Lucy Porter, Ben Norris and Karaoke

Well another busy week before my departure to Barcelona. Out every workday night, although that did include my charity directors meeting and just going down the pub with one of my ex-trainees.

Tuesday night was my department's end of financial year drinks. We are now a big enough team to just book a whole basement bar, which was just right for us. We can determine the noise levels and the drinks and just chat away to each other. We are just such a friendly team that everyone gets on very well. The hours just flew by. And even when time up there, the real hard core still wanted more. My mate Thibault persuaded me, against my better judgment to go on to a neighbouring karaoke bar. Now you either love or hate that sort of stuff. I am afraid I fall into the hate category. But some of my colleagues loved it - You've lost that loving feeling... probably shouldn't have sounded like this ...

Friday night I took my largest party yet down to to my local comedy club - five of us, although on size we were comfortably beaten by a hen party celebrating the forthcoming marriage of a lady who had been courting her intended for 34 years.

I have to say, this was another brilliant evening which I have to put down as much as anything to my companions - my current trainee Andy, his predecessor Thibault and my ex-colleague Gareth with his fiancee Jo. We all just clicked easy enough, had a fun dinner beforehand and then settled down to a night of comedy. We were put down at the front again, and my arrival with yet another new trainee in tow did incur suggestions from the MC that my trainees expected a job at the end of it but instead would end up under my patio. Absurd of course as my patio would be a small mountain by now if I had installed them ALL there.

Anyway the main acts were Lucy Porter and Ben Norris. And very good they were too.

Now it is often said there aren't many good women comics and I have to subscribe to that viewpoint. Most just aren't very funny and many resort almost entirely to gynaecological humour which isn't that funny but you are made to feel a prude if you don't laugh at it. But Lucy is a quite wonderful exception. She has it all packed into her 4 foot 11 frame. She comes across as genuinely lovely, very funny - neither coarse nor nor too "family". Her stories flow very well, but she is still capable of moving off script and interacting with the audience. And like the best of comics, she never seems on script in the first place, like she is just chatting to you.

Ben Norris is very good too, but with less material - more audience interaction. This did feel more like he was making it up as he went along, although the couple of comic raps he did towards the end would really have needed a lot of work to memorise. But both would have my hearty recommendations for a good night out. I think the full house audience would have endorsed that. We certainly had a good time.