I am in a place called Ottawa which I've just found out is the capital of Canada. (My apologies to the nation of Canada, but I genuinely thought it was Toronto). The huge parliament buildings which grace the city centre as I winged my way into the city this morning were my first clue. The second clue was a huge sign as we drove off from the airport saying "Welcome to Canada's capital city of Ottawa" I guess that's why I'm known as an observational comic. We are roughly halfway through this 4-week tour of Canada which has been hugely enjoyable. In one of the many highlights, yesterday I went to Niagara Falls which is only an hour long drive from Toronto, which is sooo not the capital of Canada.

Niagara Falls is only the second 'Wonder of The World' I can vouch to having visited in my life, the first being the great Taj Mahal in India. That was a slightly different experience as I was only 11 at the time and distinctly remember being annoyed that I had to get on a tour bus and leave the hotel pool to go see some stupid marble palace. In fact I remember spending much of the day playing Donkey Kong on an old portable Nintendo while a tour guide bleated on about 'the greatest architectural masterpiece in the World' blah, blah, blah. 'The Taj Mahal was built on 4 levels.' Big wow! Donkey Kong had 8! I remember being similarly unresponsive when being dragged along to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in Paris when I was 13, the difference being I was still underwhelmed when I visited it again last month. But when I found out we were going to visit the Niagara Falls yesterday, I was genuinely excited. Heck, I didn't even pack my playstation.

People often ask me what I do when I have a few days off from stand up? The answer (at least today) is that I jump on an early morning train from Edinburgh to London where I catch a connecting commuter train to Crystal Palace just in time to make a game of football with some of my fellow comedians which happens every Tuesday at 2pm. It’s madness, I know. But it’s quite simply the most enjoyable thing in my life, and why let the slight inconvenience of a 788 mile round trip get in the way of that. The thing is, I’m not very good at football, but then it’s not really about the football. It’s a really good work out especially after a month of excess in Edinburgh, but it’s not really about the exercise either. It’s about the people and the banter.

To millions of people around the globe, tomorrow sees the start of the 25th Games of the Olympiad in Beijing, but to a considerably smaller group of people tomorrow marks the opening of the 10th anniversary of the Comedy of Danny Bhoy in East Lothian. I’m sure when the Olympic Committee discovered their big opening clashed with such a momentous event on the other side of world they were kicking themselves (which incidentally I’ve always thought should be an event). In fact, there is an argument that stand up comedy requires similar skills to that of our top Olympic athletes. I may not be very good at throwing an object for distance, but I’m not too bad at dodging them. And trying to keep one’s focus and balance while attempting to get through a complicated routine almost perfectly describes my last gig in Port Hedland, Australia. Perhaps one day, falling into an orchestra pit will be an Olympic event, in which case I’ve got the gold in the bag!

I am back in London after a week long mini tour of Ireland where I played some delightful little venues up and down the country. Ireland is the ultimate ‘wind down’ country. There really does seem to be nothing there that requires immediate attention. I was asked by the front of house manager in Sligo if I had a policy on latecomers? I said I didn’t mind if people drifted in after the start of the show. “Thank god!” she said “otherwise the show would be completely empty!” I was travelling round with top Australian comic Adam Hills, who had a week of holiday planned after Kilkenny, but like all comics started to itchy feet…well, foot. We started in Ballybofey up in the North of Ireland, and then did shows in Roscommon, Carrick On Shannon, Galway, Sligo and Cork. I was, of course, concentrating hard on my forthcoming Edinburgh show..so much so, that I nearly missed an easy 3 foot putt on the 15th at Strandhill. It was a brilliant week. One of the highlights for me was the gig in Roscommon where I conducted a mock Communion with some audience members including a prominent local Member of Parliament. Allow me to explain...

And welcome to my first April blog of 2008. It seems like months since I last sent a few paragraphs about my life out there into cyberspace, hoping that someone somewhere reads them with mild interest. I’m still here in my flat in Edinburgh which hasn’t changed much since my last blog. Oh, actually, I bought a chest of drawers yesterday from a local charity shop which now stands proudly in my bedroom supporting a flatscreen TV. The charity shop had neglected to clear out all the items belonging to the previous owner from the drawers, which means I am now the owner of a pair of legwarmers, a nearly full pack of cards, a French textbook and a black and white photograph of a child standing next to a circus elephant. It’s understandable that the charity shop probably thought such items were not really sellable as individual pieces, but to smuggle them into my chest was a little underhand. Shame on you Dr. Barnardo.

It’s the end of my tour of Western Australia which started on the 5th of February in Perth. It has been another amazing if slightly draining tour. As one woman said to me at the last show “Danny, you’re looking tired.” We have covered another three and half thousand miles by car, and god knows how much by air to visit as far north as Karratha, as far East as Alice Springs and as far south as Esperance. The tour has taken us from the hedonistic nightlife of Kalgoorlie to the gentle rolling vineyards of Margaret River. (From Skimpys to wrinklies). There are places I would have liked to have stayed longer and places were one night was too long, but everywhere I went I got some truly fantastic audiences, so thank you.

I trust you are all enjoying your festive season. For those of you reading this in Australia/New Zealand, you ought to know that last night the temperature in Edinburgh dropped to -8. If you’re not sure what that feels like, put your hand in the freezer for 5 minutes, then rub that hand all over your body (don’t do it to someone else without their expressed permission).

And a very warm welcome to my new website. I can’t take all or indeed any of the credit for it. The opening page is what they call a ‘flash page’ which allows the viewer to click on things and watch things happen. I’m sure you’ll work it all out long before I do. I hope you like it, and welcome any suggestions, ideas you would like to see on it. I personally have requested that the beautiful beach scenery slowly changes in line with the gradual destruction of the environment. I thought it might be nice to highlight the cause by showing over time a darkening of the skies and muddying of the waters due to pollution, the gradual eclipsing of the beach due to the polar ice caps melting and the odd beached whale which you click on and oil spurts out of its gills. So, for the time being the image will remain purposefully upbeat, and pretty, but it’s up to all of us to keep it that way….

It’s October the 9th, which as we all know is National Blog Day, so here’s mine. I’m back in Edinburgh until further notice, which rather sounds like I’ve been sent home from a war, but just means that I’m currently enjoying some time off. If stand up was like war, then I feel like I’ve spent at least some of the past 7 months on the front line. In fact there are some gigs where I would have happily delivered my show from a bunker, and would have been comforted to see a roll of barbed wire between me and the audience…you know who you are Dubbo.

I’ve just finished my tour of New Zealand. I love New Zealand. It’s a bit like Scotland except there is less brown grass and horizontal rain. I had way too much fun, for some one who was supposed to be working. This was mainly due to the fact that I travelled with a support act by the name of Charlie Pickering, who just made me laugh all the time. I don’t often get to tour with other comedians these days, which is a shame, because generally it’s a far more enjoyable experience. We did some amazing things, when we had a bit of spare time. In Christchurch we went Jet-boating, which was fun for the first 10 minutes, until we realised we really should have taken more heed of the clothing advice offered to us in the pamphlet, which strongly recommended ‘warm clothing’.

I’ve been back home in Edinburgh for the past 10 days. It’s very strange being back in my own flat for a change. I’ve become so used to hotel living over the past 6 months, that I’m finding it slightly difficult to adjust. When I heard a knock at my front door the other day, I instinctively shouted out “nothing needs replaced from the minibar!” This left a very puzzled look on the face of the guy who had come round to fix the TV ariel?

I returned home to a mountain of mail which is always fun, fun, fun. It’s amazing just how much shit can pile up in 6 months. I had an unpaid parking ticket from January that now seems to want my house as payment. I had a letter from my telephone company saying they had noticed I hadn’t used my home line in 6 months and therefore presumed I was dead, but if I wasn’t dead would I be interested in their new homeplan upgrade? I also got a letter from the local council back in April telling me that unless I had any objections, they were going to dig up the pavement outside my house and ‘have a look at some pipes.’

I've just realised that my last blog was from Adelaide, so it's high time I wrote a new one. I've just got back from a week in New Zealand, and I'm now back in Melbourne for the final leg of the regional tour of Australia. Tonight I'm in Frankston, which I am told is a large suburb of Melbourne full of bogans? I'm not sure what that is? Maybe an abbreviation for tobogganists? Or just a friendly term for the locals? I'll soon find out, I guess...

I finished up at the Melbourne Comedy Festival 2 weeks ago. Thank you to everyone that came to the show. It wasn't the easiest room to play, but when I got used to it, I really enjoyed the shows. It was good to spend some time with some of my comedian friends after spending so many months on the road on my own. I was back out on the road the week before last doing some shows on the Gold Coast. In one of the freakiest moments of my life, I met childhood legends, The Krankies, who came to my show in Surfer's Paradise. Unfortunately, the little boy wasn't there, just his dad and, I presume, his mum, given the striking resemblance (actually, wait a minute....)