Where's Bernie?

It seems the mail-out to my mailing list has worked wonders. I was letting them know about some upcoming stuff - like next week's The Wright Stuff - but also asked them to sponsor me for the London to Brighton bike ride on June 18. Many of them have done and the total raised has risen dramatically as a result. Which makes it all the more embarrassing that I am going to have to drop out of the event.

Ha ha ha. Not really. It is April 1st. If you believed that I was going to drop out of the bike ride you are an April Fool. Unless you were reading this after mid-day on April 1st in which case I believe it is me who is the fool. There, I think it is traditional that everyone who writes on April 1st must contain in their writing a blatant lie to try to fool people. I like to get mine out of the way early on.

This next bit will sound like a carefully constructed lie but is in fact true. I am now a 'published photographer.' Oh yes. What Digital Camera magazine (who bill themselves as The UK's original and best digital photography magazine) have a few of my shots in the April issue in what they call Best Shot Selector... Reader Gallery. The truth is, I can't honestly claim to be a reader. I mean, I do read... just not WDC. Still, I don't want to sound ungrateful because I'm not. I'm a hobbyist photographer and I was very flattered when they asked if they could run the photos and genuinely delighted to see them in print. Apparently I've won an Epson Stylus R800 printer for my trouble as well. That's nice.

The Times newspaper have a feature on comedy in today's paper. They're running with an April Fool's Day/Fools theme you see. They've assembled fifty names (I'm one of them, phew) and then broken that fifty down into ten sets of five.

So they have the five best character acts with Al Murray quite rightly picked at the top of that particular tree and then the five best grumpy acts with Daniel Kitson incorrectly sitting atop that list. (I say incorrectly not because I don't like Daniel Kitson, I do, I just don't think of him as grumpy. Brilliant certainly but joyful too. What do I know.)

There's a list for 'novelty acts' too. 'Novelty Act' is a term normally applied (with derision) to people who juggle fish or who can eat 35 eggs so I was slightly alarmed to see myself in that list. They provide their own definition of 'novelty act' as being anyone who doesn't fit into any other categories, presents high-concept shows and/or uses laptops on stage and obviously I accept that this has me covered. But it still seems odd. Maybe I'll start referring to myself as "one of Britain's best novelty acts" ... it would be interesting to see who would come to see such a thing. I think Bernie Clifton should be at the top of that list and he doesn't even get a mention.

Total sponsorship so far: a staggering £4177.99! Keep it coming.