Someone sounds funny

Must say thanks to Jimeoin for a quality Friday night's entertainment in the form of his Something Smells Funny show at the E4 Udderbelly on the South Bank.

Udderbelly have rigged up a most agreeable venue with a couple of bars, food stalls and tables & lanterns in amongst the trees. It's a very nice alternative to the limited areas to have a drink on the south side of the Thames, which weirdly only has about 5 pubs between London Bridge and Westminster.

My girlfriend and her mate pounced on the star of the show at the burger van after his performance, and before the poor guy knew what was happening he was being led back, burger in hand, to sit with us at our table for a while.

Thankfully, he's a thoroughly nice, down to earth chap and spent about 30 minutes chatting to us about anything and everything, barely even flinching as I wheeled out another fact about him that I'd gleaned from checking Wikipedia before the show started.

Turns out he's from Portstewart, just up the road from Ballymena - upon hearing I hailed from there he mentioned that one of the guys in charge of security was from my neck of the woods. So far, so stereotypical, albeit this time the "I know someone from your town, do you know him too?" chat was being perpetuated by a fellow countryman. Of course, I responded with the "well, you know, it's quite a large town in Irish terms" and that was that - until Jimeoin spotted the guy in question and beckoned him over to meet me; turned out I'd been in the year below him in school, our sisters used to be best friends and we used to see each other around Glasgow 10 years ago! 

The other thing that sticks in my mind is that he often has Australian people coming up to him to say their kid is called Jimeoin - because the parents wanted an "Irish" name. Which they have got, albeit a highly unusual one - given his mum made it up as an amalgamation of a couple of male relatives' names. Must be weird knowing there are people running round the antipodes named after you.

Anyway - cheers Jimeoin. Top bloke, good company and a funny bugger to boot. Highly recommended if he's playing in a venue near you.