So we’ve got my website up and running! It’s taken a little while  to design and create  – a collaboration with graphic design whizz Paul Gallagher www.paulgallagher.me and I think the result is pretty damn hot – if I do say so myself!

I’m here in Ireland, sitting in the bar of the hotel where I had my high school graduation dance. Fast forward nearly twenty years and I’m looking just as glamorous I can assure you and my waistline hasn’t grown an inch - only my boobs ;0) It’s just a shame you can’t see me.

The big move from London is underway. The plans to travel are afoot and for the first time in a while I am feeling a bit nervous! Like, what the f*** am I doing???!!! Then I hear the voice of reason inside my head going ‘You know exactly what you’re doing. You have nothing to worry about.’

I’ve been in Ireland for a week – having had nowhere to live in London – and I guess spending a week straight with your parents brings out the fear in you again. There is a teeny tiny part of me that just wants to move home and holiday in my parents house for the rest of my life. Like some batty old spinster aunt.

Yeah right, who am I kidding?! I’d rather chop off that teeny tiny part and let it live there on its own before I’d do it!

E xxx

I feel so perfectly organised. December 22^nd and all my presents are bought, wrapped and distributed, the flat in QP is twinkling with fairy lights and there are skidmarks on the living room carpet, from Santa having come early.

Everything is going swimmingly…. until I realise I’ve lost my passport and I fly out to Ireland tomorrow.  

Me, organised? Was that too good to be true?

Start the year as you mean to go on I say. So I have given up drinking. Well… the Irish version which isn’t quite ‘going teetotal’… It’s more ‘going to your local’ – not quite so often. It has been a while since I got completely hammered, which is no bad thing. The last time I got drunk I woke up in my own bed – which is bad enough for a start, but there was a big bloke next to me and he had all his clothes on – double bad… And I was wearing a Spiderman suit and a bruise!

So I’ll be laying off the sauce a bit for the New Year.

I’ll also be following a couple of other healthier resolutions: I have started doing breakdancing classes at Pineapple Studios! (www.pineapple.uk.com) I am a terrible breakdancer, it’s full of fourteen year old boys and I realise that I am old enough to be their mother at least, but it’s just so much fun! I will have to keep going till I have mastered a headspin. That coupled with Bikram yoga (www.bikramyoga.co.uk) and the Power plate at Lambton Place (www.lambton.co.uk) means I will have the body of a twenty two year-old come summer. And this time I won’t have to give it back!

Merry Christmas!

P xxx

I have completely neglected you my little blogeen! I have been doing a weekly blog for the Grove Magazine and so I kinda wanted to put different stuff up here. Like this was the x-rated version…

But the only kind of x-rated I’m getting at the mo’ is watching my flat mate have a Brazilian. Well I went first, so it was only fair. It was pretty hardcore though. We have just moved in, so there’ll be no secrets from here on in.

I’m in Ibiza this week with my new wax, although on closer inspection with a pair of tweezers, she did miss one or two stragglers down there. There’s always a couple that try to escape, I always find, when dealing with pubic hair.

It’s just me and Jackie out here now as Clare has had to go home for some big work thing this week. Clare has just qualified as a personal trainer and in a way I was thinking ‘great, I won’t have to get up and go jogging at 9am after 4 hours sleep.’ Ha! Jackie pulls me out of bed this morning and says ‘right, c’mon. We’re going running.’ ‘We must be mad’, she says, ‘No’, I say, You’re fucking mad. It’s just that I’m easily led.’ If she was sparking up a crack pipe in the corner and saying ‘c’mon, have a toot on this, you’ll feel much better’, I would probably be just as easily coaxed.

My legs are killing me after working out the last two days and all it’s done is make me more tired and hungry. Think I overdosed on chickpeas (paaarp!) and lentils (phwwwarp!) in an effort to be healthy…. been tweaking them out all day. Might actually have to leave the apartment now… I wonder if they sell gas masks on the beach?

Pxxx

PS 43 gigs now and just got a booking for Camp Bestival next weekend! Whoopee!!

God, it’s been a hectic week, two days, four hours and nine minutes.

I’m moving out of my flat and so far that’s how long it’s taken me to pack.  And I’m still packing. I’m sitting in a sea of cardboard and black bin liners and the place looks like a bombsight. It’s probably not the best first impression a potential tenant gets when they walk through the door. You’d swear I was trying to put them off.

I’m such a hoarder and I have accumulated some shite since I moved in 2 years ago. Like, why on earth do I keep Tesco coupons six months out of date, or special blend Christmas tea, two years out of date? Or an old student card 18 years out of date? Still, isn’t it nice when you find an old photo of your eighteen year old self and realise you look way better now, eighteen years later? (Yeah, I will be 36 in exactly 2 weeks)

I am moving up to Queens Park, formerly the arsehole of London, but now after a few years at finishing school, a facelift and a good colonic, Queens Park is the new Notting Hill. I am serious. This place is fabulous and I just cannot wait to get up there!

I’m moving in with another mad Irish woman, actress and singer, Bronagh Gallagher. Seriously creative times are ahead!

Tonight is my comedy night at The Paradise and gig number 35! Not bad going in just over 3 months. As a special one off we have a hot new band called ‘Playground Legend’ playing us out. I said yes as they are all such fine specimens and Radio 1 has tipped them as one to watch in 2008. All the girls are coming so there will be some serious watching going on tonight.

In a bit of a dilemma as to what to wear tonight… as everything is packed up and most of it is now at Bronagh’s… including my epilator. I’ll have to make sure none of those hot young men get to close to my legs or they might get third degree sandpaper burns. Definitely too hot for tights tonight.  

Anyway,  must go write some jokes so I better sign off…. My public awaits!

P xxx

Its wedding season again. Just been to two in a row in Ireland. That meant going back home two weekends in a row. I would have stayed the week in between but my parents would have driven me mad. It’s funny how they can make you feel like an incompetent 15 year old when you’re under their roof – even at the age of 35. It’s a wonder how I even get dressed in the morning without my mother, she’d have you believe.  On the other hand, she reminds me every time I see her that I am 35, single and childless.

‘Well of course, you’re not going to have a baby now.’

‘I might mum, I’m only 35.’

‘Exactly. 35 is too old to have your first baby.’

’I’m fitter than I was when I was 20’.

‘Well your body doesn’t know that. It’s still 35. If you were to have a baby now, you’d have a serious risk of Down’s Syndrome.’

‘Who me or the baby, mum?’

‘And of course you couldn’t do it on your own.’

Thanks mum. Of course I forgot, I’m on the shelf.

The first wedding I took Jackie, as we thought we might spot some talent together. Us thirty somethings have to hunt in packs. My dad, always up for the crack, nudged me on the way out of the church and said, ‘you should introduce Jackie as your girlfriend, hehehe!’ So, not one to miss an opportunity for a laugh, I turned to the bride greeting her guests at the door and said ‘this is my girlfriend Jackie.’ She couldn’t hide her shock. We could hardly keep a straight face. Outside the church, we thought we’d add fuel to the fire by making a further introduction to the bride’s brother. That was all it took. Half an hour later at the reception, two of my cousins and my aunt cornered me and asked, ‘Is it true, are you really a lesbian?’ That put paid to our chances of finding a man – at least one that wasn’t looking for a threesome.

Wedding number two I went to on my own.  It was a very alternative affair in a mediaeval castle in County Clare. The bride is one of my oldest friends and I introduced her to her husband. They had written their own vows and it was all a bit tear jerkery. To add to my unease, I hadn’t seen her brother since I snogged him at our back door last Christmas. What could I do? I was drunk. He asked me for a kiss goodnight with a line that ran something like…’I’ve fancied you since I was twelve.’ Well at least he’s shaving now.

As I made my way up the spiral stone staircase of the castle I recognised the surroundings. ‘Oh my God, I’ve been here before!’ I whispered to the bride. ‘When?’ she asked. ‘When I was eighteen, at an acid party. This was where I took my first trip!’

By 4am I was asleep in a corner having overdosed on champagne and finger food. I may be partial to a more sophisticated high these days, but I still end up the same way.

P xxx

So I took to the open mic circuit in NYC with the intention of doing as many gigs as possible in one day…. on the wettest Monday since they invented the week.

The first wet venue I turned up to, the Village Lantern, I was told. ‘Sorry, you got the wrong day. They’ve moved it to Wednesday.’ The next venue, the Comedy Village on West 3rd Street was above an Irish bar. The venue was closed but the bar was open. The friendly Irish barman took me under his wing and plied me with large vanilla vodkas to steady the nerves while we waited for the club promoters to show. They didn’t.

A New York comic I had met earlier told me he would get me a gig that night and to call him after six. I kept trying, but the phone just kept ringing out. So I texted him, then I called him again, then again and again and again. Finally I called his wife. That’s the last time a guy does that to me.

The next venue was a strange little bar on Bleecker Street with sawdust on the floor and a fat hostile waitress who’d clearly had a personality bypass. ‘You’ve got to order a drink, or else you have to leave’, she told us. ‘Us’ was now a cosy foursome; me, Clare, Jackie and the Irish barman from the last venue who had finished his shift and was up for the crack. 

This gig was a haphazard affair. Anyone at all could show up – and clearly did – and put their name on a list by the door to do a spot. The promoter was a weathered white guy named Dax, with dreadlocks down to the floor. At six foot three, and the wrong side of 50, I’d say Dax hadn’t seen a shampoo bottle, let alone a pair of scissors, since the devil was in short trousers.

I was there early so my name went at the top of the list. ‘Great, I thought, we can slip off to the next venue soonish, if I’m on first.’ First, after Dax’s own band, after Dax’s bunch of bad Beatles tribute band mates, and after a strange girl named Wilma with really bad breath who had now adopted us as her new peer group. When she got up and sang what sounded a bit too like ‘Smelly cat…oh smelly cat’, we knew it was time to sneak out the back door.  Had there been a back door…

But I was there to perform so feck it, I was going to. I went up and took the mic and started singing ‘Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds’.  Then said, ‘I thought this was Beatles karaoke night.’ My group of three laughed but the audience wasn’t listening and the bad Beatles band carried on packing up their equipment behind me… so I felt compelled to comment on this – David Attenborough style.  ‘It looks like a guitar the male is holding… a symbol of his cock…  that he likes to play with as much as possible’. My audience of 3 were falling about at this stage and the rest of the room had started to take a small bit of notice, but I think it was probably more my short skirt that was raising the eyebrows. 

One woman just carried on talking regardless so I brazenly got down off the stage, mic in hand, walked up to her, tapped her on the shoulder and said into the mic ‘Hi there, excuse me, but I was talking first, do you want to take the mic, if you’ve got so much to say?’ That shut her up. I finally got into my material, and the audience started to come round, but there were so many weirdos there, I was genuinely afraid to make too many rude jokes, in case I was followed home by a rapist. So that was my set cut down to about three minutes.

We arrived at the final venue of the night, The Bowery Poetry Club at 10.30. Sign up time was 10pm so I went down as number 13 on the reserve list. Unlucky for me that night. The O’Debra Twins host a storming night there every Monday and right enough the place was rocking. MTV were there filming some kid whose dream it was to be a beatboxer, and the audience was filled with production bods and proud mothers. At midnight I decided to call it a day, safe in the knowledge that I had missed the opportunity to perform for an edgy NYC crowd and MTV. Bummer. Well, I suppose two New York gigs in a weekend is not bad.

Pxxx

I heard NYC was a hard city to pick up men, not that we were out hustling, but you know a girl has to be open to opportunity at all times.

We eyed up other joggers, we chatted up the young boys in the Apple shop, we sized up the guys on the subway.. and just about everywhere else.

I forget that I am actually in my 30s. My lusty eye buzzes about like a wasp on heat and usually settles on a twenty-two year old, all cool, with the right hair, low-slung jeans and bumfluff on his chin. Does that make me a perv? Well, for the 30 something pervy woman, three words: Abercrombie and Fitch. Take a taxi from the airport and go straight there. These boys have been lovingly crafted by the hand of god. I’ll take all six, one in every colour. Wrap ‘em up and ship ‘em home.  You will have memory wank bank for months.

I did wonder whether something might happen between me and our host – the rapper – but when I found out he had a new girlfriend, I was delighted as it meant we could get on with just being friends. It’s like when you see a new dress that you think you might like but when you try it on, it doesn’t fit, and you’re really pleased ’cause if it did, you’d have to buy it… d’you know what I mean?

There has been a lot of trying on for size in my life and I’ll admit to having made one or two impulse purchases. But now as my tastebuds mature – with the exception of the odd cute young bumcrack – I have graduated from Buckfast to a nice dry sauvignon blanc.

I’ve spent all my life being a feminist and wanting everything to be equal in a relationship, but now I’ve decided it’s good to know how to cook, and not good to go to the toilet with the door open. It’s good to always have your lipgloss on when you answer the door to him and not good to be slobbing about in your trackie bottoms. It’s good not to let him see you pluck the hair on your chin or chest or navel and definitely not good to slip out a sneaky fart in his company. This is all in theory, but being happily single I can cook what I like in the microwave, leave my hair unwashed for days, and squeeze or pluck whatever I choose. If I ever get a man again, the maintenance will kill me.

When you’re with the girls, however, you can do what you like. Maybe I’ll become a lesbian… More on that later.

Polly Pyne xxx

Well, New York was wet. Somehow we must have smuggled some refugee raindrops on the belly of the plane from Blighty and they bred like rampant rabbits on contact with US soil.

I had a gig in Brooklyn the Friday we arrived, which I managed to pull off quite well considering we decided to go for a long boozy lunch to celebrate our arrival. I had been warned not to use the ‘f-word’ in my set so I spent the best part of the seven hour flight cleaning up my act and committing wholesome adjectives to memory. The set carved into my mind, I took to the stage, and began bantering with the audience to put us at ease. Two sentences in… ‘It’s so great to be here. I love this fucking city…’ Whoops. Followed by, ‘Shit! I wasn’t supposed to use the f-word!’ Double whammy.

But hey, they all laughed and it got better from there. Unfortunately I was at the only comedy gig in the history of New York devoid of Jewish people, so my well constructed Jewish jokes bombed.. well, maybe they just weren’t funny. Revised versions coming soon to a Jewish audience near you.

My two number one supporters Clare and Jackie are big gym bunnies and so I was forced to go running in the park every morning – which I saw as penance for caning the credit card. ‘Run harder, spent faster’ became my mantra. All great until you’re half way round the park and nature is knocking hard on the back door, with not a ‘restroom’ in sight. Finally when I was doubled up and limping along, praying to God that I make it home in clean shorts, a big stone restroom appeared out of nowhere like a mirage. Inside, the good lord himself led me to the throne where I sat on a padded velvet seat and cherubs patted my bum with rose petals. Nothing ever felt so good.

Praise the lord! Jesus is alive and well and living in a public toilet in Brooklyn.

It started when I was seventeen and I asked my mum to sign a disclaimer stating in the event that I was killed doing a parachute jump, she would not take legal action. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done – (asking my mum, not the jump!) – but I knew at the time it was a milestone and would mean that I would never be afraid of taking a risk.

I was working as an assistant producer in television up until last summer, a career with a definite path, but I felt unfulfilled. Some of the TV projects were great but mostly you end up doing a ten week contract in six weeks, and after a while I felt like I was chasing someone else’s dream instead of my own. I knew it was time to take another leap of faith, so I decided to bite the bullet and jump again!

I had been secretly writing comedy for about 5 or 6 years, but when I went to the Edinburgh Fringe last year and hung out with all the comics, I knew I had found my tribe. I enrolled on a stand-up course with Amused Moose and was spat out last February with a reasonable seven minute set.

I am now on a mission do to as many gigs as I can in six months – 18 and counting! When I have done 100, I’ll have earned my stripes.

It’s anything for stage time right now, so this weekend, I am off to NYC to do some open spots. I have managed to get myself a gig at The Living Room in Brooklyn on Friday, but they have made me promise not to use the f-word! F**k!!

On Monday I am hoping to do 5 open spots in one day at different venues. It will literally be a case of run in, grab the mic, puke out some jokes and run off to the next venue. Some of them could me just me, a mic, one man and his dog… but it still counts as a gig!

I’m still an embryo in the stand-up world and this hasn’t been done by a rookie London comic before so I hope it works out, otherwise I will be crying all the way home, singing that Foreigner (or was it Cutting Crew?) song, ‘Aah, I just died on my arse tonight. Must have been something I said. Shoulda just walked off the stage! Shoulda walked off the stage!’

But the bad gigs are just as important as the good ones, so what’s the worst that can happen? Well, you’ll soon find out.

Polly Pyne xx

PS Did I mention I’m staying with a rapper, whose mum used to be a porn star? Everything I do is research..