It’s the nature of touring that you rarely get to know a city at all, even if you come back year after year. The Mayflower Theatre in Southampton is a regular venue for us: about 2300 strong, it’s a good size and always sells out quickly, despite the huge Bournemouth BIC just down the road where we play later on. As familiar as I am with the brief walk from stage door to the Waterstones in the shopping mall round by John Lewis, I still have no sense of the city. However, I have an inkling of the people.

You can get a sense of a town by two factors on tour: the audience and those people who come to stage door. The sounds and energy of the audience betray the general liveliness of the place (bright, dynamic Bristol goes mental after every routine and roars with approval when the show starts; tranquil Eastbourne sits quietly or coughs), and the amount and style of Twittering in the interval says a lot about them too. Even the local level of intelligence can be broadly gauged by the jokes it laughs most at, and this too varies hugely from city to city.

Stage door is trickier, as it is only the less casual attendees who are prepared to wait around in the cold after the show. Many of these have travelled, but the locals or locally studying are easy enough to spot. Southampton, I think more than any city so far, has provided the loveliest bunch at stage door (competition is high: you’re always very lovely to meet). Only a smallish handful of 20 or so gathered, which is a nice amount of people to take ones time with, and all bubbly, polite, pleasant and relaxed. Some were hugely excited to meet me, but none had the solemn urgency of the too-strongly-fixated; programmes were signed and snapshots snapped in a particularly congenial atmosphere. I was delighted, but not surprised, to hear yesterday from a particularly likeable cabbie (who was rueing the fact that after dropping me off at my remote hotel, he would have to drive back alone through the New Forest in the thick, eldritch mists of midnight) that Southampton has just been voted most friendly city on the UK. (Not ‘in England’ as I tweeted last night, apologies). London, of course, came proudly last.

Tonight is a return night to gorgeous Bristol, and a long day for us all. We must drive to Bristol, the crew must build the show (while I have meetings), run the show, dismantle it and then drive home around midnight. This is the first time back for quite a while, and we get to have a few days off. Tomorrow I’m filming a sketch, and on Sunday night I’m off to the Olivier Awards with my lovely Andy Nyman to lose happily Tom Whitnall’s Morecambe. Back on Monday, in Andy’s home city Leicester, with the silly, upbeat energy that always comes from not having done it for a few days.

Right. Must check the local papers to make sure that the cabbie last night got home safely and was not, as I suggested when leaving the car, slaughtered, bum-raped or both. Hugs.

x

PS Yes, I know that’s a different Southampton on the map.

“HORROR films are simply a disconcerting watch for the majority of us, but for Jane Barrett they are literally torturous. She writhes in agony whenever the actors on the screen feel pain. ‘When I see violence in films I have an extreme reaction,’ she says. “I simply have to close my eyes. I start to feel nauseous and have to breathe deeply.”‘

She is just one of many people who suffer from a range of disorders that give rise to ‘extreme empathy’. Some of these people, like Barrett, empathise so strongly with others that they experience the same physical feelings – whether it’s the tickle of a feather or the cut of a knife. Others, who suffer from a disorder known as echopraxia, just can’t help immediately imitating the actions of others, even in inappropriate situations.

Far from being mere curiosities, understanding these conditions could have many pay-offs for neuroscience, such as illuminating conditions like phantom pain. They may even help answer the age-old question of whether empathy really is linked to compassion.”

Read more at New Scientist (thanks, Tiram)

“A soldier blinded by a grenade in Iraq has described how his life has been transformed by ground-breaking technology that enables him to ‘’see” with his tongue.

Lance Corporal Craig Lundberg, 24, from Walton, Liverpool, can read words, identify shapes and walk unaided thanks to the BrainPort device, despite being totally blind.

The Liverpool fan, who plays blind football for England, lost his sight after being struck by a rocket-propelled grenade while serving in Basra in 2007.

He was faced with the prospect of relying on a guide dog or cane for the rest of his life.

But he was chosen by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to be the first person to trial a pioneering device – the BrainPort, which could revolutionise treatment for the blind.

The BrainPort converts visual images into a series of electrical pulses which are sent to the tongue. The different strength of the tingles can be read or interpreted so the user can mentally visualise their surroundings and navigate around objects.”

Read more at The Telegraph (thanks, KirstyJ)

Academics from The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia found that mice lacking the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissue. Unlike typical mammals, which heal wounds by forming a scar, these mice begin by forming a blastema, a structure associated with rapid cell growth. According to the Wistar researchers, the loss of p21 causes the cells of these mice to behave more like regenerating embryonic stem cells rather than adult mammalian cells. This means they act as if they creating rather thane mending the body.

Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide solid evidence to link tissue regeneration to the control of cell division. They turned off the gene in mice which had damaged ears and they regrew them. While they say it is early days, there is nothing theoretically different about applying the same process to humans. Professor Ellen Heber-Katz, the lead scientist, said: “Much like a newt that has lost a limb, these mice will replace missing or damaged tissue with healthy tissue that lacks any sign of scarring.”

Read more at The Telegraph

It’s not just that Wonders of the Solar System will reduce you to teary eyed pillow biting with its violins and gloriously happy rhetoric – it’s the fact there is such an obvious beauty to our local group that we cannot ignore. Prof Brian Cox is clearly overjoyed at what is out there and presents a beautifully made show with all the enthusiasm of a six year old on three bags of cola bottles.

His celebrity science status makes him perfect for the role and for all the criticisms that the intellectual elite might have of this form of “dumbed down science” documentary – it’s perfect sunday night viewing when you’ve drunk a little too much, especially when the only other choice is “Snog Marry Avoid” or ritual suicide. You can follow Cox on Twitter here – I just wish he was as fabulous on Twitter as he is on camera, but follow him all the same as he is a beautiful human being who I personally would forgive almost any crime.

Despite his immense knowledge and intellect Cox did not however write the series – that goes to a guy called Gideon Bradshaw who also directed the series and wrote the wonderful Are We Alone in the Universe. For true genius and brilliance we will all be forced to live in the eternal shadow of Charlie Brooker and his glorious masterpieces like the fabulous offering he has out now.

Episode 2 of Newswipe (series 2) is so good it I would poke my own mother in the eye to defend it. It should be put on the national curriculum and anyone in your family who hasn’t seen it deserve nothing more than a good hard whipping. Episode 2 is gloriously funny from the first second and if for some strange reason Brooker himself doesn’t whet your appetite then Adam Curtis joins in with a stroke of perfectly crafted documentary brilliance along with Doug Stanhope, who completes to an orgy of aggressively expert, left wing, dot-2-dot intellectual analysis that even the most rampant Daily Mail reader has to smirk at.

If there was Nobel Prize in common sense Brooker would have won it 12 times.

If you don’t enjoy this show you need to try again. Newswipe is being shown for the second time on iPlayer now. If you miss this then you may as well emigrate to Greenland or just shoot yourself. Much like how I felt when the series ended.

“The American card-stacking master has just beaten his own previous world record, by completing a model of the Venetian Macau hotel and casino, made completely out of playing cards.

Brian Berg, the man behind the famous key-card hotel, spent 44 days working on the amazing model, using a total of 218,792 playing cards. The fragile piece of architecture, which is now on display in the heart of Macau’s Cotai Strip, was Berg’s most challenging project yet.

The playing card model of the Venetian Macau weighs an impressive 272 Kg, is 35 feet long and 10 feet tall. The most impressive thing about Brian Berg’s masterpiece is it contains no glue of tape.”

Read more at Oddity Central (thanks, Jason)

“An obese mother in the US is trying to put on weight in order to become the world’s fattest woman.

Donna Simpson, from New Jersey, weighs 273kg but told the Daily Mail newspaper she had her heart set on reaching her goal weight of 1000lb (450kg) in two years.

The 42-year-old already holds the title of the world’s fattest mother after giving birth to her daughter in 2007 when she weighed 241kg.

“I’d love to be 1000lb … it might be hard though, running after my daughter keeps my weight down,” Ms Simpson told the Daily Mail.

Ms Simpson, who needs a mobility scooter to go shopping, eats huge amounts of junk food each week and tries to move as little as possible so she doesn’t burn off as many calories.”

Read more at 9 News

“A British expat who claims to have no gender is thought to have become the first person to be officially recognised as neither male or female.

Norrie May-Welby, 48, was born a man but had a sex change operation in 1990, at the age of 28.

After becoming unhappy as a woman, May-Welby decided to become a “neuter”. The 48-year-old is now officially recognised as a person of no specific gender.

May-Welby emigrated to Australia at the age of seven after being born in Paisley, Renfrewshire.

Officials there altered the Briton’s birth certificate to include the new no-gender classification after doctors were apparently unable to determine the sex of the expat’s body.”

Read more at The Telegraph (thanks, Tiram)