Gig 27: Comedy Balloon @ The Ape and Apple, Manchester – 18th January 2012

Although I hadn’t performed at the Comedy Balloon since October (Gig 14), I had already done several bits (“Luke, I am Yor Father”\Arnie\Controversial-Incomplete Joke) on all my previous gigs there.  As such, I thought it was only right to ditch them and try something new.  As luck would have it, I had some new things to try.

My planned set was:

1) New bit about Roy Walker’s autobiography.  I was originally going to open with this at Gig 25, but I decided against it as it seemed a little too obtuse to try out on that particular night.  It basically consists of me telling a long (90 seconds-ish) jokeless, serious story before capping off with a fairly lame punchline.  This kind of material is, somewhat unfortunately, the type of stuff that I find funniest.  I had a burning desire to give it a try, even though there was a good chance it wouldn’t work at all.  I had to get it out of my system, if nothing else.

2) My “personal bit”.  This is about 3 minutes of stuff that generally goes down well.  The stuff I had planned next, follows on directly on from this, and it seemed a good idea to stick something in that usually works.

3) A new section that I’m going to call “personal bit 2″.  This material came from several sources.  Firstly, there are a few things that I say in “personal bit” that I thought might be funny to address in a “meta” way.  I then had a couple of relationships things.  The first of these was just a random note that I had jotted down.  The other bit was inspired by the warm-up improvisation that I performed in Gig 22.  I felt happy enough with how all this hung together, but, as always with new material, I wasn’t really sure whether or not it was punchy enough.

As this gig came just a few days after the last one (Gig 26) – which was also new stuff – I’d had to practice the material in parallel.  The advantage of doing a chunk of material on a theme – rather than some of the more random stuff I do – is that it does make it easier to remember.  I do find it really important, though, to run through it as many times as possible in order to get the wording as tight as possible, and to hopefully generate additional toppers to jokes.

There was a fairly small audience (I think I counted 13, not including the other acts), but it was enough to continue.  I was on third and, from the two acts on before me, it seemed that although the audience were enjoying it and appreciative, they weren’t making a huge amount of noise.  So, when it came to my performance, although I got a reaction, and definitely didn’t die, I wasn’t fully able to judge which bits really worked and which didn’t.  This isn’t an attempt to blame the audience,  just a symptom of my lack of experience.

As a whole, I was happy with how it went. I enjoyed doing the Roy Walker stuff and was able to get a laugh out of it (mainly by highlighting the ridiculousness of it).  I’d like to try it again, but might possibly change where I put it in the set.  The “personal bit 2″ stuff seemed to work sufficiently well and it at least felt like it was stand up material (I’ve done stuff in the past where it’s apparent that it’s not going to work when you actually perform it in front of people).  I look forward to trying it again and hopefully gauging where it can be improved.

All in all, it was a fun night.  Yes, this is a really lame way of ending it, but that’s all I’ve got.