Carnival!!!!!!!!!

Sooooooo its that time of year again. Notting Hill Carnival time. I lived in the middle of it for 20 years and when I moved to glorious Maida Vale I figured I'd be able to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet come August Bank Holiday. How wrong was I?????

Every year the boundaries of the Carnival are widened, which means my road is now the last place you can park your car before going to it. Its also the main diversion route for all the buses in the area. To be honest, I had a quieter time when I lived in All Saints Road!

But....its home and after 3 nights in a Travel Inn in Shefflied it feels like paradise! I went up to do my pal Toby Foster's gig The Last Laugh for the first time, and had a whale of a time. Toby has an unusual booking policy in that he has no qualms about having two women on the bill, so both Thursday and Friday nights I got to see other women performing. Friday night it was Jo Caufield who haven't seen doing a set for years! My god she was on fire! It was brilliant to see her working. She's doing a tour at the moment so if you can, check her out.

Last night it was back to the traditional 'girl in the middle' spot, Greg Cook was opening and the fabulous Jason Manford was closing...he's such a joy to watch, great relaxed way about him onstage. He's getting a fair bit of telly these days and well deserved it is too.

Toby was on cracking form too, all weekend. He does a show on Radio Sheffield, a Sony-Award winning show no less, and that and his club mean that he doesn't reallly do many circuit gigs these days, its been three years since I've worked with him, which is far too long. Still the circuit's loss is Sheffield's gain, cos he's got a great club up there. I look forward to playing it again soon.

One little thing I noticed about Sheffield tho, it may be the home of ABC and The Human League and more recently The Arctic Monkeys, but its obviously also the home to the biggest collection of pie eaters in the entire UK. There's gotta be a least 20 branches of Greggs in the city centre alone! How very odd.