Gig 110: Spotlight @ The Storey, Lancaster – 17th May 2013

May 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Love Kills (Freddie Mercury song)

Friday night saw me make my fifth appearance at Lancaster’s Spotlight.  Along with SOS Comedy and Magical Animals, it’s one of the nights at which I always love performing, largely because I have the freedom to perform the sort of material that I really want.   Whenever I return to a venue that I’ve played before, I try to do completely different material (where possible).  Thanks to this blog, I have a record of everything I’ve ever done at Spotlight, and so I was able to cobble together an entirely new (for the venue) 10-minute set.  Well, I was supposed to do a 10 minute set, but I suspected I actually had 12 or 13 minutes of material.

There was nothing of note to report in the build up, so here’s my set:

Freddie Mercury joke 1 – It’s nice to start with a quick joke, even if it’s a crap one.  This particular one is also the set up to a running gag, and it also provided a nice segue into…

Some jokes –  I came up with a nice new way of introducing the ‘joke book’ section, which I’m sure I’ll use again.  I picked the jokes from ones I’ve tried out at the Beech Inn since December, which was when I made my last appearance at Spotlight (Gig 92).

Christ’s Conkers – I first gave this a whirl at Gig 109, just a few days earlier.   It started life as a potential ‘joke book’ joke, but it became apparent that I could really over-egg the set-up.  The version I did here had developed quite a bit from it’s first run out, even though they were separated by a few days.

Freddie Mercury joke 2 – This isn’t really funny but is setting something up for later on…

Walls Have Ears: A Play About Families – I chucked this in to give a bit of variety to the set. It’s a relatively new addition, last seen performed by Simeon Gold at Gig 101.

On the Bus – The was last performed disastrously at Gig 104.  It’s one of those things that I’m sure there’s something in it, but working out what that is can only really happen on stage. Luckily, it went down pretty well on the night, and it’s only made me want to do it more.

Freddie Mercury joke 3 – Stupidly, I completely forgot to do this joke.  This is particularly annoying as the third one is the pay-off that makes it worth telling the first two. I’m an idiot.

The Magical Animal – I decided to finish with this story from Gig 106.  Although it was specifically written for Magical Animals, it worked well enough to think it was worth another airing.

And that was that, another enjoyable and successful night at Spotlight.  I was conscious of over-running, so when I was about to start The Magical Animal I check my watch. I was on 9 minutes.  As the story had taken about 3 -4 minutes previously, I thought it was OK to go ahead. Weirdly, when I checked my watch upon leaving the stage it said 17 minutes. I have no idea how that happened.  It’s not good form to over run, but, luckily, the organisers were happy for me have to waffled on for so long.  Phew.

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Multi-Levelled Morons

May 20, 2013 Leave a comment

MLM ArchwayThis time last week I wrote Two Years in Comedy, to mark my second anniversary of performing comedy. The post looked back at how things had gone over the previous year, and I concluded that I hadn’t done enough gigs.  I went as far as to say that increasing the number of gigs I perform at would be my biggest challenge over the upcoming year.  With all that in mind, now seems to be the ideal time to officially announce that I’ll be doing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe this year: Multi-Levelled Morons.

I’d been toying with the idea of doing my own show this year, and got as serious as booking sufficient leave from work to spend all of August up in Scotland.  In the end, though, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen.  Doing a show on my own seemed like a stretch too far; as much from an organisational perspective as from an artistic one. The deadline for applying for a free show came and went, so it looked like I’d be going up to the Fringe as a visitor only.

But since I’ve already told you that I’m doing a show this year, something, obviously, happened. My super chum Tim Wilderspin had successfully applied to do a solo show at the Laughing Horse Free Festival, and he asked if I’d be an official part of the show. If this wasn’t fate slapping his over-sized member against my bedroom window then I don’t know what was.

Clearly I said yes and here we are.

So, what is Multi-Levelled Morons? Have a read of the official blurb (yes, there’s an official blurb):

Morons. They’re everywhere, sure, but a select band of these idiots have managed to turn stupidity into an art form. Join Tim Wilderspin: ‘Ballsy, silly and truly inventive’ (Dr Brown, Edinburgh Comedy Award Winner 2012) and the irrepressibly daft Ste Price for an afternoon treat of wild, absurd and truly uplifting stand-up and character comedy. Featuring Simeon Gold: The One Man Theatre Company, and Nigel De’Ath, the world’s strangest man. These truly are multi-levelled morons.

In short, we’re each going to do some stand up and some character comedy.   The beauty of this approach is that as we’re doing 2 sections each – and I already know what my material will be for Simeon’s bit – then it becomes much more manageable  and so much less daunting.   Those of you who regularly read this blog will know that I write and perform a wide variety  of material, so it’s going to be an interesting experience to settle on a couple of sets and (largely) stick to them for 25 consecutive shows.  It’s also going to be amazing to be able to do so many gigs in such a short amount of time (I’m sure someone will remind me of this when I’m having a breakdown halfway through the run).  I don’t expect to be ‘discovered’ as a result of the show; I just want the chance to complete an concentrated number of shows, take part in the biggest and best arts festival in the world and to hang out with some lovely people.  I can’t wait.

Multi-Levelled Morons is part of the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe via the Laughing Horse Free Festival.  Jeykll & Hyde, Hanover Street @ 13:30 1st-25th August (Not 15th).

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Gig 109: Comedy Night @ The Beech Inn, Chorlton – 14th May 2013

May 17, 2013 1 Comment

This month’s Beech Inn gig was, coincidentally, on my second anniversary of performing comedy (see here for details). Last year’s anniversary gig was cancelled (NOT Gig 58), so what would happen this time?

Well it would happen, that’s what would happen.

It wasn’t entirely clear that this would be the case when I arrived at the venue. It’s traditional for the audience to show up late, but by the scheduled start time there were only 6 or 7 punters present. It was by far the least attended of the Beech comedy nights, but we decided to plough on anyway.

One of the acts had dropped out the day before, so the format would be me doing my regular bits – Joke Book, The Donnie Hotlips Story: Chapter 6 and Monthly Report about April – followed by an act. Then there’d be a break, another two acts, a final break and then the headliner.

The opening section was tough. It’s difficult when there is a small audience, especially if they’re quiet, but I also wasn’t very good. Previously when we’ve only had three acts for the opening sections, I’ve done my monthly report in the second section, but this time I did all my nonsense before bringing on the first act. It was too much too soon.

Last week at Gig 108, I struggled with my joke book, because the context is everything with such deliberately shonky jokes. I seem to generate a steady stream of these crap gags, and it’s useful to be able to try them out every month, but the regularity seems to have robbed the section of its.  I think the problem is that, although I know it’s better to stick with audience chat early on, having some “jokes” to fall back on is too comfortable a safety net.  The bad jokes could still work, but only after I’ve dragged the audience onto my wavelength.  The main lesson I learned in my first few attempts at MCing was that it was a mistake to crowbar too much material in, especially at the start of the night.  This gig was a timely reminder of this fact.

Luckily, during the first break a number of extra audience members appeared.  Because I’d burned through all my material in the first section, I had to rely on audience interaction and acting daft, and this made things go noticeably better.  I don’t know how well it went from this point, but I no longer felt horrible about it, so that was a win.

The lesson learned from the evening was this: don’t forget the lessons that you’ve already learned.

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Two Years in Comedy

May 13, 2013 2 Comments

Today marks the end of my second year of performing comedy.  I feel a self indulgent blog post coming on…

This time last year I decided to write a series of posts called “A Year in Comedy”, to try and reflect on my experiences and to discuss some of the specifics in more detail.  The posts that I managed to write were:

Introduction

My First Gig

The Early Gigs

GONG!

And then I stopped.  I had loads of things that I wanted to write about, but because I set myself the task of scouring every diary post for information, the task became too onerous and I inevitably gave up.  As a result, I didn’t end up writing about what I expected and wanted to achieve from my second year, even though I thought I had.  Bum.  I’m just going to have to make it up.

It would make sense to look back at my aims for the year and to see if I met them.  The only goals I really set for myself in stand up are “to get as good as I possibly can” and “to do at least one gig per week”.  Since the latter is more quantifiable, I’ll start there: In the last year I’ve done 51 gigs.  I was one short.  Double bum.  To make matters worse, in my first year I managed to perform at 57 gigs, so I’ve actually gone backwards.  Triple bum.

I’m not entirely sure why this has happened.  There were 8 gigs which were either cancelled on the day, or I had to cancel at the last minute, when last year there were none.   If those 8 had gone ahead then I would have ‘beaten’ last year’s total, but I still would have expected to have done more.  I realise that “a gig per week” is an arbitrary figure, but the thought behind it is that I was to be gigging regularly – it’s the only way to improve – and if you aren’t gigging every week can you say that you’re doing it regularly?

In reality one gig per week isn’t enough to to progress; you can still improve artistically, but it becomes very difficult to make a name for yourself.  I’d love to gig more, but the practicalities of balancing my home and work lives with performing would make that really difficult.  This may be my biggest challenge as I move into year 3.

For an anniversary post, this is feeling a little downbeat, so I’ll try a bit of positivity.  I still love performing and I’m excited by comedy as ever.  Perhaps the best thing over the last couple of years is all the great people who I’ve got to meet, and from whom I’ve made some amazing new friends.  The lower rungs of the comedy ladder are full of amazing people; not only for their talent, but for the unwavering commitment to travelling all over the country for little or no money in order for the chance to have a few minutes stage time attempting to make people laugh.  Anyone who makes it as a professional comedian has surely earned it.

Anyway, I’ve got lots more stuff that I want to cover in a series of posts…you know, if I can be bothered.

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Gig 108: The Worst Comedy Night in Salford @ The King’s Arms, Salford – 7th May 2013

May 10, 2013 1 Comment

The Worst Comedy Night in SalfordAt the first TWCNiS (Gig 104) I died on my arse.

I had to pull out of the second TWCNiS (STILL NOT Gig 106) due to illness.

What would the third TWCNiS bring me? Well, it would bring me THIS:

I was due to MC the night, and since I don’t have regular set pieces for this night (as I do at The Beech Inn), I wasn’t entirely sure what to do.  I had some new “jokes” written and thought I’d have a few short stories on standby, should I need them.

When I got to the venue, I had a look in the room and there were 10-15 people sat around.  They didn’t look like comedy night types, so I assumed they were a group of locals who didn’t realise what they were about to be subjected to.  As it turned out, 4 of the night’s spots would be taken by first time acts – who had recently completed a course run by Big Lou Jones – and a load of friends had come along to support them.  Now, given that they were of a slighter older democratic and they didn’t seem like comedy regulars (I hate to make snap judgements about people but, you know, sometimes you have to), I didn’t think that they’d necessarily go for intentionally corny jokes or whimsical short stories.  I decided to just go with some audience interaction and take it from there.

The opening section seemed to go OK (it wasn’t amazing, but it could have been much worse).  There were a few characters to chat with, which helped   but I kept things relatively brief, and brought on the 3 acts pretty snappily.   The second section was hosted by Lou who brought on his 4 pupils, and the audience were really warm and supportive.   All the acts did well for their first ever gigs.  Due to an organisational quirk, there ended up being only 1 act for the final section.  By this point, the audience had been laughing regularly and were engaged in the night, so I thought I might try out some ‘joke book’ jokes, just to see what happened.  Unsurprisingly, they didn’t work:

AUDIENCE MEMBER (to her friend): They’re just like Christmas cracker jokes.

ME: I know, that’s the point.

It was all a bit awkward, but I knew it was a risk, so I just went with it.

Overall, it was a strange experience.  On one hand, I was really pleased with my proactive decision to go solely with audience chat, rather than trying to crowbar my own style/material onto the them.  This is something I should have done at Gig 82, but didn’t, and it’s something that I’ve been conscious of ever since, without being to act upon it.  I didn’t exactly storm the opening section, but I think I made the correct decision.  On the other hand, I didn’t feel that I was able to be funny in a way that I wanted to, and that was a bit frustrating.

Telling my jokes was an incredibly humbling experience.  I’ve told those jokes many times before and got laughs from them (and the way that I tell them), but on this occasion they were just utter crap.  I was getting incredulous looks from the audience; their expressions seemed to be saying ‘how can someone telling such bad jokes be the MC of this night?’.  It was a lesson in the fragility of comedy.   As I’ve written previously – see here – context is king.  You can’t fake laughter and if someone doesn’t think you’re funny then you’re not funny.  It’s one of the scary things about stand up, but, ultimately, it’s what makes it so magical.

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Gig 107: SOS Comedy @ 3MT, Manchester – 4th May 2013

May 9, 2013 Leave a comment

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

The plan for this month’s SOS was to perform the two sketches postponed from Gig 101 – a new Gold & Brass thing and one written by Lee Fenwick.  I met up with Lee on the morning of the gig and had both pieces set after a few run-throughs.   I’d also been thinking about shorter bits of nonsense I could do, and had the idea for Terry trying his hand at improv.

The sketches were on in the first half of the show and they went well.  Yes, I know that’s boring, but it’s what happened.  I’m enjoying writing the Gold & Brass stuff and making them more and more ludicrous as time goes on.  Again, yes, I know that’s boring.

I was sat back stage for the entire show – with Terry due to appear towards the end of the second half – so I started to think about what I was going to do.  The only idea before the gig was to go on stage, sing the theme tune from Whose Line Is It Anyway?, then ask for some improv suggestions before failing to do anything with them.  I planned to be on stage for about a minute.  I started to think about what Terry would actually do and came up with the idea of him acting out an episode of Whose Line, including him pretending to be Clive Anderson.  Taking this approach meant that I was likely to be on stage a little longer and that, ironically, I’d genuinely have to improvise.

I hadn’t been nervous when I’d been intent on performing the shorter version of this – it was going to be so short that if it didn’t work it wouldn’t matter – but, as it expanded I did start to feel a little apprehensive.  I was going to have to genuinely be in the moment to make it work and it was as scary as it was exciting.

Boringly, it pretty much worked how I hoped it would, and it lasted about 5 minutes.   Although it wasn’t the funniest set I’ve ever done, it did feel significant; much in the same way as the first time I told the full length Roy Walker story (Gig 67).  It’s quite a feeling to go on stage with only half-formed ideas and somehow make it work.

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Gig 106: Magical Animals @ 3MT, Manchester – 1st May 2013

May 3, 2013 1 Comment

After a couple of cancellations (NOT Gig 106 & STILL NOT Gig 106), I finally managed to get a gig done.  And where better for me to ease myself back into the world of performance than Magical Animals? (answers on a postcard, please) As this was going to be a relaunch for M.A., at the wonderful 3MT, I decided to write a new story in its honour.  The nonsense that I came up with was The Magical Animal.

Sorry to be a whinger, but this being my first week back at work, I was almost supernaturally tired by the time I got to 3MT.  I pondered the possibility of having a nap, but decided it may have come across as a little rude whilst people were performing.  Luckily there were lots of friendly faces (attached to equally friendly heads/bodies), so I was distracted from my languor by sheer human decency.

The line-up on the night was particularly strong, and, as I was on midway in the second section, I started to suspect I might get a lukewarm reaction.  I wasn’t sure whether my story was actually funny, nor whether I had the energy to wring the laughs that may have been there.  My chances seemed even more daunting as I immediately followed Rachel Lancaster who was on top form (and was crowned the rightful winner on the night).

Luckily, me and my stupid story went down really well.  I came up with some ridiculous spiel to introduce the story about how I was a “proper writer” who “changed lives”, and it seemed to set things up well.  That’s all I have to say.  It went well.

Eeeks, this post really tailed off.  Bye.

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STILL NOT Gig 106: The Worst Comedy Night in Salford @ The King’s Arms, Salford – 23rd April 2013

May 2, 2013 2 Comments

Yeah, so I still wasn’t well (see NOT Gig 106) when this came around and so it was another one that I missed.  It’s frustrating because I hate having to cancel gigs; I don’t feel like I do enough, anyway.  To make matters worse,  the previous TWCNiS (Gig 104) was completely crazy (in a good way) and I really wanted to be there.

Right, well I know it looks a bit insane to write a blog post that’s two sentences about a gig I didn’t actually do.  Actually, I don’t know if it looks insane so much as it looks completely self indulgent.  As much as I’d like people to read this blog for (hopefully) interesting pieces about my experiences in comedy, there’s also a large part of it that is a reference book so I know what I have (and haven’t done).  Anyway, that’s enough self-justification.  It’s my blog and I’ll write what I want to.

P.S.

I’m back in work now (it’s the 30th April), so you can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.  I had to turn down a gig for this week because I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to make it.  Complete hairy balls.  Oh well, hopefully normal service will now resume.

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NOT Gig 106: Comedy Night @ The Orford, Warrington – 17th April 2013

May 1, 2013 2 Comments

In my last post – Gig 105 – I told you how I wasn’t feeling very well.  The very next day, I went to work and almost immediately went home because I felt awful.  It was also the day of this gig which, obviously, I had to cancel.  I felt terrible having to let down the organisers at such short notice, but it couldn’t be helped.

That’s pretty much all I have to say.  This post is very much for my “records”.  Yes, I have records.

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Flogged

April 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Funny Looking LogoSeveral weeks ago, the chaps at Funny Looking podcast asked me to write a piece about writing comedy for their Flog (Funny Looking blog, obviously).  Since they asked, I did write a piece about writing comedy.  You can read it here.

As this post is essentially just a link to somewhere else, I thought I’d better bulk it out with something.   What I decided to do was to  write something about the process of writing it.  Yes, I am that much of a knob.

The main thing I learned from writing it is just how much I dash off all my other posts.  Because this article was going to appear on someone else’s blog, I thought I’d better put some effort into writing it properly.  This involved the piece going through several drafts.  Yes, “drafts”.  I didn’t just proof read it and make a few amendments based on obvious mistakes.  I sat down and rewrote entire sections, attempting to make it all hang together as a cohesive whole.  Ooooh, get me.

Anyway, that’s what I learned.  I learned that rewriting something generally makes it better.  Who would have thought it?

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