I had an audition today. An actual proper audition, for a TV company! They were looking for comedians to do some improvisations and help develop scripts for a new comedy series. My friend's brother who works for the production company had seen NSN24 and wanted to know if I was interested. Well why not be?

I thought originally I would just have to do some improv with some folks but then I was told I had to prepare "3 minutes of comic material". This wasn't as terrifying a thought as it might have been as for some mystical reason I had just written some stand-up about a month ago - something I hadn't done for at least 10 years. Spooky. However when it came to the thought of actually performing it in public I did start to get cold feet. I've been practising in my kitchen and I tell you - I'm the king of THAT room. My cooker loves me and the fridge thinks I'm the new Willy Rushton (not sure how to take that). But it was strange: I would rather perform it to complete strangers than do the material infront of my friends & peers at last night's NSN workshop. I remember clearly that the worst thing about dying on my arse at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Club wasn't the room full of people booing me off after 30 seconds, it was afterwords, facing my 5 friends who were there. Oh the horror. However I thought I've really got to make myself do it and get some confidence in my schtick so I asked if anybody minded being an audience last night and everyone was up for it. God bless them, they were kind; I think they laughed fairly genuinely and they did give me confidence for today as well as some good suggestions.

Today's audition was over in a flash actually. It was up in Soho in a big hall looking like something out of Fame. It was fun just to be auditioning for a real show but not what I was expecting. I had planned to do my material like my stand-up act of yore - frantically rushing round the stage trying to make in energy and brio what I lack in cast-iron gags. But actually he wanted me to do it quite close up and sitting down if possible. I'm not sure that suited me particularly but I did it and then I was out - no improvisation required. That was maybe because the girl in before me had been bigging me up. Remarkably, when I arrived in the green room I met a girl there and we both recognised each other. It then dawned on us that we had a mutual friend and she was someone I had been trying to recruit for NSN. She stayed around and we had a good chat after my audition where she told me she had given me the hard sell - bless her. It maybe that I'm not cut out for this gig but at least I may have got another player for my own show - thanks Mel.

If they want to see me again there'll be a callback on Monday...