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Monday 2nd March - Where The Hell Is Fleetwood?
It was off after work to a little comedy gig tonight, no less than Jim Daly doing a work in progress version of his show Match of the Daly (see what he did there) before doing a tour later in the year. You may know him from some of his comedy football songs such as the one he does every year with all 92 league clubs from all four divisions (make that tune of the day) and there was one he did about Manchester City midfield maestro Kevin de Bruyne that had me in stitches too. Generally, all good fun and as he is a Crystal Palace fan, he of course had two great moments last yeae winning the FA Cup and the Community Shield.
The gig was at Aces and Eights, a bar in Tufnell Park, north of Kentish Town. The place has a good reputation for pizza as well as decent beer so I knew I could head there earlier after work and get some tea. To be faiir, the staff were lovely - you ordered the pizza from near the kitchen and they took payment, and I went for one with pepperoni and mushrooms. The bar also had good beers and went for the Signature Brewery's Roadie, a solid pint. £6.30 for the beer and £12 for the pizza was decent, and on a Monday you get a two pizzas for cheaper offer which is well worth it if you've got a friend with you.
I had a nice little table seat in a booth and it felt rustic and nice with some good tunes. The lovely staff brought the pizza over and it was crispy and lovely, and really was plentiful on the toppings too. Methinks I will need to head back here when I am not going to a gig just for the vibe, pizza and beer anyway, so noted that for future reference. The time ticked over nicely and soon it was time to pass the kitchen and head downstairs to the small underground cellar (which had a bar for certain nights) and the seating and stage, which was nice and cosy and intimate.
Jim Daly came on and started the set with the 92 league clubs song, which of course meant you could sing along to key lines such as "What's the point of Crawley?" and "Where the hell is Fleetwood?" (for the record I do actually know where it is) and as well as advising to "do not call the Forest Notts" as well. That set things off for some fun, including some related heckles if you support a certain team (think Arsenal and bottling it) as well as guessing the unsung hero footballer. That was fun but what worked well was to guess the footballer not by their professional career but by what they got into trouble for. And yes, I did get Joey Barton straight away as I suspected lots of things were down to him in that one.
The show also had some other songs of Jim's too, including one where all the words were from Wayne Rooney's Twitter account and some of the mad things he used to say on there back in the day, and a Beastie Boys parody based on a former Leicester City player (think of something that rhymes with party that you could adapt into one of the BB's classic tunes and you'll get it.) Some sections did work better than others and I do think that it was good to see with an audience what works beforehand so you can tweak the show. That's also why the tickets were a bargain fiver each, so you get to see the work in progress but also see the stuff that is in the finished show, but for less. I did similar with Punt and Dennis at Epsom Playhouse some years back too.
The hour or so went by very quickly, and Jim's tales of supporting Crystal Palace and iindeed a sort of "only Palace could do this" moment, such as when a fan was complaining about the poles in the Arthur Waite Stand and one of the fanbase from another country didn't quite get what they meant. Ironically when Palace then did sign a Polish player, they posed him in the same stand by one of the poles. Bizarre, but true. And there were a good few Palace fans in the audience which probably helped, although the sod's law moments of any football clubs could be relevant in that we've all had our club do something daft haven't they? It was all in all a very good show and a nice walk downhill to Kentish Town station so that I could get the train to St Pancras and change there for the train home, and that was a relatively painless journey too, which is always appreciated.