Soho Theatre, VAULT Festival and Stoke Mandeville Hospital

January has kicked off my decade with the kind of ups and downs that felt like the trademark of my 2010s.

On one hand, I played Soho Theatre. Not only did I perform my show I, Tom Mayhew there, but we managed to sell the whole run out!

Soho Theatre is a venue I have a lot of love for; I saw my first ever solo Edinburgh show there, when I saw Jon Richardson perform This Guy At Night for my 18th birthday present. I also went there on my first 2 dates with my girlfriend back in 2017, watching shows by Mae Martin and John Kearns. It was a dream since I was 18 to have my own show at that venue, so to perform a sold-out run was a wonderful feeling, made even more apt because my show was directed by my girlfriend!

It is a show I love performing, because it is a show that is fuelled by passion, anger and love. If you didn't catch the Soho dates, it will be coming to Leicester on February 14th, Sheffield on March 8th and Glasgow on March 28th, with a Manchester date in July almost finalised.

Things never stop in this game, though - after sold out shows at Soho Theatre on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I found myself doing new material at an open mic gig on the Monday. In terms of a follow-up show, I am performing the first work-in-progress performance of my new show later this week at VAULT Festival. It should be ramshackle and fun, with all details available here: http://vaultfestival.com/whats-on/milo-edwards-work-in-progress/

I don't know why the link thinks I am Milo Edwards, but there we are.

With all of the good news of Soho Theatre, it would be easy for people to think "hey Tom, it looks like everything is going great for you!" - but, as anyone who attended the Soho shows would know, my Dad was in hospital in January having stem cell replacement treatment, as part of his ongoing battle with lymphoma cancer. He was at Stoke Mandeville hospital for 3 weeks, which is the longest length of time he has been kept in hospital since he was diagnosed back in 2011. This meant that this month has been a strange balancing act between the best achievements of my comedy career, and some of the toughest moments at home. I ended each show by getting the audience to record a little video for my parents: day 1 was for my Dad, day 2 was for my Mum, and then day 3 was for both of them. The video from day 1 is here, if you are interested.

The performances in January became more than comedy shows about real-life, as the timing of them meant that real-life and art were both on show for all the see. While it meant that I probably didn't have the best build-up in terms of preparing for the shows, I have always wanted to write comedy that is real and genuine, because that's the kind of art that I love...though spending one day visiting your Dad in hospital and then spending the next day talking about your Dad on stage is not something I fancy doing again, if I can help it!

It has been both a tough month and a brilliant month, and I am pleased to say that Dad came home from the hospital today, and it feels so much better to have him here. Tons of people from my generation in their 20s/30s have found themselves living with their parents for far longer than they would like, but when both of your parents have had treatment for cancer, it really makes you appreciate all the time you can share with them. Even if it does mean I have to see his bum every day.


Thanks for reading. Look after yourself, and I'll see you again soon.

Tom

Relaunch: Twitter Killed the Blogger Star

Hello.

If you were one of the small number of people who followed this blogger account years ago...it's been a while, hasn't it?

I fell off the blogging bandwagon; or, perhaps more accurately, the internet moved on from blogging.

People don't blog anymore; they tweet; they do Twitter threads; they write long statuses on Facebook which are shared far and wide; they say their thoughts to a camera; they talk to their phone and release it as a podcast. All these things have seemingly pushed the idea of blogging to the outskirts of internet communications.

But I'd like to get back into it. There is something about writing long-form that is different from a tweet. The writer has taken the time out to craft something, to think about the structure, and to choose the perfect words; the reader has specifically taken the time out to sit and read it. Not only that, but it is an in-depth record of how you felt at a certain time in your life, in a way that tweets often aren't.

When I was writing my Edinburgh show in 2019 - a show about being long-term unemployed, being working-class, and the demonisation of both groups of people - I looked back on some of my old blogs. These were written between 2012 and 2015*, and they helped me think of new things to write about, just by reading about how I felt back then. In that sense, those blogs were very useful, and helped shaped what my show became.

So it's a useful resource for me to get back into. I don't plan on sharing these far and wide, so it isn't a career move - I'm not crazy enough to think "I know how I will make it big! I'll become a viral blog star in 2020!" - but it will be interesting to see what I come up with, now I have opened the door to this outlet once again.

Write again soon!

Tom