Piccadilly Comedy Club 9th
May 2013
This year’s first Edinburgh
Preview
Before Gig
Tonight is my first preview
for my new Edinburgh Festival Show “Gambling Man”. So no polished finely honed
routines tonight. 100% brand new stuff. 100% raw rookie material. And as I move
towards the Edinburgh Festival the new set will start to gel but tonight is the
first preview. Tonight is the most un-gelled this show is ever going to be.
Tonight I feel a stranger to my own material. I feel like the groom on the
night of an arranged marriage. I think I may have glanced this material across
a crowded room but I’ve never really been alone with it. I will need a
tolerant, forgiving audience this evening. God I hope they’ve never seen stand
up comedy before. I hope they are not expecting professionalism. I stumble on
to stage with a notebook. A heap of uncharted new material. I scarcely know
where to begin.
During Gig
This women is brilliant, she
is amazing, she is the best ever. This women sitting at the back row, I think
she is the best audience member I have ever had. For starters she not only
laughs but she laughs in the right places - that is a rarer quality than you
may think. Some audience members feel the need to fill any pause with a laugh.
Tsk, tsk. Not her no, she understands a thing or two about punchlines and
set-ups. God this was meant to be. She has timing, wonderful impeccable timing.
She never tramples on my punchlines.
And she laughs for the correct duration of time. Not too short to leave
a bald silence but not too long to muck up my rhythm. I think she may have done
this before. And the quality of
the laugh is pure gold. She does not have a sarcastic laugh, or a annoying
laugh or worst of all a funny laugh. I hate funny laughs. Laughs should never be funny in
themselves. People start laughing at their laugh instead of my material. Her
laugh is warm, it’s infectious it spreads along the back row like a pandemic.
And she’s brave too. She
happily laughs when no one else is laughing. Sometimes this solitary confidence
can alienate other audience members who’ll refuse to join in out of pure
stubbornness. But she charms them with her laughs: they want to join in too.
But she actually gets the material, that’s the thing. SHE. ACTUALLY. GETS. IT. I can see her face, I can
read her body language, she is with me every step of the way, she follows the
logic of every step, she correctly anticipates the next move. There is that
little conspiratorial look that she gives me, she knows where the material is
going. Even when I stumble she forgives it and picks things up again when I get
back on track. To be honest she is carrying this audience, if it wasn’t for her
I’d be dead in the water. But she keeps the faith and she is their leader.
Where she goes they follow. Thank God she’s here. There are around thirty
people in the audience, some of them tourists. I don’t think the audience knows
quite what is going on. It is some approximation of a comedy routine, but
something’s not right. Why is that Scotsman on stage reading off bits of paper
and why does he sometimes um and ahh as if he’s not quite sure what he’s
saying? Why do routines suddenly trail off to nothing and why is there no
thread to his thoughts? Why does he grasshopper from one subject to the next
without any links? This, I imagine is what they’re thinking. So thank God for
my best audience member ever. She is so into the routines that she is
whispering to the person next to her. That is how much she is engaging with new
material. It speaks to her and she can’t help speaking to the person next to
her a little bit. There we go another whisper. That’s fine I don’t think anyone
else in the audience can here her whispering. It’s slightly off putting to me
but the audience cannot hear it. Yes I think they can actually hear it. Is she
whispering or is she actually talking to her neighbour? Has it got louder or is
it just me? I wish she wouldn’t do that. It’s rude, it is distracting to the
audience and off putting to the comedian. At least if you are going to chat
please heckle and then it is out in the open and I can deal with it. Ah she is
heckling now. She has pre-emptied the end of a routine, the routine is still
born. No point ploughing on with it. I admit my defeat on that one. She covers her
mouth like a naughty kid. She knows she blew that routine to Kingdom Come. At
least she has learned her lesson now. Except she hasn’t because she is at it
again. Every jokes a spring board for a conversation as far as she is
concerned. This is starting to irritate me. I mention something about Gordon
Brown being the most successful failure I know. Now she’s off on one now,
discussing the banking crisis. I try to riff along but it falls flat. She knows
she killed that routine stone dead. Don’t claim you were trying to help me.
Don’t claim you were trying to help me. She says it. Apparently she was trying
to help me.
Oh for Fucks sake!!! You are
the worst audience member ever! I don’t mind heckling when I know the material
and I can divert off script. But this is different. This is an Edinburgh
preview, the purpose of which is to try out new material, which I can’t get
around trying out because you are monopolising the airtime. Now I am annoyed.
She is eating into my time like a giant PacMan. I wish I were one of the PacMan
ghosts that could attack her. Now she is on about something about a plane
crash. “I wish you were in a plane crash” I retort. But there is too much on an
edge to it. The audience knows I am annoyed. And she is surprised, a little
hurt. The rest of the audience pulls back a bit. It’s awkward. It’s overkill. I
went in too hard. I taken a sledgehammer to kill a fly. At least I’ve shut her
up but at what price? No she isn’t shut up. She’s back again, wounded but
alive. I have failed to neutralise the target while I am now guilty of a war
crime. It is the worst of both worlds. I went in too hard and alienated the
audience but I didn’t shut her up. She is the worst ever. I hope she never
comes near a comedy club again. Why did I like her?
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