Blog Archive: February 2026

More MJ/CJ ACTION
Today Found Festival have UNLEASHED their full line-up for this year, which excitingly includes me and Chris doing our first MJ Hibbett & CJ Thorpe-Tracey FESTIBAL show! HOORAH!



Obviously I wouldn't stoop to anything so foolish as to check WHERE in the listing we are but if anyone DID feel the need to do something so BANAL they would find that we are bang in the middle of the listing i.e. not at the bottom or in tiny type, which of course means nothing to me and definitely didn't please me inordinately when I double checked. HOORAH!

This announcement comes hot on the heels of a whole DAY of CJ/MJ ACTION, as yesterday I went down to BRIGHTON for some PRACTICING. To be brutally honest most of what we practiced was chatting and drinking tea, but we did manage to squeeze in a few songs too. We kicked off with a go at a proposed cover version (the name of which I shall not mention here in order to maintain the already high levels of excitement and interest) before launching into runthroughs of a whole batch of NEW songs. We started with I'll Fetch Me Book which had been the first song attempted at our first ever practice. That time it had been COMPLICATED, but went MUCH more smoothly this time, partly due to our increased AWARENESS of each other and the OUVRE, and also partly because we took out some of the fiddly bits.

We then did two songs UNHEARD by any human being except each other, starting with one only wrote a few weeks ago called Timewasters. This was originally called "Timewasters Need Not Apply" and then changed to "The Greatest Music" but then Chris suggested that just "Timewasters" was much better, and he was CORRECT. I had been very eager to get this one into our list, despite its very recent creation, as a) I think it is dead good and b) it's the only song I've written specifically FOR this project, so I was relieved to discover that it sounds ACE!

I was similarly delighted with our version of A Christmas Cry, which is about a year old and which I have been DESPERATE to let out into the open. This probably wouldn't go on the actual ALBUM we're making but I really wanted to give it the piano treatment as I thought it would suit it, and I was right, as it sounded BLOODY WONDERFUL. I often get a bit over-excited when we're doing these songs, but in this case I had to stop myself from SCREAMING with excitement at one point, and then realised that I was wafting round Chris's living room PRETENDING TO BLESS ORPHAN CHILDREN as if in a C Richards video, such was my Christmassy Joy. Chris did some AMAZING work on it and put not only FANCY CHORDS in but also - brilliantly - a GEAR CHANGE!

We then went for a well-earned pub lunch before coming back to have a go at ANOTHER otherwise unheard song, Give It Up. I really like the THORT behind this song, but once we had a go it didn't feel to me like it was RIGHT. We had several goes at it, with Chris trying all sorts of ways to improve it, but in the end we had to follow the songs own advice and, well, give it up!

We then had a runthrough of what we'd achieved, recording VERSIONS of everything, before a celebratory spot of BUBBLES, some more tea and chat (and BISCUITS), and then the day was done and I headed off back to That London, full of EXCITEMENT about what we'd done and what we might indeed YET do. It really does feel like this is turning into something Rather Special, and I can't wait for people to get to hear it, whether that be in August or possibly sooner!

posted 12/2/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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Doctor Doom at The Leicester Comedy Festival
I was up in lovely LEICESTER at the weekend, there to bring Data and Doctor Doom to the Leicester Comedy Festival for, I think, my TENTH time at the festival, and the SEVENTEENTH anniversary of (the second night of) my first time there!

It's an amazing thing that the festival is still going strong 30ish years after it all began. I remember it getting going as a very local affair in the distant days when I still LIVED in Leicester and it's come a LONG way from there to its current status as a COMEDY BEHEMOTH. In some ways it feels a bit sad that it's lost some of the Fringe-y localNESS of those early days, and does feel a bit more focussed on Big Telly Comedians than an INDIE TYPE like me would necessarily prefer, but it's an incredible thing to see how much it's embedded in the city and generally accepted as PART of Leicester.

As ever when returning to that fair city I was delighted to see that the grand tradition of knocking down buildings has continued, this time with a great chunk of the street near the town square being demolished. Later research showed that this had been done YEARS ago but it was new to me and WEIRDLY there had never been a PUB on the site so I cannot even take personal responsibility its removal, unlike the many many other demolitions linked to my musical past in Leicester.

I arrived at the King Richard III Visitor Centre - another NEW THING to me - and met the lovely staff there, who were all VERY friendly and helpful, especially when I got into my room and needed some help getting the projector working. It was a GRATE room I must say, and after some mild PANIC about getting set up (largely caused by me not having done it in a while) I was just about ready to receive AUDIENCE.

And LO! Audience did appear, and was PACKED with PALS and familiar faces, as well as some NON-familiar faces also. I must admit I got A Little Bit Excited by it all, and had to use ALL my willpower to wait until it was actually time to start before getting going properly. Rather fantastically during this time Mrs E Pattison was able to grab a candid snap of THE COUNCIL, fully reunited for the first time in many years!



The show itself seemed to go OK - I was a little bit thrown by a) having some of my oldest PALS in the room GRINNING back at me and b) the projector set-up meaning I wasn't able to use Presenter View, and so couldn't see what was coming next, but I think together we all rose to the challenge and had a rather jolly time. I then got to lurk around and CHAT to a few people, including the marvellous Mr B Ennis who had PROMOTED the whole thing so ably (he was GRATE!), before we headed round the corner to yet ANOTHER place I had not been before, The Blue Boar.

COR, this was a really nice pub which, I think, had been an office when I last walked past it, and was now PACKED with so many beers that there were FOUR pages of screen listing them all! CHAT was had with the lovely friends who had rolled up, and stories were told of adventures that happened more DECADES ago than I would really like to admit. It was BRILLO!

Hugs were had, farewells were said, and myself, Mr T 'The Tiger' McClure and The Pattisons made our way along New Walk to The Marquis Of Wellington to find Mr and Mrs F Machine, who had arrived for our BAND CURRY, which took place over the road. This was ANOTHER delightful affair, during which we discussed plans for our next GIG (for about 3 minutes) and also TELLY (for significantly longer).

We popped back over the road for a final PINT and then it was time for us all to wend our weary - and, in my case, slightly WOBBLY - way home. I collapsed into my Premier Inn very happy, but also EXHAUSTED - that was a LOT of fun to pack into one day!

posted 10/2/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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I Take Full Responsibility For My Error
I come to you today as a much humbled, but hopefully wiser, Hibbett - for LO! my GRATE PREDICTION wot I made in a Major Entertainment Outlet about there being an "Avengers: Doomsday" trailer during the Superbowl turns out to be have been entirely INCORRECT!

I was sure that my divination of the Weird Numbers in the teaser trailers were all pointing towards a big reveal during yesterdays American Football Extravaganza, and this prediction was repeated in multiple OTHER Entertainment Outlets (as discussed recently) but alas this was not the case. However, despite all this, there appear to have been no implications whatsoever. The article what I wrote is still there, the other articles mentioning it don't seem to have been changed, and nobody has, as yet, been on The Socials to reprimand me for my inaccuracy.

It all feels a bit weird, almost as if... almost as if there's no penalty for being wrong in this sort of thing? As I pondered this thought this morning I was reminded of all those political pundits who show up in The Media to pontificate about what current party political leaders are doing wrong, despite the fact that most of these people are best known for cocking everything up entirely. I will mention no names - not least because there is probably a SECRET SOCIETY of such people and I might get invited to a DO or something - but I regularly see newspaper columns by people who have steered opposition parties to disastrous defeats, or the papers being reviewed by people who were sacked for being entirely untrustworthy, or indeed former chancellors of the exchequer responsible for one of the worst budgets ever popping up on telly to discuss what the current government should be doing instead. NO NAMES.

Thus I am providing this MEA CULPA to say that it's a fair cop, I got that one wrong, and will take some time to reflect upon my errors. I expect this to take at LEAST half an hour, at which point I shall once again be available to confidently predict Doctor Doom's future movements. When IS the next big Comic Con anyway?

posted 9/2/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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