FESTIVAL DIARY DAY 7 - fever dreams at the Looking Glass

Dear readers, I must apologise.
For I know that you have come to expect from me your daily round-up of the previous evening's festival shenanigans. Well it is my sad duty to inform you that yesterday I fell prey to the dreaded 'festival lurgy'. Too many days of racing from show to show in the icy cold, then sitting in hot, airless rooms stuffed with people and their various germs, meant that I was unable to go out into the festival yesterday, as my brain and body became gripped with an intense fever, and I became delirious for several hours.

I have had fevers before, but I have never in my life experienced fever dreams like these. Obviously I have spent most of my time in pubs and bars watching comedy shows recently, so it makes sense that most of my feverish mental journey was framed by the bare brick walls reminiscent of the Looking Glass basement - I went on some incredible and ridiculous adventures, but every now and then I would look around and realise I was still down there, surrounded by semi-familiar figments of my imagination, with no sense of time, no way out.

FESTIVAL DIARY DAY 6 - Paul Foot, Bridget Christie and A Finger of Judge

And here we go again... Tuesday was full of promise, with two of the more well-known 'alternative' acts performing in the city.

Alternative Star - Paul Foot

First up was Paul Foot at the Cookie Jar. Regular readers of this blog will know I'm a big fan of the mulleted oddball. Love him or hate him, to see his act is to know that there are people out there who are thinking in a totally unique way and are not afraid to just run with it on stage, taking you to places you never thought you'd go. He has never tried to tailor his act for a mainstream telly-viewing audience, which ironically, has led to him getting a fair bit of TV coverage, having popped up next to Noel Fielding on Buzzcocks, done a spot on Russell Howard's Good News and is now featuring in Comedy Central's Alternative Comedy Experience. Last night's show was all that you'd expect from Foot, starting with a ten-minute intro in which he awkwardly introduces himself to the audience and imagines out loud the different reasons why they might have come to see his show, eventually coming to the conclusion that the next hour's performance will more than likely ruin a couple of marriages within the audience.

Cheer up Englebert, Europe may not like you but Leicester still loves you...

(actual Englebert, pictured preparing for the show yesterday)

Rising like a Phoenix from the Eurovision ashes, everybody's favourite Leicester crooner Englebert Humperdinck will be appearing at the Crumblin' Cookie tomorrow and Friday... but he may look a little different in the flesh!

That's because 'Eng' is just one of the many characters played by Leanne McKie & Suzanne 'Sooz' Rowland in their Leicester-centric cavalcade of craziness entitled "What have you done with Denise's 30p?". Originally developed in Leanne & Sooz's living rooms (just off The Narb), the hour-long show was a big hit back in February, earning the pair a special mention at the Leicester Comedy Festival awards, and returns tomorrow for two nights only, for the benefit of all those who missed the original show.

Expect popstars, ghosts, fictional vigilantes, famous film stars, quizzes, badges, moustaches, wigs, cheese and bucketloads of general insanity from Leanne, Sooz and their comic collaborators Ian Hall, Barnaby J Thompson, Lindsey Warnes-Carroll and Neil Johnston.

Tickets are a jolly reasonable £5 and can be bought using pounds of electronic money from here (Thursday): http://www.wegottickets.com/event/169591 or from here for Friday's show: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/169811

Now, if you'll please release me I need to go to the toilet...