As I mentioned towards the close of my last journal entry, Amanda got me tickets to see Dylan Moran at the Hammersmith Odeon for my birthday - so, as logic would dictate, that was how we spent Saturday night.

To be brutally frank, The Hammersmith Odeon is a somewhat dingy venue and I generally won't bother with acts that appear there unless I genuinely love their work. Unlike it's well-run South London big brothers the Brixton Academy and the Shepherds Bush Empire, the Odeon looks as if it hasn't been decorated since 1975, can barely cram in the people it seems to want to, herds the audience around like cattle and always seems to be unbearably stuffy. Saturday night was no exception (in fact, the majority of the audience were using their programmes to fan themselves with) so it was lucky for Dylan that he put in a strong set.

For those of you who haven't seen or heard Dylan before - and I pity you - he's a savage, easily frustrated Irish comedian who ultimately pulls to pieces the bizarre and unnecessary rigmaroles of daily life. In previous shows, he has hated children ("Children In Need? What kind of a charity is that? Whoever heard of a child not in need? They always need something!") street thugs, and Irish holidaymakers. In this show, however, a lot of the more enjoyable mindless hatred and intolerance seems to have gone out of the window to reveal a slightly more laidback and reflective Dylan. It probably says a lot about my mentality that I don't find this quite so funny, and I was almost horrified to have to sit through a brief part of his set telling us how wonderful having a child was. It almost felt as if he'd picked up somebody else's script by mistake. Nonetheless, his set was generally strong.

The title of the show "Like, Totally...." appears to have derived from a segment where he spoke about why Americans are globally loathed. Dylan believes that far from it being about their global policy - which is about equivalent to the English or even the Australians for its extremes - is actually because the most stupid Americans always manage to sound more stupid than every other nation's idiotic people. His definition is that they sound like the room-mate you always dreaded having: "Uh, I like, uh, broke all of your stuff but, uh... I've like, replaced it with some of mine that doesn't work, so that's, like, cool". On the tube journey home, we stand next to three large American women who underline his point a bit. "We're like, uh, eating chocolate on a train?" they say to each other. "Ha ha, uh huh huh huh. That's cool". They then go on to muse as to why British automated machines talk in British accents because this is "like, so pointless". I tuned out of the conversation at that juncture. It was no more or less stupid than the majority of bad conversations I've heard on the tube, but I think it was the interjections of "like", "totally", "cool", "uh" and "duh" that made it sound a whole lot worse than it actually was. Maybe Dylan has a point.

Quick question, though - what do Ticketmaster actually do for their extortionate admin fees, apart from complain about the delivery arrangements you try to set up with them? Answers on a postcard. Amanda would like to know.