Stephen K Amos and The Ariston with Eoin

I was really looking forward to this weekend visit from my young friend Eoin. It was built around coming down to see White Lies on the Sunday, but I proposed doing some stand up on the Saturday evening, and then seeing as that didn't finish too late, added on a pub gig only half an hour away.

We started off with early Chinese meal in Chinatown. I mention that as it rather saved the evening (in contrast to Sunday). So the comedy was at Leicester Square Theatre to see a comic who I always love live, Stephen K Amos. And we had a couple of beers while we were there.

Stephen had an opener, Ninia Benjamin, and she was pretty awful. I could see Eoin looking at me as if to say "why did you bring me here? For this?" But fortunately Stephen turned that all the way round. Eoin loved the show, and inadvertently became a star of it. (Typical Eoin.)

So Stephen tends to a do a bit of audience interaction, and for the purpose of this routine he wanted to find a representative young person. Although we were not in the front row, we were in the second row and so Stephen alighted on Eoin. And Eoin being a great sport he went along cheerfully. To the extent that in the foyer, where Stephen was doing a book signing, on our arrival Stephen announced "It's Eoin everybody!" and Eoin gets a spontaneous round of applause!

Nice photo of the three of us below.

So with Eoin clutching his signed book, we went four stops up the Piccadilly Line to Kings Cross and then walked down to a new pub venue to me (although not a new venue) the Water Rats, to catch the Ariston. Actually this gig was billed as "Big in 2026" with a number of bands scheduled, but I figured we would only catch the last, the Ariston, whom I have seen a couple of times before.

But actually we caught most of the Pedestrian Band's set too. And once again Eoin was looking at me a bit "why  have you taken me to this?" Exacerbated by it being boiling hot in there. But fortunately the Ariston were much better. And I wanted to see them with their new guitarist, furthest away from the camera, who manfully played in his leather jacket for the whole set despite the place being a sauna.

 Fortunately we were close to Kings Cross, so easy journey home; so easy in fact that we could just pop into my pub for a last orders pint before going home. And opening a bottle of red wine. I wasn't sure where I had left my wine saver, but we cured that problem by finishing the bottle before going to bed. Just glad we had had dinner