Its a raid!

No journal entry yesterday as it was work, followed by a quick walk for T&M, a rushed dinner and then in to the car and over to the NIA in Birmingham for the last night of the Peter Kay "Tour that doesn't tour tour".

I feel that the NIA must be quite daunting for a stand-up comedian. It must be a challenge to form a connection with an audience in a venue of that size and get them to go with you on that journey that is a successful stand up set. A few years back I saw Eddie Izzard in the same venue and it just didn't seem to work. I am a huge fan of Eddie but he just seemed too remote and the laughs just didn't flow.

Now Peter Kay seems to have an ability to bond with the audience from the start. Within seconds he had the audience laughing with some atrocious old gags and then smoothly transitioned to his material that had "in joke" references to previous tours and was based on his unique observational approach. It was a great night and the audience loved him. If I am honest I would say that it was not his best material but it was acutely observed, beautifully paced and perfectly timed and it was still consistently "laugh out loud" funny.

Today involved a trip to my nearest circle of hell to link up with Golfy and spend a happy few hours reviewing and revising a vast amount of risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies associated with the current project. With over 250 lines of information to cover we felt that it was best to do this face to face rather than attempt it via a phone call.

The Defender had an air of a mobile shop this morning as there was a dozen eggs for the Gloucester Boy and a sample of Black Pudding Sausages to see if he can be persuaded to appreciate the charms of the blood sausage.

Visiting the local "ish" circle of hell turned a real chore in to a reasonably tolerable task as The Boer and Grand Dad Jack were both on site and lunch and coffee breaks degenerated in to raucous laughter as we told tall and bawdy tales and generally took the mickey out of each other. This was a welcome relief from the spreadsheet review and we ended the day having done a great piece of work and also having managed to have a few laughs too.