The Comedy Store

If I was the type of chap who looked back the day's events and tried to divine some sort of message from a higher power, then today's lesson would have been that I know an awful lot of clever and talented people. And if that higher power manifested as Anthony H Wilson, he probably would have pointed out that almost all of them are from Manchester.

In the afternoon I drove down to Oldham (ish) for the opening of John Risby's Alcohol Free Shop. There was an exhibition of @artminx's work on the walls and Peter Hook was there to officially open the store. (Although Peter Hook is not actually a friend of mine.)

After that, I drove into Manchester with @headfirst_dom to go the Comedy Store for one of the the heats of the BBC New Comedy Awards. That's Dom in the photo, the dapper chap on the left, not the fellow from the Ministry of Silly Walks. He is wonderful company and also the man behind Jetpack Journeys and Inkology, amongst other things.

And the reason we were at the Comedy Store was to see the unnecessarily lofty David Callaghan perform. I first met David at the Edinburgh festival a couple of years back and then again a few months ago when The Minx and I were in Glasgow. He is, for want of a better phrase, a comedy geek (a phrase for which I hope he'll forgive me). But he's not just a fanboy; he performs as well.

And before I say anything else, I must say that to go out in front of a crowd of strangers and perform a comedy routine takes remarkable chutzpah. So I take my hat off to the three or four routines that I didn't find particularly funny as much as I do to the others.

Just before the interval we had a pleasant surprise when they announced the next act as Michael Spicer and it was, indeed, him off the Twitter, @mrmichaelspicer, who proved every bit as funny in real life as he is online, so I took the opportunity to go and say hi in the interval.

The compere was Justin Moorhouse who became progressively funnier as both he and the audience warmed up. I thought he was great in his section when we came back from the interval, which made it even more of a challenge for the contestants.

However, David rose to the challenge with an inspired routine that took a lot of timing and confidence to deliver. Even if he didn't think it went as well as it might, he and Michael both deserved a place in the top three. I need to have a word with my higher power.