Gig 113: SOS Comedy @ 3MT, Manchester – 1st June 2013

June 5, 2013 Leave a comment

SOS PosterI had three pieces planned for this month’s SOS Comedy.  Firstly, I wrote a new Gold & Brass sketch which further cranked up the tension between Simeon and Oliver.  I also had another semi-improvised bit planned for Terry Dowling, in which he would attempt to become an impressionist.  The final bit would be something completely new: The Story of the 1980s.

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.

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Interview with Terry

May 26, 2013 Leave a comment

During a recent trawl through my archives, I found an abandoned episode of The Gravy Boat (remember that?), which contained an interview with the ‘legendary’ Terry Dowling.  Well, I’m not one to let 12 minutes of audio recording go to waste, so feel free to have a listen to it now…

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Gig 101: SOS Comedy @ 3MT, Manchester – 2nd March 2013

March 4, 2013 2 Comments

According to George Orwell, my 101st gig would be the worst gig in the world.  Well, guess what? It wasn’t the worst gig in the world, not by a long chalk. Screw you, Orwell.

The plan for this month’s SOS Comedy was this:  I had the idea for a new Gold and Brass sketch immediately after the last show (Gig  96), so that proved relatively easy to write,  and Lee Fenwick had written another sketch in which I was going to play one of the characters.  I had a couple of train journeys to Edinburgh (Gig 100) in which to learn both scripts, so everything was sorted.

I found out on Friday afternoon that, due to unforeseen circumstances, we wouldn’t be able to do the sketches.  I had to think of something else to do, and in the absence of a completely new, hilarious character act, I knew I’d have to go with something largely pre-existing.  I quickly settled on a version of the Simeon Gold’s solo act (last seen in Gig 71).  Simeon is a slightly different character when done solo, so I wanted to make him more like the Gold and Brass version (although, I don’t think I could describe what the difference is).  I also wanted to come up with a new introduction to address his membership of G&B’s theatre group.

On Saturday morning, I was struck by the idea of Terry Dowling doing a bunch of my more recent ‘joke book’ jokes (similar to Terry’s original incarnation as Den Kodd).  I quickly compiled a list of jokes, identified as keywords, and that was pretty much it.  I did a couple of run throughs just to make sure I could tell the joke from a keyword only, and planned to just take the list on stage with me.  As Terry is an awful comedian, it seemed to fit in that he would have to refer to his notes.  I decided to open with a version of “Revolutionary Era France” (a stupid shaggy dog story).  The way I usually tell this bit is too intelligent for Tez, so I had to tweak it to match his particular style.

For Simeon, I settled upon 3 tried and tested plays:  Spies Like Us, Bertie’s Speech and One Day in Liverpool.  I also threw in Walls Have Ears, which previously has only appeared at Gig 97.  On that occasion, I just read it out from paper and it wasn’t in character, so I felt I was at least treading some new ground with the act.

I still felt a bit under-prepared upon arrival at the venue.  It wasn’t so much that I thought I’d forget anything, but rather that I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do.  Thankfully, both acts went well.  Simeon appeared in the first half and I performed it more fluidly than I thought I would.  Terry was on in the second half and because he’s supposed to be rubbish, there was plenty of scope for messing around and using the moments where I genuinely cocked up.

Overall it was a really useful gig.  It was good to know that I was able to pull together two acts at short notice, and that they actually worked.

P.s.

I’ve probably got a few more things to say, but I’m not going to.  I’m having one of those moments where I feel really self-conscious about how annoying  and awful these blog posts are.  Ironically, the fact that I’m bailing on it rather than fleshing it out actually makes it a worse read.  Oh, the irony.

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Gig 96: SOS Comedy @ 3MT, Manchester – 2nd February 2013

February 8, 2013 1 Comment

TerryThe previous (and début) SOS Comedy (Gig 89) saw a reboot of stupid theatre duo Gold & Brass (myself and Lee Fenwick).  The intention was always to follow it up with another G&B sketch this month, and after having the idea of what it was going to be about, it was relatively easy to write.

This left the question of what, if anything, I would do as a solo piece.  It’s been a while since I’ve written any new character material, so I didn’t have anything obvious to try.  I did quite fancy doing something else with Terry Dowling – a character I really love performing as – but, again, I didn’t have anything lined up.  Then I remembered my Roy Walker story.

This bit of material started out life as an idea for a one-liner based on Roy Walker and his catchphrases.  The problem I had was that in order to make the punchline work, I ended up with 90 seconds of set up.  At this point, the joke would usually be thrown in the bin, but I’m unusual so it wasn’t.  There was something about having a really boring, wordy set up capped off by a pretty lame punchline that I found really funny.   I also have a habit of starting my sets with bits that don’t seem like they’re going anywhere, and this fitted that bill perfectly.

I tried it out first at Gig 27, where I was able to get some kind of positive reaction (according to my somewhat vague post).   The joke’s next appearance was at Gig 35, where it didn’t really work.   From re-reading the post for that gig, it seems I was too distracted by  some of the audience being too young to get the reference, whilst worrying that some aggressive looking men were about to start heckling, for it to ever have worked.  I guess this experience soured me to the material for a while, and, although I really liked it, I didn’t know what to do with it.  The problem with doing an intentionally unfunny piece of material is that people might think that you’re just unfunny.

Six months passed and I’d largely forgotten about Roy and his fictional failed marriage.  Whilst lying in the bath, wondering what I could do at an upcoming Magical Animals,  I was struck with an idea:  if the set up felt drawn out over 90 seconds, how would it feel if it lasted 4 minutes?  The conceit I came up with was that I would start by mentioning that I’d been reading RW’s autobiography and then inadvertently start telling the story, before realising that I was running out of time and start hurriedly trying to complete the story (whilst getting frustrated at not being able to perform my “real” material).  By elongating the story it meant that I could add more stupid bits in, but the comedy would be mainly derived from my increasingly desperate attempts to finish.

And this is what I did at Gig 65, which thankfully went really well.  The next challenge would be to make it last for 10 minutes.  Which I did 10 days later at Gig 67, which again went really well.  In fact, it was one of my favourite ever gigs.  It probably wasn’t the best audience reaction I’ve ever received, but to have made the material work at all made it feel like a real achievement.   I couldn’t wait to try it again, and only had a couple of weeks before I unleashed it to utter indifference at Gig 69.

I guess I knew that the routine would fail eventually, but it was still disappointing.   Frustratingly, I was the architect of my own downfall.  The set is all about the audience and their reaction to me becoming embroiled in retelling Roy’s life story.  In Gigs 65 & 67, it felt as though the audience had bought into it quite early, so I was able to develop the story and work off their reactions.  On this occasion, the opening part of the set was met with silence.  At this point I should have broken away from what I was saying at directly addressed the audience’s indifference.  Instead, I ploughed on with the story.   Although I may not have fully have won the audience over by breaking away, this would have been in line with the intent of the material.  The approach that I took meant that I ended up just telling a boring story.

Gig 69 was on the 1st August last year.  Another 6 month gap.   I hadn’t intended to leave it for so long, but I guess I was looking for the right opportunity to resurrect it and when nothing suitable came along, I guess I forgot about it.  Anyway, you won’t be surprised to learn that I decided to do it as Terry.  I have a real sense of freedom when I perform as Terry; I seem to know what he would say in any given situation.  He’s also supposed to be someone who is trying to perform comedy without any talent or ability (or even a real concept of what comedy is).  This seemed to suit the material and the idea of him getting further and further away from performing his intended set, as the story progresses.

As I’ve not got the story written down I was relying on being able to remember it.  Thankfully it all came flooding back by just having a run through (although there may be bits I’ve forgotten that I’ve forgotten).  After that I did my usual trick of practising while driving, which I made sure I did with Terry’s teeth in (I can’t do his voice properly without them).  For the Gold & Brass sketch, we met up on the afternoon of the gig to rehearse.  It only took a couple of run throughs and we had it sorted.

Wow, this post is really dragging, isn’t it?  I don’t know why I felt the need to write the life history of the Roy Walker material, but it’s done now.  Don’t worry, I’ll try and move things along.  And, yes, I do realise the irony of me writing this bit and actually making the post even more drawn out.

Terry was on in the first half of the show.   The audience’s reaction to it seemed to fit into three categories   those who thought it was really funny, those who didn’t find it at all funny and those who were utterly baffled.  I was pleased with my performance of it, and there seemed to be enough people who liked it, but because there was a mixed reaction it’s difficult to gauge exactly how it went.

Gold & Brass was in the second half of the show.  I’m always a little nervous about forgetting my lines for these sketches, but, barring a slight cock-up at the end, it went pretty well.  I think it went down OK with the audience, but I get so wrapped up in acting it out that, again, it’s hard to know exactly how it went.

It felt like a slightly strange gig in that I really enjoyed both performances and they seemed to get decent reactions, but I came away with a slight feeling of it not having gone well.  I don’t really know why that was, but it’s a disconcerting feeling.  Maybe the reason that I feel that it didn’t go well was that it didn’t go well.  In which case, the idea that the individual bits received decent reactions might be entirely bogus.  In which case, it’s possible that on any occasion that I feel that I’ve had a decent reaction I might not have done.  In which case, does this mean that I’m one of those acts that’s deluded about how well they’ve done? I think being deluded about how well I’ve done is perhaps my biggest worry.  I’d rather be crap than deluded.  It would also be nice not to be so paranoid about this things.  Such is life.

Regardless of all my navel gazing, I came away from the night still with the ambition of stretching my Roy Walker bit out for a full 20 minute spot.  Maybe one day…

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MBM of the Year 2012

December 21, 2012 1 Comment

2012 has been a terrible year for the Milk Bottle Manifesto.  As pundits speculate on the reasons behind this unexpected fall from grace, it’s time to cobble together the nominations for MBM of the Year.

Terry Towelling

MBM - Terry Towelling

Hi!

My name is Terry Towelling and I’m reet sexy.

He is, indeed, ‘reet sexy’ but I’ve been asked to point out that he is no relation to Terry Dowling.

Jive Bunny

Jive Bunny

Et tu, Jive Bunny?

Did Jive Bunny betray Julius Caesar? I guess we’ll never know…

Skull & Crossbones

MBM - Skull and Crossbones

A late entry, this iconic image blah blah blah, something about milk.

And that’s it! Last year saw a mind-bending 8 votes cast.  Can we beat it this year? Probably not, but I’m going to persist with this anyway.

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Gig 91: Comedy Night @ The Beech Inn, Chorlton – 11th December 2012

December 15, 2012 Leave a comment

To use a sporting cliché, last month’s Beech Inn Comedy Night (Gig 84) was a game of two halves.  The opening section suffered from me trying to cram in my pre-prepared material, but the later bits went much better as I relaxed and concentrated on what was happening in the room.  It would have been stupid of me to not take something away from the experience, and I decided that this month I’d try and be less prepared and more in the moment from the start.

That’s not to say that I didn’t do any preparation.  I think it’s a good idea to have something to fall back on, and there was also the matter of my regular monthly report.  I came up with 6 new ‘joke book’ jokes, some ‘contingency questions’ (daft questions to ask the audience should ‘Where are you from? What do you do for a living?’ not work) and the obligatory monthly report.  I also decided to write the first chapter of the Donnie Hotlips biography (read it, here). Donnie was the name I gave to an audience member last month, along with an accompanying back story (he was a drummer in a 1970s rock band).  It was far from guaranteed that he’d be back this month, but it didn’t take that long to write and I thought it would be a nice surprise if he did show up.

I was nervous on the afternoon of the gig, which is a recurring theme for these Beech gigs.  It’s not something that really happens in the build up to standard gigs, but when you’re MCing there’s the double whammy of a) knowing you’re going to have to improvise most of your stuff and b) you have the responsibility of ensuring the night runs well.  As the MC, you aren’t expected to be the funniest performer on the night, but you do have to make sure that the audience know what’s expected of them and that they are suitably warmed up enough to enable the acts to be successful.  It’s not an easy job, but luckily it’s extremely rewarding and enjoyable when it goes well.

In the lead up to the gig, I thought about different approaches that I could take.  It struck me that if I was going to be MCing in character as Terry Dowling then I probably wouldn’t be as nervous; I’d feel confident that I’d be able to deal with the improvisation stuff and organisation more easily.  As I wasn’t MCing as Terry, I don’t know for sure if that was true, but it was still an interesting observation.  I tried to use this as a psychological trick to convince myself that I needn’t be so nervous, after all I am Terry.  This technique proved semi-successful.  As I would be primarily making stuff up, I wouldn’t really be able to rehearse, but on the drive over to Chorlton I started  to talk out loud in a stream of consciousness, to warm myself up.

Unlike previous months, the night had 4 acts plus the headliner, meaning that I didn’t need to fill one of the spots entirely with the monthly report.  My report was split into two halves: the first was a unsuccessful explanation of Bonfire Night (read it, here), the second being some “Radio 4 style topical jokes” to make up for the fact that the first part of the report was rubbish   The plan was to split the two parts between the first two sections of the gig.

I was still a bit anxious as the gig was about to start, but it was good to see some familiar faces. If people were coming back then I couldn’t be that terrible as MC.  Just as I was going to kick things off Donnie Hotlips and his wife made an appearance.  At this point I got a bit over excited, and pretty much started the gig with the story.  I think it worked quite well, but I really should have let things go a bit longer and built up to it.  I then quite quickly went into the joke book, where again I should probably have eased into it.  With both of these out of the way – and at some point making the decision to leave the report to the second section – I was left with having to improvise.

From this point on, I find it really hard to judge how I did.  Some bits worked nicely, but I’m not sure I fulfilled all of my roles and responsibilities adequately.  As compere, you need to do admin: explaining the format of the night and laying down ground rules for the audience.  I sloppily explained the format, but completely forgot about the rules. I got away with this because there were lots of regular audience members, and the audience is generally lovely.  If I was compering elsewhere, this would have looked amateurish  and it could prove costly if you don’t make sure the audience are all singing off the same hymn sheet.  Also, some of my introductions for acts were clunky, which I made reference to and light of , but I hope that the acts didn’t think I was being purposefully disrespectful.  I also don’t know if there were times when I brought acts on when there was a bit of a lull; it’s really hard to judge when you’re so wrapped up in the moment.

With the negatives out of the way, I should probably mention some of the stuff that went well.  I felt comfortable with my on-stage persona and was pleased that I didn’t get bogged down when stuff didn’t work and just had the confidence to go with it.  I didn’t have to resort to the contingency questions, instead I got plenty of mileage from asking about how prepared people were for Christmas.  I managed to get a few audience members involved.  Aside from Donnie, there was also Helen and her boyfriend Mr Loverman.  I ended up acting out being a door-to-door charity worker with two friends called David – eventually nicknamed Cruel David and Nice David – and I practiced some rubbish chat-up lines on a young lady called Cat.  I had a lot of fun, and hopefully this came across to the audience.

I opened the second section by explaining that the monthly report was too rubbish to read out, but that I’d do my Radio 4 jokes instead.  I’d written these by looking through Wikipedia’s November 2012 summary, taking individual bits of news and trying to add a stupid tagline.  These jokes were generally quite poor, and, because most news is distressingly tragic, some were really inappropriate.  I wanted to make a thing out of being embarrassed of the inappropriateness and my inability to do this type of material.  The jokes in full were:

Who shot JR? No one. He sadly died of …ahem… complications of throat cancer.

On November 3rd, the city of Turin, Italy, was chosen as 2015 European Capital of Sport.  Critics say that the decision is shrouded in mystery.

Two suicide bombers attacked a restaurant in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and a security guard is killed in the attack.  Apparently their soup was cold…

During the Syrian civil war, 7 Generals defected to Turkey.  The rest decided to stick with the chicken.

Celtic shocked Barcelona in the 2012–13 UEFA Champions League group stage.  They used one of them hand buzzer things.

Phillip Schofield handed David Cameron a list of suspected sex offenders live on This Morning.  Let’s hope it included the guy who had his hand up Gordon the Gopher’s arse.

The president of the Central African Republic François Bozizé ordered the detention of his son after he refuses to pay a hotel bill.  The son claims he definitely didn’t watch Council Estate Slags 4: Suck My Turkey Twizzler.

Following Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, some footballers sign a letter of condemnation against plans to hold the 2013 UEFA European Under-21 Football Championship in Israel next summer.  Gaza said: “Wie eye, that’s cannie nice of them.”

A freight train derailed at the Stuttgart-Feuerbach station, Germany, after a collision with the railway platform. There were no reports of injuries, but the platform was said to be badly shaken.

A committee charged with developing a new Egyptian constitution released a final draft as protests against sweeping new powers granted to President Mohamed Morsi continue. Protesters claim that the floors don’t need to be that clean.

Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo announced that Hurricane Sandy ran up a bill of $32 billion in New York.  It was very much like a meteorological Brewster’s Millions.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he backed the principles of the Leveson Inquiry’s recommendations, but has “serious concerns and misgivings” about introducing any new legislation to underpin a regulatory body to oversee the media.  What a twat.

I started with the JR joke but I really didn’t sell the concept of the section well enough, so it just looked like I was making a horrible, cheap joke.  At this point I decided to just pick and choose a few of the less contentious gags, and ended with the David Cameron, as it had a crowd pleasing ‘punchline’.  By the time I’d finished this section, it was time to bring on the acts, and I didn’t have that much more to do.

Overall, it was a great night, with some really good acts: Chris McIlroy, David Tandy, Gunther, Zoe Iqbal and brilliant headliner Peter Brush.  I’ve still got so much to learn as an MC, but it’s great to have such a lovely gig to practice at, and have a lot of fun as I do it.

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Gig 89: Superstars on Saturday @ 3MT, Manchester – 8th December 2012

December 9, 2012 1 Comment

SAS Comedy is dead.  Long live SOS Comedy.

Last night saw the relaunch of SAS Comedy, rebranded as Superstars on Saturday (SOS Comedy), at new venue, 3MT.  It’s been a long wait for the return, with the last actual gig being back in June (there were two cancellations after that: NOT Gig 67 & NOT Gig 75).  As I’ve mentioned many times, SAS has always been my favourite comedy night – both as a performer and as a spectator – so I was genuinely thrilled at the prospect of it starting up again.

I had two acts to prepare: a resurrection of Gold & Brass – a collaboration with Lee Fenwick previously seen at Gig 57 & Gig 61 – and a Terry Dowling routine that I had previously had prepared for the two cancelled SASs.

Gold and Brass are Simeon Gold and Oliver Brass, a ridiculous theatre group.  Simeon is an idiot, performing ‘theatre’ to make himself look good; Oliver is incredibly serious about using theatre as a political tool, but slightly psychotic.  I had to decide whether to write a new sketch or re-use one of the previous two.  After reviewing them, it struck me that the first sketch worked well, but, by performing it, it revealed more about what the relationship was between the two characters.  The second sketch was my attempt to reconcile why these two seemingly opposite men would be in a theatre group together, and I tried to cram everything we’d learned about them into it.  I decided to go back to the original sketch and tweak it based on my greater knowledge of the characters.  It wasn’t a massive re-write, but I thought it was enough to provide a good starting point for future sketches.  I met up with Lee yesterday afternoon, and we had it nailed after just a couple of run throughs.

Terry didn’t really need a lot of preparation.  The act was going to be Terry’s foray into stand up, based on the 4-minute version I performed at Gig 62, way back in June.  I’d been itching to do this routine ever since.  Because it’s supposed to be shambolic and loose, doing too much preparation would probably have had a detrimental effect.  I had a set list of about 8 or 9 things for Terry to do, and because I wasn’t didn’t have particular lines to hit, it gave me a lot of freedom.

3MT is a lovely venue, and it really suits character comedy because it’s set up as a proper theatre (in the slightly surprising setting of Afflecks Palace).        I had a lot of fun performing Gold & Brass, and really got to play around with Terry.  Overall, it was an absolutely fantastic night, with the likes of Peter Slater, George Cottier, Liam Bolton, Funkrocket 5000 and Rod Shepherd offering alternative comedy of the highest standard.

The next SOS will be in February, you owe it to yourselves to be there.

P.s.  You can find Terry on Facebook, here.

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Gig 83: Magical Animals @ Sandbar, Manchester – 12th November 2012

November 13, 2012 6 Comments

Saturday 10th 15:32

I’ve not been gigging as much recently, and in some of my blog posts I’ve mentioned that I need to renew my efforts in sourcing them.  Well, like the clichéd buses of lore, this week 4 gigs have arrived at the bus stop that I call me.  Given that these 4 gigs are on consecutive nights – Monday to Thursday – it’s more than likely that I’ll have some kind of meltdown, so I thought it might be prudent to write about my preparation for the week as I do it.  This should help pinpoint the exact moment when I lose it.  It’s also a kind of clever trick to try and guilt myself into actually doing the preparation.  Let’s hope that it works.

Prior to Thursday evening, I was pretty sanguine about the upcoming week.  At that point I only had 3 gigs lined up, and a pretty clear plan about how I was going to approach them.  As happened last month (Gig 80 and Gig 81), Monday’s gig would be Magical Animals followed by me MCing at The Beech Inn on Tuesday.  I was going to follow the same plan of preparing some new material to try at M.A., which I could then use as my contingency material for use at The Beech.  I would also need to write my ‘monthly report’ should I need it for Tuesday (I would need to do it if I end up being one of the acts as well as MC).

The third gig was due to be Open For Laughs in Huddersfield on Thursday.  I’ve played this night a few times, so it seemed like the ideal venue to try some newish material. The plan was to re-use any of the new stuff I’d performed at this month’s and last month’s M.A./Beech that I liked, bolstered by some older stuff.  I figured that I could pretty much pull a set list together by Wednesday morning,  which would give me a couple of days to run through my selection.

Last Thursday evening, I got a text from Jeff Downs asking if I could be a last minute replacement for Moviejokie.  Under normal circumstances, I would have said yes in a heartbeat, but I feared the addition of a fourth gig might just push me over the edge.  The main problem would be that as I didn’t have anything prepared for MJ, and had no ideas lined up for it, it would mean that I’d have to conceive of the ideas, write them and practice them all by Sunday evening, or I wouldn’t get chance to.  It would also mean that my day of practice for Open for Laughs would disappear, adding more pressure to that gig.

Despite my doubts, I clearly said that I’d do it; I’m not one for turning down gigs.  This means that I need to get cracking on preparation.  And, yes, I am aware of the irony of me wasting time by writing about the need for preparation.  Oh, and that it is now nearly 4 o’clock on Saturday and I’ve nearly wasted a day.  I’ll try and wrap this up quickly.

So far, I’ve written, but not practiced, my material for Magical Animals, which I’ll use as stand by for the Beech.  I’ve written about 400 words of my monthly report, but it really needs to be closer to 1000.

To do:  Practice material for M.A. Finish monthly report.  Do everything for Moviejokie.  Come up with set list for OFL.   Easy.  And by ‘easy’, I mean ‘shit, I better get cracking’.

To make matters worse, I’ve got to go out in 45 minutes for a haircut, of all things.  I definitely need to get cracking.

Saturday 16:35

So, I’ve had about 35 minutes to work on stuff and I’ve got 10 minutes before I have to go out.  We’re way overdue an update:

I’ve written about 50 more words of my monthly report, but I have a good idea of what I need to write to complete it.

I’ve firmed up the material for Magical Animals, and have written the bullet points of the set list onto an index card so I can practice on the way to the hairdressers (and on the way back).

I’ve pulled together the bits that I want to try at OFL into one Word document.  At a glance, I reckon there should be 10 minutes worth of material, but I ideally need to try a timed run through at some point, and, crucially, I need put it all into some kind of order.

I’ve made a start on Moviejokie.  I decided pretty much straight away that I should do Casio, as he’s worked well there before and if all else fails I can just be filthy.  I still need a concept for him, though.  Jeff – the brains behind Moviejokie – suggested that I try a British stuntman character, and I’ve decided to give it a go.  He’s going to be called Barry at the moment, but I can’t think of a suitable surname.  Being a stuntman, there’s plenty of opportunity for physical stuff and getting the audience involved, which, as discussed previously (see here), are essential for MJ.  I’ve had a few ideas, but they’ll need serious fleshing out.  Right, I’d better go.

Saturday 19:41

Home.  I managed to run through the material while I was driving and, as always, it proved really useful.  It’s all well and good coming up with a joke, but the key to making it work is all in the phrasing and the only way to really hone that is by saying it out loud and trying it in different ways.

MCing at The Beech is a really good way of forcing me to write new material, so I’ve been consciously taking more notes over the last month.  As a result, some of the bits don’t really fit into my usual style; specifically I’ve written a topical bit (about the U.S. election) and a “my girlfriend said a funny thing” bit.  Through my practicing, I’ve pretty much worked out how I’m going to approach them, but they still feel really alien coming out of my mouth; in a very similar way to my “Personal Bit” which I dropped some months ago.  These gigs are great opportunities to try something a bit different, though, and it would be useful to have a different type of material in my metaphorical back pocket.

Sunday 11th 15:28

Well, it’s mid-way through the afternoon and I’m finally sitting down to do something.   I’ve only just got home because we’ve been out to a farm shop. Yes, a farm shop. Deal with it.

Following my final update from last night, I finished off the first (and possibly final) draft of my monthly report.  I checked last month’s and it was 800 words long, so I’ve pretty much exactly matched that.  I then sat down with a notebook whilst watching telly and came up with some ideas for Moviejokie.  I came up with a name for the stuntman character, “Barry Muntstan – The British Stuntman” (I love a spoonerific character name, e.g. Barry Garlow, Jack Michaelson).  I also came up with an idea for what Casio is going to get up to; making an audience member act out a famous scene from a film.  It’s a relief to know I’ve got something, but I think it’s lulling me slightly into a false sense of security.  I need to firm up some of the ideas, pronto.

When I was in the bath earlier today, I was thinking about what I had to do, when I suddenly remembered a dream that I had last night.  I was performing character comedy and it wasn’t going particularly well. The problem was that I was either ‘in character’- getting the voice and mannerisms correct – or I was concentrating too much on improvising material, which was funny but not really related to the character.  Now, I don’t usually put much stock in the meaning of dreams, but even I had to admit that this looked like my subconscious sending me a direct message.  There’s a good chance that I’ll have to do a lot of improvisation at Moviejokie and perhaps it would be more successful if I were to do this as a character I was comfortable with.  This has made me think that I might be better off doing the stuntman as Terry Dowling.  It would essentially be all the same ideas that I had for Barry Muntstan, but it should be easier for me to make them funny as Terry.

It’s just coming up to quarter to four and football is starting shortly.  I’m going to have to make some decisions sharpish.  Magical Animals should be pretty much ready to go, although I’ll need to spend a few minutes tomorrow to prioritise what I’m going to do.  The Beech is more or less covered off, although ideally I’d like to do another draft of the report, which I should be able to squeeze in on my dinner breaks on Monday and Tuesday.  Thursday’s set is going to be a lot more adhoc than I would have liked it, but I’ll have to go into with the air of a new material session, and possibly have an index card set list with me as backup.  What I really need to do today is finalise as much of Moviejokie as I can.

Sunday 19:00

I managed to write up my notes for Moviejokie and get them into good enough shape that I roughly know what I’m doing.  As I’ve mentioned previously, the key for MJ seems to be to have a simple gimmick and/or audience participation.  The ideas for both Casio and Terry make use of both.  I wouldn’t say I’m completely happy with what I have, and I haven’t rehearsed them in any way, but at least I’m not completely panicking.

Or, I wasn’t.  I quickly e-mailed Jeff to mention the basics of what I had planned, mainly to confirm that part of what I had planned for Terry wouldn’t clash with the other acts.  As it turns out, the main set piece that I had planned for Casio actually clashes with something else. Poo.  This means that I’m going to have to think of another film scene to use.

I’ve actually got one in mind, and it could work quite well for audience participation.  The main problem is that it’s a very 80s film, and so a lot of the audience might not have heard of it, let alone knowing about the, admittedly once famous, scene.  Oh well, at least I have something I can use, assuming that I don’t think of anything better.

I’m not feeling that well this evening – I’m going to euphemistically use the term ‘upset stomach’ – so I don’t feel like doing too much more tonight. This is basically an excuse to not think about it and assume that everything is going to turn out OK.

Fingers crossed.

Monday 12th 13:31

I’m on my dinner break – corned beef butties, thanks for asking – and, as promised, I’ve just completed a second draft of my monthly report.  I say ‘second draft’, but that’s being too grand about it; it was just a few minor tweaks.  I’ll probably have a last look through it tomorrow, hoping to add a few more jokes.

I’ve also taken a look through my material for Magical Animals tonight.  My document listing all the new bits of material was geared towards tomorrow night, so I’ve created a copy and put the stuff in a more suitable order for tonight.  The material and order is:

On the Bus – I had to use the bus to get to work a couple of weeks ago and tweeted a number of times about the experience.  My first tweet was: “Today I am catching the bus. Stay tuned for a series of tweets that will form the basis of a stand up set I will never, ever perform.”  Before the end of the journey, I decided that I should try and turn it into a bit of material. I’ve transcribed the tweets and I’m going to read them out and attempt to adlib around them.  There’s a good chance that it won’t work at all.  I’m not that bothered if it doesn’t work (that’s why you do new material nights!), But  I am concerned that it will chew up my full 4 minutes and not give me chance to road test anything else.  This is the only section that I’ve not practiced so far, as it needs me to read it out and I usually do run-throughs while driving.

A Funny Thing My Girlfriend Said – As I’ve already mentioned, this is something brand new and a totally different style to my usual material.

4 New Miscellaneous Daft Bits – They’re all pretty much one liners, but silly.

80s Corner – The other day I stumbled across my set list for my first ever straight stand up gig. It reminded me of a couple of bits that I really liked – “Luke, I Am Your Father” and “Karate Kid/Extinct Birds” – but ended up dropping because they use pretty obscure 1980s references.  I thought it might be fun to try them again and wrap them up together, making a feature of their nicheness.

Supermarket Poem – New, short, silly poem.

U.S. Election – Another brand new bit, that’s in a style I wouldn’t normally do.

4 New Joke Book Jokes

There’s no way that I’ll get through all of this, so I might end up changing the order on the fly. And that’s pretty much all the prep I’m going to do today.  I’ll see you after the gig.

Monday 22:46

Just home from Magical Animals, as I managed to sneak off a bit early.  I know I look a bit overly keen writing this up now, but if I don’t attempt to keep up with these posts then they’re soon going to run away from me (not literally).

On the drive over to Manchester, I thought it would be a good idea to practice how I was going to set up the ‘On the Bus’ section, even though I wouldn’t be able to read the individual tweets.  By doing this, I soon latched onto the idea of me getting annoyed with myself for being arrogant enough to say that I wouldn’t do this as a stand-up set.  Getting an angle on it made the material come alive, and I immediately knew how I was going to play it, and how I would end the section.  Most importantly it felt like a bit of my material.

I arrived at Sandbar pretty much as it was due to start.  There were suspiciously fewer people there than usual, and it looked like it would be a really quiet night, but suddenly a bunch of people appeared from nowhere (they were, obviously, somewhere).  As the first few acts performed, it became clear that there was a slightly weird vibe in the room.  I think that the demographic of the audience was slightly different to normal and I got the feeling that some of the people in attendance didn’t know what to make of it and weren’t particularly interested in proceedings.  This gave a slightly uncomfortable air in the room, which was strange for the lovely Magical Animals.  It started to make me unsure about some of my material.  I think in particular I was wary of the ‘a funny thing my girlfriend said’ bit.  As I’ve already mentioned, it doesn’t feel natural to me yet as I’ve not found my angle on it, and this made me uncertain of its value.  Uncertainly is not your friend when you’re trying new material.  Where I was worrying earlier that I’d only get chance to do ‘On the Bus’, now I was worrying that I’d have to do something else.

In the end, I needn’t have worried.  The Bus bit worked better than I had hoped and it lasted around 4 and a half minutes, so I didn’t have time for anything else.

On the drive home, I had a run through of how I’m planning on opening tomorrow night and I started to think about Thursday’s set list.  After tonight, I’m all for giving Bus bit another run out – although it might tank if I try it tomorrow and I might change my mind – and that would end up being nearly half my 10 minute spot.  I also worked out how to tie in another bit of material to the bus bit, so I’ve already allotted about 6 minutes. Given how much other new stuff I have, it might end up being a question of what to leave out.  Of course, a lot could happen between now and Thursday.

Right, that’s enough for now.  Night night.

Filed under Comedy, Gig Diary Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Gravy Boat 33 – Terry’s Back

October 21, 2012 Leave a comment

Well, I gave Terry a chance to do a podcast last week and, technically, he did complete one (see here for details).  As a result, I’m contractually obliged to give him another go. Sorry about that.

This time, Terry asked people on his Facebook page (see here) to give him some things to talk about, and they, incredibly, duly obliged.  If you’d like to find out what utter rubbish he responded with, then you’ll have to have a listen.

You can listen to it on iTunes here:


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

Or, if you prefer, you can just listen to it here:


http://thegravyboat.podbean.com/2012/10/20/the-gravy-boat-33-terrys-back/

Or, if you’re so inclined, the RSS feed (whatever that is) is:


http://thegravyboat.podbean.com/feed/

Filed under The Gravy Boat Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Gravy Boat 32 – Terry

October 14, 2012 1 Comment

You may have noticed (or not noticed) that there haven’t been many episodes of The Gravy Boat lately.   There are many varied reasons why this is so, but the primary one is sheer and utter laziness.  As a remedy, I’ve decided to delegate the creation of the podcast to Mr Terry Dowling.  If you’ve never heard of Terry, then get a life.  Also, check out his Facebook page and ‘like’ him, here.

What did he talk about? I’ve no idea, you’ll have to listen for yourself.  Yeah, I know. That’s just the way that the biscuit crumbles.  Have a listen, it might be good.

You can listen to it on iTunes here:


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

Or, if you prefer, you can just listen to it here:
http://thegravyboat.podbean.com/2012/10/13/the-gravy-boat-32-terry/

Or, if you’re so inclined, the RSS feed (whatever that is) is:


http://thegravyboat.podbean.com/feed/

Filed under The Gravy Boat Tagged with , , , , , ,

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