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Victoria Nangle goes off-script to reflect on a comedy-filled October in Brighton

I saw some excellent gigs during the Brighton comedy month of October. Obviously, with so many flying about at the Paramount, the Fresh Meat and the Brighton Comedy Fringe festivals we should all have seen some fandabidozee clangers of excellent gigs. However, the ones that have stayed freshest in my mind are the ones that no one else will ever see again. Sure, the comics may continue their tours but no one will catch the off-script off-kilter random-madness and absent-minded cleverness that certain stand-ups managed to deliver, chiefly because they have no idea how they got there this time either.

Off-script. It’s great. And really demonstrates quite how the random mind of a good comic works. To think on your toes and still find unexplored tangents that captivate – from a set they’ve been performing for the last three months non-stop – sure shows a madly active mind more than anything else I could name. When a comic looks round furtively and asks if there are any journalists in and then rubs their hands with glee, my smile is already there. Then, as he explains the joys of riding on his gran’s Stanna stairlift you know he’s doing that because he’s having fun too. Hence, the cycle of unique one-off fun continues.

“They’re brave adventurers mining out extra laughs for the sheer joy of the experience”

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with staying on-script. Comics have worked long and hard to get their finest gags together, lined up in quick succession in some semblance of an order. It’ll be grand, and more likely to have you laughing out loud with merry amusement. Off-script is more likely to leave me smiling knowingly with a slight chuckle than loudly guffawing and falling off my chair with merriment, but I still love the magic of the one-off musing. It just demonstrates quite how genuine the rest of the set is.

To see the comic brain in action – if it’s a good comic brain, obviously – is a thing of awe. Russell Howard does it, Robin Ince does it, Zoe Lyons does it. They’ve all been standing in front of a crowd for enough years to be concentrating more on how interesting what they’re saying is – to them as well as to us – than how scary it might be to make a balls-up of it all. It leads me to trust them, because no one’s written that tangent for them in the style of the rest. It just jumped into their heads and they thought it might make us laugh ’cos it made them chuckle. Surely the most intimate thing we can share in polite society is a sense of humour.

I feel I know the comics that went into unknown territory a little better than the straight scripted ones. They’re brave adventurers mining out extra laughs for the sheer joy of the experience. Now that’s what I call a pioneering comic.

Andy Vella has been a professional designer, photographer and artist for over twenty years and is best known for his designs and images that grace much of The Cure’s output, for whom he still works. Penile Dementia is his first solo exhibition and features huge canvases and sculptural pieces depicting grumpy, ageing and deformed nudes. Vella’s fascination with the grotesque stems from watching monkeys masturbating at Longleat and seeing old men playing pocket billiards whilst waiting for the bus. It’s an exhibition that is bound to cause a stirring in more areas than one.

Andy Vella: Penile Dementia, Unit 03, Portslade.

Spinelli Coffee arrives in Brighton

In an age when our cities are dominated by coffee chains, it comes as a great relief to find a stylish new independent.

Spinelli Coffee combines the best of modern Californian café culture with great-tasting, high-quality speciality coffees roasted by Red Roaster Coffee and delicious pastries and savouries from Brighton’s celebrated Real Patisserie. Coffee shops abroad open early and stay open, catering for busy people who rise early and work late. Carlo Torre and his team promise to do just that. Carlo is committed to Spinelli being the real deal and has recruited a team of experienced baristas to ensure that this is the ultimate coffee experience. And the coffee is great (we tried it several times to find out). Not only does it taste great, but it looks good, too, with wildly creative designs in every topping of thick froth.

Designed by renowned Brighton design firm Wilson Cory, style is key to the whole package – from beautiful sliding oak doors onto a heated outdoor seating area with sea views, lush coffee-coloured walls, comfortable seating, Brazilian mahogany parquet floors to stylish lighting. Downstairs the Still Room offers a tranquil atmosphere where soft light filters through a bed of calathea plants. The space is an ideal venue for meetings and parties and even offers complimentary computer stations. There is also a free WiFi connection throughout the entire café.

Great coffee, good food and a relaxed atmosphere in which everyone can find a space to kick back and feel at home. At Spinelli the service is personal. Order and sit back with a book, a paper or simply relax as the locals already do. Join them at Spinelli Coffee, located in the heart of Kemp Town Village, just off the corner of St George’s Road and College Road.

Spinelli Coffee, 24 Garnet House, College Road, Brighton, 01273 818819. Open Mon–Fri 7.30am–7pm, Sat 8am–6pm, Sun 8.30am–4pm.

Katie wonders if there’s any more to her life than work, work, work

This week I read an article about women who work a lot. Actually it was more of a women-wholive- alone-and-work-too-hard-sohave- no-friends-or-life-and-thendie- a-sad-lonely-death-but-noone- even-notices-(becauseeveryone- just-assumes-they-are- ’at-work’)-until-the-neighbourscomplain- about-the-smell kind of article.

Anyway, damn the specifics, it struck a chord. You could say I’ve been working a lot recently. And it’s starting to worry me.

“Would you notice if I died?” I asked my new best friend Rupert, “or would you just assume I was at work?”.

“Are you at work now?” he asked.

“Er yes,” I admitted, checking the clock and noting that 10.30pm wasn’t the latest I’d been sat at my computer this week.

“So if you died,” said Tom “the clues would be…”

“Well you’d have to start buying your own vodka for a start,” I snapped, clinking down the phone and starting up this column. But at some point past 1am, when I finally went to bed, I started to think.

Had I put my career before everything else? Was I destined to turn into a career bitch? Had journalism taken over my life? And why was I asking all these questions like I was Carrie bloody Bradshaw?

When you’ve got issues like that its hard to know who to talk to. I called Parcel Force.

It’s been three weeks since I tried to get Parcelforce to redeliver the parcel that they’d brought over ‘while I was out’, and so far a combination of my workaholism and their ineptitude meant I was getting no closer to seeing it. But today, I decide, will be the day we finally sort it out. So I’m appeasing my anger by thrashing out the redelivery down the phone.

“I don’t think we should redeliver,” the rude man from Parcelforce is saying, “can’t you come and pick it up? What about Wednesday?”

“I’ve told you, I have to work Wednesday.”

“But we’re open until 8pm.”

“I know, but I’ll still be at work.”

“Thursday? Or even Friday?”

“I’m working every day this week until late,” I tell him, thinking about the days that will start at 9am and finish sometime past 12am.

“Next week?”
“Next week too.”
“What about Saturday morning?”

“I’ve got to work Saturday,” I tell him, depressed. “I don’t understand why you won’t just redeliver.”

“You can’t be working Saturday – nobody works that much.” He really does say this and, naturally, I am irritated.

“I am working that much. I’m working all the bloody time,” I scream.

“When do you go shopping then?” (Yes, he does ask this too. He cannot be serious). There is silence while I think miserably about the fact I never go shopping. And about the irony that the dress I bought online is the very one Parcelforce are holding hostage.

“I don’t go shopping,” my teeth are gritted.

“Your life,” the man from Parcelforce who has no right to comment on such things, says, “sounds rubbish.”

I bite my lip, hang up the phone and remind myself gently that the man from Parcelforce does not really know anything about me or my life.

Then I walk across the office and ask my editor for a day off.