Hitchin, Hertfordshire.
6th September 2013
The Worry
This is my first gig back after the Edinburgh festival. It has been a full 11 days since I last stepped on stage. It has been a full 14 days since I last performed a twenty minute “club set” but even that club set was during the heady days of the Edinburgh Festival. It has been a full 41 days since I last performed a stand up comedy club set unbesmirched by the Edinburgh Festival. It is basically a life time ago. A different era. I may as well not have gigged since the 19th century. Maybe I cannot do it anymore? Maybe I will have forgotten how to? Tonight I am attempting to do something I haven’t done for over a month.- my regular job. I just need the air of familiarity to snap me back into it. I decide to do my pre-show routine. I cannot remember what my pre-show routine is. Do I even have a pre-show routine? I decide to make one up. I scribble down some notes on a piece of paper and then don’t look at it again. I leave the dressing room to look at the audience and deduce nothing about them from the exercise. I come back to the dressing room and decide to do voice exercises, I don’t know any voice exercises. I need caffeine. I go to the bar to buy a coke. The queue is too long. I don’t need caffeine that much. I return to the dressing room. I scribble some more notes. I don’t look at those. I really do need caffeine, I go back to the bar. The queue is still too long. I really don’t need caffeine that much. I go back to the dressing room, empty handed. More Scribbling.
The Cold
I have a cold. This is standard post-Edinburgh operating procedure. The Edinburgh festival ends, I come off a high, my immune system crashes I get ill, I get a cold. A cold makes me sound even more Scottish than usual. I am in Hertfordshire tonight. I will need to watch my extra Scottish-ness.
I have this tickly cough. The tickle is sitting at the back of my throat and it builds and builds and builds and eventually I have to cough to clear it. That eradicates the tickle for a few seconds of pure bliss. But the tickle is just biding its time, the tickle is lying dormant, the tickle will be back. And sure enough, before long, the tickle has returned. It is gnawing at the back of my throat. It starts building all over again. I can resist the tickle for a while but eventually the strain starts to show on my face, I develop a far off look and an individual tear strays down my cheek, my voice wavers and I sound like I am about to break down at a press conference.
In the early stages of tickle I can control my cough, I can choose the moment to clear my throat. Eventually, however, the tickle reaches the point of no return, it has gone critical and from here on in, it’s anarchy. It could go off at any moment. To stay on top of the situation, I am required periodically, to execute a series of carefully placed coughs. This keeps the tickle from reaching a critical mass.
The Microphone
The microphone has a dodgy cable. This becomes apparent, seconds before I come on stage, there is no time to change it. The microphone just randomly cuts out when it’s moved. The only solution is to keep it in the microphone stand. This sounds simple enough in theory, but in practice I never keep the microphone in the microphone stand. It is just not how I roll. I like the freedom to move about on stage, even if I don’t always choose to move about, it’s nice to have the option. I think the audience can sense “Oh he might move about” and that makes all the difference. All my material has been written with moving about in mind. What if it doesn’t work with me glued to the spot? I am about to find out. This is another problem on top of the cough. I know how the guys in Apollo 13 felt.
The Gig.
The opening works really well. I mean it is a revelation in many ways. I wonder whether the microphone in the stand is behind the strong start or whether it would have happened anyway? But certainly the microphone in the stand is not hindering things. For many comedians the mic in the mic stand is just standard operating procedure but it feels heretical to me. The longer it goes on, the more heretical I feel. If this keeps on I may even turn into a maverick. I keep expecting to be found out, that the audience are going to say “That’s not how you do stand up.” But it doesn’t happen I keep getting away with it. I feel like a man living a double life and wondering when I am going to get caught out and I never do. I am now five minutes in and this microphone in the stand lark is still working. Over on the throat front there are one or two problems.
A cough at the wrong moment could spell disaster, if the audience miss a key word of the set up or punchline then the routine is destroyed. When I am about to say something important, I do a pre-emptive cough so that my voice won’t give way at the vital moment. On the approach to a punchline, I stop, cough and then proceed. It sort of flags up that a punchline is imminent, it sort of ruins the element of surprise but works OK. It is the closest I have ever come to having a catchphrase. Charlie Chuck uses a cough on stage. I hope my cough is different to his.
I am now ten minutes in and this microphone-in-the-stand business still carries on. I can’t believe they are falling for this! They have no idea I usually do this – the fools. But something sort of snaps in my head, although it is working, I can no longer tolerate this deviant behaviour. The mic must come out of the mic stand. I must be free from this stand at all costs. I have bottled it. I slowly take the mic out of the mic stand. But it soon becomes apparent, that even the smallest of movements will make the sound cut out. So I have to stand super still not moving the microphone at all. I am now even more rooted to the spot than ever. I can no longer move my hand. It is a retrograde step but somehow I feel it is a moral victory over the electrical equipment. It is a hollow victory by this. I have gained nothing. I am a fool.
After Gig.
Cough….cough…cough.
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