Jack Dee was brilliant last night, there was one particular riff based on a farty noise coming from the audience that had me in tears, and made my stomach hurt with laughter. The full review can be read here.

After the show, we went for a couple of drinks at the Horn In Hand, just along from the theatre and very close to the tram home. The pub is over the road from Trent University, and although it seems to attract a student clientele, this is not reflected in the prices. Now I am neither dirt poor or mega-rich, so it makes no difference to me what they charge, I go into a pub based on what the pub is like. A pint of Guinness (me) and a pint of toffee apple cider (Mandi) cost six pound something, which is about right for the city centre where a pint of Guinness averages the three pound fifty mark.

When I first moved to London in the early 1990s, I had come from being a college student in Boston, Lincolnshire. Boston was never a progressive town, but it did have (it might not any more) a good range of pubs that catered for the young and groovy; The Axe and Cleaver, The Indian Queen (known as the IQ), The Carpenter's Arms, (The Carps), The Town Pump, and two nightclubs that dealt with us cool young things by hosting the alternative night on a Wednesday. When Rumours stopped doing it, we switched our custom to The Corn Exchange. Prices were low. During my first week in London, I went for a job interview in Hamleys, (I got the job by the way), and went out after the interview to sample the delights of Carnaby Street by going into a pub and ordering a pint of Guinness. I was charged two pounds. TWO POUNDS! I never thought that I would live to see the day that I was charged two whole pounds for a pint. I had to walk home from a successful job interview because my desire for a pint had fucked up my bus fare.

So where do students go these days for the cheap life? Or, are students a lot richer these days? We used to go where it was a pound a pint, and I think that I might have actually soiled my trousers if I'd been asked for three pounds. Our routine was to meet up in the square and head to Threshers for cigarettes. Sometimes we would go halves on a packet, and take our own empty box to put our share in. There was a sliding scale of which cigarettes you would buy. If you were flush you would of course buy Marlboro Red, if you really wanted to look flash then you would buy a twenty box. The sliding scale would go further and further down, through Lambert and Butler, (Lammy Bammys), Berkley, Gold Mark were the lowest you could go before buying rolling tobacco and making your own. Whatever fags you ended up buying, you would decant them into a Marlboro packet so as not to look like you couldn't afford the same smokes that rock stars liked. The Town Pump was the first pub you'd go to, as it was a pound a pint until half ten. Once you had a table sorted, you would all buy two or three pints and put them down to savour until it was time to leave. Once in the club, it was the one pound a pint thing again. Nobody got a taxi home, we all walked as the town centre and the houses were conveniently close, if you lived in the sticks you would stay at someones house.

Talking of smoking, first of all I'm glad that I was a student during a time when you could smoke in the pub. The ridiculous ban on smoking in pubs has taken something away from pub life, and it is a shame to see that an entire generation of the future won't know any other way of life other than going outside for a cigarette. Tonight I saw two people passing an electronic cigarette between each other.

When I lived in a shared student house, we all shared the shopping on a Friday after college. Most of the stuff we bought was 'white label', in our case it was the dreaded Kwik Save and their No Frills range. As far as value for money was concerned, forget it, nothing lasted more than an hour before going off. One of the house worked a few nights a week in a chip shop, and she was allowed to bring stuff home if it hadn't sold. She would deliberately cook a load of stuff towards the end of her shift so that we could have a good feed when she got home at midnight.

I can't imagine students today living like this. Do they really have more money than we did? When we left the pub, we went to buy a pint of milk from a shop that was open late and seemed to place an emphasis on their close proximity to the university. A pint of milk cost 78p. I'm no tight wad, but you can buy a four pint bottle of milk for that in most shops, so I was looking forward to seeing what a 78p pint of milk tasted like. To my disappointment, it tasted just like regular priced milk. If the cats think they're having some of this, they can think again.