An extremely average night was had in Bristol last night. Ok it was great fun afterwards talking to John Robins and Michael Legge about Zappa albums and general pub speak but the gig was hard work. Full of stags and hens who were generally disinterested, I honestly do fear for circuit comedy these days. Obsessed with the Jongleurs model (which has been proved a failure) clubs from where I’m standing look to be killing the goose that lays the golden egg by bowing to these online entertainment companies that can flood the room with single sex parties. What sort of tit goes on stag weekends anyway? Certainly not the type of person I want to be associated with.

Some punters spoke to us afterwards. Admittedly they were the less annoying people but what they see as comedy is so different to what me and my pals did 20 odd years ago. It's not that there's no alternative people about, it's just that they're not at city centre comedy clubs on a weekend.

I came back to the hotel and watched ‘Stand Up For The Week’ on Channel 4. The new programme from Open Mike. The odious Paddy Kielty was hosting it and Andie ‘everything’s been written for me by the writers’ Osho was strutting her stuff. This is an act that surely the word box ticker was invented for. They were the same sort of woo-woo type crowd we had just witnessed at the gig and it makes me fear for stand up in general. Being a veteran of 18 years doing this, I’ve seen it change from a genuinely exciting underground phenomenon to something so banal and mainstream. The stuff Paddy Kielty was coming out with on the telly last night was just deeply unpleasant but in no way challenging. He just seemed like a nasty board member of a corporation belittling service staff. It’s gone full circle people, alternative comedy is now dead and replaced by these designer suits and young ‘haircut’ comedians telling us that Kerry Katona is a slapper and that Big Brother is hopeless ‘Ooooh how outrageous!!’

Please save us somebody, before we turn into the sort of uncaring society from the fictional but visionary V for Victory.