I haven't had such a long gap in blogging for a while. I have no idea how the past two months have gone by (chronologically, I would imagine), but here we are, December 15th, and as far as anyone knows, I could be dead.

But I am not! (Of course, I would say this). I have been simply been drowning in a sea of thesis writing, teaching, working, holidays, films, meals, sleep, watching live comedy, performing in live comedy (not dead) and swimming pools. All of which is pretty standard fare, particular for those of us who write theses, teach, work, holiday, watch film, eat, sleep, watch live comedy, perform live comedy (not dead), recycle jokes and swim. So here's a brief snippet of each.

1. My thesis nears completion. It looks and sounds very much like a thesis - earthy and well researched.

2. My teaching has been fun. I hope one day to be good at it.

3. My work has proceeded. I have research papers and journal submissions and I think I'm due a minion.

4. I went to Egypt! I walked like an Egyptian - that is to say, near some pyramids and sand. This was a very good time.

5. I have watched many films. I'm unlikely to reach 100, as I've lulled for much of the year, but I've got through a lot in the past month. Donnie Brasco is absolutely my new favourite film. I like Johnny Depp playing lunatics and the weird, but Johnny Depp playing hardman undercover agent is far better, and Al Pacino's performance? Forgedduhboutit.

6. I have ate and slept. Not dead, you see.

7. I saw Mark Watson - here's a comedian who you should go and see if you want five hours of comedy delivered in under two hours. I failed to see Josie Long.

8. I have done the Imps, and that. There were new Imps who are a delight to be around and old Imps who get better and better, and a director-assistant director team who are doing a lovely job. A student of mine saw a show, which I imagine was strange for her. But that's me, shattering preconceptions about lecturers and their non-participation in improvised comedy shows. In some ways, this carries over into tutorials (no preparation, polite applause, rock music between each section).

9. I continue to Twitter. Follow me on Twitter. This is where you get everything you might expect from this blog - mystery, intrigue, preconception shatterings (bring you own!), jokes about the News and what we should do about it - but shorter (less than 140 characters) and more regular (more than 0 characters in two months).

10. I have continued with swimming. I am svelte. I am doing an exercise class on Saturday mornings. My abs glean in the midday sun. I am getting faster in the pool. My biceps bulge. I take my hands and place them on your hips, pulling you close.

I have a Twitter. I have no plans to update anybody on my whereabouts, nor to send messages to others, nor to pass on anyone elses thoughts. It is solely to write (or reproduce) a joke (or something) every day. It'll be like the Month of Puns (remember that, Facebook friends), only never-ending.

Anyway, follow me.

A story about last Monday that I want to remember.

There is a legend in the Imps, known by few. It's name is Lost in Alien. It is my all-time favourite improvised scene - loosely based on the films Lost In Translation and Alien, it remains the funniest thing I ever did on stage with Andy, featured the line "' I Will Survive' was your song?" and a thousand other bits of stupidity, and culminated in our first on-stage kiss. It was one of those moment where everything we said got a laugh and I felt like we were in complete control of the audience yet giddy with delight at the same time.

Last Monday was the last Wheatsheaf show I will do with Joe Morpurgo and Lucy Hamilton, two of the best improvisers I've ever had the privilege to perform with and (to the extent that anyone cares about it) two of the best human beings on the planet. I have had numerous great scenes with Lucy (including the only Imps scene I can remember that was done completely without words), she is so easy to be with on stage and I will miss her.

And now to Joe. To finish the the set off, we did a scene which could be entitled: Batman - by William Shakespeare. Everything started off normal enough - Batman (Joe) and Robin (Jim) talked in Elizabethan English to set the scene. At one point, Joe fires webs from his wrists - it later emerges that Batman has defeated everyone in Gotham City, and he had also eaten Spiderman. My cue to come in as the disembodied voice of Spiderman, from inside of Batman. The scene basically broke away from any semblance of a Shakespearean plot from then on, as the dysfunctional relationship between an increasingly irate Batman and an increasingly aggravating Spiderman played out.

Spiderman says "follow my lead", and Joe exits the stage, stomach first. Then: "What can you see, Batman?" "Nothing, it's dark". "Me too. We must be in the same place". Then: "Spiderman, I need your senses". "OK, I will use my sense of touch. It feels squishy. Are you somewhere squishy?" (Joe grabs his stomach in pain) "Use you sense of hearing. What can you hear?" "Digestion".

In the next scene Simon, as narrator came on, only for Joe and I to completely tear the Shakespearean structure to pieces and say goodbye to any plot for good, first correcting his failure to use sufficient plurals from offstage ("Can our hero..." "HEROES".), then making snide comments when he tries to please too hard ("Is it the Flies". "No, it's just the Fly. Keep up"), before finally breaking into a proper fourth-wall crushing argument between Batman and Spiderman ("Whose name is on this play?" "It should have been mine, until you ate me". "Well, did your film win any Oscars?"), until Joe tires of the whole thing and commits hari-kari to end it all - only to be met with "You missed me".

It was beautiful. Everything we said got a laugh. I felt in control yet giddy with delight, spurred on by occasionally glancing at all the other Imps on stage falling about with laughter. Joe was magnificent, spending most of the show on stage alone, talking to his stomach and slowly building up an impotent rage (all the while, I could corpse at will from off-stage).

Monday was one of the best shows I can remember in a long time. As a final act of the uniqueness that Joe brings, he got forty audience members on stage to join in the final song of musical, whilst reflecting out loud on three years of Oxford and love and life and everything. This is also the show that he ended Story Story Die with a rant on the Cherwell's predicable reviewing policy for any form of untraditional theatre. But above all of this, I am so glad that I'll remember my last Imps show with Joe for this: our Lost in Alien.

We did a run of our Byron and Shelley improv show last week for Oxfringe, although in a three man format with Joe taking the role of Byron as Jim was out of the country accidentally. Andy retained the role of Shelley and I continued as Maurice the boatman.

If you came to see it, thank you - I hope you enjoyed it. Overall, I thought the run was pretty good. I think on reflection I liked it more than our Burton Taylor run last October, but then again, I think my opinions of that were skewed by my own lack of personal enjoyment of those shows, rather than an assessment of the show as a collaborative effort. There were parts of the style of improv that we were shooting for - conversational, rather than plot-driven - which we managed on a couple of occasions, and there were other things which pleased me on a technical level, like the tying in of themes by the conclusion and what we call 'finding the game' of a scene. On the downside, I don't think we got the audience response that we wanted (crave, need, exist for, etc.). There was laughter, sure, and sometimes a lot of it, but it felt like hard work at times, which indicated to us that it wasn't the sort of free-flowing, uncontainable joy that we always picture it could be but something a lot more workmanlike.

In fact, the mood after the last show was very low-key and disappointed, followed by the saddest looking after show party you could possibly imagine: three guys sat around one full cider, one half beer and one Coke attempting to politely work out what went wrong and not apportion blame. Ultimately, however, we came to two conclusions. The first is that discussing what we would do next may largely be pointless - the four of us each have an increasing number of commitments, far more than we anticipated last June, and looking ahead seems to suggest that we will be quickly become even more geographically spread out over the coming six months. Realistically, another run of shows with the amount of rehearsal time we needed doesn't seem like an option.

The second was skirted around a lot more, but it came out implicitly: this show isn't working as we hoped. Maybe we have lofty expectations and are perfectionists, because friends and critical reception have always been positive (at least on balance), but I'm also sure that we should be having more fun. We discussed that before, but it seems that no number of directives and edicts ordering us to have fun with the show made that more likely.

I don't think we've canned it completely: it definitely feels like more of a shelving. It seems easier at this point to focus on point one and acknowledge the practical problems which mean that point two is somewhat moot. Given the opportunity, I think we would definitely come back to this project at another time and try and make it work, if only to be sure that we've done as much as we could. I hate giving up on something that I've spent so much time on. Sunk cost fallacy it may be, but it still feels no less of a failure.

Which is silly, if I think about it objectively. Financially, the two runs of shows and additional extra performances broke about even - the first made money, this one lost a little. I've gained a lot of experience from the technical and production side and, most importantly, I was involved in a hugely ambitious show which, to an acceptable standard, worked. People are generally amazed by the notion of improv in its short-form format, so the reaction to the risks a entirely improvised play receives are quite something. It's hard not to believe I'm not a better improviser now; I know for sure that I am.

And I've also learned a lot about what sort of things I want to do and am suited for. I think long-form improv is a niche performance type (at best) that I would dearly love to help push forward to wider recognition. I think I have a certain approach to improv which is useful to it: I actively look to spot themes and ideas that can brought back in again and again, I think I have a good eye for finding resolution to complicated narratives and I think the use of mime and physicality for establishing scenes is underutilised by most improvisers. Yet, if I am being honest, I have struggled with this particular format: I've felt hemmed in by a character that I never properly got into. I never felt at ease playing the straight man (and I have an immense amount of respect for anyone who can). Worst of all, I often felt superfluous to whatever stories have been developed by the others, especially in the first run of shows.

My approach to my comedy ventures has long been: I want to do things I enjoy, I want to try as hard as possible to be a success with it and if anything ever really works I'd be delighted. If not, I am fortunate to have plenty of career opportunities ahead of me and a comfortable existence. So, all of these lessons are good to know. There will be many more projects and experiments, no doubt, and I'm one step closer to working out which things I want to do and how I want to do them. And that is today's life lesson.

So we're are three nights into the show, and it's going well. I would say, although its open to debate, that they have been improving each night, certainly from a personal level, and also with things like the degree of mind-meld and reincorporation. There were several times last night when I realised we were all thinking the same things, which makes driving an improvised storyline that much easier, and look that much better. That said, last night was also more silly and over-the-top than previous nights, which means that perhaps, whilst enjoyable for ourselves and entertaining for the audience, may not have been the best (or deepest) improv.

John and Sarah Lloyd attended last night, and said they thought it was so well improvised, it was possible to forget that it wasn't scripted. This is a huge compliment, although also creates problems, which we may need to deal with. Reviews have been good, generally. Aside from a savaging in the Oxford Student, based on what was admittedly not the greatest press preview, the Cherwell review was good (although the star rating reflected the perceived likelihood that a improvised show varies in quality) and OTR put up two here. It's a shame no-one was in to review Wednesday or Thursday's show, as they were our best yet.

Anyway, tickets are mostly sold, though some remain, especially for Saturday. If you haven't had chance yet, do come: 9.30pm, tonight and tomorrow, Burton Taylor Studio Theatre.

Home from Edinburgh, having had a great week in Edinburgh.

Aside from performing in a few Imps shows whilst there (more on that later) we got to see around fifteen shows. Some were exceptional. Tim Key (this years main award winner) thoroughly deserved his accolades with his show, The Slutcracker, and his friend Tom Basden's show, Now That's What I Call Music-Based Comedy, was also great. They both have a similar style, delivering what could be described (simplistically) as intentionally bad poetry (Key) or songs (Basden) ("it's not intentional", says Key, "when I sit down to write a poem, I think 'Let's make this a good one'"). Basden is an excellent guitarist, I should also note. Their material is coupled with extensive use of multimedia and some props, making the show seem so much more than just stand-up. Key ends his show attempting to cross the room, aided by the audience, without touching the floor, paying off an earlier bit. Basden litters his shows with slides on his inventions (new boys names, girls names, maths) cartoons, and other ideas (a wordsearch comprising 100 letter Y's and the word 'Patio') set to music. I liked Key's show more, because of the quality of his performance, his delivery, his interactions with Fletch the techie, but Basden has perhaps been underated this year.

I also really like Laura Solon's first show in Edinburgh since winning the Perrier in 2005. She tells a story through a number of charachter (both male and female) which she voices. The story is both good in of itself and serves to allow a number of excellent standalone sketches (the French radio interview where the presenter and the French author debate whose culture is better, England or France is a highlight, as is her Welsh call-centre lady). The performance was energetic, her delivery impeccable and she seemed just, for want of a better word, lovely.

Rounding off my picks (bearing in mind I'm waiting to see Daniel Kitson and Stewart Lee on their post Fringe tours) was Simon Munnery's 2009 AGM. For our ticket, we got an hour and a quarter in the venue, and a further hour in the pub after as he finished going through all the submitted motions, improvising responses leading into more established routines. It's incredible how much matertial he has to draw on, and style-wise, there's no-one like him ("I went swimming in the river: widths, mainly").

I saw a lot of sketch shows - the Bristol Revunions and Delete the BanJaX were really fun, especially the latter. They seemed liked good friends whose palable delight at performing together was infectious, and where bits fell apart due to exhaustion and lost voices at the end of the run, their good natured mocking of each other was pitched exactly right. One of the guys, Dan, was particularly difficult to stop watching, and his enormous personality was obvious in all his characters (both human and horse). I want to do shows with them.

The Durham Revue were disappointing - I've often enjoyed them more than their Oxford or Cambridge counterparts. Cath and I left feeling quite bored by the end, as the show ran out of ideas about halfway through. I enjoyed the Penny Dreadfuls and Pappy's Fun Club, although given the disputes over the latter between Imps, I've had quite enough of discussing its merits and shortcomings. Rich Hall was quite a letdown - it was a bit meandering, and while he's great at dealing with the unplanned bits with the audience, little of his material was as stellar as I've seen in the past.

There's more, but instead, let's talk about the Imps. I did three shows, and to be brutally honest, I didn't enjoy myself a huge amount. Part of this was being a little out-of-practice, and the problems with joining a group of people who have their own momentum. I also didn't particularly like the set lists - I find improvised musicals tedious and I don't have much more love for Shakespeare scenes either. I find them restrictive with their conventions and often too long and convoluted. I'm also not convinced the audience don't share my assessment, for all our own bluster. Quite frankly, I like short form with all its silliness and energy and gimmicks and short scenes which allow quick ideas and short bursts of insanity, and I like long form for the ability to develop ideas and characters slowly and build up layers of humour and bring back themes. Where the group currently is sits between these two, but without the positives of either.

I'm starting to put videos from Correctness on the YouTube. Here's the first one - the Elephant in the Room. I'll try and add more to this post tonight/tomorrow.

Update: Have now uploaded Good Cop, Good Cop, Secrets of the Stage and Artsy Parents. If you like them, do share with others. More tomorrow.

Further update: I've now uploaded Don Alfonso, Balloon For Sale, Tenzing Interview, Spleen Conference and Weather Vanity.

Well, I've spent most of my evening (aside from two and a half hours gloriously spent rewatching The Dark Knight) setting up a new website for Gelastic Band Productions, mine and Andy's production company. It's placeholder stuff for the time being while I get some graphic stuff done, but I thought I'd link it anyway. It's here.

In the aftermath of Sunday's performance of Correctness, I've been thinking (and Andy and I have been discussing) what happens next. I like sketch, and it is pretty much my ideal medium, so it's interesting to see what opportunities there would be. Sketch nights in London and festivals - though sadly not Edinburgh, this year - are on the radar.

In that vein, two articles, published independently but about the same topic, appeared in the Guardian and the Independent today. Interesting, the former seems to believe sketch shows no longer have any appeal, while the latter seems really excited about the blossoming live sketch scene in London. Let's assume the latter is true.

Anyway, I started having a look at some of the sketches and sketch groups who are on Youtube, and while there are a great many that I liked, here's my favourite: Women, by Idiots of Ants.

I posted some unused material from the show over on Project Brainstorm. I think, actually, it works much better written down than performed.

Imps show tonight - 7.45pm at the Wheatsheaf. Time to see if I can still do comedy without writing it down first.

This is post number 400, apparently, and I tend to use such landmarks for reflection. Why should this be any different?

It's a particularly interesting time for such consideration, as I'm coming towards the end of my years as a full-time student, with various options being contemplated. By September, I'll need to find some alternative to the grant that has supported me for the last four years. My doctoral thesis won't yet be finished, though I hope to have made huge in-roads into that by then. I'm looking at economics jobs to be working at while I finish. This is broadly labelled the Safe Path.

As I write this, I'm also coming to the end of putting on my first show. I am immensely proud of it (particularly tonight, which was our best performance so far, and which also featured my parents in the audience - the first time they've seen me do any live comedy) and I feel like it might be the start of something good. I am enjoying collaborating with Andy, and feel we work well together. I also think I could be OK at this, and it is certainly more exciting that consultancy. However, it's performance art, and as such carries with it the prospects of poverty and failure. I think it would be fair to label this the Risky Path.

My plans depend greatly on my current circumstances - I'm going to be married in May, and I want a family. If I had been in a different situation, I'd give the Risky Path a proper go without hesitation - when you don't have more than yourself to think about, it is much easier to put up with a low income in the pursuit of a goal. But I'm not, and I don't regret that at all. Cath brings more more happiness than any career ever could.

But I don't want to squander any opportunities I have. I'm fortunate to have a number of useful talents, one of which could be comedy writing, another of which is a reasonably functioning and intellectually curious brain (which, happily enough, may be valued by a company with a good pay schedule). I do hope I can find a compromise - secure work to provide the sort of life I'd hope for my family (and which I was lucky to enjoy myself growing up) but continual efforts towards writing in between. You never know what might happen.

Thought I'd share a little something with you. Nothing Nice to Say is my favourite online comic, because I am so punk, and this is one of my favourite strips. They have a book, which collects together a load of NN2S stuff, which I am very fond of.

Show going well. Three down, two to go. Expect a full evaluation of the run on Sunday or Monday.

First night done, and I'm feeling pretty pleased. We have a bunch of notes for a better, tighter show tonight. Here's a review.

Cherwell review is a glowing and fawning three stars. They should be an online version later, so I'll post a link when it's available. It's OK. I leave it to you all to read it, come to the show, then decide if it's right.

The important thing is that you come along, you see. I don't want to say that it's as important as lasting peace in Gaza. I don't want to say that.

But I will, if that's what it takes.

The OxStu have said a number of very nice things about our show. If I can scan a copy and save it somewhere, I will. They said our writing "rings with confidence as it strays into the complex or ridiculous", and that ours was a show where "each joke comes from round a corner, unexpected and entertainly so".

They also discussed our show's no-sex-and-swearing-and-controversy ethos in positive terms. That's good: I did half expect some reviewer to mistake that for unnecessary prudishness, when nothing could be further from the truth. After all, a recent Cherwell review of the Revue criticised them for not having much satirical or topical material at a time when there are plenty of newsworthy events, as if it's valid for reviewers to criticise what is not in a show regardless of the quality of what is. In fact, the idea of doing as we have in our sketches is described as "noble", and the reviewer also suggests that it is one which "all our comics should put their hand, to prevent stagnation".

I am simultaneously 25, and delighted. Cherwell review tomorrow.

We had our press preview for the show today. I think it went well - a certain amount of laughter was forthcoming from our reviewers, which was encouraging at least. I will put up a link to any reviews, good or bad, when they are available. Hopefully we picked four sketches that gave a good overview of what the show is about, without giving away the bits we are most proud of.

The Cherwell did mention us briefly in their preview of the term. I don't want to make too big a deal of our aim to write a show without sex, swearing or "edgy", controversial material (although the author of this piece thought it were worth noting) because it isn't the reason to come, or a particular gimmick of the show; it's just our style (possibly mine more so than Andy's, though he has of course been willing). I think that makes our show a bit different, but I wouldn't want it to be a major talking point - it would be a rather tragic reflection on all comedy if it were.

My goal is to always be original. For a 75 minute show, that is impossible - we never copy a line, but some jokes or set-ups will always have elements of similarity to other material. Some formulas are classic, and they work, and any good comedian should know how to use them. It's what you do with the rest of the time that is the difference between being solid and exceptional. We may not entirely make it on the first go, but I have no doubt we will in time.

Happy new year, everyone.

Inspiration is an odd thing. I spent a large part of the weekend trying to come up with a decent idea to write a sketch about, and nothing was happening. I went through websites and new sites just to see if someone would click, and I came up blank.

Then, whilst washing up on Sunday night, I remember something that I had seen over the summer. Although it had given me something to talk about at the time as an amusing observation, it certainly wasn't something I could write a sketch about. Standing at the sink, however, I suddenly thought a few short words, a throwaway line, which made the whole thing into a much more interesting and viable situation for comedy writing. From that, I thought of a whole host of ideas about where the scene could go, and what the characters could say. I woke up Monday morning, and wrote it, in thirty minutes. It's no more than four minutes of comedy, but I hope it will works well for the impending show (details below).

First observation: Washing up is zen. Like long motorway driving, you enter a strange state of conciousness. In Chuck Palahniuk's latest book, Rant, (which I recently finished recommend) it is is explained that the theta level of brain activity, is the frequency that "mystics report that vision and inspiration are most likely to occur. In those relaxed moment, while bathing, driving or falling asleep, as you lapse into theta brain waves, you typically retrieve deep, distant memories. You make connections and achieve revelations."

Second observation: if that is a tedious way of thinking about it, then the Discworld idea that inspiration literally rains through the universe, occassionally striking a receptive mind and giving birth to an idea, is more interesting. Plus, it just feels right.

As promised: Correctness Gone Mad - a comedy sketch show written by Andy Murray and Craig Holmes, is on at the Burton Taylor Theatre from the 27th to the 31st of January, at 7.30pm. Do come.

So here's quite a thing. Let us talk about it for a few minutes, shall we?

Apparently, the Oxford Imps have not impressed Sian Cox-Brooker, as well as the nameless many who would doubt our reputation as the most talented bunch of frustrated thesps. That is, of course, fine - the sold out show we performed last week (and all other weeks) leads me to believe someone is enjoying what we do. However, I can only assume that while I saw them laugh frequently, they failed to laugh largely, thus allowing the laughs to be smaller than our swollen egos.

But I do need to be clear about something. Do people doubt we are frustrated thesps, or do people doubt we actually have any talent? Because I do doubt the former myself - most of the group aren't interested in performing drama outside of our comedy show (which has always left me feeling the exact opposite of frustrated) while the few that do are incredibly successful within the Oxford scene.

So it must be that we aren't all that talented, a flaw we apparently blame on our audiences. I have been an Imp for four years now. We have blamed audiences for giving unimaginative suggestions. We have blamed audiences for encouraging cheap and easy sex gags. We have never blamed an audience for a bad show. We blame ourselves for not being funny. We blame ourselves for being funny but not being good. We even blame ourselves when we are both good and funny, but not as much of either as we hope to be. Anyone who has ever sat through our post-show analysis will quickly realise we are our own harshest critics. Suggesting otherwise is as inaccurate as it is mean-spirited.

Thankfully, of course, the Revue are close by to show us how to do things, in the sense that while they are the same idea as the Imps, they perform an entirely different form of comedy. They write a scripted show once every four months. We make up two hours of comedy every week. So you can see how might lack ambition. If only we could make less comedy with more of a safety net. Of course, they are infinitely times funnier, so that's measurable at least.

Do not mistake this for an attack on the Revue, who I happen to respect and have defended from charges of mediocrity a number of times today alone. I just want to point out where this article may have drifted slightly astray from the small matters of truth and reality. I can't help that the writer may not like the show, and would listen and agree with anyone who wanted to point out which specific bits of comedy failed. But I do expect a little more research and specificity if we are going to be so strongly criticised. She could, for instance, have emailed hannah@oxfordimps.com - if only to check who is now in charge of auditions.

A link, especially for Tom, but also for anyone else that loves Stephen Fry. I love Stephen Fry. I often wish my first homosexual experience had been with him, but instead I had to settle for a girl.

Also, some jokes I thought of this weekend:

Race relations are changing. Look at America. Used to be if a black man was running for office, there would be people who wouldn't vote for him because he was a black man. Now when a black man runs for office, there are people who won't vote for him because he's an Arab.

I want to go hunting for zebras with a laser gun. I want to know if, when I shot one of them, it would tell me the price of zebras.

Even in Dutch (or whoever), this is very gratifying.