Mark Watson the Comedian

Hello. I will shortly set out for the Hay Festival where I’m doing a comedy show (tonight) and a talking-about-my-book-like-a-proper-adult show (tomorrow morning). In the comedy show I will be trying out some new material with what are almost guaranteed to be mixed but interesting results. In case anyone is reading this who’s already got a ticket, I should clarify that I am not planning to be shit (‘trying out new material’ can be a rather alarming phrase to hear) and will also be falling back on things that are definitely funny rather than merely suspected of being funny. It is sold out, but the book event probably isn’t, so I’d encourage you to come – but of all the places you might tempt a casual ticket-buyer to, Hay-on-Wye is low down the list as it’s 3,400 miles from any other habitation. Still, in the far-fetched event that you are already at Hay, or planning to go, but don’t know what to do tomorrow morning, that’s what you should do.

There are still definitely flaws with my self-publicising skills.

…and if you’ve never been, and you like books/ideas/life, I strongly recommend you make the trip to Hay at some point. As I’ve mentioned it is in a famously inaccessible spot, and it’s also so small that you ideally should have booked your accommodation well before you were born. But it’s great fun and allows you to step for a few days into a world where books are still (rightly) seen as the cornerstone of civilization and don’t have to compete with things like The Only Way Is Essex. Which I haven’t even seen yet, but it’s become the default cultural development for people like me to be snobby about, and it saves time now and again to jump on a bandwagon. Speaking of which, I should really catch that train. See (maybe one or two of) you there.