STREATHAM 15TH MARCH 2019

Sometimes I really hate the Scots. There is a Scotsman and he is really drunk plus and/or possibly on coke. He has stopped using consonants and his heckles consists of merely vowels. Nobody can tell what he is on about. I could probably decode his noises if I wanted to, for I too am a Scottish. It is not really words just ambient Scottish sound. It is as though he occasionally wakes from his slumbers and chucks in something else before going back to sleep. 

He is not really a major problem. More like a grumbling appendix. He rumbles away during the other acts but I am aware he could become a flash point. 

When I take to the stage he very quickly pipes up when he finds that I am Scottish. I immediately tell him I wish to distance myself from him. That I want nothing to do with him. We have nothing in common. That we have no affinity whatsoever despite being born on the same piece of rock. I do it with wit and charm so it is a good icebreaker. I wish I can remember how I did it because it was really good. Funny but also setting out the ground rules, ingratiating myself with the rest of the audience, isolating the trouble maker and done with a light touch. I wish I could recreate that on stage again and also in real life where I could go about telling people who needed to be told to fuck off but in a charming fashion. Like a master politician or a socialite or something. 

Anyway however I fluked it the audience are on my side. So I already have more leeway. Then I do the gay town routine and the whole gig is flowing. it is in the ideal spot where they trust you and the audience are so elastic you can stretch them all over the place and you can get the next laugh with such economy of delivery, just little nudges and you don’t really need to over sell or push the delivery. It is probably as good as it gets for this size of crowd. It is also unfortunately as good as it gets. 

But I take a wrong decision about material. I do a routine about coming down from Scotland to London and having a chip of my shoulder. And although the routine is about me and I am the joke in it all, the Scotsman gets riled up by it and starts causing problems. He thinks its about him. And it really IS about him. He thinks I am having a go at him. And I really AM having a go at him. Why choose that routine? My subconscious has decided to take him to task  that is why. Fair play to my subconscious and fair play to him - the headcase -  amidst all the alcohol and cocaine and regret and hatred in his addled mind  -  he is the only one in the room, including me, that has cut through the sub text and can see that I really am saying  ‘Fuck You’ to him. His over sensitivity to social slights are working perfectly. 

So anyway he reacts to it and not in a good way. He thinks some gauntlet has been thrown down. And it has by the way. He starts becoming a problem. I find myself later thinking I shouldn’t have chosen that routine. But armed with fore knowledge would I really have acted any differently? I doubt it. I would probably have delighted in ramming the whole thing down his throat anyway. Who knows? He may have exploded on something else? Maybe nothing is ever my fault? That is also a possibility. 

There  are more exchanges with him. I always get the better of him. That is not a boast by  the way. It is my job and also he is really out of it and I am not. I should be getting the better of him. But every interruption damages the rhythm and exposes the artificiality of material. He is too far gone to know that I have beaten him anyway so he will always be back for more. Like the time the Zulus beat the British in some battle even although the Zulus didn’t have guns and The British did have guns and all because the Zulus were on hallucigenics and that stopped them from stopping when they got shot. Like that. 

There are other miscalculations. For example I am looking at the wrong person. I think the heckler is somebody else and I am directing my barb comments at the wrong person entirely. That in itself becomes “a bit”. By “a bit” I mean an improvised comedy routine around an occurrence during that gig. A happening or an event if you will. In the parlance “a bit” is a good funny bit. 

Anyway it is not the gig I would have envisaged but it is all cooking anyway. But suddenly he stands up and this changes the whole dynamic. And it is quite a small audience so the tension at potential conflict is always going to be quite large. I am sure he wants the toilet and not to hit me in the face but he looks so dazed. He is not sure where the toilet is or where backwards or forwards is. He rocks back and forth on his heel trying to focus, a thousand yard stare. I think the audience think his is limbering up for a right hook. But they don’t understand Scottish psycho body language. He is merely marshalling his resources for a toilet visit. All this is largely post gig conjecture of course. At the time I don’t really know what is going on. At the time I don’t initially realise he is standing at all. All I know is that the heckle put downs are no longer working and that they are no longer laughing at me and there is tension in the air. I think it is my fault. Have I gone too aggressive? Has my tone changed? I try to correct my tone but to no avail. And it could have been my fault maybe it wasn’t because he stood up. Who knows? 

Anyway he goes to the toilet and the tension abates and I do the rest of  the gig and it is good but it is bad because it could have been so much better judged by the start of the gig standards. They were in that elastic state where I could have taken them anywhere and know they will only go some places. So the end is good but it is not good. 

STREATHAM - 6 NOVEMBER 2015

Blog 6th November 2015 - The Hideaway Streatham

Before

This Friday night club has a warm and civilised crowd consisting mainly of couples or family groups. The venue is primarily a music venue and a live soul band are playing elsewhere in the building. The audience have been warm and appreciative all night. Just before I am brought on a man enters the room on his own and starts to heckle. If there is such a thing as an old man hipster then this man is it. He sits down, heckles, then realises he wants a drink, so he gets up and walks to the bar and gets a beer while continuing to chip in. There is something about this wandering about that really gets my goat. There is a cockiness about it, as if he owns the place. I have rarely seen a heckler so relaxed (perhaps he really does own the place?) He doesn’t seem drunk, just full of himself. Nether does he seem deluded in anyway - like he thinks he is helping. I get the impression he knows exactly the impact he is having. He wanders about and heckles with  detached interest like a kid  torturing an insect. I could see this guy take the gig down merely as a social experiment. It is now that two emotions start simultaneously. The first disappointment. Disappointment that the lovely gig I had been promised by fate will not now be mine. The second: a swelling anger at the future direction this gig is about to take. I can already smell the soured atmosphere that will be unleashed during my set as I clash with this guy and fail to contain my contempt.  The compere reads the heckler the riot act and he shuts up for the time being. But this is surely only a holding position. 

During 

The stage is very wide. Too wide. When I take the mic out of the stand and walk with the stand to the edge of the stage I don’t know when to stop. If I walked to the literal edge of the stage, it would take too long and I would have turned into a physical comedian. I have to plank the mic down where I arbitrarily decide the edge of the stage is going to be. The start is sluggish and it doesn’t quite connect, I don’t know if I have done anything wrong or they are just getting used to me. I do adjust the delivery, injecting a bit more energy and now it seems to land better. Things start to build gradually but steadily. Even within two minutes I am throwing in some new lines so it must be going reasonably well. The momentum continues to build. The women are particularly enjoy it. There is one woman who has a noticeable laugh and this injecting more energy into the crowd. Rolling laughter is now picking up. Each routine is building on the laugh. By the five minute mark I am thinking that this could become an exceptional gig if I continue to build upon it. At the end of the dentist routine I deliver the final punchline and the heckler chips in and tags it. He isn’t funny but it never the less cuts the energy out of the routine. He is very calm as it chips it in. A sort of sniper heckle. It ruins my punchline but in a very specific way. I try to tackle him in a more conventional way, stating that his heckle wasn’t funny. But I don’t think that was the point and neither do the audience. I am irritated by him and it shows. There is a bit of an atmosphere. I marvel how the warmth and energy of a few seconds previously is now dissipating. I can see this turning ugly. Not really aggressive just majorly awkward. For a few seconds I am not sure how to handle this and then I know what to do or I accidentally do the right thing and build from there, who knows? I think it was a conscious decision? I switch to congratulating the heckler, apparently sincerely, for taking the momentum out of the gig, for preventing me from resting on my laurels. I hate comedians cruising on previous energy, I tell the audience, cheats, charlatans, every one of them. This is now getting traction. There is an American woman in the audience. I now bring  her in, berating American comedy for not having similar in-built hurdles for the comedians to overcome. Now the momentum is building so I just continue, saying that I hate doing material and that I prayed to God something like this would happen so I could get out of doing it. In a way everything I am saying is true. I am basically offering a commentary of what is actually happening although sometimes flipping my attitude: saying that I am happy with something that I am clearly not happy about. But other times it is just straight forward candid admission. I am now pushing at an open door. I wonder how long I can run with this? It has been approximately three minutes. I muse aloud of the problems of getting back into material after a prolonged ad-libbing section. This is of course true. I know that the window of opportunity, to switch back into material, is narrowing. I am debating with myself whether to go into material at all now. I feel I could ad-lib indefinitely but perhaps another ten minutes is a stretch? I worry about the absence of any shape in a prolonged riff. Soon I will pass the point of no return where the rhythm of the ad-libbing will jar too much with scripted stuff. I decide to go back to material but that is a decision of the head not of the heart. I would dearly love to keep winging this to see where it takes me. Even at this point it already feels a leap to get back to material. I have to go back to material but ad-lib a bit about the absurdity of going but to a routine from 5 minutes ago. This softens the landing and then I go back in. And it is fine but I never quite regain the momentum of the early set. I spend the remainder of the time regretting my decision to return to written material. I don’t know if this regret is justified. I never will but it feels like a cop out on some level and a wasted opportunity. 

After 

The Heckler buys me a pint of lager.  He plonks it down in a slightly cocky manner. He gives it to me in front of the other acts. He fails to offer them a drink. This is like when a punter compliments one act in front of the other acts and fails to say anything to the others but only ten times worse. 

I don’t even want the drink. I offer it to the other acts. They don’t want it either. It is as if has been tainted by the heckler.  I drink it. I don’t enjoy it. It gives me a headache. I go home. 

Later at home I listen back to the recording.  I can hear the note of annoyance in my initial exchanges with the heckler that I had to overcome before I really started taking him on. Perhaps of more note however is that the highlight for me is not now the ad-lib section at all. Listening back the best bit is the early section of my set prior to the heckler. This is the bit that really crackled and felt alive.  And while I was loving the ad-libbing at the time, now that I listen back I feel that the set could have been really good without it. So my regrets are of a different kind now and I wish I could have worked out how to get back to the spirit of the early bit as I minimised my dealing with the heckler. Lesson: what feels best isn’t necessarily best. 

EDINBURGH FRINGE - 16TH AUGUST 2015

SHOW 9 

16TH AUGUST 2015

AUDIENCE: 50

WALKOUTS: 0

RUNNING TIME 55 MINS

BEFORE 

A busy Sunday night and a bustling audience full of energy.  There are four older Glaswegian men who are on a piss up from Glasgow. I can tell they will be trouble. 

My venue has now been fitted with massive air fans which i decide to turn off as they are noisy. 

DURING

A great atmosphere at the start of the show. It could not be better, the audience warm and energetic and I feel very relaxed and already in the zone. 

But as I establish where the audience are from, already the Glaswegians are out of their box. They are very excited to be from Glasgow, very excited to be from a place and they already have that internal dynamic of their own internal comedy, special to them, tedious to everyone else. 

One of them pipes up and I decide I have to come in hard. I am not prepared to have them as part of the show. Last year one of my fringe shows was constantly interrupted by a group of pissed up woman who worked for social services. It was funny and I enjoyed the banter and I weaved it through the show and in many ways broke the ice but I do not wish to go down this path again. It is a fringe festival and I want to perform the show I have written. I do not want to do crowd control for sixty minutes. Other people have come to see me do a show not fence with twats. It annoys me that they think the show should be about them and not me. I try to keep the heckle putdown funny but I want it to have edge and carry an implicit threat that I will chuck them out if necessary. I want them to know it is not OK to keep piping up. 

For the time being they are quiet but they are also drunk and an hour is a long time in the mind of the piss head. I am careful to eyeball them frequently to keep them in line. I want them to know I am not intimidated by them. 

The start of the show is a dream. Every punchline lands. The audience get everything, they are big laughers, there is good rolling laughs. This show is shaping up to the best so far and possibly the best of the run. If the show continues like this it will not be bettered in this run. I am enjoying this show immensely but I cannot entirely relax. 10% of my brain is constantly maintaining the Glaswegian situation. 

Even the switch to the God material, which does require the audience to stretch up and is a bit more cerebral than the start to the show, goes smoothly. Perhaps the Glaswegians have taken the hint. I cant quite see their faces, I cannot tell if they are enjoying it. They are certainly not laughing as much as the rest of the audience but I am not feeling any bad atmosphere form them.

Even through “Homophobia” material all quiet on the Glaswegian front. At this moment I am worried by something else. There is one black man on the front row and I have a routine about having a black girlfriend. I am worried, the audience will tense and not want to laugh in front of one black man. I am disproportionately concerned about this. I never worried about this issue in London or Berlin when I was previewing the show. But it the white dominated Scottish audiences, I have already become unaccustomed to the dynamics of a multi ethnic audience. It is all fine but I think I take my eye off the Glaswegian ball and they sense it in some way.  Up until now this has been the best show. 

The Glaswegian levee breaks around the start of the “Jacket” routine. They have been quiet for around 20 minutes so this is already a minor miracle. 

“I was trying to help mate” In a show that has been going swimmingly without them. 

I really slam them, bluntly telling them they are the only problem. I go in too hard and it all jars and the moment just hangs. There is a tense silence. But i am glad it is not funny here. I don’t want them even to think I am remotely joking. I want to do my show. I do not want to usher these pricks through the show. This is not about them, this is about me. This is about the other audience members who have come to see a show. I want them to come back. But there is no point humouring the Glaswegians. Pissed up pricks never come back. 

They start becoming a problem during the AIDS routine. I have to shut them up and start bits again. But bizarrely this routine works though not as well as it could have. This routine, so temperamental in previews, is becoming bomb proof in the show. No matter what happens, it always seems to work although it is never the same twice. It can teeter but it never crashes. It takes considerable skill to keep the AIDS material on track tonight through all the interruptions.  

I think I expend a lot of credit with the audience steering the AIDS routine through because the driver material falls flat. But I may be performing it badly today? And also it is getting hot. Maybe it is the temperature? 

The last two sections,  “Jesus” and “Love and Hate” work well but in comparison with the start of the show they fall flat. The Glaswegians are now getting up and going to the toilet in an almost constant relay. I am distracted by them, it sometimes knocks out my timing and not every punchline lands. It is also hot and the energy is sapping. A great audience is now an average audience. I close the show. It receives a strong round of applause, The Glaswegians nip out to avoid putting money in the bucket. I should have thrown them out.

AFTER 

In some ways the best show of the run but nevertheless I end feeling disappointed as it could have been better and was marred by the pissed-up Glaswegians. With hindsight I should have told them to leave or really read them the riot act but on the other hand I wasn’t sure that I could do it without poisoning the atmosphere in the room. It also pissed me off that they stayed till the entire end and then nip out before the bucket. I feel disrespected by that. My feeling of them hardens from boisterous drunks to cunts. 

Also I should have kept the fans on I think it heated up too much in the room as the show went on and the audience tired. 

Sunday 2nd February – Top Secret Comedy

My tendency is not towards aggression. I wouldn’t, for example, sit in the second row of a comedy show and fight with my partner. i.e. actual physical fisticuffs. I wouldn’t do that. Neither would I be thrown out of a comedy show by security for hitting my partner and then feign a confused look of “What did I do?”  But tonight during my performance one couple will do just that. It is a Sunday night and I am not prepared for a fight but then when is a good night for a fight?

Before Gig

I don’t want to say that my guard is down but let’s just say it is at half-mast. It is a Sunday after all; I am not expecting a tsunami of drunken high-jinks. People may drink themselves silly on a Sunday but they can rarely achieve the “schools out” energy of a Friday night or the “biggest night of the week” mind set of a Saturday. Sunday is not the traditional night of the stag-do. Sunday night audiences are usually containable. If anything they can suffer form the opposite problem – a sluggishness as their minds turn to the start of the working week.

However as the audience pour in tonight, a large group enters who have shit-hitting-fan potential written all over them. They are a birthday party. They have clearly been reveling all day. They will clearly be reveling later on. This show is only an interregnum in their reveling but the risk is they will revel straight through.  They are young, possibly students? And clearly no respecters of days of the weeks. They are carrying on like a Friday night. As I watch this group, I can keep upping the danger level of this audience. 

The show starts. The Birthday Party are indeed a handful. They are a writhing drunken mass of distracted, youth. The compere takes a strong line with this group right from the start. She lays down the law to them immediately. She lets them know who is boss and the consequences of stepping out of line. There is two-ing and frow-ing between compere and the birthday party. They heckle, they are slapped down. It is a very combative stuff. It is more reminiscent of “late and live” during the Kitson years than a typical Sunday night West End gig. The compere beats them. As I watch the compere I keep upping the danger level again. I imagine all sorts of things before I go on. I imagine them being a delight as an audience. I imagine it all descending into chaos. I see myself successfully surfing the madness. I see myself  walk off stage before my time. I see myself sharing an amiable chat with  the birthday party after my set. I see myself wanting to kill them. I had a lovely gig at this same venue three days ago. Now the memory is that is confined to the dustbin. I have to do it all over again. 

I am first on after the compere. Seconds before I go on the technician says to me “I apologise for what is about to happen” But what is about to happen? Something is about to happen, I just don't know what it's going to be yet. 

During Gig

There is an eye of the storm feeling as I take to the stage. It is calm for the moment but this is just temporary. How long will it last? The audience haven’t quite gelled yet. I can feel the seething factions. There is the birthday party to my left, drunken and distracted, then there are the young people frightened of the birthday party and everybody else has that look of “lets see how this goes" fence sitters waiting to see who's side to take. Problems could arise from anywhere. I have a feeling I haven’t had for a while but which is reminiscent of an earlier Stephen Carlin who found himself playing gigs he wasn’t quite ready for and was forced to do an impression of somebody who looked like they knew what they were doing.  The first 3-4 more minutes are fine. There is one interruption but order is maintained although the truce cannot possibly hold. It doesn’t matter how well routines go I know there is a malaise bubbling under the surface. 

Eventually the threat breaks cover. It is not the birthday party. It turns out that they are not the problem. Another problem breaks from left field (actually the middle of the audience). The problem is a couple in the second row. The pair of them are really three hecklers. She is interrupting. He is interrupting and then quite separately they are interrupting as a couple. Their destruction is greater than the sum of their parts. There is always one of them with something to say. Routines have one in two chance of making it to the end. There are interruptions aplenty but sometimes I can get back on track and continue with the material and other times the reprise is not worth it. The moment has passed. 

Taking the compere's lead, I take a firm line with this pair and it is working but it is not quite working. It is working in a superficial sense. I am postponing another showdown. But it is always fire fighting. It merely quells the flames until the next eruption. It never quite caps it. The trouble is I am being aggressive and this aggression doesn’t really suit me. I am not being myself and on some level the audience can sense that. Having inherited a highly combative dynamic when I came on stage, I sense that I'll need to switch to something more Carlinesque. The question is how? I'd been trying to stay on my agenda rather than embracing the chaos. I could fire fight this all night and it would be OK but it would never be great. And sooner or later they will sense this isn’t really me. I need to do it my way. But How? And what is my way? 

Perhaps taking their cue from my material, they start fighting during a routine about relationship break-ups. When I say fighting I mean actually hitting each other. The guy also calls me a “Jack-ass” repeatedly but in a voice that is too deep for his face. That almost throws me more than the violence. Fighting in the audience is bad. It is the worst.  It indicates a lack of control of the room. It poisons that atmosphere. I can’t ignore it and neither can I be overly flippant. And it has happened on my watch. Perhaps this is the moment it goes tits up? There is a tension, a bad feeling, an ugly mood. The couple are escorted out by security. And they do not go quietly. It drags the whole process out. I wonder how to tackle this. I don’t want to launch into something new while they are still causing a ruckus. I tread water. I feel like a commentator at this moment. There really is an apprehension now. And I could see it sliding away now and never getting it back on track. I remember this happening once before. I can hear little groups breaking away to chat. And I don’t quite know what to do. And then I say wistfully “I wonder if they are going home to have sex?” This speculation concurs with the audience and it gets the biggest laugh of the set. I have struck a different tone with it now and for the first time it seems I am totally in control of the room. I start deconstructing the couples relationship and hit a seam of comedy, this, I realize, I should have been doing all along and to hell with the pre written routines. All the seats are taken, there is standing room only at the back and so now people filter down the front and take the rows vacated by the domestic violence couple. I start a riff about reserve audience members standing by in case something should happen to the original audience. Like co-pilots on a plane. I have found my stride with the disruption. More chaos ensues. People get up and leave, others come in, people shout out. But now I am able to weave it into the fabric of this ad-lib. It goes on for about seven minutes. It is the most fun I have on stage this year. I pull it back into material right at the end just to round of the set. I pull out an old routine about “something to tell the grandkids” I don’t use it anymore but it seems apt tonight and hopefully I can fake it as ad-libbed to round of my turn.

Bromley 16th January 2014

16^th January 2014

 

Bromley

 

Before Gig.

This room is like a giant banqueting hall. It is designed to hold around 400 people but tonight there are nearer 60 people in attendance. They have sat themselves around the edges - - an entire periphery with no centre. Except, the two sides of the audience do not connect across the front.  The way they've assembled themselves resembles male pattern baldness. There is no compere per se rather the bar manager has a clip-board and he confesses to me before he goes on stage that he has never before introduced a show. I am guessing this is going to be hard work. 

 

During Gig

I guess correctly. This gig is an uphill struggle from the off. The applause dissipates before I get to the microphone. I find it difficult to generate any momentum.

There are only two tables that I can actually see from the stage. They are stage right and stage left with an empty table between them – the bite out the donught. I cannot see any other tables. This is partly a result of the stage lights and partly a result of the curvature of the earth that is clearly visible in this giant banqueting hall. This will come in handy later on when I will be unable to see their ambivalence and merely sense it intuitively.

This is fairly up market audience but they seem to turn their noses up at the thought of heroin making me think they are not proper posh just noveau riche.

“Beer isn’t alcohol” I state later.

“Yes it is!” corrects a lady (table right). 

Sigh.

She is of course factually accurate but, alas, her search for the truth is misplaced in a comedy show. Her literalism will be her undoing as an audience member. If there is state of mind half way between pedantry and confusion then this woman resides there and will stay there for the remainder of the gig.

Nevertheless the ill judged intervention affords me the opportunity to do this routine as more of a conversation piece as though I am persuading a sceptical friend. Initially, I like the turn this routine has taken tonight. For a moment, I am hopeful, but I am never destined to get to the end of it as a bigger heckler is on the horizon. Just as I am about to recommend drunk driving to the audience (that would probably have invited another outburst from my obtuse friend at the front) I am heckled by a woman mid way up the audience (and thus invisible) “Looking at porn on the internet?”  This feels more of an 'in' with the audience and I take it. I am desperate to build a rapport. There is banter back and forth along the lines that I may get together with this woman after the show. She is clearly well into middle age (and possibly beyond) so the joke should be that I am hitting on one of the less eligible women in the audience and, I don’t how I know this - - but I can tell that she's overweight. Indeed this is confirmed shortly afterwards when a man at the back heckles her regarding her size. From then on I feel hamstrung. I keep thinking to myself “don’t say she’s fat”. I now feel I am fencing with one hand tied behind my back.

I feel I have exhausted the banter with this woman and I return to material but I am still finding it hard to get moving on the routines. As the gig goes on this hall is getting bigger. The walls are moving outward. The gap between the front table expanding. This woman will heckle again but it will never reach the giddy height of me claiming to fancy her. There will be more banter. Occasionally her table will break out in a sort of separate gig but they will always return to the polite ambivalence of  audience. There will even be a point later on where I accidentally say she is fat and she won't mind and the audience won't mind but neither will they like it either and I will feel a bit dirty.

 

There comes a point where I realize things aren’t going to get better and I totally relax and the gigs just bumps along. There is not a scintilla of malevolence from the audience but there now seems to be a mutual understanding from both performer and audience that this is as good as it gets. The room stops getting bigger.

 

I am keen to encourage any audience participation. There is a man right at the back who previously was heckling the woman heckler who has decided to start heckling proper and aim it at me. However he is so far away that it is a bit like trying to hold a conversation with an elderly relative in a wind tunnel. Since I cannot hear what he is saying, his heckles have to be passed on by a relay system, intermediate tables have to hand the message on. It feels a bit old fashioned, maybe like the way heckles may have been done in Victorian times. Actually, I wish I’d made that observation about it.

The Deceased Comedian’s Ball – The Bedford Arms.

 12^th January 2014

 

Before Gig.

This gig is in memory of Ed Balls who used to run the new act night at the Bedford Arms and who sadly died of a brain tumour last year. Ed gave many of us comics our first ever gig and even after, helping us gain a little more experience. I used to regularly turn up to his gig to try out new material.

 

I hadn’t known how big tonight’s gig would be. Whether it would be in the main room? So when I turn up and see the main room is sold out I am pleasantly surprised. I also feel nervous and unprepared – exactly as I always felt at those first gigs I did for Ed. 

 

I am the third act on in the second section. The audience may now start to get a little tired and be losing their focus. The show is already running late so I am aware of keeping it tight (15minutes). 

 

During Gig

The start is hardly textbook I try to chat to the audience but they are not in the mood and so it jars slightly at the start. I switch onto material and am in the grove although I have changed my drinking material stuff all round about and this makes me really think about it a lot more.

 

I have decided to make changes to my Dentist routine as the section about “feeling naughty” has, to my mind been under performing for quite some time, if indeed it ever did perform. I need to have a far better example of naughty behaviour than “getting your receptionist pregnant”. I have an idea that I have to get the dentist pregnant instead of the receptionist. Who cares about the receptionist in this? What has she got to do with anything? The point is the dentist and it has to be more extreme than just pregnancy it has to be more extreme because the whole point is to contrast my behaviour with her idea of naughty which is to eat too much sugar. So something along the lines of getting her pregnant and talking her out of an abortion on the promise of some idyllic future only then to wrangle custody of the child so that I can make it eat sugar and not brush its teeth etc. I have the general idea in my head and it needs to be a rant. It really works and it lifts the gig, perhaps it is that good or perhaps it is the enthusiasm of the new bit triumphing over its actual weaknesses but it excites me. It works and opens a door to further improvement.

 

I also have a new section on American Girlfriend and this works less well but I think this is because I lost the rhythm. Here I am too bogged down in remembering the actual words as opposed to focusing on the sentiment and letting the words find themselves. I am able to get the show back on track with the Stephen Carlin standard “leave you for no one” (2012). 

 

I am now on the “Dumping a Mate” section but something is amiss.

The audience are laughing but not in the right way. They are laughing in the wrong places. Their timing is all out. They sound like they’ve been dubbed on. This is someone else’s audience from another gig laughing at something else material.  They are doing it all wrong.  Trust me, I worked with audiences before and they don’t usually laugh in this way. They go suddenly quiet as though contemplating something new and then they start laughing but in odd places and not in the correct rhythm.

 

“Debbie!” Shouts one woman. The interruption does indeed sound like it is intended for Debbie and not for me but unfortunately the cry of “Debbie” was of sufficient volume to count as a heckle and fall within my purview. “Who is this Debbie? And what has she to do with the gig?” Even as I ask her that I sense that the rest of the audience already know.  I turn to my right and now I see what it is. There is a giant screen behind me projecting “The Deceased Comedian’s Ball.”  But now somebody has obviously interfered with the computer projecting this image because now the instead of “The Deceased Comedian’s Ball.” It is showing the log in screen to Windows Vista with somebody’s log in name “Deborah” and Deborah is currently typing in her password (asterisked out so there is no security breach). Ever feel as though you are the last person in the room to know something? Well I am literally the last person in the room. Sometimes it is useful to use the technique of letting the audience get ahead of you and then playing catch up. I am playing catch up now. There is a good twenty – thirty seconds of me pulling faces while the audience laugh. This buys me eons of thinking time. I opt for pretending the audience along with Bill Gates (of Microsoft) are involved in a giant conspiracy to interrupt my set and stop me delivering “my truth” to the people. It is a rant built out of faux paranoia and faux fury, chastising the audience as though they were a class of errant school children. I want to run with this adlib as long as I can. I think I have already reached my allotted 15 minutes. I wish this had happened earlier. I run with the adlib until it runs out of steam but I know that that is not the end and that something is bound to turn up. So I pretend to wrap up the gig. Saying that I am looking forward to meeting Deborah. “And ask her password” shouts an old man with a moustache and three piece suit. Now phase two of the operation where I deconstruct going out on a date and trying to get back to a woman’s flat on the pretence of finding out her password or alternatively having sex with a woman just to gain access to her password. What is more evil? This second wave of adlibbing comes to and end but still I want to go on but I also know that I am by now over running. So I wrap up the gig by doing it as though it were an advert for Microsoft and this provides an out. I wish I could have done longer, just another five minutes please!

 

After Gig.

An average gig made good by a technical error. As I come off stage I am introduced to the woman who shouted “Debbie”. She apologises immediately for the interruption, oblivious to the fact that it raised everything up. It provided a tremendous opportunity to ad lib something and makes the gig special. I must admit my heart falls at these moments when somebody apologises for an interruption that I was able to make something of. Are you oblivious to my great adlibbing? Fuck off! If you ever heckle me please don’t speak to me afterwards. If I have handled it badly I will not want to speak to you anyway and if I have handled it well don’t undermine my achievements by reasonable behaviour.

 

Also I do wish I had worked in a reference to Ed Balls heckling me from beyond the grave. As though his spirit was interfering with the IT system. I think that would have been a fitting end to my set.

Saturday 5th October 2013 - A casino is Essex

Before Gig.

Tonight I am performing in a Casino is Essex. I am part of their “Vegas” style entertainment. The gig takes place in a small side room off the main gaming floor. The room is roughly the size of a classroom. There are 12 CCTV cameras located throughout this small rectangular room and mounted discretely in the ceiling. It is the most filmed performance of my entire career. All I need to do is edit the security footage and I have a ready made DVD. The cameras are those of the curved variety that can see around corners, totally redundant in a room without corners to have to see around. I imagine my face looks bloated and distorted on the cameras as though it is being reflected in a spoon. I think this “hall of mirrors” effect would look good on a DVD and contrast with the current tsunami of live comedy DVD's rather predictably showing people in their proper dimensions.  

Access to the gig is exclusively for those patrons using the casino and entry is free. Actually I don’t think the gig is free at all, I think the cost of entry is factored into the huge sums of money punters are chucking away at the tables. But perhaps that is my cynicism? 

It does mean that punters can wander in and out of the comedy, sample the comedy, leave, gamble, come back in again, leave, go gamble again. At one point I actually hear a man say “lets get more chips”. I didn’t think people actually said that in casino's any more than real life Eastenders actually say “you and who’s army?” or police officers actually say “You’re nicked mate”

The audience can be roughly divided into two camps. There is a loyal hardcore of audience who are there for the gig and sit throughout the show. They comprise mostly of couples and sit down the front. Then there is the more hobo element that wonder in and out drips and drabs. They sit at the back and are all male. Their dress, haircuts and struts announce that they are  Essex boys.  As the wandering minstrels join the gig half-way through proceedings, they are inevitably on a different page to rest of the audience, having missed the ground rules and set up etc. This can cause problems.  I am sitting in the audience watching the show and masquerading as a public when a fresh wave of transients come and sit in the row immediately in front of me. I eavesdrop on their conversation and this is always a bad idea. I prefer to think of my audience as a blank canvass rather than individuals with actual personalities. These guys are talking about getting pissed and pissing on people during sex - - the usual nonsense. 

The microphone is kaput and while the microphone isn’t necessary in a room this size I really feel i may need it tonight, especially if the piss monsters pipe up. 

During Gig 

I have been working on a more naturalistic style of  delivery and this seems at odds with speaking without a microphone, I feel like I am addressing a trade union meeting. I have no microphone and I don’t know quite what to do with my hands.  

The opening material goes OK but I have a feeling that the Essex boys at the back are not quite going for it. Sure enough there are outbreaks of sporadic heckling and chatting amongst themselves. Almost immediately I have to abandon the material and just banter. I do wonder whether it will be possible to do material at all? It may just be bantering for 20 minutes, so be it, but I will feel I am short changing them a bit (at a free gig).  I banter with the front row. There is a woman called Gaynor originally from Lancashire. She seems to be related to most of the front row in some way or another.  After a few minutes of bantering I feel I have connect with the front half of the audience at any rate. I go back into material but there is disquiet at the back. 

There are two young guys (19/20 ish) who are chipping in and doing a very bad double act. But it is the man seated a row behind them that I am worried about. He has a face full of burst blood vessels, an angina face. I  can tell he is not enjoying it. Having bonded with the front of the audience, the material is now getting more traction. But his displeasure is in direct proportion to other peoples pleasure. The more other people enjoy the material the more he hates it. Faced with confronting the idea that he may in fact have abysmal taste in comedy, something gives. He manages to heckle, exit and explain the background to his grievance all in one go. It is a neat efficient maneuver and other hecklers should take note. I have never before witnessed a man spasm himself out of room from pure unadulterated anger. He looks like he may be having a stroke on both sides of his face simultaneously, but two different kinds of strokes, that will leave his face both paralysed and  asymmetrical. As he goes he mutters to no one in particular “Supposed-to-be-comedy-not even-jokes-fucking-ridiculous” 

Another of the Essex boys shouts “Twat” but it is unclear whether he means me or the stroke victim. I try to clarify this situation, I cannot let a heckle like that against me ride, but I have no desire to crush an ally with friendly fire and risks alienating the audience. He doesn’t seem sure himself. He won’t answer but I keep pursuing the point and the situation develops into an unnecessary high-noon situation. Things are tense now. I may have fucked this. I don’t know why I do this? There must be a better way of handling this. Maybe I should have assumed he meant me and bludgeoned him anyway? But in small rooms, injustices like that can rebound badly, whereas an injustice doled out in front of a large audience is invariably treated with immunity (or welcomed by the blood thirsty masses). Essex boy eventually concedes that he did mean me but he then issues a retraction and apologizes in such an obsequious manner that I feel nauseous. He has made a  heckle put down almost redundant but I feel duty bound to deliver one anyway and sure enough it falls flat. This may be the moment when this gig slips away for good, but no, paradoxically, this is the moment where it picks up. I’m not sure whether the audience have rated my handling of the heckler better than I have? I’m not sure if the stroke victim guy’s exit has purged the room of bad vibes? I’m not sure if the challenged has galvanized my spirit?  But either way the gig now enters it’s halcyon days. The whole dentist - relationship break up - gambling section,  including new material I am developing about choosing a partner based on their particular type of teeth, really hits it stride. I find a new found sense of purpose and I bang it out for the next ten minutes. One gag rolling off the back of the momentum of the last.   Perhaps that’s what they wanted instead of tender loving care, me banging it out. Or maybe I had to deal with the renegades first? There are too many variables.  After ten minutes,  when I look, the other Essex Boys have gone, quietly, without a fuss and without a spasm. 

After Gig

I have always had a good time gigging in Southend-on-Sea and I include tonight’s gig in the Pantheon of having a good time.   

Edinburgh Festival - 10th August 2013

10th August 2013  Pleasance Court Yard 

10th show in the run

Length 55 mins

Before Show

The Pleasance Court Yard is mayhem tonight, there are people everywhere . My show starts late and I don’t know why that is. The House has been open for ages and people are coming. There is clearly some problem. The entrance music loops around three times and still we don’t start. I stand behind the curtain and I here this conversation: 

“Gerry. Sit there. Sit there. Don’t sit fucking there. You’ll get destroyed. Sit down the front and you’ll get fucking destroyed. Are you fucking suicidal?  Well bring it on. No one is going to fuck me up. I’ll fuck them up. Have you got a beer? I need a beer. Hold on. I am sitting there. No you sit there. I am ready for this. Bring it on. I’m going to sit there and you can sit there. Arghhhh!” some thing like that. 

During Show

As I enter there are three men on the front row worthy of note. They all have skin heads although I am not necessarily implying they have far right politics. One has a thousand yard stare as though he has seen too much. He stares into the distance and has his arms folded in a permanent pose that doesn’t alter once throughout the entire gig. One sits with his head in his hands from the off as though he is either a) about to vomit b) has been sitting in a sauna for a long time and is reaching the limits of his endurance c) is traumatised by some as yet unknown event d) realises in advance how little he will enjoy this show. The third guy who feels like the pack leader, has intense blue eyes that seem to promise physical violence. The room is very small we stand about 1 metre apart. He stares at me, I stare at him. I don’t want to stop staring at him because he will have won. So I stare back and he stares back and so on.  As I start the show the rest of the audience seem to sense they are mere by standers in some kind of personal duel. The opening stalls and when they don’t go for the “It’s 1970s” line. I know we are in for a slog of a gig.  

There is an odd atmosphere in the room that I cannot pinpoint the exact nature of it.

During the “Professional Gambler” there is an outbreak of chatting between the staring man and a guy in the row behind. He is with them too. There is at least four of them. 

I sort out the chatting but I basically loose this routine as a result and this annoying because it is a strong part of the show. The next routine hinges on “Professional Gambler” it too so it doesn’t really work either. 

I reset and stand further back on stage. This seems more comfortable. The staring man smiles. But is it a sincere smile? Or the smile of someone who thinks that it is shit? Perhaps he can’t help having the eyes of a wolf?

“Mirapex” they are semi on board with this but they don’t really like the reference to Dyslexia. I now openly berate them for being too socially conservative. I tell them that is the routine I used to judge an audience and they have been found wanting. I tell them they are below average for one of my audiences. This gets laughter but not much. Nevertheless the fight back starts here.  There is something that is compelling about the “Just a number” routine that they don’t really go for but then there is genuine gasps at the end of it. I suppose this is where it gets down and dirty. 

During the “Understanding Addiction” section there is audience interaction around the subject of tablet. I let this run on in an attempt to build rapport but in hindsight it runs on too long and lets the audience too out of their box.  There is a guy who heckles about tablet. He starts amiably enough but he will grow to become a nuisance. 

The Dentist routine is strong but they don’t get “Hairdresser”. I keep thinking I am getting them on side only to realize that I am not. They are annoying socially conservative. Needless to say “Dad Embarrassment” They just don’t go for. 

There are jokes about racism that rely on the assumption that racism is a bad thing and should be avoided. I realize that myself and parts of the audience are not on the same page on this one. 

“Adults are Weak” there is multiple heckles from the Tablet Guy during this section I return to it and finish it but any momentum is shot to pieces. 

“Feel the Fear”  I don’t feel inclined to try the new version of this tonight. As it happens we will never know. It is interrupted by the tablet guy again and this time I abandon this routine. There is heckling during the “Kid” routine just on the approach to a punchline. I try and salvage the situation but inevitably the punchline gets less. I explain that it would get more if there were weren’t heckles on the run up to a punchline. This is where I fall out with the Tablet man. Every heckle is “tablet” or “buy tablet” and I am genuinely contemptuous of this man now. His lack of imagination is getting on my tits. The interruptions I can take but he has all the creativity of a car alarm. 

I bash out “Tipping Point” and “Probability” in an attempt to build momentum to the end but as soon as those routines are done the momentum dissipates at the mention of Nate Silver. The End fails to make the impact I want and I decide to round up all the “characters” and incidents that have featured in the show in an attempt to round things together. I mention that I would like to boot the tablet man “up the arse” this draws a shocked “ohhh” from the audience. It is a figure of speech but even at this stage their respect for me is so tenuous they don’t give me the trust to kick someone up the arse without being metaphorical. 

After Show

Two things didn’t happen that I thought would happen. 

There would be walkouts ( and often you just wish they would go) 

The would be a breakdown of gig with open hostility breaking out: didn’t happen. Was it ever really close to this? Felt like it. 

What does it feel from an audience point of view when it teeters on the precipice? Are they aware just who close it is to crashing and burning? Or do they think you are holding it together? Do they just think there is something unsatisfying but they cannot put a finger on it? Do they just think you are shit? 

I think I gave hecklers too much leeway in an attempt to break the ice and get momentum going but I think it made the show too chaotic and upset the narrative. 

I couldn’t get any traction tonight and I could feel an odd resistance from the audience throughout. Particularly during interaction which would usually break the tension there was a reluctance to go with stuff even when they enjoyed it. Afterwards I find out that there was a party of 16 in (one third of the audience) including the three guys in the front row. I don’t think it was their cup of tea and they intimidated the rest of the audience into ambivalence. Or perhaps the rest of the audience were ambivalent on their won merits? But here is the difference I could have bullied the rest of the audience into liking it I couldn’t bully those 16 guys. I don’t feel I know anything about comedy today.   

Edinburgh Festival - 4th August 2013

4th August 2013  Pleasance Court Yard 

5th show in the run

Length 45 minutes.

I have forgotten exactly what a bad gig at the Edinburgh festival feels like. That inevitable  whiff of hostage situation that emerges between you and the audience (except sometimes real life hostages start to develop a rapport with their captors). That initial hope that things maybe able to be turned around. The eventual realisation that it is not going to get better for either party but like a bad marriage you plough on out of misplaced sense of duty. 

That shared belief that the other party doesn’t know what the hell they are doing. The moments when you preview the upcoming material in your head, listing all the routines that the audience are about to not enjoy. Flashbacks except from the future. It hasn’t happened yet and already I am traumatised by it. The dwindling faith of the audience as they increasing come to the conclusion, that I will never pull a rabbit from the hat. The conviction I have that even when I do it will be mistaken as a pile of shit, after all I am now viewed as a man who doesn’t know what the hell I am doing. And yet it didn’t have to be this way. It was all going so well at one minute in... 

Before Gig

I feel more relaxed today than at any point during the fringe. Today is the first day I have had nothing else on other than my show. I have a sauna at lunchtime. I try to get into a play about Gordon Brown- it is sold out. I have more time at home to run through the material and practice facial movements in the mirror. I practice the opening of the back stage, finding new ways of saying it. I really feel it is coming together. The audience sound up beat as they come in. The microphones are working perfectly today. I don’t need a piss. My legs ache from the Edinburgh hills.

During Gig

I say good evening. I ask the audience how they are. A man nods, a man belatedly says “good”. It provides a jumping off point for some banter. This is probably the best opening of the run although I am not doing material yet. Two guys come in late, the first latecomers of the run. They apologise for being late. They had just come from a gig by the “Red Bastard” . I misunderstand this and think they are saying “some bastard kept them late” more banter so far so good. We clear up the confusion. They say “the red bastard was good, you better be fucking good.” They mean this playfully but it comes out as aggressive and I treat it in the spirit it was intended instead of treating in the tone it came out as. In hindsight I should hammer them at this point. They have challenged my authority but I feel I have the audience onside and instead I play with it too much. Of course, I am fucking good, haven’t you seen how the others shows have gone? Obviously they haven’t. Didn’t you see me at Joke Thieves last night? No they didn’t. Didn’t you see me showcase last night? Apparently not. But this is what I am thinking. It is my room. Nothing to worry about. So i go into material, i start the show and I can see now this looks like a retreat. The start just doesn’t work. The “but its the 1970s line”, always lands. It doesn’t tonight. Shit. Trouble. “His wife had four jobs”, always kills, tonight tepid response. I don’t worry, I think I can get traction, but as I move from routine to routine it doesn’t build.

At about ten minutes the two late comers leave. They are polite as they go. It is obviously a verdict on me. I am glad they didn’t hang it out. There is a noticeable lightening in the mood as they go. There is relief. The gig rallies briefly. But after a brief Indian Summer it slumps again. There are two couples who are enjoying bits of it and if only I can get a few more of those people I can build this up. I really try to work on eye contact and making it as coversational in tone and as personal as possible, but I can’t hook other people in. I am sweating now. It is hot but am I worried? Probably. I get some routines in the wrong order and this can only be pressure. I play it professional to the end. I keep trying to make it work. I keep acting as everything is Ok. I don’t think there is anything to be gained by admitting the obvious. I keep it polite. Do they think I actually think it is OK? Do they think I am mad. 

I don’t think there is much point breaking down material in this report. The gig was so fucked little can be gained from moving from routine to routine and comparing them. 

After Gig

I don’t think I could take another gig like this at the festival. It would kill me. There was no press in tonight. Thank God. No one need ever know about this gig.