The title above is pretty much spot on. It concisely sums up the course of events that should be soon happening to me…

It’s the last Sunday of the month this weekend, which means the Comedy Store is set to hit town, or to be more precise, revisits the Rose Theatre in Kingston upon Thames. The Comedy Store is a comedy club based in Oxendon Street, London, just off Leicester Square. To my knowledge it started off life back in the eighties, spawning many of the so called ‘alternative’ comedians around at the time – Ben Elton, Rik Mayle, French and Saunders all gigged there early on in their careers.

Having a laugh?

As well as the traditional stand-up routines, it also hosts improvisational comedy, where regulars such as Paul Merton and Richard Vranch perform comedy routines based on suggestions from the punters in the audience in a style similar to the legendry TV show ‘Whose Line is it anyway?’. They used to do an open mike night called the Gong Show, where some very brave/foolish souls from the audience would get up on the stage and attempt to do a five minute comedy routine – the aim was to do the full five minutes without getting gonged off by three randomly picked audience members. The end result tended to be very chaotic and was often very funny.

As you can probably tell I am a bit of a fan. I couldn’t tell you exactly when they started doing tours of the regions – I only heard about it shortly after the Rose Theatre opened in Kingston, where the programme mentioned the regular monthly slot. From experience the bill for this Sunday’s performance will include four comedians strutting their stuff, with each act linked together by a compare. As the comedians at these types of venue tend be new or less well established performers, it can be a bit hit and miss, but so far I haven’t been disappointed.

After the show my mate and I are off to a Kingston Curry house which is supposed to be of Nepalease origin. I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the menu, but they certainly do a good curry!

Anyway, that’s the plan for Sunday. Tonight I have a date with a girl that used to work for the same company as me. We are meeting up at the cinema in the Rotunda complex to see a film which sounds like it will be Chick Flick Central. It’s called ‘Salmon fishing in the Yemen’, and the old gut instinct is that it will be completely pants! I am hoping to get a few drinks in at the bar before it starts. We have been out a couple of times before and I am still at that not too sure stage…as I have said in many blogs before, wish me luck!

This was it! It was the culmination of a bit of planning that took place towards the end of last year when I had sorted out the hotel and the flights. When the Iceland Airways plane finally took off and headed north towards the Arctic Circle, it was proof positive that my long awaited trip to the land of the midnight sun had finally begun.

Not that there was any midnight sun around when my flight touched down in Reykjavík, as it didn’t happen in March – it was more of a summer thing. The legendry rain was no where to be seen as I was leaving the airport, though it was noticeably cold as I boarded the shuttle bus to get to my hotel. I had been a bit lucky with my room at the Reykjavík Natura – as it had been booked last minute.com I got a very good price for a four star hotel. The place was very comfortable and pleasant to say the least – the only thing that they didn’t say in the advertising blurb was that it was next to the national airport! This didn’t turn out to be much of a problem though. The staff, ever helpful and polite, all spoke perfect English. As the Icelandic people were descended from Norwegian settlers, there was also a higher than normal proportion of lovely blonde women around, although this wasn’t just restricted to my hotel.

Another plus about the Natura was that its logistic organisation was excellent – from an office just off reception it was possible to book trips and excursions – as well as the booking, the transportation was also covered, as the tour operators picked you up from the hotel. There was also a regular bus service to and from the Natura and Reykjavík town centre, which was about a five minute drive away.

Ice land Cathedral

I spent most of my time in a part of Reykjavík Known as ‘Down Town’. From what I could tell this was the main tourist centre, where the low-lying skyline was dominated by the imposing Hallgrímskirkja Cathedral, the sixth tallest structure in Iceland. This was given a visit (the views at the top of the tower were breathtaking), and the locale had a good variety of cafes and restaurants. From the money point of view the Icelandic capital was pricey – 1000 Icelandic Kroner was just over £5.00, and most things averaged at around 1000 – 2000 Icelandic Kroner. Eating out was also on the expensive side – most restaurant bills averaged about £30.00 per head, and one meal in a more swankier venue came to over £50.00 per head!

The cost of a pint tended to vary depending on where you went – I discovered a very nice pint called ‘Polar Beer’ (geddit?). In the hotel bar this set me back 1000 Icelandic Kroner (just over a fiver), but in a pub in Down Town Reykjavík it was on offer, costing around £2.50. It definitely paid to shop around.

Trip wise it turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. One thing you quickly learn about Iceland is that you need to invest in layers of clothing – a tour to see the Northern Lights involved being taken high into the bleak Volcanic Mountains to spend three freezing hours waiting for them to happen. Apparently, finding them is not an exact science as their visibility is dependant on weather conditions and the amount of solar activity around at the time. On the chilly night when I went, the solar activity was optimal, but the weather was a bit on the cloudy side, so when the aurora borealis did appear, it was more of a dull green glow than the spectacular display I was expecting – it was kind of like the 10 Watt version.

I also tried the Whale watching excursion – a group of us went out on a ferry to a bay where there was a 95% chance of seeing Whales and dolphins, but on the day I went it was the 5% option, as the only wild life to be seen after spending four and a half hours in the biter cold on deck was a few sea birds!

Other tours went better – I took the famous Golden Tour where I saw an impressive water fall, some spectacular volcanic geesers, and the place where two tectonic plates met. A trip to a place called the Blue Lagoon involved going to one of the many Geo-thermal power stations in the mountains, where nearby was an outdoor spa of volcanically heated water where I had a dip – the water was bath temperature, but as soon as you stood up you were hit by the icy Arctic winds – it was a bit of a surreal experience!

I did enjoy the Iceland trip though, and would definitely want to go again – I want to have another chance at seeing those Northern Lights!

It’s been just over two years, though I may be wrong – you know how fast time flies by! By my reckoning, that’s when I started presenting my show for the Weybridge Radio Station.

Before then, my broadcasting experience there had mainly been co-presenting on an early evening Sunday show, which initially involved reading out the weather forecasts and other bits and pieces, and then progressed to doing more and more presenter cover when other Radio Station staff were away. Then, all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, the management did a reshuffle of the Programming Schedule, which meant that the early evening Sunday two hour slot needed a presenter. I was offered the job, and the rest is history!

At first I stuck with the format of the last presenter, which was playing 70′s and 80′s music around the speech based features. Much as I love those 70′s and 80’s sounds, I wanted to make the show more of my own. Since I was a huge fan of this kind of music, and felt that there was a bit of a gap in the Schedule for it, I changed the type of tracks played to 90′s and 00′s (that’s nineties and noughties),  and introduced some new features. To date, as well as this 90′s and 00′s playlist my show includes the following:

• A music based quiz
• A film based quiz
• An Entertainments news round up
• A request track
• Two light news stories
• A ‘What’s on’ feature for the local area

I have got to know the above format well, and am now used to finding the material in respect of the preparation. The thing is, when presenting the show, it still seems to be a bit feature lite – in some parts I’m finding there is an over reliance on music tracks to fill air time.

As I see it I have to ways of dealing with this. The first is too re-jig the existing features by having them at different points in the show, for example, one feature every quarter of an hour, which would distribute them more evenly over the course of the two hour broadcast. The second method is definitely the more difficult option, which is to think up some brand new features to add to the ones above – at the moment my inspiration level is annoyingly low!

I’ll probably end up doing some sort of mix of the above methods. If any of you out there have any (polite) suggestions please let me know!