Hello. I am Andy Ward. Wait, hold on, this needs curtains. I’ll go over there and stand behind those curtains. Pretend not to have read up until this point. In fact, if you could position yourself near some curtains, this would make my entrance a hell of a lot grander. What I need you to do is open the curtains at the same time as you read the sentence, ‘Hello, I’m Andy Ward’, then we’ll have some kind of theatre like entrance to my blog. Not that this will be at all deep or a challenging piece of modern art. Anybody who may have caught my last few attempts at blogging will know that, but I feel that I should at least try to start on a high note so that we can gradually descend into a low depressing monotone note as if we’re on a cable car of sadness.

Anyway, ready?

Hello, I’m Andy Ward. Welcome to my theatre of idiocy. I figure that with a blog, most people try to describe what they’ve been doing, much like a diary. Thankfully, I’ve had an interesting few days, so this should be fine for this blog at least. Allow me to begin.

Yesterday was a great day. Although really, when you’re on the dole, your standard of what’s defined as a great day is skewed somewhat. A great day involves something spectacular like leaving the house, and that’s exactly what I did. I mean, not at first, there were parts before I left the house that are perhaps worth of some mention. Most notably, having an interview with the Kent and Sussex Courier. They got in touch after seeing a press release from Keele, and, me living in Kent and everything, thought the story might be worth putting in their paper, meaning they wanted to have a word with me. It was fun. Interviews are always fun. My first one that I did for 4Talent Magazine was my favourite I think, since it essentially became a Peter Griffin style ‘You Know What Really Grinds My Gears’, in which I basically ended up ranting against everything that I hated. Thankfully, the final interview was edited, meaning that I hadn’t destroyed my potential chances of a career in the media industry before I’d even got started. Mind you, all my targets for that deserved it to be fair. Anyway, this interview gave me less opportunity to do that kind of thing, but I did snatch the half-chance I was given to take a shot at somebody, that being BBC3, who seem to be churning out a never-ending stream of poor comedies at the moment. They used to be alright too, so I’m not sure where it’s gone wrong. The Mighty Boosh and Family Guy aside (which doesn’t really count, as it’s an import), they haven’t produced anything really good for a while now. They used to have some quite good stuff, so who knows what’s happened.

Anyway, having finished my interview with the Courier, which may or may not be in this Friday’s edition, I started preparing a bit for a comedy gig I had in the evening, at the Lion’s Den Comedy Car Crash in London. It’s basically a night where anybody can turn up and do a short spot of around 5 minutes. I’m not a pro, it was only my 8th gig, so these are the kind of gigs I’m restricted to at the moment. Having said that, this was a hilarious night, and one that I’d quite enjoy doing even if I were a professional. It was such a strange place, but utterly brilliant. They had a mad jazz band upstairs, who played properly insane jazz, with no noticable tune whatsoever, and the downstairs room, where the comedy was, was basically decked out like a dungeon. The actual comedy night was brilliant, it was a nice, supportive atmosphere, as there were mostly new acts there it seemed, so even if it didn’t go well then people were fairly nice. It went alright for me though, not brilliantly, but not bad. Much as I’d love to be brilliant from the outset, it’s genuinely not as easy as it looks. There’s a hell of a different between being funny with friends and being funny on stage. It’s all practice at this point though, and you learn from every gig, so hopefully, given time, I’ll improve. I’ll definitely go back to that gig though.

I had some chilli cheese bites from Burger King on the train back. They were also quite good. That’s just a passing observation, however, one that I feel is necessary given my recent sponsorship deal with Burger King. I’m going to be on a few of the posters soon. I’ll be smiling, eating some Chilli Cheese Bites next to the caption ‘Andy Ward, 4Talent Award Winner 2008 in the Off-Air Radio category says “You’d be a Chilli (Cheese Bites) Billy to miss out on these!”‘

I’ll admit, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s a lucrative deal, what do I care.

Anyway, I made it home, which was… nice.

Today the Courier sent round a photographer to take pictures for my article in the paper (which, they also said may not be in there, it depends what happens. I might get bumped for a more exciting story perhaps. In the Courier this basically means there’s a chance that my story will be dropped for the more exciting tale of how a swan nearly crashed into a boat. It’s very much that kind of thing.). I was however, not allowed to wear my Die Hard 4 vest for the photos (Die Hard 4, incidentally, the weakest of the Die Hard Quadrilogy, but still, they were giving out free vests in HMV once, and I would never turn down a free Die Hard vest). Even if I had worn it, they wouldn’t have got it in, as it’s basically a head and shoulders picture of me with my award. I may be grinning manically, I can’t be sure. I’ll have to wait and see. Of course, I may not see at all unless I can prevent those swans from being mavericks.

I can’t remember what else I was going to talk about now. I might as well end this I suppose, especially since Heroes is about to be on.