If it ain't broke...

I type in "Captain Clevedon" in a search, not unreasonably, for my Captain Clevedon page, and Facebook helpfully says "No results found for your query", adding a patronising "Check your spelling or try another term". Has my Captain Clevedon page vanished I suddenly wonder? No, it's listed not once but twice below.

Idiot. Another self-inflicted nail in the coffin of Facebook.

I wonder if MySpace is still open?

Why do people keep trying to improve my internet? I waste quite enough time thankyou very much updating blogs, responding to forums about largely irrelevant subjects, trying to find people striving to attract my attention on Facebook, and of course Tweeting. So why make my life harder by rearranging the furniture and redecorating walls that looked perfectly fine to me and, if anything, were just beginning to develop the attractive warm patina of familiarity?

New look Twitter has appeared on my screen today (after a few days of everyone else moaning about it and me having no idea what they were on about) and it is, of course, disconcerting and annoying. Of course I'll get used to it within a day, but right now all I can see is my real name in bold lettering instead of my twitter name, and something missing but I can't remember what.

But then I go to Facebook, which has spent months trying to shed users with its sparse and unloveable "Timeline" and its telepathically suggested adverts which make the whole set-up feel like you're being watched by the CIA, to find they've gone even clunkier than they were yesterday. Yesterday, when I would type into the Search box the names of the Groups or Pages I was looking for, the spooky clairvoyant mind-reading search engine would have listed all likely suspects before I was four characters in. And tonight? Tonight..? (Return to top of page)

Anglo Saxons in Leicester - Scottish Falsetto Socks

Also brand new from the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, it's the complete history of The Anglo Saxons and their influence on Leicestershire.



This may make no sense whatsoever to anyone who hasn't lived for many of their formative years in Leicestershire, but they liked it at the Leicester Comedy Festival. Enjoy.

History of the Civil War - Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

Live at the Leicester Comedy Festival, the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet do the entire English Civil War in 30 seconds flat.



This is an excerpt from their longer Complete History Of Leicester routine, which can only ever be performed in Leicester and may make no sense to anyone from any county anywhere else in England, let alone the rest of the world. Enjoy anyway, and stay tuned for the full thing.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre perform the first previews of their new show Socks In Space at Kayal, at the Leicester Comedy Festival on Friday Feb 8th (7.45), Sat Feb 9th (6.30pm) and Sunday Feb 10th (2pm matinee).

Site for tired eyes

On Chortle today, someone's claiming Time Vine nicked his gag. The story is that A recruitment consultant for Chingford has claimed Tim Vine stole the one-liner: ‘Conjunctivitis.com, that's a site for sore eyes.’

You don't have to google for long to see that's a bit of an ambitious claim. I immediately remembered having seen that gag as a spot cartoon dating back to the 1960s, in a Fleetway comic, showing a building site where an Opticians is being built, and two passers by saying "that's a site for sore eyes". So the gag predates the concept of the website. And, as the examples below show, has been very much in use with both meanings for quite some time...



Now, where did you first hear the gag about marriage being like a game of cards - you start out with two hearts and a diamond, you end up looking for a club and a spade?

Tiny Leicester Socks show listing cock-up

(reading this blog post a week or so on, from Adelaide as it happens, it sounds bit pathetic. Sorry. We artistes take these things a bit too seriously sometimes. With a little perspective it doesn't seem worth writing about. Anyhoo, here's what I wrote).

Socks fans - tonight's Leicester Comedy Festival show has another listing cock up, and this one is really bad!

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre are booked to play at Kayal (where we've been for the last two nights) with doors opening at 6.15 and show starting at 6.30pm. Look, that's what it says on the We Got Tickets website:



But on the official Leicester Comedy Festival website (and I assume in the all-important printed programme) it says "Doors: Event start: 7pm".



This means that most punters, the ones paying on the door, will turn up once the show's been going for half an hour. And it's not as if we can give them the full hour show by over-running because, as you can see, Adam Hess & Chris Turner are expecting to start their show at 7.35pm - a show which is listed on the venue page of the website but not on the full day's listings.


(LCF have amended our times on this page but not on the main page)

All in all a monumental cock-up on someone's part - I hope it wasn't my doing!

So, spread the word everyone please. The Sock show tonight start at 6.30 tonight, not 7pm. If you turn up at 7pm you'll only see half the show.

PS - And we've just discovered Ents24 has the incorrect 7pm listing too.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 *angry socks*

Snowmum! + Leicester latest

Thanks to everyone who came to last night's Scottish Falsetto Socks gig at Kayal in Leicester. A very good sized crowd who made a brilliant noise and allowed us to test out some new stuff (including our first Boo Lingerie gags and two thirds of Sherlock - the last bit got missed because our show had to start 10 minutes late and couldn't overrun. And by the way, thanks to the comedians from the gong show who turned up at the end of our show and stood there chatting at the back, that helped.) A brilliant show, and to show our gratitude, here's a Snowmum:


This is my Mum's first ever snowman, or certainly the first one I've ever seen her make (and I've been around for quite a few winters now, did I mention my first winter in Aberdeen when the snowdrift went right up to the eaves of the roof?). This shows the benefits of going to art college (Mum went to Edinburgh College of Art in the 1950s, did you hear the story about how her life model was Sean Connery?) Definite contender for best snowmum ever.


Meantime we have a few concerns with tonight's show (Scottish Falsetto Socks at Kayal, Leicester Comedy Festival, 2nd night out of three).

The listing page now says 7pm start and the venue page now says 8pm start!

The correct start time is 8pm, but I have no way of knowing which time the ticket-buying punters are expecting us to start at, so the Socks and I will be there ready for an audience coming in at 7pm and, maybe, they'll get a longer show than they expected. Either way, we'll get a longer show than last night, and let's see if we can do all of Sherlock this time.

See you all there.

Leicester Listing Error alert!

Hi Sock fans,

I just spotted two crucial errors on the Leicester Comedy Festival website affecting our show:

On this page:

Friday 10th Feb it says:

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre
Doors: 7.45.pm Event Start: 7.00.pm
Entry: £7 (£6)

- this should read Event Start 8pm (ie 15 mins after doors open, not 45 mins before)

Sat 11 Feb it says:

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre
Doors: 6.15.pm Event Start: 7.00.pm
Entry: £7 (£6)

- this should read Doors 6.15pm Event Start 6.30pm
(The next event is listed at 7.35pm, which would be an overlap)

I don't know how these mistakes have happened, but can we put them right or our audience will either turn up at the wrong time or not at all! Everyone spread the word. The Socks are at Kayal in Leicester, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 6.30pm

Thanks