Iestyn Edwards is...what?

Dog-sitting by the East Sussex coast, I was added to a WhatsApp group for doggy play dates.  Here is an example of what went on in that group.  Julia . Sarah, can I please have your recipe for the yummy cooked food. And, business woman's hat on here, I still think it's a good idea to try and sell it commercially. Look at that man with the spicy sauce getting on Dragons Den . Deborah whatever-she's-called is a dog liver.  Mary . Ha ha ha. Julia . What? Mary . *liver Julia. Oh. Right.  Suki. I am sorry to have to write this, and I'm super-grateful for our little band of canine brothers and sisters, but I'd love some thought about which dogs are play-dated together? Smidge is tiny and white (and fluffy) and does keep getting bowled over like the hedgehogs by the flamingos in Alice in Wonderlan d. At this muddy time of the year he needs to be bathed, which traumatises him at the best of times. [Cue myriad adverts for polythene doggy sou'westers.] Julia. Perhaps ...

I've walked out of an Airbnb. I tried, I really tried. To put up with being there. On and off for eleven days. I don't know why.  Well, I do. Trying to make things work, fearing reprisals, not sticking up for myself.  The Hosts and I are now in dispute, with Airbnb as referee.  (In the Are you f-ing blind or what, ref? sense.) To kick off (no football pun intended) the agent told me, 'I can't pass on your comments. That would count as personal advice.'  So, I passed them on myself: 'Robin, I have some reality checks for you on your listing.' It is in a luxurious block and has just been fully renovated to a high end before being listed.  'The block is not luxurious, it's basic.' [Even the block's management company laughed at the descriptor luxurious .] 'Stained, damp smelling industrial carpet, faded, scuffed and spotted magnolia paint. Throughout the flat itself are botched paint and plaster touch-ups.' The space comprises a one-bedr...

This afternoon I went upstairs from my Airbnb to ask whoever lived there would they mind if I had a singing lesson at some point this week. The woman that opened the door was in her seventies, with a wryly amused look; deep turquoise woollen pyjamas and matching slippers. Her hair was grey, side parted and up-combed-over.  Here is the transcript of her monologue: I can’t believe it’s Airbnb downstairs. I’ve been here twenty years, since I divorced my husband and the housing association found me this place. I wouldn’t want to be here, otherwise. But I’m from round here. There’s good places, of course, but also bad places. Ore. The Old Town is so overrated. All those...what are they called...artin...oh, is that it? I’ll know for next time. All that type of shops but still nobody picks up the dog shit.  Do you hear my tele? Because I go deaf of an evening. I can’t believe it’s Airbnb downstairs. I did see a fat woman in there. And a bloke coming in and out I never saw without a c...

We self-employed performers in the UK will be skin of teeth submitting our tax returns by 11.59 and fifty-nine seconds on January the thirty-first. But only if we're that anal and over-organised.  Now, one, don’t worry – the following won’t get over-naughty, just naughty enough – and two, it isn’t true. Though an actor in my year at Guildhall went into porn, which gave me the idea.  An HMRC pamphlet gave me some amusement one dullish day in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.  Q. Are you confused about what constitutes being self-employed as opposed to employed? For your own self-elucidation, we advise you to answer in writing the questions highlighted in the pamphlet with specific reference to your last completed paid employment. Your answers should be written in ink. A. Not blood, then? Q. Did you “A” instigate the work or were you “B” hired to do the work? A. B.    PS - maybe use numbers as well here? Letter on letter is a tad confusing.  Q.  If “B”, by whom were y...

Coochie, a late teen, in the pub wearing a lime green tracksuit ironed to cutting edges by his mother, needed to buy a new toaster.  He had never been left home alone before - clearly had never done anything for himself at home before - and his mother had gone on holiday.  Making breakfast for the first time ever, he had spread butter and jam on the bread before putting it in the toaster.  'How was I to know? That's how it always is on my plate.'

Other than the word ‘unique’ used over ten times, a digest of this week’s feedback from my talk My Tutu Went AWOL contains the word ‘hilarious’ five times, ‘laughs’ four and ‘hysterical’ once. On Wednesday I stood with a male member of the Welwyn U3a, in his most unsmiling late-fifties, watching the future talks programme in perpetual motion on the screen at the front of the hall. ‘That one about bomb disposal has sold thirty-seven more tickets more than you have,’ he told me. ‘The history of plague pits twenty-six. The murder case forensic officer nineteen. I think the bomb disposal woman was so far ahead because in her blurb she said she had suffered some failures.’ Oh. 

'Iestyn, we loved it. Thank you for entertaining us so wonderfully.' 'Warzone anecdotes told with such soul. Stacks is a tremendous character - plus spins and fabulous bass-baritone singing. I laughed one minute, cried the next. AI would be foxed trying to usurp this man's art.' 'I can't do the so-called funny talks, as they're usually not. But I just laughed literally all the way through yours.' 'As a public speaker myself, I wonder - how would one follow such a unique performance? Anecdotes both enthralling and hilarious, topped off with an amazing singing voice. What a treat!'

  Connie ‘Should Be Fully Bedridden Any Time Now’ Presland waved from a day bed, snug in the St Francis alcove framed by green paper chains.  A Dansette emitted a recessed blare of “Rock Around the Christmas Tree”.  Orange squash, fried spam and wintering prayer books smells mixed with the twelve Delaney kids’ mildewed tent and sketchy pants stink. Aged from two to fourteen, they sported nit-aftermath skinheads and binman surplus formals. At table they were under parents’ orders to eat a little and doggy-bag a lot. The Mission had fielded Mrs Mustin as representative on earth. In scratchy tweed the colour of turned beef, hairs on her chin combed for Jesus, she loomed in her small corner and made any child separated from the herd sing Sunday School Choruses. With full actions. Only a boy called David (no action to be done here) Only a rippling brook (don’t make it look too hula hula or God will be merciless) and the sling went round and round…round and round… (in t...

In four sweaters, long johns under tracksuit bottoms and my dressing gown, I've been writing my new book since 6am. Now I'm about to start ringing speakers' agencies to try and get myself on their books for My Tutu Went AWOL - the Book Talk that Morphed.  So, I've showered, shaved and dressed smart-casual.  Oops, nearly missed that I'd left my slipper socks on.  Brogues, better, I think.  All of which reminds me of a classic occasion when my mother turned up at my father's day job.  When Terry 'the Bargoed Yodeller' Edwards (my father) needed some extra income (very often) he worked on the Battersea bins as plain 'Tel'. Clarence was his supervisor.  One summer when Tex ‘Jessie’ Jameson booked Terry for a fortnight singing at the El Paso in St. Austell, Terry paid the however much it was back then for the doctor to sign him off sick.   'Are you Clarence Pugh, the chief shit-shoveller?’ my mother was wearing her old WRAF uniform, with her hair ...

                                                     MY FIRST GIG  In a family photo from the Nashville Rooms, on Christmas Eve 1972, seven-year-old me looks tiny beside the wooden statue of Hiawatha. I'm in my first ever suit for the stage. It has a good three sizes for me to grow into and is sewage brown.  Men entering the venue would return the Hiawatha statue's silent 'How' with theirs, deep in the throat. Beyond Hiawatha were heavy, dark chairs and tables, a  sawdust floor, red and white striped walls. To me then the place seemed hangar sized, the stage a long walk across. In images on the internet site  Seeking the Shows of Yesteryear  it’s pub-sized with a four-piece country band in double denim boleros and bum hugger jeans crowded onstage. From the ceiling, the lights and the mahogany fixtures manager Charlie Stephenson h...

By which I mean - face life down with hope.  And I use the baboon and enema analogy because Stacks, Royal Marine, who confronted me in Iraq about not getting my tutu, tiara and self under hard cover quickly enough during a rocket attack, had a way of giving sideway that made him look like said baboon having said enema. I used to face him, stand up to him. At the time he said he thought a bullet with my name on it wasn't big enough and he wanted to chew my name into a hand grenade and lob that at me, but later, he gave me credit for giving him as good as I got.  The world is a challenging place. We have to help ourselves deal with it.  I suggest one thing - that we keep hoping that tomorrow might just bring that bit of luck that changes everything.  You know it can happen. You see it. You hear about it. Go out there and try and attract your bit of luck. Think positive, uncover possibilities, follow up. And if you get to the end of the day and that bit of luck failed t...

I have always challenged Eirwen, my narcissist ne plus ultra mother. And as we often must when dealing with a narcissist, I have fought to be my own whale shark rather than that pilot fish mooching along at the shark's gills. NB - we have Royal Marines Commando, Stacks, to thank for that analogy. Eirwen was unreasonable, raging, physically violent. I read and reread E.B White's classic  Charlotte's Web . One teatime Eirwen, leering, simpering, was telling family friend Connie 'Practically Bedridden' Presland how Charlotte famously spun words into her web. 'Words such as "splendid", Connie, and - ' 'No,' I said. 'Charlotte spins "Some Pig", "Terrific", "Radiant" and "Humble"…' Connie's features shrunk on my behalf. Eirwen shouted at me, 'I'll thank you, you snivelling fatso, not to question your elders and betters about something I spent my hard earned money on buying you in the f...

     RIP Terence David Edwards 6/10/39 - 9/01/26    Country Singer, beloved husband of, father of...et al.  This happening has pushed my 'stop' button.  Sometime in 2019, due to dementia Terry (I always called my father that) forgot who I was. He was absent so much of my life I can't latch onto anything that showed he ever really knew. People said we had a voice in common. They're saying it again now. Eirwen, my mother, always clarified, 'Sadly, Iestyn, you inherited your voice from Terry's side of the family, not from mine. I had my vocal cords officially looked at, and, apparently, they were pure operatic. Terry's were more for the folk clubs and the country and western.' It's a lottery, singing. It all comes down to the little flaps of skin slung across your windpipe. Eirwen's flaps were Fortnum and Mason, Terry's flaps were Poundland. But still he had a residency at The Nashville, West Kensington compering bills that included Slim Whitman...

I went out to look for what I thought must be - judging from its tracks in the snow - a one-legged pigeon. Or at least a hopping pigeon, with an injured foot too painful to walk on.  After a few minutes, I clicked that pigeons walk...er...clue's in the description... pigeon-toed. Which is what this two-legged pigeon must have been doing, in semi-circles on the paving slabs near the incinerator bin.  On the other hand, everything on the apple tree this morning was still. The white cat watching me. The crows in the higher branches. The blackbirds beside their respective apples.  The two apples, on different branches, have their flesh exposed. I've seen the blackbirds return day by day to convulsively munch their way through them. Whereas today, the birds were just sitting, looking at things, listening for things, being.  Because that's what nature decrees for this time of the year. She isn't running on our calendar. She's still, sullen, cold, inner, waiting to start h...

Do we ban AI or embrace it so enthusiastically we end up with sphincter burns? We know it rapes the planet but still we use it. Will it render us obsolete in the work place? I could be resting in smugness here because I might just keep my job - recent feedback from my talk, My Tutu Went AWOL!, said, ‘Well, AI certainly couldn’t replicate this man’s work!’ Though as my talk is about my tours of the military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan in the guise of Madame Galina Ballet Star Galactica, a Sugar Plum Fairy wannabe with a missing dance partner, who she must replace from a selection of likely candidates pressganged onstage from the paying audience, possibly nobody would wish to replicate my work. Might a nuanced rather than an either/or approach to our use of AI be a thing? Let’s agree to rein-in personal use. Not creating more CO2 in the atmosphere in a year than does Delhi posting photographs of ourselves transformed into beetroots wearing Santa costumes; making hyper-realistic porn i...