But, Steven, what is Gravy Gold?

It’s this: I am going to create an archive of episodes of my podcast, The Gravy Boat, on this blog and then write about each episode as it appears on the archive.

But why on earth are you doing that?

Two reasons. Firstly, because of the plan I use from my podcast host, there are only a limited number of episodes available on iTunes or the RSS feed.  All the episodes are available on the podbean site, but I thought it would be better to have them all in one place.  Since I have the capability of storing them on the blog,  I thought this would be the ideal place.

Yeah, but nobody listens to your podcast, do they?

Hey! Can I give you the second reason before you start slagging me off?

Ok.

The second reason is that when I’ve recorded recent episodes of the podcast I’ve found myself listening back to them. I hate the sound of my own voice (as most people do) and so I’ve never listened to the early episodes of the podcast before.  I thought it might be interesting to have a listen back as they’ll seem completely fresh to me, and see what I thought. It’s particularly interesting to me as I started the podcast before I started performing stand up, and it will be intriguing to see what, if anything, has changed.

Is that it?

Yes. Yes, it is.  So, without further ado, here is my spiel about Episode 0 of The Gravy Boat from 15th November 2009.

I’d been wanting to do a podcast for a while, because I thought it would be fun, and it would be a good way to show off.  I didn’t really want to do one on my own – the podcasts I listened to were generally of the ’2 people chatting’ variety – so my original plan was to try and get my mate Dave – who had experience doing local radio – to be my ‘co-host’. For whatever reason, we never managed to arrange anything, and, in the meantime, I spoke to another friend, James, who was up for giving it a try. The plan was for the
3 of us to do it, but when we came to record it Dave was unavailable. We didn’t want to lose the momentum of finally finding ourselves in a room ready to record it, so James and I decided to do a test episode.  As I’ve read too many comic books in my life, I decided it would be a good idea to call this “Episode 0″, as in some ways it wasn’t supposed to be an ‘official’ episode. (For the record, this is really Episode 1 because I change the numbering later on, but it’s title remains Episode 0.  Sorry for being a cock.)

The first thing I noticed when listening back is that I can barely talk and sound like there’s something wrong with me. But I got over that. The podcast is basically just James and I having a conversation and trying to work out what the hell we are doing. We laugh a lot at our own jokes, which is a) endearing, b) shows there was something amusing going on and c) self-indulgent.

We talked about such diverse topics as James’ encounter with “Ernie”, his milkman; chest hair and hairy muffs; The Runcorn-Widnes bridge; and a painfully whimsical exploration of faeries in legal precedent (my fault).

Things I noticed about me (other than the whole ‘being unable to speak’ thing):

• I totally overuse the phrase “in a way” as a comedic device.  I worry that I still do it, in a way.
• It took me far too long to think of an Asda pun.  Complete amateur.
• I thought of a lot of the same jokes that I would have thought of now.

Despite it being a bit ramshackle, I thought it was entertaining. That said, I do have somewhat of an invested interest in it, so I may not be the best possible judge on the matter.

Why not have a listen for yourself, here: 

The podcast archive is, here.

If you’d like to subscribe to The Gravy Boat, you can do it one of these ways:

Click here for The Gravy Boat on iTunes.

Click here for The Gravy Boat’s RSS feed.

Click here for The Gravy Boat’s site on Podbean.

A few months ago, I read an interview that Richard Herring did with The Psychologist (read it, here).  In it, he made the following observation:

I have noticed that the best and the worst performers have the same psychology – whatever happens, they seem to think they are brilliant. The genius comedians will go on stage, no one will laugh, and they will still come off and say ‘I was fantastic’. The worst comedians will do exactly the same. They seem to have an innate confidence.

Having seen my fair share of both ‘genius’ comedians, and those that are at the other end of the scale, I could certainly see where he was coming from.  In fact, I think that Herring’s point reveals something fundamental about the curious mindset that is required to perform stand up comedy.

As I thought about it more, it struck me that, on some level, I enjoy both the best and worst performers for the same reason.  I’m talking about those comics who are able to push the boundaries of what comedy can achieve, and those acts who are so bad that you assume that they must really be some Andy Kaufmanesque provocateur (before you realise that they really, really aren’t).  I love both these types of performers, and I think they’re broadly pushing the same buttons within me, albeit with very different fingers.

I think that this is the reason that I love open mic nights.  You’re never quite sure what you’re going to see, and certainly not all the acts are going to be funny, but, whatever happens, it is going to be real.  There’s a simple joy in watching people get up and give it a go.  And the odder it is, the more that an act’s strangest thoughts are revealed, the better it is.

It’s common for people to say that you have to be brave to do stand up, but once you’ve done it a few times this seems a bit silly.  However, when you take to the stage, you’re undoubtedly putting yourself out on a limb.  You’re going to try and make people laugh by speaking aloud some ideas you’ve thought of.  The whole process is inherently tinged with madness; whether you’re one of the nutters, one of the geniuses or just one of us mediocre ones in the middle.

In short: it takes one to know one.

This week I read the diary entries for Gigs 13 to 19.  The posts cover the following topics: a wrestling double-act, students, a radio interview and the inevtiable appearance of the legendary Kowalski.

If you’d like to read the posts what I read out, without my ‘hilarious’ asides, they are:

Gig 13: The Occasional Cabaret @ The Yard Theatre, Hulme – 1st October 2011 (you can watch all of this performance – if you dare – here)

Gig 14: Comedy Balloon, The Ape and Apple, Manchester – 5th October 2011

Gig 15: SAS Comedy, Lass O’ Gowrie, Manchester – 8th October 2011

Gig 16: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 10th October 2011

Gig 17: University of Salford’s Student Union – 18th October 2011

Gig 18: Open for Laughs @ Bar 1:22\Bar Maroc, Huddersfield – 20th October 2011

Gig 18a: Spooky Halloween Quiz on BBC Radio Leeds – 31st October 2011 (you can listen to this, here: The Gravy Boat 28: Spooky Halloween Quiz)

Gig 19: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 14th November 2011 (in which I read the following story:  The Door Knocker – A Kowalski Mini-Adventure)

You can listen to it on iTunes here:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=340803894

Wednesday 12th 13:30

As I MCed at the Beech last night (Gig 114), I hadn’t thought about this gig at the Railway until now.  Since it’s taking place tomorrow night, I’d better start compiling a set list.

The first/last time that I did this gig was way back in February 2012  (Gig 32), where my set list was:

Stretched cat.

“This shifty looking bloke came up to me…”

“Can’t Fight The Moonlight…”

Arnie\Controversial-Incomplete Joke.

“So she lost her job…”

“Personal Bit”

I don’t like to repeat material when returning to a venue, so those bits are out.  The other thing I need to seriously start considering is what material I’m going to need for Edinburgh.  I wrote recently about how I’d be taking part at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe in the show Multi-Levelled Morons.   I’m going to be doing 2 sections in the show:  15 minutes of stand up and 10 minutes as Simeon Gold.   I’m going to be using existing material for the show, so I’m confident that I’ve got what I need, I just now need to work out exactly which bits and in what order.  Perhaps my biggest challenge is that I usually close my straight stand up sets with “One Day in Liverpool”,  but this is an integral part of Simeon’s section.  I also want to pull together 5, 10 and 20 minute sets using material that won’t be in the show for any guest spots that I perform at during the Fringe, so I need to work out which bits work well together.

This is the stuff that I decided to use:

Freddie Mercury joke 1 followed by “Some Jokes”  -  This is the same opening as Spotlight (Gig 110).  I really liked how it gave me a different approach to using my “joke book” section, and also the Freddy Mercury joke will play an important role later on.

“Moves Like…”

Stand Up Comedy Poem – I’ve not done this for ages and it’s a bit I really like.  It also links directly to “On the Bus” later.

Freddie Mercury joke 2 – the plot thickens.

Two Zombies – this worked surprisingly well at Gig 114, so I thought I’d give it another run out.

Telephone books

US Style Stand Up – another bit I haven’t done for ages.  There’s a nice segue I can use from the previous bit, too.

Christ’s Conkers

On the Bus – last performed at Gig 110.  It’s a bit that’s not always worked that well, but that I’m convinced there’s something in it.

Freddie Mercury joke 3 – the conclusion.  I think this might be an interesting way to finish a set.

There’s way too much material here for 10 minutes, but I think I’ll practice it all anyway, as it won’t hurt.  I really want to use the Freddy Mercury jokes and On the Bus, as these are the bits I feel I’m most likely to use as cornerstones of a set.  I don’t know how long On the Bus is, so I need to try and have a timed run through of that tonight to get a better feel for it.

Thursday 13th 13:30

So, unsurprisingly, I didn’t do a timed run through of “On The Bus” last night. My excuse? I was too knackered. It’s as simple as that sometimes. However, I did have a practice on my way home from work and realised what I think the key to it working is.

The bit is based around an attempt to turn some tweets I sent on a bus journey into a stand up routine.   My revelation was that it isn’t really about the tweets as much as it’s about how I set them up, and the inevitable failure of them to work as comedy. The resolution of the section is my reaction to the failure, and so this builds in a certain amount of flexibility in the timing. I have to do the set up, but then can do pretty much what I want with the reading of the tweets before I get to the conclusion. I’ll just have to try and use this flexibility to make sure I don’t over run. Fingers crossed.

Both “Stand Up Comedy Poem” and “On the Bus” contain bits that I read out, and I did manage to edit both of these documents to, hopefully, make them a little snappier.

Also, on my practice attempts, I managed to find a couple of extra angles to use within Two Zombies that I’m looking forward to trying.

Saturday 15th 9:30

Well, that turned out to be something of an experience.

I arrived at the venue at around 8:15 for a 9 o’clock start.  My friend Lee Moore was also on the bill (and he had coincidentally been on at Gig 114 this week, too), and so I knew I’d be able to have a good chat in the build up to the gig, instead of just lurking awkwardly.  After speaking to Tim, the organiser/MC, it turned out that 2 of the scheduled 6 acts had pulled out.  He said that under the circumstances we could do 20 minutes (or even longer) if we wanted to.  I knew that I had more than 10 minutes of stuff prepared, and felt pretty confident that I could do 20 pretty comfortably.  It’s relatively unusual to get such a long spot, so it looked like it could be a really useful opportunity.

There wasn’t much of an audience around at the scheduled start time, but Tim knew that a number of people were on their way and so decided to delay.  We eventually got started some time after 9:30, and there was a decent enough sized audience (maybe 20 people watching from the main seating area, and a number more watching from the bar at the side).   The first section had two acts on doing 10 minutes each and they had both done well.  There was a group of younger audience members sat at the front – who had come as a group to support one of the acts – and I got the impression that they hadn’t been to see comedy before.  I wasn’t sure how they were going to react to me.

Due to some logistical reasons, the interval ended up lasting a while, and so it was after 10:30 when the second section started.  Lee and I would be doing longer sets than the first section.  Neither of us was entirely sure how long we were going to do; partly because we didn’t know how much stuff we had prepared, and partly because we thought we might have to bail early if the audience didn’t go for it.  Lee went on before me and did 18 minutes, getting the audience onside with some great storytelling.

It must have been 11 o’clock when I took to the stage, which is far from ideal.  I was a little apprehensive as some of the audience members’ attention had naturally started to wane.  I decided I would try and put lots of energy into it, to try and grab their attention.  I also decided to be as big and daft as possible, so that even if they didn’t go for my material they might laugh at the stupid man.

I launched off with my Freddy Mercury joke and used it to talk directly to a few groups of people, just to try and engage them early on.  I then went into telling some jokes.  The venue is geared up for live music, so there’s a big stage, which I ran around as a way of setting up the joke book. I usually limit this to 5 jokes (read from index cards), but I probably had 10 to choose from, and as I had longer to fill I was able to play around more.  I refrained from telling some jokes by saying “you won’t get this one”, which in itself got a laugh.  During this section I knew I had to be alive to what was happening in the audience.  If some chatted, I would immediately address it, and my asides to the audience all became part of the act.

I didn’t really think that “Stand Up Comedy Poem” would work particularly well, but I wanted it there to link to On the Bus.  I decided to totally over-egg how serious the bit was and told off audience members for not treating my ‘art’ with the respect it was due.  At one point a woman was being a little noisy as she said goodbye to some friends.  I, of course chastised her for this, to which she replied “but it’s my birthday”.  I countered this with something like “so what? We all have birthdays…every year”.  And then made fun of her for still getting excited about Christmas.  She was in the process of leaving the pub anyway, to which I essentially said ‘good riddance’.  It all came out quite organically, as the on-stage me was reacting as he would about someone interrupting his serious poetry, but I hope she realised that I wasn’t being serious.

I then told the second Freddy Mercury joke, which elicited the response “you’ve already told this one…” (they’re all variations on a theme).  I replied with “no I haven’t” and then kind of despondently told it anyway.  This set up the third occurrence better than I could have hoped.

At this point, I should probably point out that the audience’s reaction to me overall was pretty…mixed.  There were plenty of bewildered/bemused/blank faces staring back at me, but then the people who were enjoying it were really enjoying it.

Two Zombies struggled a little, but I liked the way that my tweaks felt, so it was well worth trying.

Telephone Books didn’t get it’s usual reaction and that put me a bit on the back foot as I went into US Style Stand Up.  Both bits are essentially playing with a different styles of comedy, and I guessed that as they didn’t go for the first then they probably wouldn’t go for the second.  I decided to dispense with the usual set up and go straight into the US style stand up.  This didn’t really work, but, in the moment, I started to perform the ending in a slightly different way – the words were the same, but I put a lot more emotion into it – and this seemed to really work.

Christ’s Conkers was a real slog, apart from the punchline which got the best reaction it has so far.

On the Bus was the bit that I really wanted to explore, and, thankfully, it worked better than it ever has.  The realisation of how the failure of the tweets working as comedy being the key really made a massive difference.  I’d already used this to work out how to end the bit, but as I performed it, it also made a big difference to the way that I read the tweets out.  It’s not enough to just read them, I had to make it clear that I was hopeful/desperate to make them work.  I still need an end line for the section, but it’s moved significantly in the right direction.

I closed with the final Freddy Mercury joke – “I should probably end with a joke…” – and this worked exactly as I hoped it would.  The jokes in themselves are (intentionally) not very good, and I think I’ve found the right way to play each of the three.

In the end I did 21 minutes.

As you can probably guess by how much I’ve written, it was an extremely useful gig.  It was a treat to be able to do 20 minutes, as I got to try everything that I wanted to and it was great practice to do a longer set.  The bits that I was focused on worked really well and I reaped the rewards of MCing, as I was able to address what was going on in the moment, and improvised around whatever happened.  It all sounds very positive, but there were plenty of people there who didn’t like what I was doing, and that made it something of an odd experience.

But then it’s boring if it’s not a bit odd.

My method of quelling the butterflies was to start singing and shouting as I drove.  Sure, I must have looked a complete knob to my fellow motorists, but it was a good way of expelling my anxious energy.  As always, I felt calm by the time I arrived at the venue (which is weird in itself), and I was looking forward to the gig.

As the weather has been so nice, I was a little concerned how many people would turn up, but I needn’t have worried as there was actually a larger audience than usual.  There were a healthy number of regulars in attendance, plus a large group of obvious newcomers.  The room was full and there was a lively atmosphere, so it boded well for a good night.

I wasn’t too sure what to do when compiling the running order for the night.  As usual, the night was split into three sections.  There would be two acts in the first, my monthly report and another act in the second, followed by Ruth E. Cockburn doing an Edinburgh preview in the third.  Two of the acts – Les Kershaw and Andy Mannion – had only done a handful of gigs between them, whilst the third was lovely Lee Moore.  In many ways it would have made sense for me to put Lee on first, as it can be tough spot for a brand new act.  But I also felt that since there would only be one act in the second section that it would make sense for Lee to go there.  In the end I went for Les to open – as she had some friends coming to support her, and had 10 minutes of material – followed by Andy who’d be doing 5 minutes, and then Lee in the second section.  I don’t know if I did the right thing here or not.  Probably not, but, fortunately, it didn’t work out badly.

Remembering a lesson learned last month (Gig 109) – where I’d tried to cram in loads of prepared material right at the start – I decided to ease myself in with some general nonsense and audience interaction.  I asked early on how many people hadn’t been to the night before, and it was a large proportion of the audience.  Since Les had said she had friends coming to support her, I asked how many of the newbies were there to support an act.  It was all of them.  At this point, it confirmed that I was right not to start with material.  As many of the audience knew each other they were a bit too chatty and I was able to take a bit of time to get everyone settled down and ready for the acts.  Once I felt comfortable, and that they were on side, I tried out some new jokes.  They were my typical convoluted groaners, but the audience seemed to go with them and take them for what they were.

As Les was first on, the crowd didn’t need much encouragement and she had them in the palm of her hand throughout her set, before leaving to a rapturous response. I had another tricky decision to make here.  Generally if an act has done well, it’s fair practice to bring the next act on straight away; they’re already warmed up, so there’s nothing for you to do (if anything you could actually bring the mood down by trying to squeeze in your own ‘funnies’).  The exception to this (and this is only from advice I’ve read online about MCing, rather than from personal experience) is that if an act has stormed it, then you should give some breathing space to let things calm down a bit as the previous act is “unfollowable”.  I decided that bringing Andy on straight away would be the lesser of two evils – the audience were really receptive and I thought it was best to bring him on with so much energy in the room. Again, this wasn’t necessarily the correct decision, but I did what I thought was best in the moment.  Andy managed to get plenty of laughs from his one-liners and did really well for what was only his second gig.

I started the second section off with a bit of chat before launching into The Donnie Hotlips Story: Chapter 7 - a fictional biography of one of the night’s regulars.  It must have been utterly baffling for the newcomers (this chapter saw Donnie approached by an alien to save his planet using his drumming prowess), but seemed to work pretty well.  I followed this up with my Monthly Report about May 2013.  It wasn’t one of my stronger ‘reports’ and perhaps I’m getting a bit tired of the format.  It’s nice to have a regular piece to do, but it’s also tough to squeeze them out.  That said, I think the process of having to write something regularly to a set format is probably a really good skill to have.  Perhaps I’ve just become a bit complacent in churning them out and need to plan my time a little better to allow me to do a couple of drafts on them.

And that was pretty much my work done, as I only had to do a brief introduction for Ruth in the final section.  All in all, it was an enjoyable night and the audience really seemed to appreciate all the acts.  Compering is hard work – the closest comedy feels to having a real job – but when it goes well it’s incredibly enjoyable and rewarding.

If you’d like to read the original posts, they are:

Gig 8a: On The Funny Side @ Pulse, Manchester – 28th July 2011

Gig 9: Comedy Knight @ Mello Mello, Liverpool – 1st August 2011

Gig 10: SAS Comedy, Lass O’ Gowrie, Manchester – 13th August 2011

Gig 10a: Gary Barlow on BBC Radio Leeds – 1st September 2011

(In the episode I say that I didn’t think I knew how to make a podcast from the interview in Gig 10a, but I was wrong. I’d already done it, here: The Gravy Boat 27: Gary Barlow Interview)

Gig 11: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 12th September 2011

Gig 12: Beat The Frog @ Frog & Bucket, Preston – 28th September 2011

You can listen to it on iTunes here:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=340803894

Due to other commitments, we had to postpone Gold & Brass, leaving me with a spot in each half of the show.  The first section saw Terry take to the stage.  Last month (Gig 107), I performed a largely improvised bit, where Terry acted out an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?  I really wanted to try something similar and soon settled on Terry trying his hand at impressions.  I’ve always wanted to do a spoof of the sort of impressionist from Royal Variety Performances in the 80s, where they had a little table of props at the back of the stage.   I decided that the easiest way of doing this would be for Terry to pretend to be Bruce Forsyth, who would then introduce Terry Dowling to perform in from of the Queen.  I planned to have a few props – glasses, wigs etc – and then just wing it. On the day of the gig, however, I decided to have a test run and came up with a few ideas that I thought might work. I didn’t have anything scripted, but I had some basic ideas and one of two lines to aim for. The impressions that I/Terry performed were:

The Beatles sharing a flat.

Michael Caine (he’s the classic).

The New Labour Government have a party.

The Queen.

As always with Terry, it was enormous fun to perform.  I did about 4 minutes, but I would have loved to have done longer.  That said, keeping it brief probably kept it funnier.  It also seemed to go down well with the audience, which, you know, is pretty important.

The Story of the 1980s originated from a conversation I had with my friends Vic and Dave “Dave Turquoise” Turquoise.  To be honest, I can’t remember exactly what the conversation was, but the result was that I was challenged to write a play.  I decided to write a faux-earnest epic detailing the entire history of the nineteen eighties.  I was so into the idea that I wrote the first scene, “1980″, even though the idea of me writing a play was actually a joke.

This then sat dormant for several months until a conversation with Lee Fenwick when preparing for last month’s SOS.  I can’t remember what we were talking about, but I suddenly remembered the ‘play’ and read a bit out for him.  He suggested that I might be able to turn it into a sketch.  I didn’t need asking twice.  I had to do a small amount of re-writing – primarily because there are two characters and I had to tweak things to take into account that I’d be playing both of them – but it was pretty much ready to go.

On the day of the gig, I was anxious about how it was going to go down.   It’s one of my favourite things that I’ve ever written, and it seems really ‘me’, but it also doesn’t really contain any jokes and relies on how ludicrous it is.  There was a chance that the audience wouldn’t go with it, and I’d be stuck doing 5-7 minutes of a stupid play to awkward silence.  Luckily it did work, despite me forgetting to do a short section and temporarily forgetting a line (getting away with mistakes is a major advantage of writing something where the joke is that it’s intentionally bad).

And that was that.  Now it’s time to write 1981.

If you’d like to read the original posts, they are:

Gig 5: Comedy Night @ The Lounge, Warrington – 21st June 2011

Gig 5a: Comedysportz Intermediate Showcase @ Comedy Store, Manchester – 25th June 2011

Gig 5b: Quizzilingus @ The Bowling Green, Chorlton – 30th June 2011

Gig 6: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 12th July 2011

Gig 7: On The Funny Side @ Pulse, Manchester – 14th July 2011

Gig 8: Comedy Balloon, The Ape and Apple, Manchester – 20th July 2011

You can listen to it on iTunes here:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=340803894

My first appearance at the Balloon was Gig 2 (you can listen to me read out that post, here), which went so well that the experience got me through loads of early dodgy gigs. As such,  I have a real fondness for the night, and I was looking forward to making my return.  The Balloon is one of the few nights that gives acts a chance to MC.  When I first requested the spot, I had just performed my first compering spot at the Beech Inn (Gig 81) and I was desperate for extra experience.  Due to the logistics of getting a spot booked in, by the time this gig came around it would be my 12th attempt as an MC, but, you know, 12 still isn’t that many.

As this was a one-off, I thought I’d try throwing in some of my regular material into my bits, something I’ve never done before as MC.  It would be a chance to give them a run out, but I was also interested to see how using these tried and tested bits would affect my compering.  I certainly didn’t want to rely on these, though, and it’s essentially to get the audience involved as early as possible.

There were 9 acts on the bill (3 sections of 3) and a decent sized audience in attendance.  I got a bit nervous just before I went on, even though I had material to fall back on, as I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to say.  Thankfully, things started well and I was able to keep it going, finding a nice balance between the audience interaction, off-the-cuff bits and the pre-prepared material. I used my “joke book” and even some of my “contingency questions”.  In the first two sections, the material that I used was:

Section 1:

Peter Andre

“This shifty looking bloke came up to me…”

Stretched cat

Moves Like…

Section 2:

Revolutionary Era France

Arnie from Wigan

Paul Gascoigne

As it was a fairly long night, a number of the audience members left during the second break.  The reduction in numbers led to an inevitable lull in the room, and it was quite tough to get the third section going again.  It probably wasn’t wise to start with my “short play” Walls Have Ears, especially as I hadn’t practiced beforehand.  With that out of the way, I didn’t have a lot to do for the remainder of the night as I had to keep things brief to squeeze all the acts in before kicking out time.

Overall, it was a hugely enjoyable evening.  Fortunately for me, the audience we well up for it and they pretty much went with everything I tried.  I’ve still got a long way to go in learning how to compere, but this certainly felt like a step forward.

I’ve read a few criticisms that Meadows doesn’t delve deeply enough into the band’s problems; in particular there’s a moment when their comeback tour appears to be imploding, and instead of documenting that, the director decides to stop filming and go home.  While it may have made interesting viewing to watch a Jeremy Kylesque intrusion, this was not what the documentary was about.  Made of Stone is a celebration, both of the band’s unlikely return and of what this reunion meant to the fans.

The film is full of memorable moments.  An early archive interview – conducted three weeks before the release of their first album – is, on the surface, the epitome of painfully monosyllabic band interviews, but what shines through is the deep friendship between Ian Brown and John Squire, and the playful sense of humour that they shared (“If you’re the biggest band in the world, why isn’t your record number one?” “It hasn’t been released yet.”).  The final section of the film – an elongated, magnificent rendition of Fools Gold performed at one of the huge Heaton Park gigs – would have been a fitting record of the band’s presence and musicianship had it purely focused on the on-stage concert footage.  But this was a Shane Meadows film and he wasn’t going to forget the fans.  The sequence was interspersed with a stream of poignant vignettes from across the park – the doomed attempt by security guards to keep out some ecstatic, literal gatecrashers being a highlight – capturing the very soul of the night as no other film maker could (OK, I may be being hyperbolic here, but just deal with it).

The heart of the film, however, is an extended sequence focused on the band’s surprise comeback gig at Warrington’s Parr Hall.  Meadows somehow captures the emotional roller-coaster that this day was for all those involved.  It begins with his own elation at being part of this historic gig (“maybe this can be my Spike Island”), and as the gig is announced, we see his excitement seemingly spread throughout an entire town.  It may seem strange for the emotional centre of a film to be a queue (even for a British film), but that’s what happens here.  Through a series of interviews, Meadows exposes the real human stories of how and why these people find themselves waiting to play their part in music history.  We also saw the quiet despondency of those who’d joined the queue too late, before we were treated to the utter euphoria of the gig itself, and the post-coital glow of those leaving the venue when it was all over.

This was undoubtedly a stand out section in an amazing film, but, as it progressed, I sat in my cinema seat with an ever tightening knot in my stomach.

On May 23rd 2012, I found out on Twitter that the Stone Roses would be performing a surprise, free gig at the Parr Hall.  It was going to be the gig of a lifetime.  Why couldn’t I be in Warrington to try and get myself a ticket?  Oh, wait.  I was in Warrington.

Not only was I in Warrington town centre, but I found myself having to walk more-or-less past the Parr Hall itself, not long after I found out.  I literally couldn’t have found myself in a better location.  All I would have to do was take a quick detour into town to buy a CD (you needed a piece of merchandise to gain your free ticket) and then take my chances in the queue.

At this point, you may be surprised to learn that this isn’t what happened.

I had a stand up gig booked for that night, and I made the decision that I couldn’t cancel.  It was a decision I was comfortable with until I saw the film last night, when the knot in my stomach told me that I was an idiot.  It can only be a testament to Meadows’ skill as a director that he made me feel so bad.

The film finished and I texted my girlfriend about how I felt sick that I hadn’t gone to the gig.  ”No point in thinking like that, Stevie,” she replied.  ”I know,” I lied.  I went home with the knot only slowly unravelling, safe in the knowledge that I would have forgotten about it by the morning.

I woke earlier than usual this morning.  I’m not a morning person and I don’t wake up earlier than I need to.  I knew something was wrong, and then I remembered that I had been dreaming.  I had been dreaming that I had to explain to my parents why I hadn’t gone to the Stone Roses’ Parr Hall gig.  Shit.  The knot was back.

What I couldn’t remember was which gig it was that I had blown off the music event of a generation for.  I perform open-spot level comedy, and last minute cancellations are hardly uncommon in this world, even when there aren’t remarkable excuses as to why.  What was this gig? Why hadn’t I just cancelled? What had I been thinking?

Luckily, I have this blog and so I could check.  That fateful night I performed at The Bernard Bananas Cabaret Show! (Gig 59). This was a series of shows put on by Peter Slater, and I was excited to be involved.  Not only would I get the chance to do the sort of comedy that I really wanted to, but it really meant something to me to be asked to perform.  Sure, I may have only played to an audience of 6, but my decision suddenly became understandable.  Perhaps it’s better to follow your own creative path rather than enjoy the output of someone else’s.

So, in summary: Britain’s best director makes a film about the World’s best band, and it provided me a moment of existential clarity. What more could you ask for?

(To be at that bloody gig, that’s what.)