In retrospect, screeching Dexy’s Midnight Runners on stage without even a pair of denim dungarees for protection was a big mistake. My already struggling voice, which had begun to show signs of recovery, was shredded. And I had a show to do.

There are three comedians in Three Man Roast. We have cunningly concealed a clue to this fact in the name. Yesterday, two of them did very well. The other one of them, having managed to screw his larynx, struggled through his set trying with only some success to get punchlines out without his voice cracking over the most crucial syllables. In hindsight, I like to think the relative quiet from the audience was generosity: they didn’t want to drown out my quiet lines with laughter. That was kind of them.

One audience member did come up to me afterwards and say she enjoyed my set which is always lovely to here but was particularly appreciated after straining through it.

I did innovate two responses to my impairment. I lip-synced to a recording of part of my set, which elicited bafflement more than anything else, but, for the record, my lip-syncing was very technically accomplished. Alex suggested it may have been too accomplished and the audience thought I was just talking. Dan suggested I had become my own Blackpool drag act.

The second innovation was a cracking joke about Robert Redford that frankly didn’t get the recognition it deserved.

It’s fair to say I was a bit dejected, but I was cheered up by a cuppa, some vitamin pills and stumbling across Ronnie Corbett and Paul Daniels within five minutes of each other. Go, Edinburgh.

And while I thought I had a bad gig, I shouldn’t be complacent as I still had a better gig than the guy whose show I went to see in the evening. He had one audience member turn up: me. So he took me to the pub, which was nice, and we pretended it was a one-to-one immersive theatre experience.

The third and final Karaoke Circus of the run was another joyous occasion. In the bar afterwards, I met half of the Beta Males and was able to tell them how much I enjoyed their show. I may have had a few drinks and added a lot of people on Facebook on the way home.

What I learnt today: The iPhone’s Facebook app needs a breathalyser built in. Or maybe a logic test that you need to be sober to beat, like the one in GMail. The same goes for Twitter.

Recommended show: I haven’t seen it but I have been recommended M. Croser – Unpleasant Man by people of taste, so that’s today’s.

Obligatory plug: I’m in Three Man Roast (★★★★ – whatsonstage.com), 2.35pm weekdays at Finnegan’s Wake on Victoria Street – free entry.

Sunday. The sabbath. The day of rest. When God tells me to have a lie-in, who am I, a mere mortal, to refuse?

Sleep banked, I headed to the Pleasance Courtyard to see Phillipa and Will Are Now In a Relationship, a short, funny play told entirely through a Facebook wall-to-wall. It’s very well observed and performed and although there are one or two occasions where the drama requires conversations that are unlikely to have taken place online, the play acknowledges this and turns it into a laugh. The conceit could easily outstay its welcome but at half an hour, the show is just the right length.

That sounds a bit like a review. I need to keep reminding myself not to review things.

After the play, I went next door to the Pleasance Gym for a run, giving my sore thigh and its large, multicoloured bruise a bit of a workout. Most importantly, I burnt off a few hundred calories and therefore was allowed to have a massive roast dinner. If God didn’t mean us to stuff our faces with tasty, tasty meat on a Sunday, why did he invent Yorkshire pudding?

I had an evening nap and then took myself off to see Dan’s “main” show, Lifestyles of the Weird and Aimless. That was a fun hour, although not for the first time I embarrassed myself by laughing too loudly at a joke – on this occasion, a lovely two-liner by Laurence Tuck.

LOTWAA is a free show and I’ve started to worry (it’s a social situation – I worry) about free show donation etiquette. If you’re doing a free show, as we are, then at mates’ free shows, it feels a bit odd contributing to the bucket collection at the end. You end up recycling your own takings; if the same comics then come to your show and donate they’re just handing the money back; and it’s a bit weird (and feels almost patronising) chucking a few quid at someone you’re friends with. But equally, I feel miserly walking past a collection bucket and not putting something in; I don’t want to set an example to other audience members that they don’t need to contribute; and you can never be sure whether not donating will be read as being tight-fisted or, worse, disliking the show.

Basically, it’s a minefield of potential faux pas and someone should come up with a clear rule so we all know where we are. But then all social situations would be better with a rule book. Or, even better, a script.

What I learnt today: My laugh is too loud.

Recommended show: Phillipa and Will Are Now In a Relationship

Obligatory plug: I’m in Three Man Roast, 2.35pm weekdays and Saturday 20th at Finnegan’s Wake on Victoria Street – free entry. Also at the Amused Moose Comedy Awards Showcase at the Pleasance Dome, 4pm on August 17th (book online).

Mark blogged this wek about his top 10 iPhone applications. Always one with an original idea, I thought I’d post up a list of mine. Unfortunately there isn’t an app for that so I’ve had to write it myself. And they call this the future?

This isn’t an ordered list and it’s not an attempt to catalogue the best apps out there – just the ones I use every day or find particularly useful.

1. Tweetie

I experimented with some other Twitter clients (TweetDeck and Echofon) but Tweetie does everything I need with a clean and easy to use interface. My only bugbear is that you can’t do old style manual retweeting – when you “Quote Tweet” it puts “via @username” at the end; I have to cut and paste that to the beginnng and add “RT”. Not a big flaw though given its pleasant handling of threaded replies, direct messages and saved searches.

2. Boxcar

I almost forgot this one because I never actually run it. Boxcar uses push notifications to alert you to various chosen activities. The free version lets you connect it to one site so I use it to generate on-screen notifications when I get new replies and direct messages on Twitter.

3. Facebook

I find Facebook‘s official app a good alternative to their mobile site. The latest version generates push notifications which replace some of the text message alerts I used to use. It’s good for adding photos directly from my iPhone and keeping me up to date with new activity. The drawbacks are that it seems to struggle with time zones on Events – I’ve been invited to rather a lot that are shown as starting at 3am – and it has absolutely no support for Groups, which is a bit of an oversight.

4. Dropbox

Dropbox is an online file storage system. It appears on your computer as a normal folder but when you’re online it will upload the contents of that folder to Dropbox’s servers. A similar folder on another computer can synchronise with the same server allowing you to access and edit your files from different machines – and providing a backup.

The iPhone app is another way to access the files in your Dropbox which means, for example, I can use my phone to read and email onwards Word documents without having to think ahead about which files I might need or having to email them to myself first. The basic service and app are free and you get two gigabytes of storage. There are ways to earn more free space – including by signing friends up using a referral link 🙂

5. Spotify

Spotify is a music streaming service with a huge library of songs. You can use the desktop version free with adverts or pay a subscription to Spotify Premium to ditch the ads. You need the Premium account to use the (free) iPhone app. I use it enough to make it worthwhile – not least because it has a big range of, erm, karaoke tracks…

6. Tube Exits

I know where to stand on the Jubliee Line platform to be in the best place to disembark on my way to work, and I know where to stand on the platform at the other end to be in the best place to disembark on my way home. But for other journeys that I don’t make so often, that anal approach to subterranean travel in London is harder. Or at least it was until the Tube Exits application. Tell it your starting station, your destination and any changes, and it will tell you the best carriage to get on, and which side of the train (same door or opposite) you’ll disembark by. All the data is held offline on the phone so it works even with no reception and there are regular updates as the data changes. I believe it also includes the DLR.

7. RunKeeper

OK, this isn’t one I use every day, but it does the job well. Using the iPhone’s GPS, RunKeeper can plot your path as you travel around. Although you can use it when walking or in a vehicle, it’s designed for runners, to keep track of distances, speeds and routes. On the rare occasions that I go for a run, it’s great.

8. Bejeweled 2

Don’t install this.

Bejeweled is a moving-coloured-jewels-into-lines-of-three-or-more game. I used to play it a lot on Facebook – where it took advantage, like the best Facebook apps, of the playing against your friends option. Eventually I stopped completely because it was too addictive. And then they brought it out for the iPhone – with the killer feature being a connection to Facebook that lets you continue to play against your friends. It’s actually easier to play on the touch screen than with a mouse on the PC which just makes it all the more addictive. And lots of other people must like it too because I regularly get flak for dominating the high score table.

One caveat: the latest version of Bejeweled on Facebook has some new features (coins and boosts) that I’m not a fan of. They’re yet to make it into the iPhone version but when they do I may use them as an excuse to stop playing. I need to wean myself off somehow.

9. Sleep Cycle

This is one of the most popular releases in the App Store though I’ve only been using it for a few days. You place the phone on the corner of your bed and the app uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to monitor your nocturnal fidgeting. It uses this to plot a graph of your sleep patterns, which is pretty cool just on its own, but that’s not the primary aim of the app. These patterns plotted, it then tries to wake you in the morning as soothingly as possible, with gentle alarm sounds timed to go off at the point near your desired time when you are in the lightest sleep phase.

10. Google Mail

This isn’t technically an app but I use it a lot. Although the iPhone’s in-built Mail application works with GMail – and I use it when, say, emailing photos to TwitPic – it lacks some of the features of the full GMail website. One of those I use the most is “starring” emails which you can’t do from the Mail app. Instead, I use Google’s own mobile-optimised version of GMail within the Safari browser, with a bookmark straight to it on the bottom bar of the Home screen.

Some other apps I have installed: Tube Deluxe, Scrabble, thetrainline, Huddle, LinkedIn, Zippo (which puts a lighter on your screen – good for gigs) and Flux (which turns your screen into the Flux Capacitor from Back to the Future).

I was surprised to see Steve Webb at the leadership election announcement this afternoon as Facebook had reported that he didn’t really exist. (My guess is that an automated system detected his surname as he unlikely “MP” and flagged it as a fake.)

The good news is that Facebook have acted quickly and have restored our parliamentary party’s leading Facebooker to the site – and will make sure it doesn’t happen again.