Twice In One Week! Jimmy Carr and Dara O'Briain

KT and I managed to get out, not once, but twice this week.

The first time was Tuesday, when we went to the Ipswich Regent to see Jimmy Carr. He quickly started picking on someone in the front row and they obviously reacted badly as he kept at them. During the break, we headed off like everyone does and trying to get back to our seats was frustrating - I have to cleave a way through the crowds so KT can get through. One woman decide to jump in between us and try and push through but being the stubborn moo that I am, I refused to move until she flipped off. Her boyfriend could see what I'd been trying to do and said to her but she was getting all moody because she wanted me to carry on going forward which would have left KT alone. After a minute she realised it wasn't happening and stepped to the side so he could get back to me and then I encountered some old bloke who was too busy being intellectual to even regard me. I asked him twice to please excuse us and he looked down his nose at me and carried on talking. I was already exasperated (it's blooming tiring trying to get through crowds off people all standing in the walk ways with their beers and alcopops and I leant closer as I went past and said, "so get your fucking feet run over then", not realising until KT told me when we sat down that he'd actually run over the guy's expensive leather shoes. Fabulous. We then noticed the moody woman from before and when she sat down we realised she was the one who'd been getting all the stick through-out the first half ... there is a God! I wont go into much here as it was pretty much all too filthy for a general audience, but you can tell he loves the parts where the audience gets to play along.

Jimmy Carr comes across, when you meet him for your two seconds of autograph time as a genuinely nice guy. He asks people he recognises how they are and takes a moment to say something to everyone who's waited to see him.

Our second trip out was to see Dara O'Briain, presenter of Mock the Week and fairly regular participant in such shows as QI and Have I Got News For You (which London's new Mayor, Boris Johnston has guest hosted, as indeed, has Dara).

The show started off with Dara telling the audience that he normally had a Madonna style mic but that it had taken him 7 hours to travel down to Ipswich due to a jack-knifed lorry and his sound crew was still somewhere on the A14. He'd been provided with a battery mic but it kept cutting out so off he went to get one with a cable and the crowd roared as he disappeared across the stage, telling the woman who'd handed him the mic that 'there's plenty of cable? You don't know what I'm likely to do with this thing' before whipping the cable across the stage. Dara is a quick thinking comic, who takes what's thrown at him and runs with it. At one stage he asked if anyone had stopped a crime. One man shouted out that his dad had stopped a burglary and as the story progressed it turned out that the burglar ran off after the man's father had farted. Farted! Dara turned the details given to him into a rather funny fairy tale style story which left nothing of the would be thief than his smoking shoes. KT laughed so hard at times I was worried he wouldn't be able to breathe.  For the most part, this crowd was polite enough to move out of the way when we needed them to, but yah boo sucks to the woman next to me. Not only did she clearly resent me sitting in the seat that she thought she'd snagged for her coat, but she then spent the entire show pushing it and her leg against mine in quite an agressive manner. When it was time for an interval, she stood up immediately and tried pushing her way past us, which is impossible without 1. my standing up and 2. KT being able to move his chair off the ramp, which he couldn't because there were already streams of people behind him. To that woman, I say this. Very fookin' sorry I made you hold your coat - next time, why don't you pay £20 and buy your soddin' coat a seat?!

Anyhow, some vids of Dara now.