There ain't no cure for the summertime blues...

...or at least so it seems. This is always a tough time for comedians, what with most gigs either being stopped for the summer or pulled on the night, when you've already spent the best part of the day getting there in a baking hot coach. In these humid, sticky months the trauma of a long coach journey is such that National Express actually operate less like a public transport service and more like a fleet of mobile S&M parlours.

People, you see, just don't want to be cooped up in a dark sweaty room when the sun is still beaming down outside. They want to be sipping cold ale in the clement evening air as the sun gently sets. I can't blame them either, as so do I.

The problem then, as a comic, is that you then find yourself at odds with both your audiences' and your own desires. You want them cramped into that dark sweaty room, forcing themselves to sit and listen and be entertained like good boys and girls, ignoring their discomfort and excusing the fact that the air conditioning must be switched off (as it's noisy and will interrupt the acts). You then have to make yourself want to get up in front of this grumpy, lethargic mob and be sparkling and witty, not letting on that the stage lights are making you at least twice as hot as anyone in the room, smiling as the perspiration blinds your eyes, quipping with cheeky wink as your more intimate nooks and crannies become so uncomfortably moist you begin to seriously consider the possibility that your genitals have melted.

We comics MUST face this, as this is what we do to live, and work is scarce enough at this time of year. We must forge sweatily on, fighting to banish the now strangely appealing prospect of a job in a nice air-conditioned office (repeats to self; the grass is always greener, the grass is always greener, the grass is always greener....).

Peace. X