This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

OK so hello from Leicester. City of good curries and ....... good curries. While some of my teamates aren't enamoured with this town it seems fine to me and so here I sit in an internet/off-license/convenience store. Ahhhhh the glamour. The tour is rollicking along though I am not in the ZONE yet.

By that I mean the time zone. I keep waking up at 7am after getting to sleep at 2am and as such my head feels heavier than the bags under my eyes are looking. Pretty.

SO far we have played London and Cambridge and audiences haven't been massive. Which is a shame as it's a great show. So if you're reading spread the word and come and see us, I'm the one whose the comic relief with the sparkly outfits, hard to miss.

Last night we stayed in a Travel Lodge and I don't reccomend it. They have no bath mats in the rooms and explain why thus; apparently bath mats cause significant amount of injuries in the UK due to slipping on them, so they are saving us injury by not providing them...and of course saving them money.

Still I don't like to complain as someone else if paying the bill and that's so bizarre and rare for me I'm loving it.

ANYWAY Australasia hasn't made the final either night with America taking out the first night and Africa the second. BUT as they say the points aren't the point, poetry is the point. Which is a load of bollocks way to say we're all for a caring sharing good time! Lucky for us I say.

Right, my computer is out of time....better go!

I'm fucked!

Penny

Hello from old London town. I would gush forth with interesting tidbits and witticisms except I am completely and utterly fucked. Nothing like a 24 hour flight accompanied by my sacred lady time to complete knock the stuffing and a fair amount of iron out me.

I'm reclining on my friends couch, hoping to recuperate in time for OPENING NIGHT! Yes I am about to hit the tour trail in the UK with an international poetry group. 9 Poets from all over the world could be heading to your town so check out where we're going and come and so hi.

I promise to be witty then, otherwise stay tuned for results. It's a poetry slam tour which means there'll be a winner every night as voted by the audience. Fingers crossed!

The Hammer and Tongue Four Continents Slam

The four corners of the globe slam together

Event: The Four Continents Slam: UK Tour
Dates: Tuesday 24th November 7th December 2006
Venue: London, Cambridge, Leicester, Bolton, Nottingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Brighton, Oxford, Reading, Bristol

Some of the best spoken word artists that the world has to offer will come together next month for Hammer and Tongue’s “Four Continents Slam Tour”. The tour will take teams of top performers from Africa, North America, Europe and Australasia to tour the UK in a series of high profile poetry slams.

A poetry slam is a high-energy performance poetry competition held in public where random members of the audience are asked to judge the competitors with an Olympic-style scoring system. The result, invariably is high octane, highly entertaining performance that is both exciting and relevant to the audience.

The Artists:

Europe:

Elvis McGonagall (Scotland) - The current world slam champion
Henry Bowers (Sweden) - World slampionships runner-up 2005

Africa:

Kojo Baffoe (South Africa) - Monstafunk productions supremo
Ardreattah Chuma (Botswana) - Star of Exodus Live Poetry

North America:

John Akpata (Canada) - Capital Slam Champion 2005
Sonya Renee (USA) - 2004 US National Slam Champion

Australasia

Penny Ashton (New Zealand) - Critically acclaimed comedy poet
Thom the World Poet (Aus) – Legendary traveling street poet

Hosted by:

Steve Larkin (England) - Spoken Word Olympic International Champion


London - Fri 24th Nov, 7:30, The Cochrane Theatre, Southampton Row, London 020 7269 1606
Cambridge - Sat 25th Nov 7:30, Mumford Theatre, Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, Cambridge, CB1 1PT, 0845 196 2320
Leicester - Sun 26th Nov, 8pm, Firebug, 1 Millstone Lane, Leicester, LE1 5JN 01865 200550 Leeds - Mon 27th Nov 8pm, Brudenell Social Club , 33 Queens Rd, Leeds, LS6 1NY, 0113 275 2411
Bolton - Tue 28th Nov 8pmThe Phoenix, Bolton, Lancashire BL1 2BG www.writeoutloud.net Nottingham - Wed 29th Nov 8pm Canal House, 48-52, Canal St, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire NG1 7EH, Tel: 0115 955 5060
Newcastle - Thu 30th Nov 8pmThe Cluny, 36 Lime St, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 2PQ 0191 2331113
Glasgow - Sat 2nd Dec 8pmThe Halt Bar , 160 Woodlands Road, Glasgow, G3 6LF, 0141 352 9996
Edinburgh - Sun 3rd Dec 8pmBongo Club, 37 Holyrood Rd, Edinburgh, Midlothian EH8 8BA, 0131 558 7604
Brighton - Mon 4th Dec 8pm Komedia, 44-46, Old Steine, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1NH, 01273 320399
Oxford - Tue 5th Dec 8pm Zodiac, 190 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 01865 420042
Reading - Wed 6th Dec 8pm South Street Arts Centre, 21 South St, Reading 0118 901 5234 Bristol - Thu 7th Dec 8pmThe Polish Club, 50 St. PaulÂ’s Rd, Clifton, Bristol, 07771900583

check http://www.hammerandtongue.co.uk/ NB not .org

OK so time for my first proper weekly bog entry.

How exciting.

I feel my subject should be a topic of sufficient gravitas as befits the occassion.......................HHHhhhmmmmmmm I know, porn!

And not just any porn, oh no, animal porn!

I know I know, how unusual from Pinky, something kinky, but wait this is hilarious.

And relax, I'm not talking beastiality, well not inter-species anyway. But you see in Thailand there is this Panda couple who are having difficulties.

It seems they just don't want to mate.

Despite the fact that they are in a country where sex is more available than Paris Hilton, these bears are refusing to do the Panda Position and so remain unprogenated.

Personally I feel for the poor lady panda. I mean imagine how it would feel. There you having a nice time chowing down on some bamboo and all of a sudden this obviously quite unattractive boy panda arrives.

He probably smells bad, has dubious toilet habits and keeps trying to ply her with fermented bamboo so she'll let him have his wicked panda way.

She's therefore keeping herself 'nice' till Panda Charming comes along. Of course we all know that there are generally fuck all pandas in the world, and finding a charming one is about as likely as me finding a decent single bloke in Auckland.

She, however, is steadfastly gripping her utopian dream like a Remuera debutante grips her Merchant Banker Fetish.

Their keepers though are frustrated with their lack of panda-tang and have decided to take an interesting approach.

For the next while the couple will be played porn in an effort to stimulate their breeding bits. And no I don't mean re-runs of Once, Twice Three Times a Labia, Shaving Ryan's Privates and In Diana Jones and the Temple of Poon, I mean actual panda porn.

And anyway watching human porn wouldn't help in the slightest for mating purposes.

For a start the first thing the male Panda would do was to try and fix the plumbing. Then the two girl pandas would get down to some serious rug tending while the boy panda watched. Then when finally some mating did occur, just at the crucial moment the boy would pull out and aim at the girl panda's face. Hopeless.

No they're been shown footage of two other pandas at it like.....well pandas. It's the karma sutra for the Oriental Bear and they're hoping it will bear fruit.

I'll keep you posted.

Cheers

In honour of my new column I am going to publish some of the best of my old ones. The following is from my Xtra Column of August 2004.

Hot Vince

As I fell asleep on the toilet floor this morning after throwing up everything I didn’t eat for breakfast, I contemplated back on the night before.

My mother would have asked if the evening was worth the pain and misery I was now enduring. She would have asked if all those red wines, beers and…..er bourbon and cokes were worth the gut wringing spasms and lung puking that was occurring.

And I would have to tell her, oh yes, yes it was.

The evening started as many do, with me preparing for my show here in Edinburgh. It was a Saturday night and I anticipated a good crowd and was excited at the prospect of possibly even 30 people. I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up though as the show started with a meagre 16. Thankfully a further 6 trooped in AND what they lacked in size they made up for in charm.

Everything was going marvellously well and I even dropped the c word in as I felt we were really sharing. Jut after that I shielded my eyes from the spotlights to see if anyone put up their hands when I asked who liked a damn good pash when….wait a minute….oh my god is it….yes it bloody well is….sitting in the back row of my show is none other than 70’s comedy poetry legend Pam Ayres. Holy shit! And I just used the c word, oh my god.

Yes mum, Pam Ayres was sitting there with a lovely crooked smile on her face at MY show. Seemingly unperturbed by c words she later told me that she really enjoyed the show and even gave me a hug and a kiss. Wow, how cool.

I then floated off to a friend’s house for a dinner party and that’s where the drinking began. What better way to consume wine than with couscous, chocolate torte and dip.
After dinner I had to rush back to another venue to do a late night gig. This one possibly didn’t go as well as I’d hoped so I drowned my sorrows in some beer and headed to the performers bar at the Gilded Balloon, where, for some university inspired flashback of stupidity, I started drinking Jack Daniels.

I was having a perfectly lovely time flirting with an Oxford grad that runs a film company when none other than Vince Vaughan walks into the bar. Yes that’s right Vince Vaughan. For those who don’t know VV was the cool dude in Swingers, the Psycho in the remake and is the half of Dodgeball that isn’t Ben Stiller. He’s sexy he’s hot (though not quite so much at 3am) and he’s cool so I went over and chatted to him. (I did mention the wine, beer and bourbon huh?) For a Hollywood star he was pleasant, slightly stand-offish and not keen to be interviewed for National Radio on my mini-dat recorder. Ahhhh well.

Then after chatting to Oxford man some more I decided to run off with Jack Daniels, however when I went to leave at 5am Oxford was waiting for me and it would seem he was very keen for a coxed pair. I agreed to a chaperone home but soon it became apparent that he would have raised his hand in my show when I asked the question “Who likes a damn good pash?” I managed to disentangle myself from his amorous intents and headed off alone.

I then got lost and three young Scottish lads called Jimmy, Ewan and Duncan (seriously) gave me bad directions so I got lost some more. Finally a lovely lady called Mary who was walking to work walked with me to the right destination. My bed!

Three hours later my alarm was ringing and I had to get up to go to a meeting. I thanked my lucky stars I felt fine BUT I guess I was just still drunk. Eventually the halo of the hangover descended and RALF and I became best mates. For the first time in my life I did a full show hungover and I must say, despite puking a good 15 times today, it was one of my best shows ever.

To ensure the same thing happens tomorrow I’m off for a drink now. I’m hoping that Edgar AllenPoe will show up in my audience, that I’ll pash Christian Slater and Keanu Reeves on the Royal Mile and that Jack Daniels and I will get married.

Did I mention I’m delirious by the way.

Choice.

Number One

OK so this is it, the beginning, or should I say the end.

I have been writing weekly columns on two of New Zealand's biggest websites, Xtra and NZGirl for the past four years and I have decided it's time to strike out alone! No more asterisks, no more "can you tone it down" and no where near as many readers I'd hazard to guess, BUT one has to start somewhere.

Don't get me wrong, they were both fabulous and everyone involved was very supportive. I mean it's fair enough if they don't want me to say fuck-knuckle on their site.

I'm not exactly sure what can be achieved by saying fuck-knuckle in the first place.....but now I can and that makes me happy.

SO anyway, hello, nice to meet you, my name is Penny Ashton and I'm a comedienne, poet, writer, improviser, voice over artist, actor and social commentator.

What's your name?

What do you do?

What's your star sign?

Good.

Well nice to meet you, I'm going to go now but I hope to see you soon.

Choice.

PS Here's a soppy poem to read if you're in the mood
PPS ......fuck-knuckle, hehehehehe


Finger Licking Good

I’m counting my chickens
My plot has just thickened
My mind is a riot of free range smitten
Thoughts, that I’d previously fought, didn’t want to get caught
In the No. 8 wire of expectations, fraught, overwrought
Valentine’s bought
for a man I just met
BUT I am counting my chickens
Coz its been slim pickins And I’m having more fun than a pig in the thickest mud
He boils my blood
A relentless stud
Who causes a grey-less cloud free flood
Of smiles
Hours just whiled away in a bed
With new colours in my head Like yellow and strawberries and crispy French Bread
He’s the tickle of new things
Aeroplane wings, the eye-full tower in my bed springs
A fantastically dirty boy sexy fresh fling
Who hangs round my neck like a beautiful bling
With a chest doused in hair
And my underwear
And sometimes I just forget to come up for air
SO I’m counting my chickens
Coz this girl’s been bitten
Not bitter or quitter but just go and get him
I know it’s the glow of “In the Beginning”
But his herbs and spices are just finger licking