It's been a bit of a week ...

... and that pretty much sums it up; nothing major has happened but I have been head down on the new project trying to get to grips with what is being done and what needs to be done. I haven't swayed from my initial opinion that the current team are a little "light weight" and that with more experience and a few swift kicks in the arse they could be performing better than they are and making more profit. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, it's not my job to sort them out but they have a tendency to suck me in to the day to day operations and they seem to want to drag me  in to a number of activities that  are most definitely not my job. I do what I can but my overriding conclusion about the Account Team is I'm fairly certain that they just don't get "it". Let's hope that if we are successful on this one Dante's see fit to bring in some experienced personnel to captain this ship.

After an intense day at work I tend to prefer an extended period of vegetation on the sofa so two evenings out on Thursday and Friday weren't really what I had in mind. Thursday saw us out in Birmingham to see John Bishop on his current Rollercoaster tour. He performed at the National Indoor Arena which is a huge venue and it takes a particular talent to connect with an audience and personally I don't think Bishop quite made it. He has a likeable persona but the act was more of an audience with rather than a stand up gig and his material was probably best described as amusing rather than laugh out loud funny. The script was mostly a series of anecdotes based around family and friends and relied on funny situations rather than sharp writing or clever construction. Overall I'd say 6/10 and would recommend borrowing the DVD from a friend as, in a venue that size, you end up watching the screens rather than the performer anyway.

This evening saw us over at Warwick Arts Centre to see Jason Byrne's People's Puppeteer tour. After last night's average performance I wasn't really sure what to expect having only seen a couple of clips of Byrne on TV. What I saw was a great routine, perhaps helped by the mid, front row seats. As with Bishop it was an anecdote based set but Byrne's surreal lunacy and manic pace made it incredibly funny. He took great delight in the fact that he had a fifteen year old in the front row and made several references and apologies to TP during his set. TP actually ended up on stage a couple of times; one of which was to participate in a Space Hopper bouncing routine. All in all I much preferred this to Bishop's gig which seemed lazy in comparison and Byrne gets a commendable 8/10.

Tomorrow sees us at Warwick again to see Jack Dee. I really could do with a night in as I need to prepare for Monday's presentation.