Hello. Hope you all had a wee-busting Nando's Day. What do you mean you forgot? Honestly, how are we going to bring these places down?

I was doing a gig in Chesterfield tonight. It's a town dominated by a church at its centre with a strange crooked spire. It looks rather spooky, especially when you arrive at night, where it stands out on the sky-line looking like some kind of bizarre witch Cathedral. I wondered it it was possible that Chesterfield is home to a coven of warlocks and necromancers who brazenly advertise their evil religion with surely the most dreaded and frightening place of worship in the UK.

But the Chesterfield residents seem to strongly deny this, saying that the spire started off untwisted in thye 14th Century, and only started to go askew hundreds of years later, possibly as a result of unseasoned timber being used in the construction. Yeah, right, chinny reck-on. And Jimmy Hill's chin grew like that because his mum used unseasoned bone when she constructed him in her womb. Like the inhabitants of Chesterfield, Jimmy Hill is a witch. There is no other explanation.

So I did my last gig of the year to the witch people (taking care not to do my child baked in pie bit, which would surely inflame their witchish ardour) and it went really well. For a room of witches the crowd were very polite (I suppose they are evil all day, so when they go out at night they want to relax and be nice - it's fair enough).

It's amazing to think how far I have come with the stand-up this year. When you look back at the write-ups of those early gigs around this time last year you can almost smell the fear and lack of experience, but a year of regular gigging has led me to a new level of competence and things are still interesting for me. In fact in the last two or three months I think things have moved up an extra notch. I am really glad I went back to doing this, even if a gig like tonight involves a long drive there and a long drive back.

2005 has been an important year for me and I am confident that 2006 will be even better. To those of you concerned that I was down in the dumps yesterday, you can't be further from the truth. I was genuinely pleased not to be involved in the proceedings and quite like the fact that the pokerzone thing went so badly. My career has had ups and downs, but I am definitely on an up at the moment and can afford to laugh at myself. That's all I was doing.

I have one of the best jobs in the world and my work is far from done. And believe me I'd rather make the witch folk of Chesterfield cackle for 40 minutes, than have a plastic statuette which informed me that the readers of Heat or Zoo thought I was funny.

Life is good. It's nearly Christmas and if my plans have come to fruition Nando's should be closing down sometime tomorrow.

Buy Collings and Herrin T-shirts here and AIOTM T shirts here.

For details of the Christ on a Bike tour click here and you can book tickets here for The Lyric Comedy Nights

[ Email this edition of Warming Up to a friend ]