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Wednesday, 23 March 2011

Day 24 - Wednesday 23rd March 2011

Wednesday. Work. A little excitement involved going to Manchester for a team meeting and getting the chance to have a nice strong latté from their not-too-shabby canteen/coffee "pod" thing.

This evening was slightly more interesting. A mate form work came round to listen to a DTS mix of Depeche Mode's album "Violator" which I've been listening to a lot recently and then we headed out to Manchester again for a stand up comedy gig. There's a little history behind this, as the friend I was going with had originally bought me and him tickets for the same artist at the same venue some 2 years ago. Unfortunately he couldn't make it, so I went with another mate and it was fantastic. So, some months ago, by luck, I was browsing for tickets over breakfast and I noticed that tickets were available but hadn't actually been advertised and so I (rather over zealously) bought front-row-centre tickets for Doug Stanhope at the Manchester Dancehouse.

We got there in plenty of time and had something to eat and then went to the venue. It's a shitty little unassuming theatre just by Oxford Road station but it's very intimate, as shown in the picture below :

Photo (C) H. Alexander

This was only the second gig Doug had done in the UK on this leg of his tour and he started off quite shakily by his own admission, but he found his flow fairly quickly and did about 90 minutes of very very funny stand up comedy. I'd recommend anyone of a strong to medium disposition to check out the clip I've posted below.

Doug is a man who likes to have a drink or two on stage and about 20 minutes in he was handed a bottle of Jägermeister of which he poured himself a large glass of. Towards the endpoint when it became clear he wasn't going to finish the whole bottle himself he passed it down to the front row and told us to share it out. And so it went, that me and Howard had a drink (sort of) with Doug Stanhope. Cheers, Doug!

We found the car and our way out of Manchester fairly easily and despite a couple of diversions (who closes a motorway?!) we made it to our respective homes.

The wife informed me of a minor accident involving scalding hot water and a curious cat but that particular crisis is now over.

Having developed a taste for alcohol after the Jägermeister I'm just enjoying a small glass of Jack Daniels and then it's off to bed.

See you tomorrow!

Oh, and you can tell by the title that this video is not for the faint hearted, or your nan.