An-nun-ci-ate!

My flatmate managed to get tickets for the first night of recordings for Jack Dee's Live at the Apollo - or as it's now called, Live at the Apollo as Jack's only hosting the first edition.

We took our seats in the circle and waited for the show to begin, and it took us just a few seconds to realise that the speakers in the circle hadn't been switched on. My flatmate went to investigate and was treated with utter indifference by the staff, as was I when I left the theatre and asked who the other acts were that night, only to be told by the grunt on the door that he couldn't possibly give that kind of information out. I felt the need to tell him that it didn't matter as we wouldn't be able to understand a fucking word they were saying anyway.

This coupled with a rude little hoodie who tried to push us out of the way as he walked down the street - which provoked me to punch him full-on in the back once I regained my balance - and it wasn't a good night all in all.

Anyway, as a preview for the broadcast of tonight's show on BBC1 this coming Friday, here's Russell Howard. See if you can understand him, because we couldn't.



We might have stayed to see the second episode, hosted with Jimmy Carr - at least he annunciates when he speaks. But his main act was possibly Alan Carr (he of the grating voice from Channel 4) and frankly, everyone so far that night had already sounded like a bee trapped in a jam-jar.

I'd like to dedicate this entry to everyone who was unfortunate enough to endure the rudeness of the staff on the door at the Apollo Hammersmith.

Going Out - the New Staying In

Thanks to the generosity of a few friends, I've had such a fun year. It started when I went to see The Pipettes in March. They're a band my pal David raved about ages ago, and I wasn't all that convinced to be honest, but live was another sory. Very charming and with a lot of catchy tunes under their belt. They had two support acts, one of whom was Metronome - not the Japanese one, but three lads who looked like a geeky version of 'Busted'.

Since that night, I've seen 'Little Shop of Horrors' with Sheridan Smith in the female lead role and Alistair McGowan as the dentist. Lots of fun and I'd definitely go again. 'Absolute Beginners' at the Lyric, Hammersmith, was amazing - we thought it'd be really worthy but it had a very inventive set of blocks that the characters clambered all over. There were a couple of performances at the Drillhall - one about Joan of Arc that had half the audience asleep because of heat, and another called 1001 Beds by Tim Miller, which is about his idea that we sleep in about 1000 beds in our lifetime - not all of them sex-related but the funniest ones are. It's a breathless, engaging, personal one-man performance... which I can't remember because I'd been to the park and got drunk for a mate's birthday. Shameful!

With another friend, I got to see 'Fame - the Musical. Sorry to say, it's really poor and needs a rewrite by someone with a sense of humour. So many dropped balls throughout the plotting and it feels like someone trying to make a play after being told the story by someone who knew someone else who'd seen the movie or the TV show but not both. Still, it was free.

One of the surprise highlights was a night with Marcia Brown (aka 3 Non Blondes star Tameka Empson), whose diva-scaled performance was hilarious - especially when she began to pick on my friend for going to the bathroom during her act. Marvellous!

Have I got time to mention 'Live Earth'? George Michael at Wembley? Marc Almond's comeback gig on his birthday? The Scissor Sisters? The amazing Imogen Heap...

My old friends have passed comments that they never see me any more, and one person apparently asked my flatmate if my new friends are too good for them now. That's a tricky one to answer. A lot of my old friends are partnered up, buying houses and generally very busy people, who are always never less than supportive and lovely when we do actually meet up. We used to all get together about four times a week, whereas there have actually only been three occasions in the last nine months where a sizeable number of us has met up.

I suppose I'm a little - no, actually a LOT - pissed off that when my flatmate broke his leg, only three people came to visit from that gang, despite promises to pop round soon. My flatmate was really down then and any new face that wasn't mine was always enthusiastically welcomed. But then, there are friends of mine who've moved homes in the last three years and I've not set foot inside their new places. Is it because I was waiting to be invited, or because I didn't make myself available? Probably both.

I think all I'm getting at in this post is that there are some people who I'd love to see more of, and I don't think less of any of them for being busy, so I hope they don't think any less of me for finding a new gang and spending time with them. Because there've been some times in the last year when I could have really done with some company, but I was too stupid to ask. Suddenly, there are people who don't know all my jokes, who invite me out and make sure I'm included, and for the time being at least, I'm just enjoying going out. It's the new staying in, and it's a lot better for my mental and physical wellbeing.

Jim Does Comic Rellef Does Fame Academy

I love TV, unashamedly, and I'm fascinated by the illusions it creates. For instance, the huge, glitzy stages and uber-confident stars.



Last night, I went with a friend to see the recording of Comic Relief Does Fame Academy. We'd tried to get in on Saturday night - when Girls Aloud and Sugababes were performing live - but, understandably, it was oversubscribed, so we got priority tickets for another night. Our favourite, Mel Giedroyc, had been voted out on Sunday (travesty!), so we'd decided to throw our support behind Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, whose fragile, delicate performance has won over so many people. She's a bit sharp and tuneless at times, but we love seeing someone cry on National TV.

Tara sang Keane's 'Somewhere Only We Know', playing the piano too. She got thrown by the poor playback in the studio and wavered a little, but when she finished, we started chanting her name. Then the judges began to quickly decimate her confidence and we started chanting in support - which overwhelmed her and she began to cry.

Yes, we made an It-girl cry. How low did we feel? Er... not much really, because we're British and we're a fickle audience.

Sports commentator Ray Stubbs gave up on singing and talked his way through 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick', an act so brazen we of course loved it.

I shouldn't have gone out. I'd been feeling ill all day and today I'm down with a (hopefuly only 24-hour) bug. But really, it was a lot of fun and my mate kept me laughing all night. You can hear him shouting all the way through the edition... yes, my flatmate recorded it.

Snakes in a Cinema

I used to go to an art-house cinema in Liverpool city centre. I'd been told it has once been a popular venue for fans of (ahem) 'skin-flicks', and I was never really sure if they'd changed the carpet since the hand-over because it always felt a bit crunchy. For about two years I went to see loads of French, Spanish and Italian films, became pretty familiar with the back catalogues of Daniel Auteil, Gerard Depardieu and Pedro Almodovar and saw loads of older classics (saw Taxi Driver more times than is probably healthy).

Now that I live in London, the equivalent is the NFT. Until very recently I'd only seen about two films there in ten years and almost never used my allocation of freebies that I get as a member of the BFI. But a friend and I have managed to catch a couple of really mixed films there recently and I'm hoping we can continue to frequent the place as it's very friendly, comfortable, and as the films we go to see tend to be a bit obscure there's always room for a good stretch. And my mate's good company too, and loves his films so that's another incentive.

I mention this because there's another art-house cinema near to where I live. The Ritzy in Brixton manages to straddle art-house and popular films so well that last night as I joined a massive queue, I was worried that they were going to sell out of tickets for Snakes on a Plane only to discover that a) there were plenty of available seats and b) everyone was queueing to see Volver, Pedro Almodovar's latest, which was being shown in Screen One.

Snakes on a Plane was on Screen Five.

Now, I want to see Volver too, but I was surprised that the screen wasn't more than half full and that Snakes was in such a tiny screen for a film only on release for a weekend. Okay, it's a dumb B-movie exploitation flick, but by GOD it's effective. Maybe it's the venue, but the audience seemed in just the right mood for it, shrieking in the right places, laughing out loud at the fate of one passenger and giving one line of dialogue an enthusiastic round of applause. I've only seen this kind of reaction at corporate premieres and American cinemas, so this really helped make the film even more enjoyable.

If I get the time, I'd like to see Volver there, but somehow I can't imagine Carmen Maura being quite as cool as Samuel L. Jackson. He's so cool, he can wear a beret and not make you think of Frank Spencer.