Gutted

Tonight I had one of my best sets all year: felt like I stormed it from beginning to end ... But sadly, 'twas not to be. I spent the rest of the night in nervous anticipation, looking at each of the following acts and hoping that I was going to not be exceeded by them. Which is a nasty cocktail of schadenfreude, envy and pride, I suppose.

Anyway, by the end of the night I was feeling sick: sat at the back of the room, waiting for the results to be read out, and then finding you weren't one of the top three of the nine contestants. I felt like weeping, but there was nothing to do but congratulate the winners, and then get out and drown my sorrows.

In frozen yoghurt. Which isn't the strongest medication for disappointment, but there you are. I've got to get up and go for a twenty mile run tomorrow, so no tears here.

Perhaps it would be easier if I'd properly self-destructed on stage; that's probably not the case, but it's more aggravating to find you lost by a whisker - or at least if you did have a disastrous set, you'd have the next hour to come to terms with it before the results made it official. But it's not a good idea to start wishing you'd screwed up royally, now is it?