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.