Gig 33: SAS Comedy @ Lass O’ Gowrie, Manchester – 11th February 2012

I say it every time, and I sound like a broken record, but I bloody love SAS Comedy.  This month I was performing as Den Kodd.

The genesis of the character started in November last year when I received an email from the lethal duo of Victoria and Uncle Dave saying that I’d been they’d booked me for a gig in February, which was great news.  However, further on in the message was the line “You are Den Dodd and you will be supported by the Daddy Men.”  At first, I freaked out at the prospect of performing a character that I didn’t actually do and had no material for.  But it seemed like a really good gig to be involved with, so I resolved that I’d be able to come up with something.

My basic plan fell into place pretty quickly. I’d essentially be a reluctant Ken Dodd tribute act called Den Kodd.  I’d use the gags from my joke book and fill out the set with asides about how much Den didn’t like comedy and didn’t understand it.  The gig was planned for the day after SAS, so I planned to do a test run there (assuming I would be allowed to!).

In January I found out that I wouldn’t be doing the original gig, but was still wanted to do the character at SAS.  I also knew that I’d need to buy some fake teeth if I was going to fully evoke the essence of Dodd, so, you know, I bought some.  The second I popped the peggies in my gob, I instantly transformed into a somewhat sleazy, scouse bloke whose main goal in life was to unnerve my girlfriend.  This character was soon to take on a life of his own as Terry, “star” of a couple of YouTube videos that I’ve posted (see here and here).  It soon became clear that I wouldn’t be performing as Den Kodd; I’d be performing as Terry who would be performing as Den Kodd.

I had a gig on Thursday (Gig 32) and a busy week generally, so I didn’t feel like I’d had enough time to prepare.  I slightly freaked out on Wednesday night because I felt I had too much to do, but once Thursday was out of the way I managed to relax enough and was pretty confident on what I’d be doing.  I was going to use 18 jokes from the “Joke Book”, many of which I had used at Gig 1, also at SAS.  Although I knew the jokes, there was no way I was going to be able to remember an order, so I jotted down a word for each and had them on a small slip of paper to jog my memory.  As Den was intended to be a bit shambolic, it felt like an appropriate compromise.  I only really had a couple of run throughs, but felt pretty confident in improvising as Terry and had an idea of things I might say.

I was a little nervous on the way over to Manchester, but I totally relaxed as the show started and was just really looking forward to giving it a go.  The hair\teeth combination I had going on meant that people were laughing before I started, and luckily it continued throughout.  The jokes worked well; the character of Den Kodd was almost made for them.  I was also inhabited by the spirit of Terry and his endless quest to shut up his (imaginary) noisy neighbours.  Lots of the ad-libs worked really well, especially when I corrected my pronunciation of book (from buck to the traditionally scouse “buke”).   All in all, it couldn’t have gone much better.  And, yes, I know I wrote the same about last month’s SAS Comedy (Gig 26).

The last two gigs have certainly wiped out the memory of the previous two stinkers (Gig 30 & Gig 31).  It’s also made me think more about the type of comedy that I want to do, as I mentioned in the write up of Gig 31.  Perhaps I should try a bit of character comedy at my next assault on Beat the Frog…