Directing Comedy I’ve been waiting to properly announce this until I’ve had actual tangible links to share about it, but with the launch of VAULT Festival this week I now have that, so I’m delighted to announce that this year, for the first time, I’m directing two comedy shows by really brilliant writer-performers. The first […]

Some Thoughts On Writing I usually like this newsletter to be a sort of free-form back-and-forth chat about the stuff I’ve been thinking about recently, but I’ve not really done much actual thinking this week, as I’ve been very busy and stressed splitting my time between writing, looking for flats, and crying (related to the […]

“Cutting Through” I’ve been thinking a lot about making shows for the Edinburgh Fringe recently, so this newsletter might be of particular interest to those readers who are fellow writer-performers, but hopefully it’ll have some broader ideas in it which might be of interest to all of you. I’ve been discussing the making of shows, and the […]

Work/Life Balance I mentioned last week that I’d started reading James Suzman’s Work: A History Of How We Spend Our Time, and this week I’d like to talk a bit about the stuff it’s made me think about, and gather your thoughts on some of it too, if any of you would like to share them with […]

Voyager Gold Record – Your Thoughts First up, I promised I’d share a couple of my favourites from your contributions for potential do-overs of the Voyager Gold Record that told a more honest story about ourselves as a species. A handful of highlights include: A supercut of the best, worst and weirdest Eurovision performances – This […]

The Voyager Gold Record This week I’ve been thinking about the Voyager Gold Record. If you don’t know about it, you can read all about it here – essentially, it’s a golden record put out into space by NASA in 1977 containing various images, greetings and pieces of music that served as an introduction to the human […]

Dreams & Synesthesia How are you all doing? Hope you’re taking care of yourselves. I’m going to kick off this week’s Tape with a question which is a partner question, in a way, to something I asked in a Tape months ago. I think I once asked you all to tell me something you didn’t dream about […]

Episode Twos This week’s Therapy Tape is about writing scripted narrative comedy, so I suppose is angled at those readers that also have an interest in that, which I think is a small but healthy pocket of subscribers. I always feel a bit funny writing about writing, because I’m generally pretty sceptical of all those […]

The Magical Effect I’m banging on about magic again this week, because I’ve now started actually reading (forward slash listening to – it’s my first ever audiobook, and boy, I hate audiobooks, I’m getting withdrawal symptoms thinking about all the music I could be listening to) that book on magic I mentioned in a previous […]

Mixing Disciplines I think I mentioned it here previously that I’m currently slogging through a funding application for a new live show, and it’s got me thinking about the different creative processes behind different artistic disciplines, so I thought I’d write a bit about that this week. I’ve never pursued funding for a comedy show […]

Unlearning Language A quick one this week, because I’m in the middle of a funding application for a show and really ought to not be giving myself too many other things to distract myself with. So, here’s a little slice of life advice that my Miranda and I stumbled upon this week for one another. […]

Measuring Things By Year First up, sorry there was no newsletter last week – I was away for most of the week and didn’t manage to squeeze it in. Anyway, this week I’ve been thinking about the inexorable march of time, and I wondered if I could open by asking you guys a question, if […]

When To Reveal Information Thanks so much for all your replies to last week’s Tape, it’s really helpful to read through a few different takes of what it is people like and appreciate about this newsletter, and start to think about ways of continuing to deliver that for people without it being too big a […]

Permission Possibly a slightly shorter newsletter this week because I’m a bit too busy to write a full essay. The reason I’m suddenly a bit busy is because this week I’ve asked myself a question and acted on the answer, and I’d like to extend the same question to you guys too, to see if it unlocks […]

The Anxiety Of Sharing Be warned – this week’s Tape is gonna be another one of those ones where I talk about social media a lot, because I am constantly fascinated by what it’s doing to our society and our culture. Miranda often points out to me that I put an awful lot of my […]