11 FEBRUARY 2026

Hello, all.

I’m just back from Glasgow, working with the superb improvisers at Squeaky Bum Time. It was a really special intensive, helping talented and enthusiastic performers shift gears into slower, more connected scene work. The results were truly spectacular.

As was the city, shod in blonde and red sandstone and thrumming with history and culture. I loved my visit and it was over far too quickly.

Again? Again.

Rule of three

[Music] Lawrence Broadway Medley
File this under the most Chris Mead thing ever. One of my favourite bands doing a medley of show tunes over the funkiest of funk arrangements. But but BUUUUUT Gracie Lawrence’s voice is a thing of rare beauty, full of enormous power and aching vulnerability. Like a soaring fault line strung between two tectonic genres.

[TV] Wonder Man
This is the best thing Marvel has done in years. A low bar? Most assuredly. But this feels like real effort and care has been put into it, intimate and specific to a time and place, with a cracking double act driving the narrative forward. It also has a certain Shane Black-ocity - which is never a bad thing (and not even a real phrase).

[Movie] After Life
A charming oddity by Japanese film maker Hirokazu Kore-eda (of Shoplifters fame), this film centres around a group of diligent oddballs who craft a replica of your best memory out of paper and string when you die. It’s a HUGE influence on The Pretend Company’s new show What We Leave Behind (tickets available from Omnibus now, please come we’d love your support). And if you buy the excellent BFI Blu-ray release, you can listen to a stellar commentary track by none other than Tara Judah - critic, writer, best-dressed improviser and COINCIDENTALLY a member of the cast of What We Leave Behind (tickets available from Omnibus now, please come we’d love your support).

Spotlight

ONE If you do come to What We Leave Behind on the Friday night (which is our normal Pretend Night slot) we’re still putting on a workshop beforehand. This time with Alex Smith, presenting her 101 Characters workshop. Alex is an improv treasure and we’re thrilled to have her teaching for Pretend. As always, if you take this workshop, you get a code to watch the show for a fiver.

TWO The Pretend Company is performing at the Free Association at the end of the month. Not only are we fielding a strong ensemble team of wonderful improvisers - but we’re joined by the luminous talents of Teresa & Folusho. Tickets are here if you’d like to come and support us/ gaze with a slack jaw at the beauty of the FA’s new theatre.

Longform thoughts

In the mid 1800s, Adolphe Sax stuck a clarinet mouthpiece on a brass tube in an act many at the time thought was a perverse affront to god … And if, like me, you’ve been asked to play Careless Whisper a billion times, you’d be forgiven for agreeing.

Sax man Liam Webber takes over the blog for a week to talk about improvising music and what it might teach us about ensemble in Getting in tune.*

*He also employs A LOT of footnotes, at one point he footnotes a footnote.

Radio contact

Loz (my wife) learned to groom Radio. Here’s her first attempt!