Back to Earth
Jun1
And now he’s grounded.
I did Dale’s night at the queens head - I hadn’t brought anyone so I was entered into the slam - all the acts get 3 minutes and then the winner of the laugh off gets to finish. My new even more offensive than usual opening went down really well - especially as there was an asian comic who’d done the stereotypical accent earlier so I could play on that. For some reason I massively miscalculated the length of my material so I ended up partway through a routine.
Anyway, I and another comic were joint winners so I got to go back up to finish my set. Now, after I’d done my bit I realised that the timing of my set was wrong & I was stressing about what I was going to do if I won. So when they were having the vote I was voting for the other guy. Anyway, I went back on, tried to resurrect the routine I was in the middle of and that didn’t work at all. Switched to something else that didn’t worth either and then I just freaked and walked off without finishing - which I think is the first time I’ve done that.
Dale was very nice after the gig and said he should have realised that I didn’t want to go back on. But darlings, the show must go on.
No but seriously, it was a useful experience and I’ve had enough good gigs to realise that that was a one-off and that I am funny although I still have a long way to go.
Desperately Seeking Salvation
Jun0
teh date: 24.06 (that’s 3 gigs in a row - madness surely)
teh place: Desperately seeking stagetime
New night, run by Anthony and Phil from the course. Was a really excellent night - wonderful cool room opposite Bond Street tube (so piece of piss for me to get home from).
Took me a while to find the place for some unknown reason, so by the time I was there I’d missed out on the guaranteed slots and had to stick my name in for a random draw.
The cream of the london new act circuit were there, all of the more established acts I’ve grovelingly made friends with in the hope that they might aid my career, and the newbie scum who I look down upon and despise.
I ended up breaking my no-drinking before I’ve been on rule again, but I was feeling quite tired and I thought I needed a pint in a sort of kill or cure type scenario. It worked.
Didn’t want to do my standard 5 as most (but not all) of the audience were fellow acts, and at least 50% of them had seen my act before. So I ended up doing probably the most offensive set I’ve even seen - exactly the sort of thing that I said I wasn’t going to do when I started this comedy lark. It involved a spacker voice (I can say that, you can’t - diplomatic immunity once again) and a reworking of a very old ice cream joke that my dad used to tell me. The payoff line was about how black and asian comics often play with the audience’s expectations by putting on a stereotypical voice (I was thinking of Omid Djalili when I wrote it).
The worst thing about it - well I say the worst thing, it was all pretty horrible - but a particularly bad thing about it was that when I was doing the spacker voice, people who knew me were laughing along but people who’d never seen me before were looking at them giving them daggers for mocking the poor disabled lad who had the courage to get on stage.
I am going to hell for that one.
But at least I got a laugh.
Sunny Stoke Newington
Jun2
teh date: 23.06 (that’s a day after the last one - I’m getting serious about this shit, fo’real)
teh place: Party Piece
Really starting to get worried now about how consistently well this is going. I know I’m due for a fall and I think the better this keeps on going the worse the damage to my ego will be. However, in the meantime it’s nice to knock them dead every night.
Once again at PP I had a weird feeling about the gig. The first bit had some really big names (relatively speaking) but some of them seemed to treat it as less of a gig and more of just a chat. It was bizarre.
Nice to see David, Nelson and Sarah again. Sarah’s completely changed her stuff since the last time I saw her, which is a shame in some ways because I liked her self-harm material. But the new stuff is very good, although as I pointed out, exceptionally lazy in that it just consists of extracts from this ridiculous psychic Hello-type magazine.
I’m just jealous I didn’t think of the idea, and wasted my time writing cocking Eurovision jokes that didn’t age well.
Tom was very happy with me because I’d brought audience once again. He promised me a drink which I failed to collect in the end. Went on and killed them all, switched my set back to an earlier style - brought back the IT jokes which went down surprisingly well, although I thought the peer-to-peer once should have got a better laugh. Stupid audience not familiar with network topologies.
Got the tube back with Mark Restuccia (proper comic - he features on chortle and everything) who was extremely complimentary about my set. Yay me!
Stockwell once again
Jun0
(apologies - I’ve not been updating these regularly so now I’m going to write a bunch of reviews at once)
Teh date: 22nd June
Teh place: Cavendish Arms, Stockwell (again)
Another fine gig at stockwell - I know I keep going on about it but I really do love the Cavendish.
It was a bit of a reunion for the people I did the course with - about 3 of us were on - Stevie G opened again and once again failed to get into the clap-off. But, he’s so good he doesn’t need the likes of the petty Cavendish Arms’ audience to approve of him.
And, in fact, the fact that I did get into the clap-off should be taken as a condemnation of my work.
By which standards, I have a very long long way to go.
Could potentially have won the clap-off but (joking apart) - I don’t really like that kind of competitiveness in the new act scene. And I’m most definitely not saying that because I failed at the Laughing Horse New Act competition at the first round. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Apparently my stabbing motion looks more like a wanking one. I should probably clear it up with David that I’m implying he’s a murderer rather than a wanker.
Wimbledon Park
Jun0
Good gig.
Jesus it’s hard thinking up new stuff to write about this. I suppose it’s testing my abilities as a writer to think up new angles (ha ha) on old, tired stuff.
So yes, (psych myself up, ready for showtime), gig last night’s was good. Once again unexpected friends turned up, not the biggest crowd in the world but they were very friendly.
I think I’m growing in confidence in every gig I do. I still think I don’t react enough to what’s going on around me, I’m still predicting how certain gags will go.
Party Piece
Jun0
And he storms on from strength to strength.
Last night was Party Piece in Stoke Newington. I’d heard mixed things about the night, and the area itself has always had the reputation of a shithole, quite frankly. However, when I got there, it was great. Stokie (as I believe no-one calls it) was a nice area, maybe it’s because the sun was shining and anywhere (even Balham) would have been nice but I really liked it. Arrived with ages to spare (the evil Hils Jago’s advice about turning up early to gigs was actually sound), wandered around and ate the remains of the previous nights dinner (roast pork & potatoes - fact fans) in a park.
Actually that’s one of the nice things about doing comedy - getting to see areas of London that I never would have considered visiting.
Mark & Pru turned up unexpectedly - well not completely unexpectedly - I did text them - but I didn’t expect them to show so it was nice to see them.
Got chatting to the promoter (Tom Webb), who’d I’d met once before, albeit very drunk (I was very drunk, not him), and the highly amusing John Atkins (who I’d met at Stockwell). John was asking about Logan’s course, but I advised him not to bother as it’s aimed at absolute beginners and I think if you’re gigging and on the circuit (I can’t believe I actually used that phrase in a “non-ironic” sense) it’s probably a waste.
Broke my rule about not drinking before the gig and had a pint. Gah. On the plus side, unlike other gigs where I’ve had a few (i.e. many) beers beforehand it didn’t seem to make much difference. Still, maybe I would have been even funnier if I hadn’t. Who knows.
John did an absolutely brilliant 5 minutes that consisted purely of him doing a 5 minute 90’s rap medley, starting out with Ice Ice Baby, before veering into the Fresh Prince and ending on Turtle Power. It wasn’t traditional comedy, but it was very funny.
But yeah, after all that, my 5 minutes went very well. Said all my stuff, wasn’t too nervous on stage, got some good laughs. Once again the punchline to the eurovision bit went down like a lead balloon, but I got much more laughs by pointing out that it had taken 3 minutes to get to that point. Why do people laugh when you point out that a joke has gone badly? I dunno.
In other news, I’m going to see what happens if I do a 5 minutes w/o mentioning the face thing. Just to see what happens. I’ve probably got a load of stuff I can resurrect from the course that I never did again.
Although it does give me a very good entrance and gives me about a minute of quick fire gags - which builds up a level of trust from the audience that I then subvert by doing another 4 minutes of tedious, offensive stuff about Wikipedia and Lewis Caroll.
Ah, the trials of being a performer.
Random street scenes
Jun0
Well I’ve failed to keep to my promise of writing every day, what a surprise.
Trying to think what’s happened the last few days - all I have is a series of emails written to myself that consist of one or two phrases that I’m now trying to assemble into a coherent whole.
Yesterday as I wandered out of the house in order to get some breakfast, there was the sort of street theatre that Shepherds Bush is famous for.
For starters, a stranger was trimming my front hedge. That’s not a euphemism (BUT IT WOULD HAVE etc etc.) - he was a friend of my grans who happened to have a trimmer in his van (?) - as I was standing there watching a man trim my hedge, some mediterrean looking people turned up looking for the dodgy woman from next door.
This is a woman (the woman next door) who has been known to borrow cash off my gran, always with some elaborate story about how her husband needs to get to the airport or some other such bollocks. She tried to borrow cash from me once (at 1AM, no less) - but I told her to piss off or I’d have her arrested.
Anyway, so some people (who I suspect had been stupid enough to lend her money) turned up, looking for her and their money. I explained that she wasn’t in, or if she was she wasn’t answering her door - they asked me if I had a key. I replied that I didn’t, and even if I did I wouldn’t let them in (on account of how I don’t know them from a bar of soap).
Thought very little more about it, wandered down to do some shopping (Waitrose@Westfield - love it). On the way home with the fruits (and vegetables) of my labours I spotted the pair again, this time carrying a Morrison’s bag of shopping. They seemed to be having some sort of altercation:
“I never should have married a Muslim!” shouted the woman
“I’ll f**king punch you on the nose!” replied the man (actually to be honest I can’t remember which one shouted it - men/women, they all look the same to me - genderist I know)
“You touch me, that european (i.e. me) will stop you!” came the retort.
Now, I should point out, when I wrote (i.e. me) I was in fact breaking from the main text to point out that the woman was referring to me, she didn’t actually say i.e. me (in brackets).
Additionally, I was tempted to reply that quite frankly I didn’t really give a flying f**k whether they beat the shite out of each other on the street. I hate being involved in altercations at the best of times, and I had no problem watching those two idiots beat each other blue. So long as they didn’t bleed on my doorstep. Blood is such a bugger to get out, I should know.
Oh yeah, nearly forgot, as I walked down the street I overheard another conversation:
“So how does it work then” replied a person of indeterminate gender and race
“By the grace of Jesus Christ” replied his/her friend, seemingly in all seriousness.
Maybe I could do a sort of Overheard In New York website. Scenes from Shepherds Bush? Hammersmith Happenings? A**eholes on the A40?
Monsters
May0
I went to see Monsters at the Arcola Theatre tonight. It’s a theatre production looking at the James Boulger (not Jamie - no-one called him that except the press) case.
It’d be a stretch to say that I enjoyed it, but it was certainly moving and raised far more questions that it answered. I’ve read some of the transcripts of the case, because I read a book by that dickhead Paul Britton (he was responsible for Colin Stagg being charged with Rachel Nickell’s murder) and he was involved in advising the police before the interrogations (Paul Britton, not Colin Stagg. BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUNNY IF HE HAD BEEN - I’m trying that out as a catchphrase). I found myself on the verge of tears at one point, where the policeman gets John Venables to admit what he did to James (not Jamie) Boulger.
I was wondering why that was, I’m normally much more stoic and not given to showing any kind of emotion - but it reminded me of what someone said to me recently. Basically, having started doing standup, I think in order to write this stuff you have to bare your soul and actually connect with your emotions somewhat. The difficulty is, of course, is that emotions aren’t a tap that you can turn on or off at will. Or, of course, you could just do some hillarious observational stuff about how men leave the toilet seat up and this annoys women, and that’s the funniest thing that there has ever been, ever.
You’re an idiot and I’m a coward
May0
I’ve got a gig on thursday in Wimbledon Park. It’s for a parent teachers assocation & we’ve been advised to avoid the paedo gags. My new material is kind of dependent on paedophilia, especially the payoff line.
Now, I could go and write some new, non-offensive material, but part of me wants to just do it because I’ve been advised not to. As I have semi-jokingly said to people, part of the attraction of this is getting on stage and saying things that would get me arrested or beaten up in other circumstances. Plus, I’ve thought of a brilliant justification and another couple of gags about the fact that I’m mentioning this.
I’d love to say that all of this was about my pushing boundaries for some deeper meaning, but quite frankly I just like taking the piss.
(post title is from a brilliant Robin Ince piece - check it out).
Stockwell in depth review
May0
Slightly more in depth review in the cold light of day.
Turned up at about quarter to six, there were already 2 comics waiting for the doors to open, including Swiss Bianca (possibly a joke there - sounds a bit like Swiss Banker - maybe not) from Sunday’s gig but that was okay. Got chatting to them and was dispensing my intimate knowledge of the wonderful world of comedy.
Then a mob of about 6 people turned up, walked straight past us and into the pub garden (which was unlocked by this point) - it was a bit tense as there are only 5 open slots so we were a bit annoyed if they were going to push in front and all go on the bill. It degenerated into a sort of west-side story standoff with gangs of roving comedians facing off against one another, armed with rapier wits, less-than-lethal litotes and irony bars.
Not really - BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUNNY IF IT HAD!
As it turned out, only one of them was a comic anyway so it worked out fine. Got my name on the bill okay, then decided to go and get some chips as I don’t really like the food at the cavendish - I drink enough beer there that I don’t feel bad about not eating the food. I went down the road with Tom (fellow comic I’d just met) and his friend and we went to a fishbar. As we were sat there, eating chips (riveting this, isn’t it), a couple started having a domestic right next to us.
“LEAVE IT” said a rather bad tempered man
“I CAN’T F**KING LEAVE IT” said his equally unhappy partner (I’m assuming it was his partner, I didn’t feel it was appropriate to interrupt their conversation in order to ascertain their exact relationship status)
“TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF MY F**KING FOOD” the man shouted
And I wondered who he was talking to - was it perhaps the fish & chip seller, which would seem to be a bit harsh, given that preparation of food does generally involve touching it - plus of course, I don’t believe he had actually paid at that point so technically it wasn’t yet his food. And I started thinking I should write this stuff down, as it’s probably the kind of thing that comedians can make a joke out of. But I decided not to, because I didn’t want to get stabbed. Someone had been stabbed just down this road the week before, so that’s not a baseless fear - although that stabbing did allow me to make a joke at the expense of david the promoter (comedians - turning tragedy into showbiz opportunity).
Anyway, my interest obviously registered with this man because he turned to us and shouted
“DON’T YOU F**KING LISTEN TO THIS”
I replied
“Well, if you’d just be slightly quieter, I might actually be able to do that”
I didn’t really, of course, because of the already aforementioned aichmophobia.
Anyway, we headed back to the pub to prepare for the night. Phil & Stevie G were both booked, but as neither of them had brought a friend, they thought it was best if one of them didn’t do it, rather than try and scab friends from someone else and possibly earn the ire of David the promoter (who is, despite my bad taste cheap jab at him, a really lovely guy).
Stevie G was on first and delivered the kind of professional, tight set I’ve come to expect from him. I felt bad in some ways because he probably didn’t get as good a reaction as he might have if he’d been on later - on the other hand he should probably take it as a compliment that he was felt to be strong enough to open.
There was one guy I felt really bad for - he got on the stage, really nervous, pissed around with the mike stand for about a minute before picking the mike up and putting it back in the stand, took out a folder and held it in front of his head before reading stuff out aloud. All of this was getting a lot of laughs, by the way. However about a minute in he just said he couldn’t do it anymore and walked off. I thought it was a real shame and I wondered why he walked off when he was getting big laughs, maybe the audience weren’t laughing at what he was expecting, but they were laughing. I don’t think you can take yourself too seriously in this business. As Logan Murray says, you’re a clown, you’re playing the fool - and if by doing so you get to say some interesting and provocative stuff (like say Mark Thomas or Jeremy Hardy do), so much the better. Without the laughter, you can’t say anything (or you can, but people won’t listen).
Anyway, I went on, had at least 10 seconds laughter without even saying a word (I know, I just look funny) - actually it was the incredibly offensive t-shirt I’d bought in thailand and then launched into my set. Managed to forget a few of the things I wanted to say, but I think I was over time anyway so it’s probably for the best. I was pushing it a bit with the stabbing joke anyway. Good audience reaction, although not good enough to be bought a drink, not that I’m bitter about this or anything. Oh no. (saying one thing and revealing another - thankyou logan).
I went up to the very nervous guy after the show and told him he should carry on. I love being a comedy guru. Although I’ve yet to manage to convince any naive young female comics that their comedy chakra’s are between their legs or on their chest & I just need to manipulate the energy lines. Give it time.