Gig 115: Comedy Night @ The Railway Venue, Bolton – 13th June 2013

June 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Railway June 2013Wednesday 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.

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Gig 114: Comedy Night @ The Beech Inn, Chorlton – 11th June 2013

June 13, 2013 1 Comment

The BeechAs this was my ninth consecutive month compering at The Beech Inn, I was a little surprised to be feeling physically nervous on the drive over.  It’s strange because I don’t generally suffer from nerves, but they do crop up from time to time for no discernible reason.  That said, I am more prone to them when MCing, because, to a large extent, you don’t know what you’re going to say when you get on stage.

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.

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Gig 112: Comedy Balloon @ The Ape & Apple, Manchester – 29th May 2013

June 1, 2013 1 Comment

The Ape and Apple, ManchesterIn a recent post – Two Years in Comedy – I wrote about having not performed as many gigs in my second year of comedy as I did in my first.  Part of this trend could certainly be put down to my lack of appearances at the Comedy Balloon.  I knew it had been a while, but it turns out that there was actually a 10 month gap from my last appearance (Gig 69) until last Wednesday.  In my second year of comedy I appeared there once. In my first it was 5 times.   You do the math(s).

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.

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Gig 111: The Worst Comedy Night in Salford @ The King’s Arms, Salford – 21st May 2013

May 28, 2013 Leave a comment

TWCNiS Listing

An official listing…that’s eerily accurate.

Ding ding, it’s time for TWCNiS round 4!

So far, The Worst Comedy Night in Salford has been a bit of a mixed bag for me.  And by “of a mixed bag” I mean “difficult”.  Last time out – Gig 108 – I was MCing and had needed to ditch my own material in order to make the night work for the audience.  I managed to make it go OK.  Under the circumstances, I was happy with OK.

This time I’d be MCing again, and I hoped to be able to do more of my own little bits rather than having to stick with generic audience interaction.  With the Beech Inn gig – which I regularly compere – I have a good idea of what the audience is going to be like, and it makes the job easier.  TWCNiS doesn’t have a settled audience as of yet, and this gig was certainly no exception.  At the start of the night we had in attendance: me and Sir Dave Turquoise, ten performers (yes, ten) and four real audience members.  This meant that the intimate room felt busy, but the mix of people was a little off.  The four ‘real people’ were there to support one of the acts, and didn’t seem to be regular comedy goers (in fact, I found out later that they’d never been to see live comedy before). It looked like I would be back to doing audience ‘banter’.  I did try out a short story – just to see what would happen – and, unsurprisingly, it didn’t go down well.

After the first act had been on, I decided to try a few gags from my ‘joke book’.  Despite them failing abysmally at Gig 108, they actually worked quite well, and it helped me relax into my role. Things improved further when more real audience members appeared during the first interval, and from then on the night became really enjoyable.

Because there were so many acts, things did over run, meaning that most of the audience had to leave during the second interval.  The third and final section became somewhat chaotic, as there wasn’t actually enough time to fit in all the acts before we were kicked out.

It feels like TWCNiS is really starting to take shape.  With its evocative name, and, pretty much, an open door policy to performers, its a night when you could see anything happen, but see it happen in a friendly and supportive atmosphere.  During the difficult final section, Marshal B Anderson did a sterling job of condensing his set into the five minutes signalled to him by the barman.  It was an object lesson in speed comedy.  The final scheduled act – luckily a regular and local – was incredibly gracious when he was asked if he could postpone his spot until the next TWCNiS.  It was an odd, but strangely heart-warming end to proceedings.

Why not come along and try something?  You can do anything you want to.  Just try and make sure it doesn’t go on too long.

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

May 23, 2013 1 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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Gig 109: Comedy Night @ The Beech Inn, Chorlton – 14th May 2013

May 17, 2013 2 Comments

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

May 10, 2013 2 Comments

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 1 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 105: Comedy Night @ The Beech Inn, Chorlton – 16th April 2013

April 20, 2013 2 Comments

I don’t really have the energy to write this, but I’m going to give it a go to get it out of the way.  There’s a good chance that it’s not going to be very long.

I’ve not been feeling well for a few weeks now, but have been trying to keep going.  By the time this gig came around, it’s safe to say that I was flagging.  I usually write a couple of pieces for my regular MCing spot at the Beech, and this time was no different.  Well, it was different in that they were more half-hearted than usual.

First there was The Donnie Hotlips Story: Chapter 5.  This fictional biography of one of the regulars has been intentionally uneventful – he had a car crash. but walked away uninjured – and this month I’d planned to write a pastiche of an action film to spice up the story.  When I got around to writing it, I didn’t have much motivation, so I took the synopsis for Die Hard from Wikipedia and substituted mentions of McClane for Hotlips.  Yes, it was a bit lazy, but I felt that I could make that laziness work.

My monthly report about March 2013 was a rewritten and expanded version of one of my first reports (read it here).  I felt a bit cheap in reusing the old report (even though it was performed at a different venue), before realising that  was being utterly ridiculous.

Anyway, I was feeling pretty ropey on the evening of the gig, so my main aim was to get through it.  Which I did, just about.  I don’t really think I was very good, but it’s all a bit of a blur.  My two written pieces didn’t really work.  I think if I had been on better form I could have squeezed some laughs from them, but they just fell a bit flat.

I’m pretty much done.  Yeah, that’s it.  Before I go, I have to tell you about the best thing that’s ever happened to me since I started performing.  After the show, the audience were leaving the pub and I was approached by Donnie Hotlips.  He proudly revealed that he was wearing a “Donnie Hotlips and the Angry Birds World Tour 2013″ t-shirt.  Yes, really: he’d had a t-shirt made about a fake name/history that I’d made up about him.  I was genuinely amazed and thrilled that a bit of my nonsense had seeped out into real life. Amazing.

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

April 10, 2013 4 Comments

The Worst Comedy Night in SalfordSometimes 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.

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