Gig 29a: Quizzilingus @ The Bowling Green, Chorlton – 26th January 2012

Incredibly, it’s been 7 months since I last made a guest appearance at Quizzilingus (see here).  I actually can’t believe that it’s been that long, so much so that it’s making my brain want to explode.

You might be forgiven for wondering how doing a 10-question round at a pub quiz vaguely relates to performing comedy, so I had better explain.  The round is euphemistically entitled “The Experimental Round”, which essentially means I can just do whatever I want to.  This week saw me perform as Jack Michaelson (Chortlon’s 14th-best Michael Jackson impersonator).  The questions were all based on Michael Jackson songs and were of the form of “jokes” that were so bad that they end up becoming weird riddles (e.g. Q:  Which MJ song is about his demands for a non-electrically powered alternative to a hoover?  A: I want Ewbank).  To be honest, the aim of the round isn’t necessarily for anybody to get the right answers.  In fact, the last few times that I’ve done it, far too many teams were getting 8 or 9 out of ten, which was disheartening.  I’m pleased to say that on this occasion the highest score was 6 and that next to that was 3 out of ten.

The format also really allows me to play about and just say some stupid stuff (in an attempt to be funny).  I quite liked the fact that ostensibly I was “in character” but essentially making up who the character was as I went along (Michaelson’s catchphrase is “ha ha”).  It’s also a really interesting performance experience as what I’m basically doing is attempting to do a comedy performance in a completely non-comedy situation.  Although some people seemed to really enjoy it (there was a round of applause at the end), obviously some people are there because they want to do a quiz and don’t want to hear some idiot waffling on.  There’s definitely something to be learnt from it, but I have no idea what it is yet.

The last time I did Quizzlingus, it led directly to me performing proper character comedy as Gary Barlow (most successfully, here), so perhaps we’ll be seeing Jack Michaelson again soon.

To be fair, we might not.