The Other Tom Elliott

Gig Report: Wednesday Nov 4th

Tom — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:42:14 +0000

A very exciting week at 5 Minutes of Fame this week, not only did we have a TV crew in recording for a programme on Sky One, but it was also my 30th gig!

This week's guest compere was the fantastic Alexandra Clarke, and with more acts than you could shake a stick at, we limited everyone to a strict 5 minutes. So a shorter set for me this week, but that probably helped me trim out some of the clutter, forcing me to pick my best bits and keeping them to time.

Its hard to strike a balance between saying enough in the setup to give the punchline meaning and keeping it short enough to give a good impact, but the cliches are true: less is more. I'm finding I can get rid of a lot of waffle and needless words by rehearsing more and more, so I really need to spend more time running through my bits until I can almost say them on auto pilot (then squeeze out some more humour from the performance rather than just the words).

Of course, the downside of this is that really concise material won't fill as much time, but I can take that as encouragement to write more, and its win-win!

1950s PSA: Speaking with your Mouth Full

Tom — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:21:54 +0000

In the early 50s, the Film Education Corporation (or FEC), produced a number of short educational films to bring refinement to lower class British oiks following the war.

I recently discovered a copy of one of these films in my basement. Which was a bit of a feat, as I live in a 4th floor flat.

Gig Report: Wednesday Oct 28th

Tom — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:18:05 +0000

Another great 5 Minutes of Fame, with a gob-smackingly awesome selection of acts, and probably the biggest audience we've had yet!

I was compering again this week, and it got off to a great start, with a little bit of material at the top of the night going down really well. I'm thinking I might keep to doing a small amount of my best stuff at the start and then not do any more material.

However, after a while, it became difficult to keep the audience's attention in between acts, and we had odd people starting to chatter and get up to go to the bar before I could introduce the next act. I guess in situations like that the only thing to do is not leave any sort of a gap, going straight from one act to another without room to slip a piece of paper between them. The trick will be sensing it before its going to happen.

Despite this, the acts all had a great time, and were generally very well received. And I even got one over on a heckler...but in a nice way.

Togolon Promo Giveaway at iphoneachievements.org!

Tom — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:16:01 +0000

Alex at iphoneachievements.org is running a promo code giveaway of Togolon and has 10 - that's right, 10! - codes for all you lucky gamers out there.

So be sure to mosey on over and claim your code before someone else does!

[Togolon Giveaway]

I'm also planning to be writing a few guest articles on iPhone game development very soon, so be sure to keep an eye on the latest posts at iphoneachievements, or subscribe to their rss feed.

Amazing Halftone Comic Book Makeup

Tom — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:16:59 +0000

This morning, I was delighted to find this article by TashaMarie via Laughing Squid. I just cannot get over how awesome this Lichtenstein-esque makeup job is. Shame there aren't more details, though. Wonder what it was for?

Certainly puts my Halloween costume from last year to shame...although I claim moral victory for both not being a professional makeup artist and for applying it myself in a mirror.

Gig Report: Wednesday Oct 21st

Tom — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:18:05 +0000

Another great 5 Minutes of Fame! Friendly audience, loads of brilliant acts, and I'm just about getting the hang of my current routine...just in time to replace it!

Dale offered to compere this week, so I was doing a spot in the middle of the evening. Perfect place to do it...the room was warmed up, and plenty of time to have a drink afterwards without having enough to induce a hangover the next morning.

I tried tweaking my performance this time, seeing if I could wring a little bit of extra humour from my opener. And it worked pretty well, changing personality completely once I reached the "point" to fool the audience a little. Definitely a tool to use again elsewhere, but sparingly.

The rest of my material went similarly to previous weeks, good start and finish, with a dip in the middle. I'm thinking some of that stuff should be dropped, or otherwise heavily edited. I'm still waffling quite a bit, so I should probably spend some time condensing and heavily rehearsing some segments to get them as tight as I can.

All that said, I'm planning to try something a little different. I'm working on some character stuff for the week after next. After slipping in a couple of the gags this week, I'm looking forward to getting the whole thing in front of an audience.

New Podcast - The Bullshit Project

Tom — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:05:05 +0000

The last couple of Sundays, I've had the honour of being involved in recordings of The Bullshit Project - run by my good friends Dale and Alex of 101 Comedy.

I got a little sidetracked with posting, so I've got links to not one, but two episodes for you, you lucky, lucky people:

The Bullshit Project is recorded live to the hard drive at the Queen's Head on Denman Street, London every Sunday. Come along from 7.15pm and offer your anecdotes, opinions and proposals. This Sunday's topic is "The Battle of the Sexes".

UPDATE: The podcast has moved to www.thebullshitproject.com. Be sure to stay tuned!

Gig Report - Wednesday 14th October

Tom — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:31:33 +0000

This week's 5 Minutes of Fame had it all, jokes, banter and a near riot! Brilliant learning experience for my 5th attempt at compering.

Long story short, one of the acts had a lot of friends with him, some of whom were clearly more interested in getting tanked up than watching a comedy show, chattering and attempting to heckle (although poorly due to their chemically induced confusion). It finally reached the point where the act who brought them dragged two of his friends out by the collar and literally kicked them up the stairs.

I have to admit I could've handled the whole situation better, reacting to almost every utterance when most of them could have been ignored. As a result, I was probably egging them on more than putting them down. This is encouraging, as I really did want to do more audience interaction, and now I can work to pull it back a touch, and learn to pick the best moments. Sadly enough, I lost my temper slightly at one point, but think I managed to pass it off as part of a "teacher" act.

I have to hand it to Mark Talbot who was willing to exclude them completely from his performance to get to the "true" audience behind.

After the ruckus had ended, the rest of the night went really well, with the remainder of the audience, although small, determined to enjoy the rest of the acts. That said, all the acts did a great job under sometimes hard circumstances and look forward to seeing them again in the future.

I almost feel like I'm ready to perform to students now.

Togolon 1.1 Now Available in iTunes!

Tom — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:44:43 +0000

Well, its official, Togolon 1.1 is out the door and approved! The new version adds support for Scoreloop, providing an online leaderboard and allows you to issue and respond to challenges from players the world over. And still for the low price of £0.59 ($0.99)!

Scoreloop gives Togolon players access to an online community of mobile gamers, where you can:

Compare scores
Challenge players to races on single levels or whole episodes
Publish scores and big wins on Facebook
Make new friends through Buddy Lists

I'd also like to offer a huge thanks to the beta testers who volunteered to try out this new version of Togolon before it was submitted.

[Get Togolon 1.1 from iTunes]

What Did the Moon Ever do to You?

Tom — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:48:24 +0000

My take on NASA's recent LCROSS mission, when they crashed a rocket into the Moon, 4 weeks early for Bonfire Night.