was on their programme designed for blind people, In Touch. While other comedians are paying vast sums for PR people, I manage to circumvent all that and gain five minutes of air time on a national BBC radio station for free, and all I had to do was be blind for thirty-four years. I am clearly winning the game of life. I expect other comedians at my level will now be considering blinding themselves in order to take advantage of this opportunity, but it’s too late, I got in there first and it’s unlikely they’ll cover the subject of stand-up comedy for a good while now. The secret of comedy is indeed timing.

The interview was recorded the day before the broadcast and the introduction was done separate to me being in the studio. I was asked to send them a little biogg, in which I outlined my various comedy awards and mentioned that I’d just been nominated Best Newcomer at the Chortle Awards. However, for some reason, it was announced on BBC Radio 4 just before my interview was played that I’d just been crowned Best Newcomer by the Chortle Awards. This, at the time of writing, untrue; the votes are still open.

On Monday I explained that the other comedians in the Best Newcomer category had gained Russian backing and that a vote for me would be an exercise in restoring our faith in our democratic system. I now present you with yet another reason to vote for me, and it is a second completely selfless motivation. The BBC is under threat enough as it is without having this journalistic inaccuracy about my Chortle Award win adding fuel to the fire and providing further reason for the anti-BBC brigade to call for the BBC to be shut down. However, if you all vote for me to win then in a week’s time I will have won, making the BBC’s claim accurate, thus protecting the journalistic integrity of the corporation and consequently helping to save this great British institution. So if you want to rescue both democracy and the BBC, then you know what needs doing. Vote here.

Then as a special treat for helping to save democracy and the BBC, you can listen to my BBC Radio 4 interview here.

I’ve been nominated as one of the five comedians in the Best Newcomer category at the Chortle Awards, run by the comedy website Chortle. It’s slightly awkward that the only comedy awards I seem able to win are ones under the Newcomer bracket, and some people might start to question how long I can feasibly be considered a Newcomer, given that I’ve now won Leicester Square New Comedian Of The Year in December 2019, New Comedian Of The Year at Bath Comedy Festival in April 2019, and Nottingham Comedy Festival’s New Comedian Of The Year prize in the summer of 2018. My aim is to keep winning New Comedian prizes right up until the point that I retire, or even better, continue to win Newcomer prizes even beyond my death. Eventually someone will surely cotton on, but in the meantime, while I’m still being considered a Newcomer you can vote for me to win this new Newcomer award. I have been contacted by an unnamed source to say that the other comedians in this category are receiving Russian backing, so this really is an opportunity to support a much bigger fight than a mere comedy award win. You can vote for me here.

Tomorrow I will be appearing on BBC Radio 4’s In Touch, talking about comedy. It’ll be live at 840pm, and I’ll put a link up here tomorrow. All manner of podcasts are in the offing, as well as a new video project which I’ll regale you all about very soon. But in the meantime, Vote for justice and democracy here

This week we’re in Manchester with Jennifer Reid, singer of 19th century Industrial Revolution broadside ballads and Lancashire dialect work song. She’ll be doing some of that for us on this week’s podcast, as well as recounting her experience on TV with the Hairy Bikers. There’s a Lancashire dialect quiz, and a surprise appearance from Bob The Builder.

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this Week: Michael is a man of action; David is abused by Australians; there’s an anecdote regarding Mike Harding’s genitals. Gary Hammond of The Hut People and formally The Beautiful South returns to showcase another of his exotic percussion instruments. And there’s a smattering of duck puns.

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The Young’uns Podcast returns for a new weekly run, as we catchup on the backlog of Young’uns gig clips. In the spirit of Halloween there’s a graveyard-based anecdote, some spectral voices, and a bit of blood. Also, we have a rather spooky introduction to our new feature, Gary Hammond’s Percussion Instrument Of The Week, in which the percussionist from The Hut People and Beautiful South showcases the fascinating array of percussion instruments in his vast collection. Plus, David flirts with a flasher, there’s an appearance from Elvis, The Young’uns experience a rather unusual burglary, and find out what happened when we gigged in Belgium just two weeks after the Brexit Referendum.
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We’ve just left one of the worst hotels that we’ve ever stayed at, and The Young’uns have been gigging for nearly fifteen years and in that time we’ve certainly stayed in some dire places. We once stayed somewhere in Norwich that had a communal toilet which also doubled up as the smoking room. By this I don’t mean that the people staying there chose to flaunt the rules and smoke in the toilet; there was actually a sign on the door saying, “toilet and smoking room.” This toilet/smoking room was stiflingly hot with a rotating fan that blew out heat, meaning that as soon as you opened the door you were assaulted by an overpowering cocktail of smoke and shit being blown in your face and around the room at speed. It’s one of the only times I can claim to have taken a crap which had a positive influence on the ambient smell.

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Today I was potentially going to be taking part in the final of the BBC Radio 4 New Comedy Award, but as we established in my last blog post,I didn’t make it through. So instead I am now on a plane heading out to spend two weeks touring in the US. Oh, woe is me!

However, I have now worked out what actually happened at the BBC Radio 4 New Comedy Awards and I understand why I didn’t get through. I’ve received a few comments of recent from people saying that they were slightly glad that I didn’t proceed to the next stage of the competition. They were worried that a victory might mean I’d dedicate more time to comedy, resulting in the break up of the Young’uns.

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On 3rd July I took part in heat 3 of the BBC Radio 4 Comedy Award. In this podcast I impart my experience of the competition, I report on how I fared, and we compare my broadcast set from the actual set on the night.

Well what a few weeks it’s been. I’ve had the honour of opening for the amazing comedians Tom Wrigglesworth and Boothby Graffoe. I’ve been chosen to take part in the BBC Radio 4 New Comedy Award. Plus – and this is the big one – I’ve been groped by The Young’uns”> very own Sean Cooney.

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