Twitter has taken over my life. I was challenged by Gary Delaney to sign up and use it like he does to try out new jokes, and couldn't resist even though he is probably the best one-liner merchant working in the UK today. The limited 140 character input box is perfect to force brevity, and the fact that there are comedy-savvy people reading it means feedback is very worthwhile.

The only problem now is I can't think of anything to say. I've been up since seven getting the kids ready, I've got dogs to walk and a bank to visit, plus a kitchen that might warrant a visit from Environmental Health if ever they finish with Heston Blumenthal. Yet here I am looking at a little blue box on my screen trying to fill it with wit. The trouble is, unlike say a chatboard, is that there's nothing to react to, you have to get witty, or twitty, out of nothing and I'm much better in reacting than filling an empty box.

I'd better start filling soon, as I'm taking a gap year from Edinburgh and only now realising how valuable writing a new hour long show every year for the last four years has been. I say an hour, I've never done an hour at the festival, I think fifty minutes is perfect. Even if the show was fantastic no audience member would ever mind getting out ten minutes early to get to their next show or just go to the toilet. If the show is going shit then it's a blessed releif too.

I don't have the luxury of picking the best bits from a tried and tested show to drop in to my stand up set and recently it has started to feel a bit dog-eared and stale. That's where twitter comes in. I read somewhere that you should try to write ten jokes a day. Out of the ten nine will be crap but one will be worth keeping. Do that for five days will give you five new gags, maybe a minute and a half of new material. Over a year, with time off for Christmas that's well over an hour of totally new stuff.

That's the plan anyway.

My Twitter

Liverpool has figured quite largely in my life as I spent nine years here after coming to study and then not leaving. I chose Liverpool for three reasons, music, football, and being as far away from Stevenage as possible without being in Scotland.

It is strange then that it had become something of a bogey town for doing comedy. I always seemed to have a hard time here, and the large distance drive there and back just seemed to make it more torture every time. Luckily the venue, Comedy Central, stuck by me and the last few visits have been lovely. It helps that I'm on with Michael Legge, who even if he blogs and forgets i was there, is a really funny man, and Martin Mor, like Michael from Norn Iron and a lovely guy too. I'll bring my beret and sunglasses next time.

Anyway I'm feeling great as I managed to go running twice, both times on Crosby beach, just up from where I'm staying. It's here that the Anthony Gormley installation is, with lots of statues looking out to sea. It's not hilly, but the wind makes up for it, and running on sand really hurts after a while. It's great when you finish, though, and if you have to suffer to get fit it's best to do it in the middle of a work of art. The statues are really peaceful, looking out to sea. The only thing that spoils it is other people on the beach.

One last thing, I'm now on twitter, DeafSteve if anyone want s to look me up.

At one point its history, Antwerp was the furthest outpost of The Holy Roman Empire. It's true to say that in modern times its probably quite a far flung outpost of the comedy circuit, but here I am gigging in this old flemish city.

Actually I'm just leaving, on the fast train to Brussels. Supposedly fast that is, I've been surprised to find that Belgian trains seem to be just as crap as ours. The train
up from Brussels yesterday was cancelled, how nice of them to make me feel so at home, and I had to find another route. Then this morning the train back was delayed by half an hour which means I now only have five hours to kill in Brussels before my Eurostar departs for St Pancras. Man United are playing Liverpool on TV, something that seems to be quite an event here, but it hardly seems like a great thing to be doing in a European capital so I'll find something else to do. I saw that atom thing from the train, so I've done that, and the Mannequin Pis has no interest for me after bringing up children I've seen it all before.

A lovely gig last night in Antwerp, well just outside Antwerp to be honest, and confirmation once more that going out of one's comfort zone is a good thing to do.There isn't much mileage, or should I say kilometreage, in using hackneyed
old cultural references that make no sense here. There is also scant reward for speaking badly, going to fast, and not enunciating properly. At times my pace last night seemed funereally slow but Wim, the guy who booked me, said it seemed just right. Going slow really makes you think about what you're saying, something that I should do more often. If you think, instead of waiting for the laugh, it just
works better.

Wim, as I found out later, is the husband of American comedian Jovanka Steele. She was quite prolific on the uk circuit a few years ago but as far as I knew just
disappeared. Turns out she'd married a Belgian. Thanks to her I got the gig, though didn't get to meet her as she was at home looking after her eleven cats.

Anyway my slow paced 'international' set seemed to do the trick, epecially as I have an old bit of material about theologian Desiderus Erasmus, a native of these parts, and also something on Flemish masters and the happy realisation that
the Dutch word for art is 'kunst', which may or may not sound like a rude word. They weren't so keen on my bit about the german school shootings (the clinical efficiency thereof) but then they have historical reason to find Germans shooting things not terribly amusing.

Anyway I'm back home to blighty from these Flanders fields and have another off-beat gig at a birthday party in a scout hut near Staines for the sister of a former work colleague from my computer days. My colleague had her fiftieth in the
same scout hut last year and got me to perform, and that having got well her sister asked if I could come along and do hers. I hope they have poor memories as I don't think I can do a whole new half hour, and I can't remember what I did last year. Perhaps they have interest in theology or Kunst?

Well that's my news, now I have to try to find somewhere to connect to the net to get this online.

I'm off to Antwerp tomorrow, for a gig I have no idea about but am looking forward to. Going on the Eurostar makes it seem a bit different, and since I said yes to the fee the drop in value of the pound has given me a thirty percent pay rise. Possibly enough to buy a croissant, or a Belgian bun.

Before Antwerp I must indulge my friend and colleague Tony Cowards, who asked me why no mention of the gig we did together in Christchurch, Dorset last week. I haven't mentioned it thus far, despite it being an extremely strange gig, as my thoughts hadn't crystallised into anything like an opinion. The reason it's strange is because of the owner/promoter, Johnny. Imagine a Phil Mitchell, or possibly that guy Dominic Something from Daytime tv shows about how to save ten pence, but revved up to grand prix level with enthusiasm and bonhomie, and it has to be said, a complete inability to shut the fuck up.

I've done the gig three times. The first time the three of us comics, Matt Dytskinsy, Lloyd Langford and me, arrived at the the time we were told, only to find out the gig wasn't starting for another hour and a half and even when we did eventually 'start' the first twenty minutes were taken up with Johnny introducing the compere. Now the job of the compere is normally to do the introducing and generally chatting up the audience but Johnny took all this on in his non-compering introducing role so when, after a great deal of eye-rolling and looking at watches, the debonair actor-comedian Matt eventually got on stage there were few compereing duties required and therefore not much for him to do. Such crisis was averted by the fact that Johnny, after introducing Matt, declined to leave the stage in the time-honoured fashion and stuck around to 'help' Matt by getting him in a comedy head-lock and telling the crowd what a funny bloke they were being prevented from hearing.

More fun and games ensued before, after the best part of an hour, Lloyd was brought on, though by now he was the third 'act' on stage and though he is brilliant, for reasons beyond his control it wasn't his best ever gig.

The interval brought a degree of relative normality before Johnny kicked off the final section with another introduction of the bloke being paid to do the introduction, further headlocks and associted japes, until finally, at a somewhat later than anticipated hour I was brought on. Luckily it was a great gig, though the layout of the room meant I performed most of my punchlines to a huge tank of tropical fish. 

The second time I did the gig I gave Kerry Godliman a lift and all the way there regaled with tales of the above gig and as the compere for that evening she was rapt with anticipation of both Johnny and the goldfish. On arrival we found out they'd changed the room around so the comics faced people rather than fish and, horrors, Johnny was away.

last week was my third time. By this time I'd made up my mind. I really like Johnny. He's insane, disruptive, a pain, and interferes with the show but I don't care. The man has a heart and a love of live comedy and puts his money where his mouth is and I thank him for it. There are so many grey people in the world, many of them in comedy. We're supposed to be funny people yet the level of self-importance and pomposity is staggering.

I'm seldom kissed by slap-heads either.

OK, it's about time I started blogging again. You know what it's like, you decide to have a few days off, then it get's difficult to start again and then the fact that you haven't done it for ages makes it impossible to do it as you've mentally thrown a tarpaulin over the whole thing and dare not look underneath after all this time.

I'm moved to blog by a few things coinciding yesterday. Every other Monday is new material night at East Dulwich Comedy, which is in Forest Hill. New material nights are normally low-key affairs with a few punters indulging a few comics reading things off scraps of paper. This one is no different, except it is, because the standard of comics is so high. The names Geoff Innocent, Micky Flanagan and Daniel Kitson probably won't mean much to the average person but they are three of the very best working stand-ups around. Kitson is the best stand-up in the world, I'm sure of that. There is no one better.

Even with the certain knowledge that Dan speaking off the cuff is far, far funnier than I could be with a show I'd taken six months to develop, I'm still inspired by these nights. I've got into a routine of comedy as work, and to be honest forgotten what a joy it can be. Yesterday I came home with a head full of ideas, instead of the worries I normally carry around with me.

I was in a good mood anyway, my eldest stepson is moving out! Anyone without grown up children might see this as being a bit harsh, anyone else will understand what a great joy it is. He's 21 and old enough to be looking after himself. He's moving in with his girlfriend who is, I think, slightly older, and has a five year old son. He's a lovely fellow, beat Daniel at Smackdown on the Wii, and hung around being cute yesterday. I looked at my wife and  for a laugh said, 'All right, Grandma!'

Rolling yourself into a ball, I find, is the best way to protect yourself from a more severe beating.

With one human moving out, we were also one pet down as Dot, the cat we got from an animal shelter ten years ago - never get an animal from a shelter because they will be a nutter, that's why they're in a shelter in the first place! We had to fill in a psycological questionnaire to test our fitness to have her as a pet, she didn't, as she would have failed it for being a nutter - was returned back to us in a cardboard box. She's been living ferally, at the other end of the garden, her choice I might add, though we did have the lovely Mr and Mrs Flood from three doors down round last year and found out she'd been spending her afternoons on their sofa being fed far more expensive food than we ever got her. Anyway she'd gone missing during the snows and her body turned up in the shed of the weird guy two doors down. Probably on the way back from feasting at the floods, she died with a belly full of special edition Whiskas.

We now have a dead cat in a cardboard box and no idea what to do with her. Burial isn't really an option with two dogs ready to dig her straight up again. Chucking her in the bin seems a trifle un-caring. As she's boxed and ready to go I'm tempted to just post her somewhere. I think some sort of funeral pyre might work, though I hesitate to float her down The Ravensbourne, our local Ganges, as she might get snagged on a shopping trolley and cause an incident.

In other news, my wife went on a course to be a football referee, God help us all. She came home enthused but said they'd not covered the things she wanted to know about like if the ball went off the pitch is it a throw in? I think they kind of assumed that basic level of knowledge of anyone wanting to be a match official. My wife is of Ghanian origin, though, so I'm sure she will relish the chance to be officious and a stickler for the rules. I laughed when she took over managing the twins team last year, but she took them to the top of the league and the semi-finals of the London cup so I'm sure she will succeed.

Well, that's all for now, just a loosener really, getting back in the saddle so to speak.

There must be another new England shirt coming out as Sportsworld is selling the old one for £3.50. I got the kids one each, they are all Roonies of differing sizes, and at that price should have got three each so they could wear them as pyjamas.In other news I found out I'd been driving with my windscreen on the verge of falling out. Autoglass replaced a cracked screen last week but forgot to glue the new one in properly and the rubber bit that seals it was flapping about in the breeze. Now I've got to wait for the guy to come and put it right before I can drive. I'm in Liverpool this weekend so the car will have to be fixed. I'm nearly always jinxed getting to Merseyside, one way or another, and often jinxed after I've arrived. It isn't a trip I look forward to. I've had a windscreen broken by flying projectile in a storm, broken radiators, and a broken fan. On arrival I've often had tough gigs, too, though last time was good as I got on The Trisha show and went up the Radio City Tower.Another long drive home awaits me on Saturday night, but I've got to be back early on Sunday to see if Georgina Shankley can keep the 100% record going with the under nines. I suggested they could all wear England shirts, but they have a shirt deal with the local garage here, who put a grand in to the club. I thought this was extremely generous but I've already paid them half of that back in service and MOT costs. I might start telling them there's things wrong with the team that aren't really in the hope they'll spend money on us that they don't need to.Sign language classes continue tomorrow. I'm really enjoying them though in the class I can remember loads then when I get home forget everything except my name. I learned to say where I live, Brockley, but found out it was the same sign for baked beans. I can say Glasgow, easy to remember as the sign is like being punched, and Scotland is bagpipes. Brighton is sort of limp-wristed, and London is a bit like saying "I'm doolally". I find it easier to change what I'm saying to fit the signs I know rather than find the signs for what I want to say. The hardest thing is pulling the faces to go with the signs. They are really important but give me a headache. I need to practice. Step one is to find out what the sign is for "Thanks Mr Autoglass for sending me out in a crystalline deathtrap!"

It's Tuesday morning, and I'm still tired from Sunday. I don't know how it happens but whenever I get asked to do a certain gig in Exeter on a Sunday evening that starts at a stupidly late time and means I don't get to set off the two hundred miles home til after half past eleven, I'm always a bit strapped for cash and say yes to their meagre fee.Home by three-thirty, up again at seven to get the kids to school, yesterday is a blur. At least I wasn't in bed long enough for my back to start aching. The weekend had been great, doubling up at Jongleurs Camden and the club formerley known as Backyard in Bethnal Green Friday and Saturday. Opening the Jongleurs night was good both times, and the former Backyard just a delight. Sundays are now filled with the kids football teams. Daniel plays in the under eights and did well, winning the man of the match award, though I think this may have had something to do with him bursting into tears last week when he was overlooked for the trophy. Leo and Cameron are in the under nines, managed by that giant of football, their mother. She stepped in when no-one else volunteered, don't look at me I'm away too much to take the job, and so far her record is played five, won five.Remarkable really as she knows nothing about football, and moans like hell when it's on the telly in preference to 'Come Dine with Me'. I think, though, that for younger kids it's better that they are sent out to enjoy playing and the whole team atmosphere is more nurturing than some of the opposition teams whose managers scream and shout at the poor kids. Even if that worked, which it doesn't, the kids would surely be scarred by having the hair-dryer treatment at half time. Anyway they won the game five-two and top their league with a goal difference of plus thirty-eight. It was a good weekend for the teams I'm following. The kids won, Chelsea won, Stevenage Borough, Lewis Hamilton (from Stevenage), and Barack Obama stayed ahead. I hope and fear for Obama in equal measure. Hope that he overcomes the Bradley effect, or that a reverse Bradley occurs, and he wins but fear he'll be assasinated. I last lived in the USA in 1997 and hope things have changed for the better but fear not. If he wins, and stays alive, I think the world will have changed forever. My kids are mixed race, I'm happy that the future of the world is theirs. Can anyone tell me how to get paragraphs btw.

I'm not sleeping well. Actually the sleeping is fine but the waking up is a problem. If I sleep for more than six hours I wake up with sharp pains in my upper back, just below my shoulder blades. I bought a new mattress, one with the hippo and the bird on the package and risked spousal attack if I so much as suggested who was what, but the problem remains. If I sleep six hours, get up, then go back to bed for another two I'm ok, so in aggregate sleep I'm as well off. The problem is that getting up means I will be nabbed for grass cutting or taking old mattresses to the dump to be grilled by the refuse gestapo about my resident status. It's almost impossible to get anything accepted at our dump. In fact calling it a dump disqualifies you. Also putting a mattress in combustible home waste is, apparently. against every rule in the goddam book of recycling. All this whilst another refuse man tried to nick my wife's folding chairs that just happened to be in her car. Just because they're in the car doesn't mean they're being dumped, sorry recycled. Anyway my wife suggested seeing a doctor about the pains, but instead of that I did a gig with Paul Sinha, who apart from being a Perrier nominee and fantastic comedian and person, is a qualified GP, so that's like seeing a doctor isn't it. He was about to go on stage and a bit distracted, but not as distracted as if he'd been in a surgery with hundreds of screaming kids. Anyway my problems are trivial. I did a spot last night at a charity gala for Changing Faces, an organisation promoting the well-being of people suffering from facial disfigurements. At least with a bad back no-one stares at you in the street or pulls their children away.

I'm at home tonight, which I expected to be, then I got told I was doing a gig in Chichester so got ready for it then was told the gig was off. I was exhausted. A bit of extra time though to work on my BSL homework. I started a class last week, and so far have learned to spell my name, albeit at a funereal rate whilst I try to remember which letter is which and swear a bit and curse deaf people for making this stuff up. Actually I can say 'Name-Me-S-T-E-V-E' which is the same thing, though I get 'S' and 'U' mixed up and call myself 'Uteve'. What a csnt. Asking someone else what their name is is a bit harder since you have to do not only a sign but a look which I can't get right. It's a sort of questioning look, accompanied by wagging a finger, but my effort looks like I'm saying 'Get off my land!'. I thought I was doing ok for a first-timer but looking at tutorial videos on the internet I'm like a kid on a tricycle trying to keep up with a racing car. I also keep getting my left and right hands mixed up, a problem I've always had and on occasion has led people to believe I was a bit simple. I think this is also the reason I often can't execute simple linear processes but can often see through complex things without really trying. I know whatever it is has helped me in comedy, as I can't help but come at things from a different direction. It happened again doing another stint on Sky News last week, on what should have been a difficult night with nothing but financial turmoil in the papers, I found being on screen making connections between The Paralympics and the practice of short selling easier than opening a tin of beans. I'm back on Sky in November, the 19th and the 28th, 11.30pm as usual. I enjoy it so much, which is just as well as it hardly pays my satellite subscription but I hope it may lead to greater things. By then I hope to have progressed so far in BSL that Deaf people no longer feel they have to stay off my land,

I started September with a generally empty diary and worries I didn't have enough work to keep me going and now I've got more than I can cope with.Luckily it's mostly good stuff. Today I was proud to host the handover of the paralympic games from Beijing to London in the run-up to 2012, on behalf of the host borough of Hackney. That I have no connection with Hackney save that my brother used to live on Graham Road and got caught up in an armed siege there a few years ago, is by the by. It was a lovely, inspiring, event though totally knackering. The Paralympic thing, I mean, not the siege. My main jobs were to introduce the mayor of Hackney, Jules Pipe, and not say anything detrimental, offensive, or in any way siege related, for about four hours on stage and then to co-ordinate the big countdown to the moment when, out in Beijing, Boris would wave the Para-flag and Hackney's 'confetti cannons' would be fired and we'd get on BBC London News. By some miracle I got the timing right and the huge screen outside the town hall showed the live BBC pictures of the cannon going off on Mare Street, and not me scratching my arse looking the wrong way. Roll on 2012, and here's to more Olympic work if I can get it. With that excitement over, and the relief of having got away with it I now await the car that is meant to take me to Sky News to do the review of tomorrow's papers at 11.30 tonight. I haven't had any time to prepare, and the headlines are not promising. It seems to me that any company that sponsors a premiership football team is in terrible trouble. Northern Rock are as big a laughing stock as the club they sponsor, and AIG were only saved because when they were about to go under Alex Ferguson pointed to his watch and they were allowed a few extra minutes for The Federal Reserve to bail them out. Gordon Brown the sub-Prime minister, meanwhile has the look of a man who worked for Lehman Brothers and booked his holiday with XL. I fear another Labour relaunch is on the way, though when is there not a labour relaunch? They've become the political equivalent of a sale at Allied Carpets. As I write I see another bank is in trouble. HBOS is going to be rescued by Lloyds-TSB. Blimey, if that merger goes ahead it'll be, The HalifaxBankofScotlandLloydsTrusteeSavingsbank, they're going to need bigger chequebooks to get all that on, though the share price should fall much slower as it will take longer to say the name of the shares to sell. The value of Howard with the pebble glasses is now one fifth of his original price. Your investment can go down as well as down. Much as I like seeing investment bankers clearing their desks, it will be the ordinary person who suffers. Those who didn't gamble everything on red will be the victims of those who did. Our tax pounds are used to rescue the rich and the poor, who sponsor the football teams but don't have their names on the shirts, pay the price. Still, when life gives you a Lehman, make Lehmonade.