Nailing It

Growing up, Rich Hall aspired to be a writer, and after school he trained to be a journalist. But after a stint at the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee, he found himself trying to impress a girl by doing a one-man show in a state university campus in Kansas, armed with a bucket, a loudhailer and some dog biscuits.

It wasn't exactly a triumph, and he didn't get the girl, but he had found his true calling.

Nailing It is a collection of true stories from both Hall's professional and personal life where he really had to nail it. They're not about glitz, or fame, or how he met his seventh wife at the rehab clinic and found spiritual direction. None of that happened to him.

They're about accidentally melting Kraft cheese at his first Edinburgh Fringe Festival, alienating an entire convention of RV holiday-makers in Las Vegas, singing The Who's 'You Better You Bet' at a charity gig and turning his performance into a legendary rock 'n' roll disaster, and attempting to seduce Karen, which must have been successful because she is now his wife.

And other such escapades.

Hall doesn't always come out of them all covered in glory - far from it - but if someone propped him up at the end of the comedy bar and put a 50p coin in him, these are the tunes he would spin. And you'd be laughing all night.