Gig 56: Moviejokie @ Frog & Bucket, Manchester – 9th May 2012

Just a couple of days after competing in Beat the Frog (Gig 54), I was back at Manchester’s Frog and Bucket, but, thankfully, this time there was no gong\frog\competitive element.  I’d been lucky enough to be asked to be part of Moviejokie, the character comedy-based movie quiz.  Yes, it’s a movie quiz where the questions are asked by people doing character comedy.  You’re right, it is as awesome a format as it sounds.

I was only asked if I could take part a week ago, so I quickly had to decide on a couple of movie-related characters to perform as (I had to do 2 4-minute spots, where I had to ask 2 questions as each character).  It seemed a no-brainer to do Harry Potter, which I had performed at the last SAS Comedy (Gig 48), and I also thought I could convert Clive Bunny – the Bobby’s Snacks obsessive – which I’d done at the SAS before last (Gig 39).  It was exciting to be able to have another crack at these characters, but it was slightly daunting that I wouldn’t really have chance to practice them in their new forms.   I worked out the basic structure of what I’d do, at the weekend, but there’d definitely be an element of me winging it on the night.

In the first half, I’d be Clive Bunny.  In his original appearance, Clive was the host of an internet consumer affairs show in which he was a little too obsessed with Bobby’s Snacks.  To get the movie aspect in, I decided to make him Bobby’s sole agent in Hollywood, and he’d talk about his movie star friends and which snacks they liked.  I basically had some packs of crisps and talked about which celebs liked which flavours and why.  The questions would be me talking about a particular snack and making the audience work out who it was that liked them.  Overall, it didn’t quite work.  I possibly tried to cram too much into the 4-minutes (a bit like when I first tried Bobby’s Snack related materials in Gig 34).  I think also that by changing the character to fit the theme, I didn’t quite have chance to work out what he was all about and how to maximise the humour from him.  It’s one of those occasions where something not quite working has given me something interesting to think about, rather than just being a bit depressing.

Fortunately, Harry Potter’s appearance in the second half went much better.  As Harry is already, technically, movie-themed, I could just do the act pretty much as it was.  The idea is that he’s fed up of wizarding (and being a movie star) and so is trying his hand at stand up comedy.  It was pretty easy to turn a couple of his “jokes” into questions.

And that was that.  It’s the first time that I’ve done 3 gigs on 3 consecutive nights and also the first time that I’d done more than one character on the same night.  Two world records falling in the same night.  That can’t be bad.