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Today In Hornestory

@todayinhornestory.bsky.social

70 followers 19 following 230 posts

On this day in 2003, Alex Horne was up to something. Daily posts of newspaper clippings and wayback machine gleanings from the Horneverse.

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 2h

Oh indeed? 😬😬

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 23h

29 October 2011 - The Horne Section rides again! This time with Peter Serafinowicz, Charlie Baker et Marcel Lucont. Bof.

The Telegraph advertises the above with a shrugging Tim Key from a previous show.

Newspaper clipping "Ten best comedy gigs" includes a photo of Tim Key in front of Joe Stilgoe at the piano with pinky purple horne sectiony lighting. Blurb reads: "The Horne Section tonight Alex Horne and his trusty five-peice band provide jazzy backing for a changing line-up of comedians. Tonight: Peter Serafinowicz and (this should be good) Alex Dubus's shrugging French misanthrope Marcel Lucont.

Clipping of a mention of the horne section with an image of Alex Horne on stage in front of Joe Stilgoe.

newspaper clipping: The Horne Section Alex Horne's late evening fusion of comedy acts and a jazzy big-band veers between the sublime and the shambolic, so be prepared.

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 1d

28 October 2021 - Alex says "I love you" to Greg.

S12E6 of #TaskmasterUK airs.

Alex Horne looking over at Greg with hope.

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 2d

27 October 2022 - A banter section airs which dies so completely, Alex offers Greg 50 euros. #Taskmaster S16E5 Chip Biffington airs.

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 3d

26 October 2013 - AHPTHS re-run running on digital-only radio4 extra. Exciting stuff!

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 4d

25 October 2006 - TKDay enters urban dictionary, planted there by Verbal Gardener, Horne.

www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?t...

Tkday
Listen to pronunciation
Share definition
Your 10,000th day alive. You'll reach your Tkday when you're about 27 years, 3 months and 15 days.

It's a big day. You've finally moved from being a four figure day person to a five figure day person and you'll always now be a five figure day person.

On you're Tkday you actually become an adult. Forget 16th, 18th or 21st birthdays - you don't actually know anything then. But on your Tkday you should really have worked out that life's a bit tricky and things aren't going to work out exactly as you'd hoped but that you do have a couple of good friends.
"Happy Tkday Mark"
"Thanks Stu"
"How does it feel"
"Fine, actually"
by V.G.Farmer October 25, 2006

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 5d

24 October 2018 - Horne is televised poking out of a grotto.

taskmaster.info/episode.php?... #Taskmaster S7E8 airs.

Alex Horne in assistant's garb on ladder through the top hole of a grotto.

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 6d

23 October 2019 - Shaqinahat.
Sorry, Shaq in a hat? Yeah, Shaquille O'Neal wearing a hat, Shaq in a hat. Shaq in a hat? Why are you saying Shaq in a hat? Two metres 45 is equivalent to Shaq in a hat. Shiq in a hit. Shiq in a hit in a shid.

#taskmaster Series 9 Episode 8 airs.

Greg and Alex on their thrones holding cards an ipad respectively. Looking at each other in that way that they look at each other.

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 7d

22 October 2011 - "Playful, Jazz-hating" Alex Horne and a "really good band" (and Tim Minchin).

Once again, photos nabbed from the incredible diamondgeyser on flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/diamo...

Newspaper clipping: "The Horne Section" Playful, jazz-hating compere Alex Horne hosts, while a really good band provides backing and various high calibre comedians do short spots. Tim Minchin is on the bill this weekend. Tomorrow, Criterion Theatre, SW1

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 8d

21 October 2021 - Taskmaster's 100th Episode airs. Little Alex Horne looks like a big human shrew.

Little Alex Horne in assistant's garb, sits in his little throne in the taskmaster studio. He's blowing into a noise-maker and holding a rolled piece of paper in his other hand.

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 9d

20 October 2014 - Ah yes, before he was "Little."

Screenshot of a tweet by The Horne Section, retweeted by Alex Horne (not yet Little) - "Looking forward to another cracking show tomorrow night at @sohotheatre who's coming?" No replies, 2 retweets, 2 faves

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 10d

19 October 2011 - Review of the first 2011 Criterion show runs in The Independent.

By JULIAN HALL
The chocolate-box charm of the Criterion Theatre seems a good fit for thesweet allure of the Horne Section and their latest season of jazz-comedy fusion. Fur-thermore, the lightbulbs that adorn the proscenium arch give the group's set the requisite cabaret vibe. It's a vibe that stand-up Alex Horne propagates with the show's opening number, "Roll Up", that playfully warns "no matter what you think of us you won't be reimbursed." After introducing the band, that includes musical virtuoso Joe Stilgoe, Horne reveals "the wheel of wonder" that will be used to randomlygenerate various elements in the show. The first of these whimsical forays hastwo punters playing a version of Connect 4 using the rest of audience. One lady is charged with finding four people on a row who have been to France. It's all harmless fun, but the comedic payoff is slight.
Award-winning comedy-poet Tim
Key is the first of tonight's guests. Well-used to setting his brief compositions to music, Key runs through some of his accomplished back catalogue including:
"I counted to 100 and said 'T'm coming" but it was a trick and she had left me." Later Key tries to orchestratesome kind of jam with the band, with Horne improvising lyrics and Keythen doing a poem over that, but it seems he has too many toys to play with to get anywhere.
Somewhat more polished is the Horne Section's boyband pastiche "If We Ever Get Any Groupies" and guests Oompah Brass are equally tight with their versions of pop songs including Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", for which a goodly numberof the audience provide the words.

Tonight's headliner is a dapper Peter Serafinowiez. Louche, aloof, and ever-so-slightly smug, the cameo star of TV comedies including Spaced and Black Books uses a jazz soundscape to morph into a kind of Lenny Bruce-does-puns act. The material certainly has a historic feel to it: "I'd like to open a burger chain for senior citizens and call it Old McDonald's."Despite the corny nature of some of the "jazz jokes" (the man with one nostril who can "only smell in mono" or the morphing of donkey sanctuary into "donctuary") and the stretching of the conceit, Serafinowicz brings a persona very much in keeping with the show's spirit.

Not seen live that often, Serafinow-icz signs off with his renowned Paul McCartney impression and a specially truncated version of "Let It Be" to avoid public liability problems, he says.
So, "LIB" it is.
The shorthand for the Horne Section as a whole? PEO: pleasant evening out.
To 26 November (0844 847 1778)

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 11d

18 October 2011 - This all tracks.

Alex Horne
In Seven Years in the Bathroom, Alex Horne compresses the average person's lifetime (79 years) into the space of an hour, to show how much time we use up having sex, sleeping and (obviously) peeling an onion with a screwdriver. Harrogate Theatre

Harrogate Theatre Alex Horne See Ten Best, right. 8pm, £12, concs £10.

Comedy Alex Horne, Harrogate Theatre Page 14

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 12d

17 October 2005 - The Pavilion in Brighton again - only this time it's 2005, in Latin and "strangely entrancing."

Full article (ads included!): www.theargus.co.uk/news/6805791...

# Alex Horne, Pavillion Theatre, Brighton

**Alex Horne put together a pleasing amalgamation of university lecture, children's breakfast TV show and choose-your-own adventure book.**

The premise of an adult education Latin course was just the road into a tangled Spaghetti Junction of possibilities.

The audience were divided into boys and girls, with a captain of each sex, and launched on an interactive Roman holiday around Sheffield via a projected computer screen, with the aim of collecting four golden keys.

On the way we were supposed to pick up Latin vocabulary while encountering figures such as the Oracle of Frank Lampard and the Cyclops (pop singer Gabrielle with a head full of wasps).

Mr Horne and his talented assistant Tim Keys (whose fabulous deadpan eyebrows will take him far) could have done with a more gung-ho audience to really take flight, but their digitally enhanced linguistic ramblings remained strangely entrancing.

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 13d

Upside down in the middle.

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 13d

16 October 2007 - Nearing the end of the World In One City: Kiribati and Haiti

I'm sure the full story for each will show up any day now. It's not like he's busy.

Tuesday, 16 October 2007
No.178: Kiribati

Full story to follow...

Alex Horne - October 16th

Kiribati is pronounced keery-pus. That's according to 62 year old Mr Maritino Burentawara (pronounced purentawara) who's now living in Sutton (yes, that is London, it's in the London Borough of Sutton). He's been a missionary and a headmaster in his time and has lived in Papua New Guinea and Australia as well as Kiribati and London. When he and his wife, whom he met while she was working for VSO on the islands, first came to the UK they stayed on the floor of her parents' farm in Scotland. 'That is the coldest part of this country', he told me.

No.179: Haiti
Alex Horne - 16th October 2007
Both of Kathleen's parents are from Haiti. Indeed, all four of her grandparents are Haitian. But Kathleen herself has never actually lived there, having spent her first nine years in New York, the next nineteen in Montreal and then living in Miami before moving to London in 2004.

On a table outside the same Starbucks on Chancery Lane where I'd met Ohood from Bahrain three months earlier, we chatted merrily away about how different people view different nationalities. In Britain people think she's American, but in America people think she's Canadian. Nobody seems to know how to respond when she says she's from Haiti. 'I have no country!' she laughed.
It's hard to get the tone right in these brief blurbs but I should make it clear that this was a very upbeat conversation about race. She may not fit in to any easy category, but Kathleen has clearly enjoyed her life wherever it has taken her, this 'outsider' status a quirk not a burden

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 14d

15 October 2011 - The Horne Section gigs with the UK's most famous monkey, the Pub Landlord and an accomplished opera/burlesque/autoharp performer. I'd be realllll grateful to anyone with photo/video evidence 🙏

The Horne Section at the Criterion Theatre
“Fresh, original, blissfully funny; a whole lot of fun. Highly recommended.” ✭✭✭✭✭ TIME OUT

The comedy-jazz juggernaut of The Horne Section returns to the West End for a run of eight late-night Saturday shows. It’s live and loud – part improvised, part honed, part performance, part party.

Alex Horne and his magnificent band will be jamming with the biggest, best and most bizarre acts around;

October;
8th; Peter Serafinowicz, Tim Key & Oompah Brass
15th; Al Murray, Nina Conti & Ali McGregor

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 15d

14 October 2020 - Final night of a triumphant return run to a socially distanced Ronnie Scott's.

(Article from the 15th. Photos from the 13th. Slow news day, okay?!)

Full article: londonjazznews.com/2020/10/15/a...

Alex Horne holding a microphone and smiling at Peter Piano. Cool jazz lighting in a cool jazz venue.

piano ; Joe Auckland trumpet/banjo; Mark Brown , sax/guitar and Will Collier on bass. You would think these guys would tire of their own jokes but it was clear that there was some real-time banter happening as old jokes took on new directions and had everyone in stitches. Ronnie Scott’s is usually home to some of the best jazz in the world and while this music wasn’t jazz, it sure was entertaining. Just what the doctor ordered during such uncertainty and discouragement – for a minute, everyone had forgotten that they were boxed in Perspex. If this is what the new normal can be, it ain’t so bad.

The Horne Section on stage at Ronnie Scott's. The audience is visible in socially distanced groups of two.

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 16d

13 October 2014 - Alex hosts the BUG special.

Genuinely disturbing (but relatively free of actual bugs) promo video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nddo...

Close up of Alex Horne's upside-down head. There's a shadow of a mouth on his forehead.

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 17d

12 October 2003 - Same place, one year earlier.

Full review (published 14 Oct 2003): www.theargus.co.uk/news/5102882...

Academic rigour was provided by sidekick Tim and his many props: Overhead Projector, laptop, digital camera and mini fridge containing vodka and orange (to measure the effects of alcohol on comprehension and laughter levels). The man certainly has a way with acetates.

Nicely playful and coolly understated, Alex's puns were whimsically bad - just the way I like them. The show was a welcome cerebral workout with its convoluted logic, surreal twists and matey interaction.

There were occasional awkward moments, confidence subsidence and energy dips but these were cleverly sidestepped by winning charm and silly gags.

At 23 and already a Perrier best newcomer nominee, Alex Horne could make even the most inscrutable of fish laugh.

Review by Marie Sansom, features@theargus.co.uk

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 18d

11 October 2004 - Five separate papers hocking Horne. Unfortunately Bluesky only allows four.

Monday 11 Brighton Pavilion Theatre Alex Horne The top comic interprets the audience's body language as part of the 2004 International Body Language Seminars. 7.50pm. Tickets £11.

Large listing of comedians performing as part of the Brighton Comedy Festival

His playful stories and brilliantly-inspired puns set him apart from the crowd and his first solo show, Making Fish Laugh, was a huge hit in 2003.

Four years ago, Horne gave up his place in the final of Channel 4's So You Think You're Funny to go and spend a month with some llamas in Peru.

Since then, he's barely looked back, completing a national tour with Robert Llewellyn, writing for Steve Coogan and performing at all the top clubs, including Jongleurs and The Comedy Store.

Laden with supreme one-liners, Alex's latest show offers the public the chance to join him in a series of interactive lectures that aim to understand exactly what the audience's body language is saying. We dread to think!

Starts 7.50pm, Tickets £11/£10

Given the interactive nature of his show, potential audiences will be glad to know that, if Howard Marks hadn't already trademarked the title, Horne would almost certainly be going down as the festival's Mr Nice.

He says he's removed the section about baldness from the show because, "I felt horrible, like I was highlighting people's insecurities" and feels guilty about having researched it "in bookshops like Borders without ever having bought the books". Hell, he's even invited a kids TV presenter along for the ride.

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 19d

10 October 2007 - World In One City: Libya.

Still waiting on that full story...

Wednesday, 10 October 2007
No.169: Libya

Full story to follow...

Alex Horne - 10th October 2007

Sara Nashnush has one of my favourite surnames of the project so far. She told me it was a big family name back in Tripoli. She herself moved to London when she was just a year and two thirds old (well, her family brought her really) but she did live in Libya for a year in 1993. 'That made me feel a bit more connected to my family and friends', she told me. 'But being Libyan in London has never been an issue for me. I've got my own culture and religion alongside my London life but I don't ever really think about it. Maybe that's because of London. I don't have to think about it here because it's such a multicultural city.'

Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 20d

9 October 2003 - Some incredibly charming reporting about up-and-coming Sussex comedy king and "thoroughly nice boy" Alex Horne.

www.theargus.co.uk/news/5103025...

The great comedy experiment

The Sussex stand-up's latest show, Making Fish Laugh, is a recreation of a bizarre 1976 experiment to identify exactly what tickles us.

The mild discomfort of others, repetition and indeed tickling are on the list of hypotheses which he puts to the test in front of his audience.

The unusual show won plaudits and a Perrier Award nomination at the Edinburgh Fringe this year. On Sunday, Brighton gets its own humour check-up.

But for Alex, 25, the road to stand-up stardom came about almost by accident. He had returned to his former school, Lancing College, to give a talk about the year he spent teaching English in China.

He said: "I was absolutely useless and awful. I didn't take the talk very seriously and afterwards one of the teachers said I should try comedy. That was it, really."

It took three years before he dared to go in front of another audience, this time at Cambridge University where he was studying.

He said: "I plucked up the courage to do the open mic night and once I'd done it I just had to do it again.

"I just did more and more and then started going to London doing pub nights, then got picked up by an agency and got bigger gigs."

Alex, from Midhurst, was a Perrier Award nominee this year and has written scripts for Craig Charles.

He has also appeared as a support act to another well-known Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn, aka Kryten the android, and his performance went down a storm.

He said: "That show was great because when I walked on stage everyone thought I was Robert, as loads of the crowd had only seen him in his mask. They soon found out I wasn't.

"I have had a few bad gigs, the worst is when people are just not interested. I try not to say anything too offensive or inflammatory."

But not everyone thought Alex, who crafts a neat line in puns one moment and confused, surreal babbling the next, would ever become a comedian.

Adrian Arnold, his former tutor at Lancing College, said: "The surprising thing is he never did any acting until his last term, when I persuaded him to act in a half-hour comedy. I think he enjoyed it but he said he didn't think he would do any more acting.

"He always had a very dry, droll sense of humour but he was also quite shy. He was very academic and I always thought he would end up being a solicitor, barrister or an accountant. Certainly not a stand-up comedian.

"But he was a thoroughly nice boy and we are surprised but delighted by what he is doing now."

Alex appears at the Pavilion Theatre in New Road, Brighton, on Sunday.

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 21d

Awww I’d never really thought of it as an honorific but it absolutely is 👏

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Today In Hornestory @todayinhornestory.bsky.social · 21d

8 October 2011 - The Horne Section begins their clearly difficult to describe run at The Criterion.

"Shambolic" wins the award for 2008-2014's-most-frequently-used-descriptor-of-thing-with-Tim-Key-in.

The Horne Section - Versatile clown Alex Horne brings his playful take on the variety show format back into the West End. Every Saturday special guests will do their act and interact with Horne's band. Tonight's line-up includes Twitter king Peter Serafinowicz and offbeat poet Tim Key.

The Horne Section. Alex Horne's bold fusion of comedy acts and a jazzy big-band - who riff together, or not, as the mood suits - can be shambolic; it can also be utterly uproarious. Peter Serafinowicz and Tim Key are among those joining in the first of eight late-night Saturday sessions.