Gig 104: The Worst Comedy Night in Salford @ The King’s Arms, Salford – 9th April 2013

Sometimes I have a gig where there’s so much to say that the thought of writing a post about it is too daunting, and last night was certainly one of those gigs.  Plus, you know, I was rubbish.  And I don’t think I could ever actually do justice to everything that happened after I’d been on.  Oh well, I’ll just start at the beginning and see how far in I get before I get fed up.

This was the inaugural gig for The Worst Comedy Night in Salford, set up by my dear friend Dave Turquoise (founder of the Beech Inn gig, which I MC).  Like the Beech, I was lucky enough to be asked to be involved with TWCNiS; I’ll be doing some MCing in future weeks, but I’d just be doing a spot for opening night.  Rumours are abound that I consider these to be my gigs, but this isn’t true.  I know how fortunate I am to have someone doing all the hard work and then letting me have regular spots.   To be fair, all the rumours were started by Dave himself, and by writing this paragraph he’s only going to wind me up about it even more.  What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment.

TWCNiS is open mic comedy where some spots are pre-booked, whilst others are available for acts that show up on the night.   This generous booking policy resulted in 13 acts for the evening, not including MC Ruth Cockburn.  Having been delegated the task of compiling a running order (because I apparently think it’s my gig anyway), I decided to put myself on first as it’s the most dreaded position on the bill.

I’d decided to use the night to try out some new stuff, and a few bits that had been tweaked.  I opened with my “stretched cat” joke, which I haven’t used for a while.  The gag is based on the audience thinking I’ve forgotten what to say, before the punchline reveals that my apparent forgetfulness is part of the joke.  To beef this bit up, I decided to tell it by pretending it was my first ever gig and that I was extremely nervous.  While I thought this conceit was playful, it perhaps came across as though I was either a) genuinely nervous or b) a sarcastic arsehole.  I delivered the punchline and there was pretty much no reaction.  Often the joke will get a groan, but I can use that as part of the act, but getting nothing at all signalled the uphill battle that I was already fighting.

I went into some new ‘joke book’ jokes.  These were particularly tortuous examples, and, as the audience weren’t onside, I struggled to make them work on any level.   I then tried a bit I’m calling “Homes Under the Hammer”.  This isn’t in any way, shape or form stand up material, it’s just something daft that I wanted to try.  It was dubious that I could have made it work under the best of circumstances, but I had known this beforehand.  I ended up dropping “Chain Letters” as it similarly wasn’t actual material.   I tried my Freddy Mercury jokes, which are wilfully bad.  I also tried “1980′s Corner”; a bit that I bailed out of doing in Gig 86 and Gig 87.  It was an attempt to resurrect some jokes with painfully obscure references from, unsurprisingly, the 1980s.  I started the section with a new joke that made me laugh as I was telling it, not because it was funny, but because I knew how ridiculous it was to tell it.

I planned to close with a rewritten version of “On the Bus”.  I’d previously performed this bit at Gig 83 - where it had gone well – and Gig 84 & Gig 86  – where it had gone down OK, but not great.  The material is based on a series of tweets, so the original, genuine version had been a bit flabby.  I’d rewritten the tweets  a while ago in an attempt to make it all a bit punchier.  To be honest, I never got to find out whether this had worked, because by the time I set up the premise, I knew I was on a hiding to nothing.  There were clearly audience members who were offended by me (not by my material, but just me), and after I unsuccessfully looked through the list of tweets to see if there were any worth reading out (which I, obviously, played up as part of the act), I decided it was time to stop.

I don’t quite know what to make of it, if I’m honest.  It’s perhaps an occasion when it would have been useful to watch a video of the performance, to try and gain a bit of objectivity about it.  Sadly, I didn’t record it, and if I had have done, then I wouldn’t have watched it anyway.  What makes it trickier to analyse is that I’m actually pretty fond of most of the material, and in many aspects I was pleased with how I performed them.  I’d put the set together with a definite idea of what I wanted to achieve, and from a personal perspective I felt I largely had done.  Of course, as no one really seemed to like it – barring one or two exceptions – you’d have to say that it was a failure.

There’s definitely a big lesson to be learned from the night, but I’m not sure what it is yet.  The opening conceit of pretending it was my first gig, was probably a big mistake, and sent mixed, negative messages to the audience.  I do like to play with the idea of intentionally rubbish material (which I find funny), but there’s always the risk of it just being rubbish rubbish.  I also think that my choice of material and performance may have come across as a bit smug and self indulgent.  Maybe I just wasn’t very good and my new material crap.

OK, that’s me out of the way.  I now have to try and describe the rest of the night. Right, well there was….this.. then… I.. I don’t know what to say.  I think you just had to be there.  Suffice to say that it was an experience.  A very, very real experience.  In many ways the whole night felt like a piece of performance art.  But, you know, in a good way.  Even the bad bits.  Hopefully this is the start of a very odd night.

One of the other performers,Fiona Brehony, has also written a blog post about the gig.  You can read it here.

The Worst Comedy Night in Salford is fortnightly at The King’s Arms.  Spots will be available for acts that turn up on the night.  The Facebook page for the night is here.