Author Archives: Emma

It is with a heavy heart that I’ve had to cancel the next Oh Dear Diary show, planned for 7th October at the Old Joint Stock. If you have already bought tickets: sorry. Old Joint Stock will be in touch very soon to refund you.

As we often joke, it’s easy to find people to come and watch Oh Dear Diary, but not so easy to find people to read.

Despite numerous call-outs over the last four months, we just haven’t found enough people with teenage diaries to share with us at the OJS theatre in October. To put on a good show, we need at least six people… this time, we were only able to confirm two.

I’m really sorry to those who will be disappointed by the cancellation – not least the guys at the Old Joint Stock box office and Birmingham Comedy Festival, who work hard and could very much do without a festival show pulling out. I feel terrible for letting people down.

To those who have offered to help with a renewed call-out over the last week: thank you. However, it’s not just a question of finding people with diaries who are free on that date. I work hard to make sure that Oh Dear Diary is a good show, and more than just a bunch of people reading out random stuff… and that takes time. Usually at this point in the process, four-and-a-bit weeks away from the show date, I would be meeting up with readers to advise on filtering and extracting their best bits(!), choosing photos and music, putting together slideshows for each reader and working out a running order that I hope will keep people laughing throughout the evening. Even if we did miraculously find four or five new people over the next couple of weeks, I simply wouldn’t have time to prepare a good night. (And yes, I often say “we”, but it is just me.)

If you have a teenage diary that you’d like to share at a future date, do get in touch anyway. I am very keen to keep Oh Dear Diary going and would love to plan another event for next year. If we can find enough willing volunteers!

Sadly,
Emma

UPDATE – CANCELLED
Apologies but due to a lack of participants we have had to cancel the October show. Sorry for any disappointment.

Doesn’t time fly? It only seems a minute since we were last at the Old Joint Stock, hoping that people would come and listen to us reading out loud all those secret things we wrote as teenagers. And it’s actually been a year! Or it will have been… by October.

Anyway.

We’re back at the Old Joint Stock for another Oh Dear Diary! It will be on Friday 7th October, as part of the Birmingham Comedy Festival.

Click here to buy tickets from the Old Joint Stock box office, or give them a ring on 0121 200 0946.

Have you got a diary?

If you’d like to read from your teenage diary at this event, please let me know as soon as possible. Yes, we’re still looking for readers! But it’s not an open mic and we do require diary readers to register in advance. (It means that you get to sit in the green room before the show… and I’ll even buy you a stiff drink, because you’ll probably need one.) Ah, go on. You know you want to.

…Actually, it’s always that time of year. Because we are ALWAYS looking for new people to read at Oh Dear Diary!

We’re currently planning the next live diary reading event, which will be at the Old Joint Stock in Birmingham city centre in October. If you’ve ever thought about taking part, now’s the time to tell us!

We’re looking for people who kept a diary between the ages of 12 and 20 (and still have it, of course). Wouldya, couldya think about reading some extracts from it to our friendly audience?

No need to commit just yet – but please email Emma to register your interest and tell us more.

We’re especially interested to know:

• How old were you when you wrote your diary?
• What year(s) does it cover?
• Where were you living at the time?
• What sort of subjects does your diary cover? (School? Family? Love life? Current affairs?!)

(If you don’t have diaries, but you have other stuff you think might be funny to read out, let us know anyway. The reason we like diaries is that they were never (usually) intended to be made public, and the confessional element is what makes the show tick. But ask us anyway… if it’s funny, it could work.)

Thanks to everyone who came along to Oh Dear Diary at Flatpack on Friday. We were astonished to see over a hundred people packing the 80-seater Gas Hall venue on the night!

Special thanks to our brilliant readers, who once again defied my expectations with some truly random teenage nonsense. You saw:

Hetta – who went to parties and had no face
Emma H – who stalked Quentin Tarantino and was sure he liked her too
Alice (right) – who loved her naughty horse Tom more than boys
Elle – who had the 90s-est photos and loves her docs
Ben – who threw the cat at the lampshade
(and of course me, Emma W. I was the one who documented a five minute bus journey in minute detail and had a list of Daves.)

We also saw the wonderful Republic and heard from the Directors, Olie and Neil. Massive thanks to them for being there to introduce it (and sorry I gabbled at you when you introduced yourselves – I was surprised!) I’ve since found that some of the audience were originally from Blyth and had travelled from wherever-they-live-now especially to see it too! Worth the trip – a very funny and poignant film. You can view the Republic trailer on Vimeo here.

Special thanks must go to the Flatpack Festival organisers, especially Selina, for recommending ODD as a Flatpack event; Lucile and Sam who “got” ODD straight away, came up with the format for the evening and chose the perfect film to go with it; Mark for making sure we would have everything we needed tech-wise; and Stuart for his calming influence on the night, running the slideshows, getting the mic and light levels right and showing the film.

There was also a team of amazing Flatpack people there on the night running front-of-house, getting extra chairs in, making sure we were aware of timings, directing people, etc etc. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve forgotten the name of the main person, thanks to my terrible nerves on the night, but I think she was called Holly. This was the first show where I haven’t had to worry about any of the venue logistics, so thank you especially for that.

Want to read at the next Oh Dear Diary?

We’re looking for people who kept a diary between the ages of 12 and 20 – and still have it! – to read at the next Oh Dear Diary show in October. If you think you’d be up for it, email emma@ohdeardiary.com and let me know. Include a bit of info about the type of diary you have – the age you were when you wrote it, whether it’s a long form diary or a line-a-day, the sorts of topics you covered, why you think it’s funny now, etc. I’ll be in touch!

In case you missed it, the next Oh Dear Diary show will be part of the Flatpack Film Festival in Birmingham at the end of April. So we’re mixing it up a bit this time.

As well as some stonking diary readings, from brave volunteers – most of whom have never shared their teenage diaries with anyone before! – we’ll be screening a short film: Republic (2013; 42 mins).

The film was chosen by Flatpack’s Programmer Sam, who saw it earlier this year and not only fell in love with its dry humour, but immediately saw how brilliantly it would fit in with Oh Dear Diary. It was filmed in the 90s, by a team of teenagers, as Directors Neil Richardson and Olie Griffin explain: “In 1991 we were living in Blyth, a small town in Northumberland which was voted the worst town in Britain. We got our hands on a Hi8 video camera and began to document what we saw around us. 20 years later the film can finally be seen.”

We’ve only seen the trailer but we think you’ll agree it would seem to be very much up the Oh Dear Diary alley. Do come along on 22nd April and enjoy the whole thing with us!