Glasgow Stand 27th February 2014

Before Gig

The first night of a four night run at the Glasgow Stand, arguably the best club in the country (Britain). 

I always love playing this club although I never feel I can rest on my laurels. (This is probably the ideal mindset to play any club- maybe I should replicate it elsewhere?)

During Gig

As I say good evening, one man responds too loudly and enthusiastically and it cannot be ignored. So the start of my set comprises of me referencing his over loud greeting. He then apologises for his boisterousness and now I really hit my stride. This “apology” becomes the subject of a few minutes of ad-libbing and it has that “whoosh” of energy that comes when a comedian can exploit the moment fully. At times like this comedy feels so easy. Why do I need to write material? Couldn’t I just whoosh the moment? The riff ends on a round of applause and I am able to segue into material about Scotland. Tonight could not have started better. Given the heady start the next ten minutes is uneventful.  However as I am discussing attractive women with small teeth there is a disruption. 

I am about midway through my twenty minute slot and the guy who shouted out at the start gets up and goes to the toilet. The crowd is a relatively small affair and he is in a prominent position so I am forced to mention it. I get back into the material and then somebody knocks over a glass. I am the second act on in this section and they are a boozy crowd, I can feel their concentration start to wane. 

A couple of minutes later and just as I start on the “dumping a mate” material so a woman from the front table stage right gets up and goes to the toilet. She is right at the front, her disruption cannot be ignored but fortunately it is not at a key moment of the routine. I am able to return to the routine but I am never destined to finish it. As I am midway through, a man also from the front table gets up and goes to the toilet. As he does so he moves the table making a loud scarping noise, eliciting a cheer from the audience. I don’t think they are taking me seriously.  I am merely a man commentating on people going to the toilet. I abandon this section of material and riff around the topic for a few moments. The successive interruptions are too much to ignore and I also want to buy time until the toilet people return. Their reappearance will cause as much distraction as their going out.   So call this a preemptive ad-lib,  a section where we can all regroup and refocus. I am rather enjoying this current riff but I am also fearful that the audience are becoming more distracted by the second and may find  it impossible  to handle material after this. The toilet people return to their seats. There is cheering, In the intervening minutes the audience have gotten more out of their box I am aware that the transition back to material will be clunky but I also sense they need the structure of material now. I warn them that going back into material will jar slightly.  All the while I have been recalculating the time factor and cutting material and making edits in my head to accommodate the ever increasing shorter time available. The seconds are ticking away. My time is nearly up. I need to get the audience to pull together and I need to end strong. I can see now that things could slide away to a mediocrity. I go into my “chatting to a kid” routine and it does jar for a second but then the audience get into it and I now see it is possible to end on some semblance of structure.  I have pulled it together! It is going to be fine. 

As I approach my penultimate punchline a guy from the table at the front gets up and goes to the toilet. It ruins the whole build up at the end. Now I am annoyed. He threatens to walk across the stage. I let him know that isn’t on. He is sat at one end of the table. He has to squeeze by everyone on the table to get up and go to the toilet. It is a long drawn out affair. I am now exacerbated by this drip drip effect of continuous disruption. Why don’t they all go to the toilet at once? It seems deliberate- these piecemeal interruptions - and yet I know it is merely gross stupidity on their part. My temper is palpable and I rant about the latest intrusion. I have had to work had to keep this on course and now it is all for nought. They rant goes on too long and has an edge or irritation. This is getting me away from wrapping things up and yet I have to get it off my chest.  I realize i may have over stretched myself this time and there is no way back to the material but somehow I make it land and I get off stage. I feel relieved to have made the last routine work. I say goodbye and leave the stage. 

I am furious when I come off. There is a short walk from the stage to the curtained off back stage area but I am not sure I can mask my emotions even for that short walk off stage. As I disappear behind the curtain I have a memory of doing something to vent my frustration. I cannot quite recall. But something was kicked or punched or thrown or possibly bitten. I am ranting backstage about people not being able to control their bladder, Scottish alcoholism, middle class arrogance etc etc. My thoughts are a mess but now at last I can now really understand why some comics ridicule people who go to the toilet. I have always eschewed that kind of crowd control as churlish and unnecessary but now I get the point. Last time I wrote that I didn’t suit aggression now I think the lesson is that I am not surely aggressive enough. I should have eviscerated the first person to go for a piss  I thought I was surfing the wave of chaos turns out I was appeasing bad toilet etiquette.  

After Gig

Having now listened back lo the tape I have a totally different take on this gig. The show was actually pretty good and if anything my delivery picked up with the interruptions and the performance became more in the moment. Good rolling laughter and control of the room, nice rhythm to delivery despite walkouts etc. The delivery in the first half of the gig was if anything a  bit sloppy and I think I handled the interruptions well except the last one where I went on an ad-lib that was too long and too self-indulgent. This was a product of my exacerbation. Here I did the ad-lib not to run with a comedic moment but because I was frustrated. This could have torpedoed the end of the gig but it didn’t I got back into the material and ended strong. This over extended ad-lib however, was an unnecessary risk. Also the tape betrays no hint of anger in my voice so not sure if I communicated my anger in body language or whether the audience were blissfully unaware. For me the main lesson is that my perceptions of the gig, immediately after are not born out by the tape. My temper may not have been justified. Maybe I am completely unreasonable?