SEVENOAKS - 19th September 2015

Sevenoaks - Stag Theatre

19th September 2015

My name is Stephen Carlin and I work in the risk management business. My job is to stand on stage in front of different groups of people and then assess whether or not certain material will suit that group of people. And I thought I was a stand-up comedian. 

With my years of experience I have built up a huge database of previous gigs in my head. I am also armed with an array of sense organs in which I can perceive human emotions. Some of the human emotions I can identify are: joy, euphoria, boredom, anger, embarrassment, confusion, contempt, ennui. I take the feedback of the audience mood and filtering it through the database of previous experiences I determine a plan of action. This generally involves establishing the percentage risk of failure/success for various scenarios. The plan can change at any time depending on the signals from my sensory organs. I am basically a giant computer on two legs.

In my experience, there are only two occasions when I shouldn’t take risks in stand-up comedy, when the gig is going badly and when the gig is going well. When the gig is going badly I need to batten down the hatches and not make matters worse by taking unnecessary gambles. And when the gig is going well, why screw up something great by sabotaging myself? After all a gig isn’t my private life, is it? There are only two occasions in stand-up comedy when I should take risks: when it is going badly and when it is going well. If it is going badly what is there to lose? I may as well roll the dice and throw caution to the wind. If the gig is going well, then I can use the trust and goodwill I have built up to really push the envelope. And I may well find something new and discover some new level of ability.

Well tonight I didn’t take enough risks. Tonight Stewart Lee was headlining and there were 500 people in the audience. I was supposed to go in the middle but due to a last minute alteration I went on first, thus eating into my thinking time. I was backstage at a theatre and unlike a comedy club had little chance to mingle with the audience and asses them before I went on. I opened with an ad-lib about the walk from the station and how steep the hill was but I now think I should have ad-libbed longer. I worked in a bit of my Edinburgh show into my club set about bad drivers but now I think I could have pushed this further and worked in other new material. I could have weaved the steep hill into the driving material. I should have taken more risks. It was probably the best set I have done in months but I feel disappointed by it. The audience think they’ve had comedy but all they have had is live risk assessment. If only I had taken more risks this show could have been better or worse. I don’t know… I don’t know what I am doing. 

The Alternative Comedy Experience

TV Recording 8 July 2013

Before Gig

Tonight I am taking part in a television recording of The Alternative Comedy Experience. I appeared in the first series of that show and we are now recording the second series. Everybody keeps assuring me “Just do what you do. Don’t mind us with our cameras and lights.” Just do what you do. Do what you do? What do I do exactly? I’ve never thought about it before, I’ve just done it. Now that people are telling me to “just do it” I keep thinking about what it might be? What is it, that I do? I don’t really want to ask people, they’ll think I’m flaky or mad or something. I don’t think TV producers appreciate being asked “What do I do?” by bemused performers, seconds before they go on stage.

 

Tonight the show is being recorded at the Edinburgh Stand comedy club, a stage I have played many times before. It is filmed as a regular gig and then chopped up and edited into a TV programme. The beauty of TV is that mistakes are edited out. If I fluff a line I can just say it again. In theory there is less pressure on me than a regular live gig - where I am not afforded the luxury of second takes. So why then am I feeling more nervous that usual? In fact, why am I feeling more nervous than the last time, when I recorded Series One? Series One that was back in 2012, a different time. Back when I had the wind of youthful arrogance in my sails. During the first series I hadn’t known what to expect so I had done what most comedians do and shrugged my shoulders and said “We’ll see what happens” Last time Stewart Lee had assured me that “nobody will probably watch it anyway” Whether this was a ploy to get me to relax or a heartfelt prediction I will never know? But either way it worked. I hadn’t been too stressed about it all. This time is different. This time feels proper. This time the show has a pedigree. This time there is a benchmark of the first series. This time I know what I am doing. Knowing what you are doing is fatal, because if you know what your doing, then you know when your not doing it

 

Tonight is unusually hot. We are enjoying some kind of heat wave. The Edinburgh Stand Comedy is located in a basement bar. It doesn’t, of course, have air conditioning. Why would it? It is Scotland after all. In the sweltering July heat add TV lights and TV cameras and then throw a ban on anyone opening the back door, lest the outdoor sunlight flood in and ruin the subtle studio lighting. I am worried about dehydration: both the audiences and mine. Unfortunately there is not much I can do about the audience. They’re going to have to drink for themselves. But I can at least prevent myself from suffering heat stroke.  I chug down bottle after bottle of free mineral water. Eventually the bottles of water run out and runners miraculously appear to offer to get me yet more free mineral water.  Free mineral water, generously afforded by limitless TV budgets. This is the life, free bottles of water, cascading down in an endless rush of decadence. I am on free water, nothing can stop me now. Unfortunately, the TV budgets haven’t stretched to installing extra toilets backstage and now there is a queue for the toilets as I realize I may be over hydrated.

A sound guy comes to attach a clip on Microphone to my lapel. Can I still go to the toilet now? Won’t the sound of me peeing get recorded and added to the DVD extras? Will the Director mock my pissing technique, safely ensconced in his director’s gallery?

 

During Gig

Tonight I perform an unusual set comprising of some very new material, some old routines brought back for one night only and bits of last years Edinburgh Show. I have attempted to give it a through line but it is really just a ragbag of unconnected routines (so the same as every other stand up set then). I discuss sugar and dentists, I discuss rioting. I discuss disgraced MP Eric Joyce. I discuss paranoia. Then I move onto a routine about the drug Mirapex. I am working with this routine live a lot at the moment and it is currently in a fairly mutable form. It doesn’t stick to a predetermined set of words. “Just do what you do” right? So I do what I do, and I don’t stick to an exact form of words.  Tonight I mention someone who is bipolar as an example (other nights it may be dyslexia or some other condition) but I come unstuck when I realize I don’t know what the noun for Bipolar is. Mental block! Is it Bipolarity or Bipolarism? I go for Bipolarity. Bipolarity sounds right in my head but the way it comes out of my mouth sounds wrong. Maybe it isn’t bipolarity, maybe it is bipolarism. I say bipolarism. That sounds worse. I stop. This is TV. They can edit that out. I go for bipolarity again it turns to mush in my mouth. I ask the audience what is it bipolarity or bipolarism? They don’t seem to know. It would have been good to have sorted this out before going on stage. It has now become a thing, this bipolarity. It has punched a whole in my set. I am now convinced that it is bipolarity. We go for it again (spot the “we” now. If I am going to fuck up I am more than happy to share the blame with the audience). The audience laugh as I launch into the set up - of course they do, I have had about five attempts at this. But they don’t laugh at the punchline, as the joke is no longer about the original concept it is now about a man who cannot say a joke without screwing it up.

I do other routines that go as planned with all the right words in the right order so nothing interesting to see there. But the bipolarity displays a level of sham-bollockness  that I don’t think I would ever have committed at a regular gig. The possibility of editing in postproduction, led me to make a bigger car crash of it than I otherwise would have. It is impossible to just do what you do when there are TV cameras there. They affect your thinking.

 

After Gig

Hopefully, the bipolar section will be cut out completely. But will it though? Such is Stewart Lee’s contrary view of comedy; he may well choose to keep it in through sheer perversity. Or it could be edited to make it look like I got it right and thus TV is vindicated as a medium.