Blog Archive: June 2025

Outside Eye
A few weeks ago I did what I thought would be my EARLIEST EVER gig, getting up early to do a show at UAL at 10.20am o'clock in the morning. However, on Friday last I got up similarly early and went to do an even EARLIER gig (or sort of gig) at 10.00am o'clock in the morning!.

It was a "sort of gig" because I was doing it for one (1) person, and that person was Mr Declan Munro for one of his Outside Eye sessions. The idea of this is that he watches you do a runthrough of your show (or similiar) and then basically gives THORTS. I had tried a couple of times to do this as part of a PROJECT what the Arts Council utterly refused to countenance, but this time I was able to wrangle it via some CA$H wot I had secured via work for TRAINING PURPOSES for ME, and thus I was booked in for a session to go through Data and Doctor Doom.

To be perfectly honest my main DREAM for all of this was that Dec would say "Oh this is marvellous, well done, here are 3 extra jokes that can be put in otherwise TOP MARKS". After all, I'd already done the Work In Progress show and REViSED everything accordingly, so I was mostly hoping for REASSURANCE and the afore-stated Extra Gags.

I got a WHOLE LOT MORE than that!

I originally knew Dec from many moons ago when Steve and I did Total Hero Team at the Edinburgh Fringe, with him looming large in my personal memory of that time as the person who INSISTED we Do The Show Right Here on the day that our venue was temporarily shut down. I bumped into him many times over the years, notably at the launch for Mr R Manuel's Fesshole book, where I discovered he was a DRAMATURG (i.e. someone who helps with THORTS on performances) and resolved there and then to SOMEHOW do something with him like this.

ANYWAY, what that means is that we did some catching up first of all, during which I told him of my hopes for a) reassurance b) more gags, and then I launched into doing the SHOW. It was a bit nerve-wracking at first because we were doing it in a small office where other people were coming and going, so I had to keep reminding myself not to sing at FULL BELLOW, and also because even one such as I who is used to SHALL WE SAY small, intimate venues with small, intimate audiences gets a little thrown by doing the whole thing AT one person.

Still, it all went OK, we had a little break, and then came back for about an hour of AMAZING THORTS. COR! It was incredible - I DID get the reassurance I craved, but then Dec talked me through a HUGE range of ideas, thoughts, CONCEPTS, suggestions, analysis and ALL THAT taking in many many things which had never even occurred to me but, now that he was saying them, seemed utterly obvious. One of the big ones was when he asked me what I wanted out of the show as a whole, and I told him of my hopes that, for instance, when the "Avengers: Doomsday" movie comes out it would be ME who media outlets would contact to talk about it. "You should actually say that in the show", he said, and OF COURSE I should! OF COURSE!

There were lots and lots of other thoughts like this which I shall not go into here for fear of SPOILERS, but goodness me he was full of GRATE IDEAS. Also, wonderfully, he talked me through THEORY and CONCEPTS of performance and stand-up that I had never really thought of. One really really BASIC one was to pause and focus on one person before delivering a punchline, so that there was no distraction and the audience knew it WAS the punchline. COR! I mean, that sounds straightforward when put like that but I have been TREADING THE BOARDS these many decades without even considering IT.

It was, not to put too fine a point on it, AMAZING, and if this was a TrustPilot Review there would be five stars and even MORE super superlatives than what there are here now. It was also really EMOTIONAL - there is a whole lot of ME in this show and so having someone so BRAINY give it respect, attention and IDEAS was surprisingly moving. I thus staggered away and towards home EXHAUSTED but also DELIGHTED by the whole experience.
Now all I have to do is Actually Re-Write It! YIKES!

posted 16/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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London Data Week
Let joy ring out around the nation, for LO! the final date on the Data and Doctor Doom SUMMER TOUR can now been announced!

I am VERY PLEASED to say that I'll be performing the official WORLD PREMIERE of the show on Friday 11 July at The Hub in Peckham, in conjunction with UAL's Creative Computing Institute as part of London Data Week! The show is FREE to get in but has a strictly limited number of tickets, so if you fancy coming you'll need to a) register in advance and b) be free at 3.30pm, as that's when it's on.



The whole experience of booking this one has been a DELIGHT, not least because I've been working on it with the very cool cats at the Creative Computing Institute. The CCI is part of University of the Arts London, where I WORK, so I have had the extremely unusual experience of not only doing ROCK stuff during work time (which OBVS I have never otherwise done) and that being ALL FINE and part of my job. It also means I've had several MEETINGS with the people who work there, which is ALWAYS lots of fun as they are ARTS people but also MASSIVE NERDS i.e. MY SORT OF PEOPLE!

That, barring any unforseen emergency bookings, brings the SUMMER TOUR booking to completion, sitting alongside the shows in Watford, Buxton, Bedford and Camden. There should also be some more gigs later in the year, but there'll be more on that ANON. In the meantime I'm REALLY looking forward to being Officially ON TOUR again, and it would be even more fun if you, dear reader, came along!

posted 11/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Administration and Secrets
I realise that the recent absence of fresh and exciting new blogs might lead one to think that there has been no fresh and exciting ACTIVITY recently, but nothing could be further from the truth - it's just that a lot of said activity has been either SECRET or ADMIN-BASED.

There have been not one but TWO secret things occurring lately, one of which is SECRET PROJECT to do with music that I am very very VERY excited about but am unable to speak of as yet. I think it's OK to say that last week I spent a whole DAY specifically on it, and that this was the SECOND day of work, but otherwise I had really best go no further than that. The other one is to do with COMICS but I have signed an actual bit of paper to say I won't talk about that yet either, so won't. I wish I could though, they are both GRATE!

What I very much CAN speak of, however, is the ROCK ADMIN what is currently gushing through my THORT TUBES, all of which is to do with the imminent commencement of the Data and Doctor Doom TOUR. I'm currently in the pre-publicity phase, which means I've been sending out a lot of EMAILS, getting together some more thoughts for VIDEOS, pondering maybe releasing a SINGLE of one of the songs, answering various questionnaires, and most recently sorting out some POSTERS.

Posters! Crumbs, I had forgotten about the need to do these, and so was taken slightly unaware when various Fringe organisers started asking for them. I had designed some a month or so ago but when I looked upon those again I realised that they were a bit cluttered and also gave no idea about what the show actually WAS, so have been TOILING away trying to make them a bit more informative and ZINGY. Part of this involved writing a STRAPLINE, but after discussion with The Images In My Logo we couldn't decided exactly what it should BE - rather wonderfully the aforementioned Ballots In My Box suggested putting it up for public discussion on THE SOCIALS so that is exactly what I did, and we got the final version as "a musical extravaganza of slides, statistics and super-villainy". It was like OLDEN TYMES when The Socials were actually USEFUL - I also got a GRATE recommendation for a printer in a similar way, and have now begun the process of ORDERING them. You can see all the ones done so far over on the gigs page, but here's the one for CAMDEN as an example:



Keen observers may notice that, technically speaking, this is MORE cluttered than possibly any other poster EVER, and includes some new images that have previously not been associated with the show. The new images come from the REVISED version what I have been working on since the work-in-progress show a few weeks ago, including a picture of ME at my PhD graduation which I suddenly realised would be PERFECT as a Publicity Picture for the tour - not only was it taken by a Professional Photographer, not only does it clearly demonstrate that I am INDEED a Doctor Of Doctor Doom, but it ALSO clearly shows that I look FABULOUS in purple!

Also, the cluttering is DELIBERATE as all of the guidance I got from various places said "the best way to do a poster is to have one single distinctive image" and it made me think of the row upon row of posters showing A Comedian Looking Whimsical that you see EVERYWHERE during Edinburgh Fringe. As ever, the fact that everyone else was doing their posters one way made me want to do it in the totally opposite way. I am PRETTY SURE this will lead all neutral observers to think "Why, this fellow is clearly some kind of maverick who doesn't play by the rules, I must buy multiple tickets for his show IMMEDIATELY."

Anyway, it all feels very EXCITING, as if this krazy idea of a show about Doctor Doom is actually going to HAPPEN. If you'd like to come and see it in Watford, Buxton, Bedford or Camden there are links for tickets available (and indeed TICKETS very much available) with some more shows to be announced hopefully fairly soon. Do come if you can, I think it is going to be Quite Good!

posted 2/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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