Blimey. Apparently I could clean up in the Lake District.
By which, I hope it’s clear, I don’t mean they are in need of waste disposal staff. I was just chatting (it’s post quiz now, 10.50pm and I’m finishing my pint) to a guest of one of the teams. She has come down to visit friends in the “south” and they have decided, to show her a “good time,” to bring her to the Grey Horse pub quiz. They don’t have anyone like me in the Lake District apparently. I could do the rounds of the countryside pubs and “clean up.”
Is this a thing? Am I missing, now Covid is gone, a business opportunity? Shall I go online tomorrow and see if there are “pub quiz” agencies? Maybe I will…
In the meantime, it was a top night. 8 teams, all shouty and lively. My 4min “name the celebrity lego figurine” round was a hoot. The music round was pitched juuuuuuust right, with its mix of Chuck Berry, Spice Girls, Sim & Garfunkel and Louie Bega’s Mambo Number Five. Lots of thanks and handshake. Must remember to pick up my salary before the tills shut.
So I’m on my usual buzzy high from being in the spotlight. I am very comfortable up there. The gags, adlibs, put-downs and asides come very quickly and I almost always pitch them at just the right side of, let’s face it, “cheeky.”
So that’s tonight done. Home soon for shower and bed. Tomorrow I am on the last few days of my holiday. Wednesday to Sunday. 5 days to make the most of…something. I don’t know. Before the world kicks its throttle once more and I’m back on the treadmill.
I did, cheekily, push my new gig at the end of the night.
As promised earlier, I plucked up the testicles last week and took a long walk over Kingston bridge and met the owner of The Forresters. A nice country-ish pub in Hampton who are looking to bring in more of a weekday crowd. An hour of chit-chat and CV and I have agreed I will run a quiz for them every OTHER Monday, starting Nov 1st. Will need to pop by to sort speakers and space and such before then. But ghood to have another spot and another £150 in the pocket every month.
Didn’t go to the gym today, and had no excuse not to. Which frustrates me, given the plans I had for my 2 weeks off. Just wanted to find out if there were other Learning Manager Jobs in the world (one can always do with a £15k pay rise one is not going to get at one’s current role) and then, after an exhausting trawl through Indeed, Reed, Monster (horrible website) and LinkedIn, I have a handful of opportunities. Do I go for them? Well yes. Because I can no longer live hand to mouth with the escalating cost of London living and no sign of a cost-of-living bump on the horizon.
Some of this thought has been solidified by my weekend, hanging out with, let’s face it, “grown ups.”
My weekend with Alex in her gorgeous rented top floor rooftop apartment in the poshest of the posh parts of Bath was a little glimpse into how “the other half” live. Lovely women in their 40s-50s talking about second homes, third homes, rental properties, listed buildings and seemingly endless incomes to “do places up” or “get people in” has made me feel somewhat like a teenager at the grown-up table, ordering fish-fingers and fried eggs while others enjoy seabass and brie. Gave me lots to think about, but nary have I ever felt such an under-achiever. Claire tells me often how I am “under-valued” in what I do. But my job is comfy cosy and not a stretch and too easy to stick with. But at 48 and 46/52ths, perhaps I have waited too long to take my career seriously. Too much time as a 20-30-40 something believing things would just “work out.”
So I have found a dozen “learning & development manager” roles in London that require glittering CVs and dazzling “covering letters” and it seems churlish to think that, for a 15k pay rise, they aren’t worth taking a punt at.
Or I could move to the Lake District and clean up on the Pub quiz circuit…
Anyhoo. The weekend. Marvellous fun (darrrrrling) with Alex. As I say, I threw myself on a train to Bath and we enjoyed excellent dining, hilarious chat, the company of Alex’s tremendous sister and her too-politely-charming-for-words friends. They all seemed twice my age and double my income and IQ, so as ever I sat somewhat like a nephew at the kids table while conversation moved around property and profit. I had nothing to add. So I went for “charming and funny” which is my wheelhouse. I believe I was a hit. In that they all said “hope to see you again soon” and appeared to mean it. But who knows. Perhaps, as ever, I was tiring and “punny” and will go down as “Alex’s slightly overbearing friend.” Wouldn’t be the first time.
Saturday night was, in an oddly retro way, Strictly Come Dancing. Which, if memory is going all on the blink, I haven’t seen since I watched it with Helen and Luthfa, my previous partners. Claire is not a fan and – frankly – it isn’t something I’ve missed. Odd that. The things that were once “must see” TV (Big Brother, Changing Rooms, Ground Force) have just faded away from my life. But there is a guilty wriggling pleasure in the re-visit which I had on Saturday night in Alex’s sumptuous lounge.
Ahhh, Strictly Come Dancing. What a thing. Astonishing how quickly one becomes an expert. Yelling at the screen about frames and arms and feet and length and grace. As if we had ANY IDEA what we were talking about. But jolly wine-fuelled fun none the less. Oh and Greg Wise got voted off, which according to Alex, is a good thing.
Ah well, pint is empty and ashtray is full so we’re done. I’ll pick you up in the morning. Good night.
“We’ve both given up smoking. ‘Coz it’s fatal…so who’s matches are those?”
SO HARD – Pet Shop Boys
Hello again, whoe’er you are. Possibly no-one. Because to date I have told only, I think 5 people I’m writing this. Is it time to go public? HAhahahahaha, like that would make a difference. I expect I shall start posting the link to the ole blogosphere this week. In the spirit, once again, of something. I know my pal Alex (more of whom later) has snuck a peek. And my old Understudies/comedy/writing pal Neal has kindly sent an “I’ll take a look when I no-longer have work, wife or kids” email. Bless him.
The rest, as I believe someone once said, is silence.
Anyhoo, it’s been – as Barenaked Ladies probably once said – six days since you looked at me. It is Tuesday evening, and notes tell me we were last in the Surbiton Grind, deciding about Venom and cigarettes and nights in and freedom and finding quizzes and getting gigs.
So. Progress. Or lack of.
We’re back in the ever dimming darkness of The Grey Horse. It’ Tuesday the 19th. It’s creeping up on 7pm. Quiz is in an hour. We (the pub) haven’t had ANY bookings so it might be super quiet. I only know that some staff are coming down (1 team), someone phoned to book but then didn’t (poss 2 teams) and a nice chap stuck his head round the door half an hour ago asking if it was “just turn up?” So maybe 3 teams. And if the two fine ladies who make up the stalwart ever-present team “Grey Area” arrive as they oft do, that’ll be 4 teams. Hmm. Hardly Woodstock. I have the sheets and print outs and Spotify Playlist (songs with numbers in the title) all set. So just an hour to go before I hammer it out to the best of my whatnot, pocket a much needed £75 (minus what I’ve spent on “stick another Neck Oil in there mate”) and head home to Claire at around midnight.
SO what’s been going on, in order of importance.
Well. Stand-up. I am putting that front and centre in a way of gee-ing up my flagging enthusiasm for live comedy. I have at last received an email from Erich which had, in its body:
A link to the video of my first solo performance; A request for feedback/reviews to help push the course; a maddening apology that he fiddled with the lighting on his phone halfway through the filming of my set, which is why it fades out JUST BEFORE A PUNCHLINE and then fades back in quickly to the responding laughter. Like this…
So this means the following. I will have to edit down the video of my live set and, somehow, insert earlier footage of the “testicular cancer” joke into the act, as MADDENINGLY in got not only a huge laugh, but spun off into my only bit of improv’. Will take a look at that in the morning.
I should also write some nice things, or even, if I’m feeling kind, put a 60 sec “this course is great” video testimonial in Erich’s inbox. Seems the least I can do as he took me patiently from frothing eager has-been to confident has-done.
Have watched a bit of the video when it arrived. First thoughts:
Footage is better when there’s an audience. Silhouettes of heads at the bottom of the screen. Actual reactions. There are also actual laughs. And big ones. Although it doesn’t end with a BANG as the Aryan Cupboard/Airing Cupboard pun isn’t big enough for a closer. Was too conscious of over-running so cut the set there. I have WHITE HAIR. Maybe it’s the lights, maybe it’s being 6 weeks away from 49 years old. But I SWEAR in the home bathroom mirror, the sides and front still look light brown. It is NOT. Under showbiz lights I have Jim Jarmush/Steve Martin hair. Not even “silver fox.” Just “old man” grey. Fuck.
Ten past 7. Plenty of time. Second beer.
Now I have this video, I will cut and trim and add titles and (shiver – extra laughs from sound effect library? No) cut it to “send to promoters” length. Erich seemed to think (I say seemed, obviously he knows) that sending a full “5 spot” to a promoter might not be the best thing. But then, what is? Do I get fancy shmancy with fades and cuts and grainy filters and do a show reel of my “best 3 mins”? Maybe. That might be fun to do over a latte tomorrow.
Oh, can’t forget I am meant to be having lunch with my previous boss Claire on Thursday. Blew her out (not in the good way) on Monday as I was accidentally (although my complete fault/decision) still coming home from Bath at midday, instead of comfy cosy at home. Explanation later. Claire hired me when I was an out of work call-centre manager in 2009. All engaged and moved to London and eager to provide for my growing family (well, my soon to be wife and our soon to be expanding rent). She hired me after my interview when I hadn’t reached the train station afterwards yet. Literally a buzzing phone as I tugged my tie loose and fumbled for my Oyster Card. Desperate? Not sure.
So what else since we spoke. Well I have been arguing with my conscious and my subconscious about smoking and drinking which is driving me CRAZY. Why didn’t the Allan Carr book “take”? It always has in the past. I am so depressed about this. Was deciding to quit smoking the day before I did stand-up in a lonely pub for the first time a stupid idea? Was thinking about quitting drinking before I clambered aboard a downbound train for a boozy weekend with an old pal a dumb-ass decision. Am I using all these things as an excuse. Well, dear reader, you decide. Claire (MY Claire) despairs at this. And I can only shrug and agree. Feeble I know. And here I am on a Tuesday night with a pint and a fag again. GOD I AM BORED OF THIS.
Why won’t clarity and wisdom arrive? I know if I never drank again I’d probably never smoke again. As the “pint and a fag” double-act is so hard-wired into my limbic cortex, I can’t think of a night out without a pint, and a pint needs a fag. And on and on and on.
The pub stereo has moved from stumbly 60s jazz to Wham’s I’M YOUR MAN. Marvellous. Takes me back. My only other foray into music (you’ll recall talk of The Understudies in earlier episodes) was a very short-lived but hugely promising 2 piece, then 5 piece, then 4 piece wit-pop act called “Smallville” which myself (songwriter/guitarist) and best pal Darren Perry (vocals and hips) put together in the mid nineties. Lots of silly rehearsals, 6 silly songs about smoking and lego and Reservoir Dogs and whatnot, roping in of brothers and old friends and we were – for about an hour – quite a fun live act. After we disbanded due to no reason at all apart from we weren;t very good so it wasn;t much fun and none of us took it very seriously (and Darren didn’t want to sing anymore understandably) I re-recorded (for posterity) my 6 best attempts at songwriting so I had some evidence I knew how to add a horn-section to a bong-part and bunged them all on YouTube. Here are 3 for no reason at all:
Make of that shit what you will.
Annoyingly, my staff at work will, on occasion, when talking about staff, say “our boss is on YouTube. Let’s watch!” and make new hires sit through this chirpy singalong hook-heavy garbage. What this does to our attrition rate has yet to be calculated.
Oh, the reason I’m Your Man reminds me of these halcyon days is that it was one of 2 of our cover versions. That and “Do You Know The Way To San Jose.” Oh we knew a crowd pleaser…
7.38pm. Few more minutes. The Grey Horse “team” have turned up. And I’ve spotted one of “Grey Area.” So 2 teams at least. I hope my salary isn’t crowd-based.
So, in the dying few mins of tonight…what else?
Well despite intentions of last week, I STILL haven’t started looking for stand-up gigs. I wanted to wait until I had my “show reel.” But now I do, so the ONLY thing stopping me taking the SE England Open-Spot word by storm is effort. Oh effort. MUST do that. These 2 weeks off MUST have something to show for them.
Let’s talk the weekend. Not much to say for blog fans, aside from hauling my weary greying (grey? Ed.) self aboard a Paddington train and descending from it 80 mins later in Bath Spa on Friday to spend a delightful weekend in the company of one of my few true pals, Alex.
I won Alex, as I like to say, in the divorce. I won’t bang on about it, but like so many 40-something married men, in a sigh of lacksidasical-ness (spell check that, Motherfucker) I left my lovely wife to organise our social affairs.
Ohh, Madonna’s playing Like A Prayer and it’s 7.45. So fag and set up. Back later p’raps. Break some legs. And lets hope the crowd tonight is big and like Lego. (Picture round…) Love to most… x
Well you’ll be bored by now. So let’s just say it’s Wednesday. Day 3 of my 2 week vacation. It’s just after 2pm. And I am, once more, in the Surbiton Grind with my latte and Bacon sarnie.
Feels llike my holiday starts now. Today is my first day with no commitments or planning or tasks or chores or expectations. I have literally NOTHING to do today. I mean, I could sit here all afternoon, sipping coffee, typing this, listening to an audio book. Until dinner time tonight – when Claire and I have promised ourselves a treat (I hope) in watching Tom Hardy in Venom on Disney Plus over supper – I am a free man. Seems weird. Not a situation I’m used to. There is normally something hovering at my shoulder as a “don’t forget you have to…” But today, nada. Which is lovely.
Sun is out, glinting on the passing traffic of Surbiton. Opposite the café is a rather incongruous piano shop. Not that the pianos themselves are incongruous. It’s more…piano shop? Seems such an odd thing to have in a suburban high street. More fitting Bond Street or Charing Cross Road. Well it’s been there forever. And presumably managed to keep a trade going. Until now, it seems. Despite lockdown – which you would have thought would have been very good for “let’s buy a little electric piano for the spare room and Matilda and Josh can learn” middle class investment, it has now closed. Yesterday in fact. It is now an empty shell of a building. The reason I mention this is that it has taken less than 24 hrs for the appearance of those fucking creepy, never changing, permanently out of date, depressing “circus” posters to be slathered all over the front glass.
Circus posters refuse to change. No matter how modern or exotic. They ALWAYS look exactly the same. Very little money changes hands with graphic design consultants I fear. I wonder if there is a simple computer programme that generates the garish, gurning clown faced rainbow big top eye-sores automatically? I hate them. They depress me. I don’t know why. Something about a grim, drizzly british car-park, clanking poles, a whiff of manure and a sense of heart ache and neon desperation. Perhaps I’ve been listening to that Smiths song too much. “last night of the fair…By the speedway, generators…” etc. Can’t remember what it’s called. (Teenage me would have a fucking fit). It’s off Meat Is Murder I think. Rusholme Ruffians? Possibly. Here it is:
Yep that’s the one.
So I;ve packed my gym bag. (Actually Claire’s very useful backpack. Lots of compartments for such and such). So the intention today is a lazy afternoon until I am bored of this or my battery/latte funds run out. Then it’s off back to The Gym.
I’ll probably have more to say on this sudden “gym and activity and hobbies” tip that I’m currently surfing. Wave, actually. You don’t surf a “tip.” I don’t know what a “tip” is.
It’s all part of this change of heart I’m having about things. Was pondering it last night when I ambled, happy and tired, back from a STORMING pub quiz at the Grey Horse. It was a great one. 8 teams, which is ideal. Some lively back-chat and heckling. Some good improv’ and gags between questions. And the right team won. Not that that matters. But it’s nice sometimes.
The gym links into the comedy course. And the quiz. And the health kick notion of sobriety and clean living. I am finally, FINALLY, tired of the life I am living. The endless waste of good money on beer, leaving me headachey and woozy and in-bed-by-9.30pm three nights a week. No energy, no effort and a dragging heavy feeling of just lurching woozily from one day to the next with nothing but a Saturday nap and a Kermode Mayo podcast as an incentive to keep breathing.
Smoking is out of hand and the horrendous raspy phlemy cough and the constant “achem-hEM!” throat clearing that speckles the first 2 hours of each morning. I sound like my dad used to. And that was always painful to listen to. Loose dentures, ratty dressing-gown, coughing into his weak tea in the kitchen.
Plus the fatigue of listless sedentariness. That’s not a word. But just the lack of gumption and get-up-and-go that meant I was never really “in the mood” to do anything that wasn’t sitting on my arse. The days and days spent drowsy on the bed with calming ASMR nature-sounds in my earphones as afternoons melted into each other. Lockdown didn’t help, of course. When there is nowhere to go, the act of staying in, slumped infront of The Big Bang Theory night after night is hardly a conflict of interests.
And of course the podgy, bin-bag-full-of-yoghurt (copywrite Stephen Fry) silhouette that paley plops back at me, spilling over loose elastic pyjama bottoms in the humming glare of the bathroom mirror. A face with no jawline that goes from ears to nipples without any discernable detours. It’s all just piling up on me. Regrets about bad habits, wasted evenings, tired mornings and a grey feeling of “well it’s just 20 more years of this and then I’m gone,” is worrying my like a loose tooth.
I know I know. Classic male panicky midlife crises nonsense of course. I claim no insight or originality. But as I paced home up the hill to the flat last night, it did occur to me, not for the first time, that to CHANGE all these thing? It requires nothing but a shift of mind. No relocation, no retraining, no huge investment, no disruption. Just a simple decision to do things differently.
The rings were the first step. I wear rings now. Yes. Rings. Four of them. Chunky silver things. I never ever used to wear any jewellery. Ever. It just wasn’t something I did. I never even thought about it. But in the last 6 months or so, I would catch myself admiring a photo of an old rocker, a teddy-boy, a rockabilly, Jeff Goldblum, Johnny Depp, that sort of thing. And they would have chunky silver across their knuckles. And a lot of it. And I was suddenly gripped with an idea that this would make me happy. Or happier. Another midlife crises thing I guess. I suppose in another universe, I would be growing a pony-tail. Or buying leather trousers. Christ.
But I went all out, online, browsed the cheaper end of the scale (as I was very aware this would turn into a short lived fad. I wouldn’t mind bundling them embrassed, into a drawer if they’d only cost be a tenner). And I ordered 5 of them. Just like that.
Claire is not a fan. I see something in them that she doesn’t. I think, in honesty, it’s the student goth “try hard” cheapness of them. Like they’re cracker novelties. The equivalent of buying a string of candy sweets on some elastic, putting around your neck and then going to a job interview. All just a bit “daft.” Especially for a man who owns £450 handmade Church’s brogues, 2 tailored suits, silver cufflinks and vintage tie-clips. It’s a bit like James Bond having a Claire’s Accessories voucher.
But I have them. And I wear them. And I love them. And I receive enough remarks and compliments (mainly from idiot teenagers who don’t know better) to be happy with them.
You remember Ducky from Pretty In Pink? The final scene at the prom? When he’s all tuxedo and bollo tie? THAT’s the look I like.
So the rings were the first thing. Just deciding there was the type of person I wanted to be, and realising there was NOTHING stopping me being that person. Visa card, Amazon, jiffy bag and BOOM. I am a man in jewellery.
The rest of the changes? Gym visits, a jawline, less (or no) beers. No fags. A writing project. A stand-up career/hobby/night out. All that? Just a matter of will. Will, sadly, comes and goes of course. What seems like a great idea for tomorrow morning can easily collapse into a “why bother?” when the alarm clock comes around. There’s always another tomorrow…
Well, its brought me here. 2 weeks off to “do some things” and change some habits and experiment with being a person I can face in the mirror.
So where were we?
Right. Monday night. I got a huge round of applause, feat. whoops and cheers as I climbed back off the stage and stumbled humbly back through the smiling crowd to the rear of the comedy club where I could at last relax. I knew it had gone well. I knew it. Better than expected? Not sure. Perhaps. But I suffer from appalling narcissism so maybe in my head “smashing it” was just what I’d expected? This not being my first rodeo, as no one ever says. But the buzz was there. Other acts (Iman, Sarah, Mike) were effusive and high-fiving. Because I’d nailed it, sure. But I’m certain also that I’d shown it could be done, that I’d kept the crowd laughing and relaxed them into knowing it wasn’t impossible.
The rest of the night, as is typical in such memoirs, is a little blurry. I had another drink, of course. I felt I deserved that one. Pulled up a stool at the back and settled in to enjoy Mike, Sarah and Iman get up and do their “fives.”
And in the words of the turns-out-not-immortal Bruce “Brucie” Forsyth, didn’t they do well. Sarah’s grinning energy and charm won the audience over immediately. Mike’s “biker wizard hippy schtick” got a great response. He is such a larger than life character (Love child of Dumbldore and Hagrid, as he brilliantly put it) the audience ate it all up. Iman got huge recognition for her fish-out-of-water ethnic-middle class bits that went down a storm. We all felt jolly smug and proud of ourselves.
Erich and Dinesh both did a “shout out” to us four with the crowd, which might have been good manners or might have been “genuinely impressed” but either way, the four of us, like leaping blonde A-Level students in the Daily Telegraph, whooped and back-slapped. It goes without saying that Dinesh got up to close the night and did a storming 20mins on the pains of aging and family life that the crowd lapped up with big laughs and cheers.
Night closed and Erich got us all up for a group photo. I then, inevitably, had another drink and sort of prowled around with nervous energy, like an eager puppy, sort of hoping for “well done’s” and “you were greats” from the departing room. I got a few. So that was that.
In the calm of recollection I can now think clearly about the experience. I enjoyed every second of it. The whole thing. The course, the camaraderie, the video watching, the writing, the editing, the practise. There was a HUGE sense of teamwork about the process. All of us gee-ing each other on. Like doubles players at Wimbledon with their high-fives after each winning point.
I NEVER would have done this, or done it half as well, without the course. Hearing one’s material out loud, week after week, from an actual stage with an actual microphone, with real people giving real feedback. It’s the only way to learn. I think the otherwise terrifying act of “watching yourself back on video” – while stomach churning as a concept – did more for the delivery and polish of the act than all the bedroom pacing and Dictaphone playback n the world.
But now? Here I sit. Was that it? Can I finally put the ghost of the Rich Hall heckler to bed? Right now, I don’t know. The right thing to do would be to now go onto the Facebook Page of the Open Spot nights. Start emailing the promoters with my short “5 min spot” YouTube link and see what happens.
The idea of this is terrifying of course. As it was back in 1993. I mean I’d take an email and a video-clip over a dreaded phone-call any day of the week. So perhaps technology and Covid have helped remove the gut-twisting fear of the “hello? Do you have an open spot?” quivering telephone enquiry. That would be the right thing to do. Sitting here however, at 3.06pm on a Wednesday afternoon in the overcast grey of a Surbiton café? My bottom has other ideas. (That may however be just as much to do with the hastily bolted Cheese/Bacon/Tommy-toe white-bread toastie. I could do with a poo, if I’m honest).
And another latte wouldn’t hurt. I have the £75 from last night’s quiz tucked in cash in the wallet, which was an unexpected bonus. I could also, now I have my Monday’s free again, make a call to the pub in Hampton that is looking for a quiz master. I have let that contact whither on the vine a little. Mainly because it would have meant being out 3 nights a week. But also because it’s a phone call. And I HATE phone calls. Perhaps tomorrow I might take a walk to the pub in question, sniff it out, and speak to the manager. 2 Quizzes a week could work out a tidy £600p/m cash-in-hand income. Which believe me, if energy prices are going to do what they’re promising to do, will be a necessary investment in my heating bills.
There are now about 8 huge buggies and about 15 women in Sweaty-Betty active wear in the café. I think hoping a staff member will come out so I can order another coffee is futile. Plus I can’t just wander in without leaving the laptop on the street. Arses.
Okay. Plan of action. I will have another coffee now. I will close the laptop and catch up with a podcast or audio book. (I am trying “The Naked Mind” which is a self-helpy audio thing about controlling alcohol consumption. I will then head to the gym. Tonight will be shower and dinner and Venom. Tomorrow I will skip the gym and – if Erich has uploaded the videos – make a real and genuine effort to try and get another booking or two, while the struck iron is still warmish. And I may take a walk into Hampton to see if that pub is genuine about wanting their own Quiz night. Friday I am off-line as I am decending on the lovely Alex, an old pal who has upped sticks to Bath. So that’s a bit of a weekend-away thing. Okay.
Ahhh. Good morning. Good afternoon, technically. I slept late. I slept the sleep of the tired. Of the buzzing, of the full of fried chicken, of the relieved, of the weight-lifted.
We’re back, as I imagine we’re going to be for most of the next 2 weeks, on the busy sunny street of Ewell Road, Surbiton KT6. Half a lovely latte at the elbow once again, my now trad cheese and tommy-toe toastie (tommy-toe! Tommy-toe! Don’t say it again! Copywrite Fry n Laurie) mid munch at the table. I have the last 3 fags left of my final packet at my side).
I caved. Yes I know. I’m not proud. But in all honesty, it was simply too much to jump in feet first to a highly stressed pub environment, with the crowds and lights and clatter and the people and the pressure and the nerves to decide this was also the night to start coping without a tiny white mouth-crutch. So I caved and got a pack and that way had 1 less thing to think about. Forgive me lungs, cough, throat and bank balance. We start afresh again. “It matters not how often we fall, but how often we get back up again.” Or something. I want to say The West Wing, but it’s bound to be something more profound. (More profound than The West Wing? Ha! I know).
So today I have this to type up, about which I am keen. I also have a date with a treadmill and a rowing machine, as I promised myself I would – every day I could – during my 2 week hols. (Can’t believe I;m only on day 2 of my holiday. Mental. Considering since I left work on Friday I have done LOADS of writing; been to the gym twice; eaten out at FIVE GUYS with Claire; seen the new Bond Movie “No Time To Die” [spoilers. He apparently does have time to die]; edited a 10min comedy video; created a five min show; learned the show and delivered the show. This is the most productive I have ever been. Feels oddly satisfying). After the gym, I need to return home, write the quiz, format the quiz, create a Spotify Playlist, go back into Kingston to the office, print the quiz, get BACK to The Grey Horse (my new home it appears) and deliver the quiz for an 8pm start. And it’ll still only be fuckin’ Tuesday.
I s’pose this is a bit like how people must live who have a job they love. With energy and purpose and enthusiasm. Rather than a tired drudging compliance. Is it too late to get that life? We’ll see. Infact, this 2 week holiday is, I suppose, a bit of an experiment into that.
Here’s a joke from last night’s closing act (I’m paraphrasing) that rang true with everyone.
“When you’re in your 20s, anything is possible. By the time you’re in your 30s, you’re thinking “wait I can turn this around, it’s not too late. In your 40s, that’s it. This is your life.” Same idea as the City Slickers bit from earlier blogs I suppose. I’m clearly at that stage of life.
So. Where to begin. Well you left me, phone in head, taking a long long long stroll north towards Kingston, hanging a left towards the river Thames and then a long walk south along the river, playing my newly minted “YouTube” clip over and over in my ear. I would pause it every few lines as I walked, and then try repeating the jokes outloud to myself. Trying trying TRYING to keep to the script, and not suddenly throw in 3 extra sentences of unnecessary exposition. I used visual clues to help me lead from the end of one joke to another. This is my way. What image does the end of one joke conjour up that I can twist surreally into an image to launch the next. This is an old Bob Monkhouse “memory palace” idea. Derren Brown talks about it too. What it means is all I have to learn are the links. My act opening, for example, I remember like this:
Right foot on glass (Right, lets get this clear)…Gove sounds like Grove which is a place (good evening Kingston) Villages are where couples retire to (I’m divorced)…Couples have things in common (we had a lot in common)…Better than mine was (a land mine blowing up a school)…Education…Greggs (Greg Davies hosting a TV quiz)…we met at a quiz night… and so on.
So on I trudged through Surbiton, towards Claygate and Esher, muttering and pausing and repeating. Recalling the links, trying to solidify “phrases” rather than ideas to keep my timing tight. Until I began to feel it was coming quickly and naturally. Using Erich’s advice, as I went over and over, I pictured the stage, the lights, the front row, the feeling of the microphone, the pacing and gestures, to get a vivid idea of what the act would look and feel like.
Blimey these lattes are AMAZING. I don’t know what their secret is. But I can down them in glugging sloshes like cold lemonade. Mmm, and the almond biscotti biscuit isn’t hurting either. Plus they are delivered at EXACTLY the right temperature. No blowing or sipping. But still warming and creamy. Fuck this place is going to be expensive. Maybe quitting coffee? Hahahahaha etc.
I was home by 5pm just as Claire was wrapping up her course. I had time for a short nap (mind tumbling with script) that was cut short as I was too hyped. Shower, shave, iron shirt, dress. I chose the boots, dark jeans, white shirt, copper vintage tie, grey box jacket with velvet trim and silver tie-clip with ruby stud. Oh and for no reason apart from I saw a Bond movie the night before, I ironed a crisp white hanky for the top pocket. Deep breath. I felt good. Reflection told me likewise. I;m not a handsome man by a very long stretch. (My jokes about Michael Gove, the Proclaimers, Mark Kermode etc get far too big a laugh of recognition for me to think otherwise. Not a hunk among them). But I do know how to dress. Quiff was slicked and shiny and glinted like gun metal.
Wanted to get the bus to Kingston so I could play the show four or five more times in my ear for polish. But wasn’t til the bus stop that I realised I was mask-free. And London Transport are still enforcing the no-mask, no-travel rule. So I walked it. Didn’t want to get too sweaty in my clobber so a casual walk. Which actually was a blessing as I was able to recite the show a couple more times.
Got to the pub. Busy. Lots of folk eating and chatting and clinking among the dark wood and Hallowe’en cobweb décor. Couple of people (Marie and Karoliina) from work had come down to support. Which was tremendous. I wasn’t really expecting anyone. And would have been just as happy to be playing to strangers. But it did mean I had company for the hour before it started, which stopped me whipping myself up into a panicky twitch.
Went back to the club. Very dark. Chairs and tables. Erich was there, all mic stands and cables. They had put up banners and posters and such. A much more “pro” atmosphere. He ran through the plan.
HE would host (obviously). Opening act would be Jenan (her of the “how to get gigs” seminar of 2 weeks ago). Phew. An actual “comic” to start. That would warm the place up. Give everyone a chance to settle in and get some booze inside them. Then a break. Then it would be the FOUR new acts back to back as the middle part of the show. He’d put ME on first.
Felt weird and good about this. In an ego moment, I figured he might have put me on first as the most “guaranteed” of the acts. That is to say, the one that would most likely hit the ground running and give the audience a sense of “well thank god these amateurs aren’t going to be utter shit.” Maybe. Also it meant less “hanging around waiting” time. Which is a plus. I could do my bit, for better or worse, and then relax for the rest of the acts and the show. Then there would be a break and our “closer,” who would be none other than Ramesh Ranganathan’s brother Dinesh Ranganathan– also an accomplished stand-up, living in his brother’s “15mins of fame” current favouritism. I have no opinion of Ramesh’s act. Have only seen him being heavy-lidded and grumpy on panel shows. But he is very much the flavour of the week these days, so good for him.
So it was nervously back to the table and the work chums. Marie’s current squeeze Dario had turned up too. Lovely chap. So we sat and I sipped a pint of bitter (Twickenham Naked Ladies, my sup of choice at the Grey Horse) and I tapped my feet and tore up beermats and waited.
Mike turned up with his partner. So we shot the shit for a while, bluffering and booming and shoulder slapping and saying “how are ya?” and generally pounding each other with nervous energy.
7.15pm we headed in. Crowd was filling up. Erich asked my “group of 3” to sit near the front to keep the energy up. People milled in. I chatted with Mike. I spotted Iman up the front with whoever she’d brought (friends/family) and we shared an anxious cringey wave. Sarah was at the back with her guest. So I bounded over and we nervously told each other how well each other was bound to do.
I’d had 1 pint by now. I knew I didn’t want to have too many. Despite what the body might think in its dumb boozy blurry logic, alcohol was not going to make me sharper, tighter, more focused or better able to remember the act. It might loosen up the muscles and give me a giggly get-up-and-go energy. But it wasn’t going to make the show better. So I carried the dregs of Naked Ladies in a smeary empty pint pot about the room.
Erich opened the show. He is a HUGELY natural performer. Seemed amazing to see him “at work” rather than in “teacher/tutor” mode. This was the first time I’d seen him actually on stage with a crowd. And the guy can MC like the best of them. Huge confidence, a snarky aside, good crowd work, very strong material, actual jokes. So I was able to sit at the back and enjoy the show as a punter. He invites on Ginan and she does her set.
As there’s no point writing this if it isn’t true, I enjoyed her set very much, but was distracted. Knowing I would be the next act up. A set based largely on ethnicity, Muslim Britain, body hair, religion, terrorist panic and her experiences, it got all the laughs it wanted to get. I don’t recall any screams or hysteria. But the crowd warmed to her experiences (despite a little frostiness at the front table) and then a big cheer at the end. Erich came back on, explained it would be a break and then the “4 newbies.” And then the break started.
Out for a fag. Another pint? Oh fuck it why not. The first one hadn’t even touched the sides. This was Neck Oil, which was colder and fizzier than expected. I sipped it. Marie and Dario came out to see me but I politely asked them to leave me be as I sat at a quiet table and ran through my memory palace links again. Yep. Got it. Was never going to be any more prepared than now.
Back into the club. Lots of hubbub in the dark. Food being distributed, energy and crackles at the table. Music loud. I paced the back of the room by the bar. The lights on the empty stage seemed very bright. Erich was milling about, talking to the owner, ensuring food wasn’t delivered during the acts, which caused some fuss in the busy kitchen. Break seemed to drag on. And I was hopping and stamping and getting the energy out. Much pacing. Right lets get this clear…you remember the movie the fly? Over and over. As long as I started strong with this, and the Michael Gove line got a laugh, I’d be fine.
Music fades and Erich bounds on. He does much longer than I expected. 10mins? Material about his dog, material about his boiler. All good stuff. Crowd are eager. Then he introduces me. Crowd claps and I bound forward through the chairs. Confident and eager. Heart thundering. But also, weirdly calm. I know this. It’s like an exam one has not only revised for, but also seen the questions in advance. Nerves, yes. But a calm “let’s just get it done” feeling.
Up onto the stage. A hygenic fist bump with Erich. He steps down. I step up. Face the front, hold mic in stand. “Right, let’s get something clear,” I say. Mic out of stand, heave stand to the back, thump it down, back to the front, lights bright. Just shadows. Relax. “You’ll remember the movie The Fly?” and I sort of lean out, eyes wide, sweeping the whole room. My stage. I’m in charge.
“What happens when the movie critic Mark Kermode got into the transporter…” All quiet. Where’s this going? “Not realising that crouched behind him was (beat) Michael Gove.”
CRACK. Huge laugh. Boom. But big. Enough time for me to stand up straight again. Laughter still coming. Step back. Walk the stage. Touch the wooden stool. Face the front again. And we’re away.
The five minutes flew by. I got all the jokes out, in order. No fluffs, no extra padding. I felt steady. Every punchline got a laugh. Some big “inferiority complexes/Tesco bagging area/dogging/chronic obsesity.” I recall at one point I even had to give a “okay, okay, shush” as I didn’t want to over-run but something had got the crowd roaring. Me, obviously. But until I see the video tape back, I won’t know which bit. I forgot to do the Goldblum impression – as I ALWAYS do – and I said thankyou Kingston, instead of the funnier callback “thankyou little lower Richmond village.” But I said my name, mic back in the stand (a bit clumsily), took a stagey little bow, a la 1980s Ben Elton, and left the stage.
Okay, it’s 2.31pm now. I have to get to the gym. And I have forgotten my phone. Which means I can either go back and get it or just plough on. I think, mood that I’m in, I’ll plough on. Walk and think and relive last night in my head. Get some thoughts together. Then back home to shower and write up the quiz. Have lots of nervous happy energy that the treadmill can absorb.
Much more to say about the rest of the night. And all sorts of other things. But we’ll pick that up tomorrow I expect. Love to all x#
Hello. Well it’s a couple of hours later. And that didn’t work out at all. Arse.
I took off from the café, with my print out in hand, ready to find a quiet spot in the park to read out my “chopped down” five minute version into my Mp3 recorder, ready to load it and play it over and over for the next few hours.
After scouring the park looking for a quiet unoccupied bench – of which there were NONE (who are all these people sitting in parks mid afternoon on an October Mondy?) – I found a desolate tree in a corner. I whip out the phone, I whip out the script. I press record, I start to read…only to find out FUCK IIIIIIT, that the print out is of an old but from weeks ago. Not the full final set, Arsebiscuits.
So heigh-ho, as the seven dwarves once said, it was BACK to the coffee shop. (Hello again! They said. Yeah yeah yeah). I got a Camomile Tea (no more lattes for me – oh and fags have gone in the bin. Yayy) and I opened up the video of my last set. All 10mins 8 secs of it. I went through on a handy piece of desktop editing software and chopped out the errs and uhmms and the 4 jokes I;m cutting, added some titles, a b/w grainy look for that Beat Poet Lenny Bruce vintage feel, and converted it to an MP4. And have shoved it on YouTube here:
So I can now happily stroll about Kingston with it playing in my ears. It runs 5mins 9 seconds. Including pacing and laughs. Which I’m okay with. So now I am ready. What to do now?
Well it’s 2.24pm and I have nowt to do but learn it. So perhaps a walk to the gym and a half hour or so on the treadmill. Or perhaps just a long long walk for a couple of hours. Hmn. Not sure.
Either way, phone battery permitting, I am good to go. Righto. As I said before. Broken legs people, broken legs.
Morning everyone. Well here we are. It’s a much brighter Monday morning. I am back in the Surbiton Grind. Sat outside this time. My own dumb fault.
I pulled on my denim jacket this morning to throw over my hoodie and gym kit. Got to the café, reached in to find my wallet and what should be nestling in there…an almost completely full pack of the dreaded Camels. Oh for fucks sake.
Now given that I completed Mr Allen Carr’s “Easy way To Stop Smoking” yesterday at about 4pm, with a great feeling of achievement and gusto, this is very irritating. I mean I should just bin them. Get up no and walk to a “trash can” and buckle and bend and tear and get rid of the whole thing. And if it was only 1 or 2 in there I probably would. But now they sit next to me on the bench outside the café being all gross and “taunty.”
Is today the best day, given I have to stand in a pub for 2.5 hours and do a stand up set later tonight? Am I making my head too crowded with “do stand up, don’t drink, don’t smoke,” all on the same day. Or am I simply using this as an excuse for weakness? Oh ffs I don’t know. Time will tell.
Oh yes, the drinking. I’m knocking that on the head too. Or going to make my best endeavours to do so at least. Again, is today the best day for THAT?
Allen Carr has some interesting advice on this. In fact, it is the ONE part of his book that suggests it’s up to the reader: When quitting smoking, do you AVOID stressful and social and likely smoking environments? To give yourself a fighting chance? Or do you run towards them, thrilled at your new status, enjoying the freedom of being the “new you” in the “old new” world? He says it’s really up to the individual. Great.
Anyway, enough of THAT. Tonight, dear reader, as you will know, is the night. I have my latte and my bacon/tomato toastie, (tommy –toe!) I have the laptop, the phone, the headphones, the print out of the material, and about 8 hours before I have to get up and do it infront of a mixed crowd of strangers.
How am I feeling? This is what you’ll all be burning to know.
Just had a fag. They were staring at me. Now I feel stupid. But fuck it.
Nerves? Some. I feel I have done “well enough” (see previous videos of the course practise) to know I won’t absolutely die on my arse. There are enough good jokes in there with clear and present PUNCHLINES to get me through. I can’t see it going awfully. I am also now secretly glad of the glaring stage lights, so tonight’s show, once I clamber up there and grab the mic, will be identical to the rehearsals I’ve done. Unlike Downstairs At The Kings Head which is lit like a movie set and one can see the staring whites of the eyes of all the punters sat 3 feet in front.
So not worried about the material.
However I have, thanks to the Surbiton Grind Wifi, just downloaded the last practise session video (below) which pisses me off as, despite needing to be a tight 5mins, runs 10mins 5 seconds. Some of this is fluffing lines and pacing and having to check the script. But it isn’t 5 mins worth.
So my number one anxiety right now, as the clock approaches ten to twelve, is that I will over-run dramatically. Which is VERY bad form. Or I will forget my act. Which is equally unprofessional.
The ONLY solution to this is the following:
I need to listen again to the video, watching it carefully, and see if I can lift out 3 or 4 of the weakest jokes. Which I don’t really want to do, obviously. Especially as I have learnt the set like a play, and in my mind each joke follows the next. Can an actor say “TO be or not to be…” and then naturally, without missing a beat, go straight into “wherefore art thou Romeo?” Well we’ll see.
In a perfect world I would have done this already. Gone through, re chopped it, downloaded the audio and now have a tight 4mins 45secs loaded on the phone to listen to over and over. Sadly however life has run away with me so I’m going to have to do that now.
Okay, here we go. Let’s take a listen to the full 10mins 8 secs and see what doesn’t work:
(Oh this WILL be fascinating for you): Line by line, here we go:
Okay let’s get this clear. You’ll remember in the movie The FLY what happened when Jeff Goldblum got in that machine and a fly got trapped in there with him? Well I’m what happens when film critic Mark Kermode got in the machine without realising, crouching behind him is Michael Gove.
“But life uh…found a way…”
Good evening Kingston. Or if you’re an estate agent, welcome to “Lower South Ham Village.”
Where to start. I am a divorced man. Which you would assume, I know.
We had a lot in common though. For example, my wife and I both grew up with terrible inferiority complexes. Hers was great obviously, mine was shit.
Okay. First thing to note. This all takes too long. Long pauses, extra information. I’m adding “anyways” and pacing and twitchy Goldblum pauses. Extra details. It just isn’t tight enough. The above 3 jokes runs 1.30 seconds. Blimey. So we can practise (in the next few hours) just sticking to the key words, Seinfeld style. I think it was Jerry who said you should tell a joke in the least possible words it takes to get the idea. No fluff, no filler. When you watch him live you can see that even the random “adlib” sounding bits are BANG BANG BANG. When he talks about Superman on Hallowe’en, we get “I was physically ready, I was emotionally prepared.” And that’s it. Move on.
Anyhoo, let’s see the next 90 seconds…
Neither of us were academic. We had no interest in classroom lessons. We learn best I think from experience, from nature. Green, maybe healthy. Plants, fruits. Red, dangerous. Fire, blood. Bright blue, not healthy. Mould, rot, Greggs.
We met at a pub quiz. I was trying to be impressive. The quizmaster asked this geography question “what is the name of the huge fault that runs for 600 miles through California.” I shouted “Chronic Obesity?”
She got on with my family. She liked my dad. We weren’t wealthy. Dad didn’t like to work weekends. He preffered, as my mother used to tell me, to spend his Saturdays splashing out on used cars. Or dogging as it’s also known.
Not a big extended family. One uncle. Uncle Alan. We used to tell people who’d be about to meet hit: Uncle Alan’s like Marmite. Not that you either love him or hate him. Just that he’d sit in the kitchen cupboard and cum in a jar.
She got on well with my niece. Took an interest. My niece is into PAW PATROL that’s her thing. Which for years, I thought was the follow up to BENEFIT STREET
Right. We’re at 3:30 now. Well again, it’s lots of fluff and making the point over and over. The MARMITE JOKE I think can come out. It sits there and is obviously nonsense and never gets a huge crack. So that’s out. Plus it takes me 23 seconds to tell it.
In fact, looking back at the script as written, compared to how I deliver it, it’s no wonder the whole thing runs long. I’m taking, essentially, twice the amount of feedlines to get to the punch. Is it nerves they haven’t got the set up? Maybe. I need to be more trusting perhaps. Note there, a “Maybe” and “perhaps” in that sentence. Oh it’s like Raymond Chandler…
Onwards:
She was with me through the tough times too. When Dad died. Testicular Cancer. Complete surprise. Although the signs were there. Every time we’d go the Tesco self-checkout it’s say: Came home via Tesco. Till said “unexpected item in bagging area.”
But marriage is tough. You have to show someone you love them. Its not enough to tell them. Truth is we probably spent too much time staring at our phones instead of talking to each other. But we were that generation when phones and games were a novelty. I asked my brother, “How do I get Angry Birds” on my phone. Trying shagging half a dozen and not calling them back.
Right. Well this can come out too. It’s a looooong lead up to the “Angry Birds” joke. A joke I have since lost confidence in since Erich told me 2 things: “The angry birds joke, I fear I may have heard a similar version somewhere before. I can’t put my finger on where or who, but just thought I would mention that. And the couch and girlfriend on your phones, didn’t have a clear gag at the end of it.”
So Erich has forgotten that the gag at the end of the “couch bit” is infact the ANGRY BIRDS joke. Let’s see on the clock how long that bit runs: Fuck. 49 seconds. That’s like 18% of my act. That’s COMING OUT!
So, onwards:
We’re divorced now. It was the sex that broke us up. I’m shy, she was adventurous. We tried everything to keep it spicy in the bedroom. Tried everything. She ground up my Viagra and rubbed it all over her chest – , that went tits up
Final straw was when my wife shoplifted a copy of 50 Shades of Grey. To use as a manual stimulant. I told a friend of mine. He said, “shoplifted soft porn books? Has she always been sticky fingered? I said yes but it’s the shoplifting I object to.”
Well again. Sigh. It’s just so much padding. Pacing, padding, muttering. Adding extraneous detail. Repetition. We’re now at 6mins 10 secs and I’m nowhere NEAR the close. That 50 shades gag took 41 seconds. This isn’t the BANG BANG BANG it looked like when I was writing it down.
Keep it tight, Richard. Get to the point.
So last bit before the laundry section:
She learned some stuff from that book. She wanted anal action and some kind of elaborate spanking. I didn’t have that sort of equipment. Friday nights I’d find myself literally up shit creek without a paddle.
Now I work in an office. Dull place full of teenagers. Kind of office where they tell you to make sure you leave the microwave ovens in the canteen “as you would wish to find them.” So I always pop in 2 grams of coke and a copy of Razzle.
But that’s where I met my girlfriend. So I’m back to domestic bliss.
So. We’re at 7:35 now. Fuck. Now I like the Razzle joke (possibly because of my cheeky Harry Hill delivery on the punchline) but it jars. It doesn’t take us anywhere and has nothing to do with the theme of family or sex. So it might have to wait for my 10 spot. It runs 38 seconds. Fuckinell.
Now we hit the penultimate bit. The laundry section, which Erich and co seem to feel is the best bit and the most original bit. And certainly, if I watch back the first time I delivered it 6 weeks ago, it did get a huge CRACK of a laugh. Let’s see how long it runs (or rather, let’s see how long I force it to run by padding it out for no reason…)
Does anyone else feel racist when they’re doing the laundry?
Now we TRY not to feel racist! We try and be woke and use other words. But when you’re not concentrating on a Saturday morning. We have to try and Segregate…SEPARATE! Separate it all out without it turning into a Klan rally. What’s more important, the whites? The blacks? There’s a lot of coloureds about. We’ll do the whites first, they’re most important. Blacks? Well they shouldn’t really mix. Plus there’s a lot, they’re gonna need hanging.
So we’re both there trying to avoid eye contact while we discuss putting all the browns together as one batch called “coloureds.” What other words are there? We’ve tried saying “hues” instead of coloureds. But that’s worse. Because what about grey socks. They’re “hueish.” So now we arguing about the Huish problem. And don’t get me started about keeping them warm in the Aryan cupboard.
Blimey. That bit runs 2 mins 48. Blimey. That’s like HALF the running time. Does this mean if I keep the laundry, I have to lose half of the other stuff? Fuck, it probably does. So we’re gonna needa bigger cull, coz I tell that about as tight as I can.
And the closer? The mum ISA joke? Is it strong enough? I’m going to say NO right now.
Let’s have a listen:
But we get along now as a family. I call my mother every week. Well…Christmas. She was telling me she’d been seeing documents on the news about ISIS. She thinks great idea, very modern, suits people of her age. Not for everyone, perhaps only the middle England middle classes, but ISIS certainly has its merits. I said really? What is it you like about ISIS? She said how else she would be able to save up to £20,000 tax free…
Thank you Lower South Ham Village. You’ve been a treat, I’ve been RICHARD ASPLIN
Hmm. It’s not bad. Does anyone under thirty know what an ISA is? Seems awfully 1980s doesn’t it?
Well let’s be methodical. If I cut out:
ISIS (47secs) / MARMITE (23 secs) / MICROWAVES (40 secs) / ANGRY BIRDS (45 secs) that removes the better part of: 2.5 minutes. So if I do that, and really nail down the “tightness” of the rest of the show, I think we’ll be at about 5-6mins.
Okay. So that’s what I have to do. I suppose the best way of doing this will be to trim down the script, record it into my phone and spend the rest of today playing it over and over and over…
How to record it when I’m sat in a café? Hmmn. Don’t really want to go home to do it as lovely Claire is elbows deep in her R&D Course session and this will be a huge noisy stompy disruption.
A local park? There are plenty. I could go and hide under a tree…
Oooh, let’s see if I have a hard copy in my bag so I don’t have to laptop-it in an arborial setting like Bill Oddie setting up a webcam / a paedo setting up a webcam… Two tics…
Oooh, I DO!!! Okay, well I guess that’s what’s next. Timing wise, if we work backwards…
Get to the club for 6.45? Leave at 6.25pm. Shower and iron shirt, shave and do quiff? That’s another 30mins. So get into shower at 5.55pm. So I have 5hrs 11 minutes. How many times can I listen to 5 minutes of material in 5hrs 11 mins? Sixty two times. That should do it.
But now I’m at the point when…well, if I leave the café now and record the set onto my phone. I will have NOTHING to do for the most of the afternoon. Gym? Hmn, seems an odd thing to do. Somehow completely distracting. Unless I listen to the audio while pounding an hour on the treadmill? I still have tomorrow’s quiz to write. And collate. And print. Fuck. Well that can be tomorrow I guess. One thing at a time.
So y’know, I’m going to sit here a while. Maybe catch up on my Kermode & Mayo podcast over one more latte. Then off to the park. Yes. That’s the plan. Marvellous.
I may chat later, if I go to the club early. But until then. Please break my leg xxx
Hello again punters. Which is a terribly Julian Clary opening. So to speak.
I am given to be thinking of J.Clary and his “Sticky Moments” and his “Camping At The Aldwych” and his Hugh Jelly and such a ma like. He appeared of course in that live AIDS benefit show I mentioned some blogs back. Hysteria 3. London Palladium etc. I bumbled my way through his “snatch” as it were (oh give over Asplin…) on YouTube on Friday night as I had my final booze and fags blow out.
Which we might as well use as a kick off to what’s going on now. Which is that it’s 3 minutes to 4pm on Sunday afternoon. The same Sunday afternoon of the previous entry, where I was noshing bacon sandwich (or Vyvyan’s Pet Ferret, as us nerds like to call them) and thinking about gigs.
I did pack up about 2.30, passed a Chinaman on his way to the dentist, and hauled my ass Gymwards. Unpacked denims and satchels and laptops into one of the few un-buckled and un-dented flimsy tin lockers and clambered aboard a rowing machine.
Ooooooh I do like a rowing machine. Don’t know why. I think because it’s “sitting down” which of course is always a plus. But also the little stick man, icon, Keep Britain Tidy silhouette figurine drawn on the peeling stickers that these machines have, does seem to have every part of him “light up” so to speak, as the diagram illustrates the “rowing manoeuvre.” Which implies an “all body” work out. Which I like. Because going off to different machines for every different muscle group is a massive pain in the ass.
So 15 sweaty minutes on that, another 15mins on an inclined treadmill, back on the rower and then back on the treadmill gives me a solid dripping 60mins of light muscle and cardio. Especially with my now patented “do dumbbell weight lifts while on the treadmill” technique which sees me pounding away on a speed walk while lifting and crunching the 3kgs in each hand. Tremendous.
Am not quite through my 2 litres today. Prob about half a litre to go. So, in contravention of all that is fit, I have pulled out the laptop at a little table in the gym and am now trundling away on this machine instead.
I have about 30mins before I can head back and this will work out perfectly with Claire finishing up her course. Splendid.
Being an attention deficitted addle brained twit head, I cannot possibly JUST do exercise. (In the same way I cannot just type this. Somekind of soundtrack is required in the old lugholes).
Exercise MUST be accompanied by some kind of mental stimulant. I like an audio book, I like a podcast, I like a Radio 4 show, I like a bit of Rocky-style gym-pumping brassy orchestra. And today I like Allen Carr’s book on Quitting Smoking.
I smoke too much. And I quit too much too. I know that sounds stupid. But I take on things like tobacco and alcohol with such drive and commitment (lagers, bitters, shots, whiskies, chasers etc) while sporting a silver cigarillo case and a shiny Zippo that I almost give the same level of passion to quitting. If you could buy a silver “non cigarette case” to carry empty all the cigarettes you aren’t going to smoke in, I would have one in my tuxedo at all times.
In other words dear reader, when I smoke I smoke a lot. And when I quit I quit with gusto. Same with booze. All or nothing. No half measures. Why have 3 pints when you can have 6? Why have 2 cigarettes when you can have 20? And so on and so on blah blah excuses excuses. Tedious.
But once in a while (usually with a very good reason. Relationship/health/finance etc) I decide to jack in the weed. And you join me today on one of these kicks. I hope it will be the last kick. And this is the one that proves to be the turnaround. I am confident it will. (No point trying otherwise). But then have been confident EVERY TIME I have binned the Camels and cleared the neon Bics from the kitchen drawers.
Why now?
Well, we said that 6 weeks ago when we started all this. Why now quit smoking? Why now start the Pub Quiz again? Why now embark on a return to Stand-Up? For fucks’s sake, why now to throw myself at a fucking rowing machine? Oh dear reader. Why now?
Well let’s think about it. Honestly.
Firstly, I’m tired and bored. There, I said it. If I thought that my life was nothing more than call-centre training, Friday drinks, a hacking morning-cough, stinky clothes, Netflix, dinners with Claire and feeding the cat…well I don’t know. It’s been that for a while. I mean, I suppose technically it’s been that for years. I’ve tried to mix it up and get “another thing.” My Jeff Goldblum YouTube Animations got me excited for a while. Until I think, I proved I could make them. Thus making “more of them” somewhat a pointless exercise, if my only reason for their creation was showing it was possible.
Picture asking Roger Bannister if – now he’s run the mile in under 4 mins – he fancies doing it again. “Fuck off,” Roger might say. I did it. It’s done. As am I. Next is a 3 minute mile, and that ain’t doable. I’m off for a fag.” Why do it twice?
“Why do it twice?”, is something of my motto in life. And a fucking crap motto it is too. Achieving as it does, single one-off freaky achievements, mostly flukes and luck, that get discarded. This MUST be evidence of a “proof” thing. Doing whatever to “show the world” I can do it. And then, promptly stopping doing it, as the point has been made to whichever ghostly figure I am trying to impress. School friends? Peers? Family? Jesus? Rowan Atkinson? I don’t fucking know.
So if you ever want to be bored poo-less by someone chirping up “er…yeah, I did that once actually…” then invite me over for dinner. I’ll try not to smoke between courses.
So what’s all this navel gazing achieving then? Well I’m still not sure. But I’m finding out. Perhaps it’s an idea that, as I approach my 49th birthday, (49 days and counting – how pleasing) I am facing some kind of Last Chance Saloon. A decade too late one could say…
“At our age? Where you are…you are…” CITY SLICKERS
Ahh Babaloo Mandel and Loel Gantz. What a couple of Jews. An excellent midlife crisis script. But that line has stayed with me for years. And I mean YEARS. I think Darren and I saw City Slickers on VHS at his flat in Kenton back in 1992. We were going through our Billy Crystal/Jeff Goldblum/Northern Exposure period. When Harry Met Sally and Throw Momma From The Train were high points. “Father’s Day” wasn’t. Nor was that piece of crap improv’ shilling he did with Robin Williams in that Friends episode “The One With The Ultimate Fighting Champion.” Christ that’s painful.
But “where you are, you are,” is a depressing maxim. I’ll talk about it more soon. What it means. And what it doesn’t mean. And why it might explain how I come to be typing this on a laptop in a gymnasium with a “self-help” guru on the headphones while I practise stand-up comedy, 49 days before my 49th birthday.
And here we are once more. It is almost precisely 1 whole week since I was here. Not “here” as such. It’s been 23 days since I’ve been “here.” Here, today, is back among the beanies, beards, bugaboos and birkenstocks of Surbiton at the oh-so chi chi “SURBITON GRIND.”
It’s 12:38pm on Sunday 10th Oct. Which means the following:
I haven’t typed up anything in a week. And given the last thing I wrote (in the pub opposite) was essentially a fearful take-down of the whole comedy thing – rather than a handy typed up guide to “finding stand-up gigs in the SE England region,” I haven’t moved on much.
I’m out of the house again. Claire has a Psychosynthesis Weekend course going on (as she does every few weeks or so) and therefore needs the dining table, room to talk, room to express and room to learn without the thought of a gangly Richard snoring in the room next door/listening in/making her all self-conscious/banging and clattering and making a disturbing racket.
I am now, technically – as Ross repeatedly told Rachel – on a break. My 2 weeks of time off/annual leave has begun. I am free, to a greater or lesser extent, as a Big Bird after Sesame Street got cancelled due to a disappointing sweeps week. (I know its on PBS, shut up). 2 weeks off. Not back to the office until Monday 25th. 15 Looonnng days away. Whatever will I do with myself.
Well here I sit, lovely viewer. Remnants of a bacon and tomato toastie at one elbow, dregs of my first latte at the other. Laptop out, I tippy tappy and jab and prod, much like I imagine Tyson “Furious” Fury did last night in Vegas. There was a fight. The firm I work for offered over-night ITV subscribers tech support. I dodged having to go into the office. I will now check the result, about which frankly I couldn’t give less of a minge: Well lahdidah! Apparently it was quite the bout. Fury knocked down twice, but stood back up again (like he was a ChumbaWumba frontman) and stopped Deontay Wilder in the eleventh to keep hold of his title. Gene does name his kids weirdly.
So it’s Sunday lunchtime and I am back in the café (same spot). Big day today, as I have to prep my final 5mins ready for tomorrow night’s Showcase appearance. Plus I would like to get to the gym for a second day running (well, running and rowing-machine-ing). Plus Claire and I have plans tonight for burgers and tickets for the new Bond. How’s that for a Saturday.
Have all the time in the world so let’s talk about the gym.
I am sat in trainers (proper Nike sport ones, not “fashion pumps”); a standard Stallone-inspired “grey marl track pant”; plus a running shirt (slimy fabric, meant to help) I was “awarded” after a distant half-marathon about 5 years ago; navy “hoodie” (I know…) and denim jacket. On top of this, almost literally, is a burgundy coloured beanie hat with a Converse All Stars logo on the front. So I look like a basketball cyclops. The satchel next to me hold 2litres of water in a used Sainsbury’s bottle and a hand towel. This is unnecessary guffola that signals a trip to some kind of gymnasium.
Oh and a smartphone currently loaded with the boomingly stern 4min warning tones of Allen Carr’s “The Easy Way The Stop Smoking” audio book. (currently 40hrs since my last Camel).
Paging a therapist? Mid life crises expert to table 5? It’s that guy. In the beanie and the Nikes next to half the bacon sandwich. Him? He’s nearly fifty. Quite…
I sort of feel like writing about this today. Rather, perhaps, than typing up my stand-up notes. Although, given that’s the project that will be coming to fruition in 31hrs time, perhaps I should keep that for another time? Hmn. Yes. Let’s.
Let’s go back to 2 weeks ago, when I was in the Prince Of Wales and having a minor panic about the idea of “trying to get comedy gigs.” I was sharing what I had learned from Jenan, who one assumes (have yet to check) is a successful jobbing stand-up who knows the open-mic scene.
She was talking about Gaelle Constant and her FB page. Remember? This blog is weird. One has to start at the bottom and keep scrolling up a bit to find the next chapter. It’s a bit Japanese.
I haven’t been near this since we were last chatting. But as I say, it appears to be a very helpful guide to new clubs, new nights, new promoters etc, designed for the new open-micer or budding 10-minuter to use as a “planner” to give them the contacts and details to start building a career.
In the old days of course, before the Web spun and choked everything around it like a big e-spider, these details were purchased from a weekly edition of Time Out. The London “listings” magazine where Mark Kermode first blagged his way into a “listings job” before becoming….well, Mark Kermode. One purchased this fat papery mag once a week and it simply was THE guide to every gig, show, concert, performance, dance, poetry, exhibition etc in the London Area. Lovingly put together and almost faultless in its accuracy. If you wanted to know what was playing at the Prince Charles Cinema at midnight next Wednesday, or which amateur poets would be shouting into a microphone upstairs at The Redan pub on a Tuesday lunchtime…Time Out told you.
Of course the best thing about the magazine was the contact details. Occasionally after a comedy club listing, it would have printed “new acts call Geoff on 0181 555 7676.” This was the holy grail, as it meant you might – if courage up-plucking was a thing – get through to a bloke who’d “stick you on to do an unpaid five” in 6 weeks time, somewhere in Balham. Getchaself two dozen of these spots in your year planner – I believed – and you could say you were “on the circuit.”
Time Out has gone the way of the Tyrannosaurus (by which I mean it’s been replaced by a much more efficient digital version) so it’s all online booking now.
There are also, it appears, facebook collectives and groups for new comics. Comedy Forum (as apposed to “against ‘em”, I assume) and such. These I need to investigate. If I’m going to do this.
The idea of not doing it. I mean, even not even turning up to tomorrow’s show, still flitters mothlike about my shoulders.
Open mic nights naturally still exist in London and the surrounding world. Apparently – and this I can only see as a plus…or MASSIVE MINUS…clubs now require you to “enquire for a spot” via email. And include a YouTube link. So the promoter can “check you out” presumably and see if you’re gonna bring the mood up or crashing down.
Blimey. I mean…blimey.
It makes sense of course and was naturally de rigour in the music biz, when one would hastily jiffy-bag up a “demo tape” with accompanying letter and glossy 4×6 b/w off to clubs and such to get gigs. And sending a “link” to your show is certainly less humiliating than having some twerp on the phone grumpily asking you “are you funny? Make me laugh…” when you bothered him over his afternoon Frosties.
So the show reel, as it’s called in the acting biz. This, I assume, is what I’m hoping to get from tomorrow night. Erich will be taping the show infront of, I hope, a welcoming crowd. Monday night, rather than Friday night, so less boozy blokey bellowers. Also clearly a “new act showcase” so one would imagine a “forgiving” and “generous” crowd. But that’s a lot of pressure for your FIRST five minutes to become your calling card for all your other gigs for the next year. Unless you fuckin’ SMASH it of course. Hope hope hope.
It’s 1:18pm as I type. And God I write weird. Just occurring to me now. If one was to try and fake my prose “style”, it would be a matter of just typing: I expect, frankly, I suppose, essentially as you’d imagaine, to a certain extent – or rather not – I guess, presumably, one, dear reader, I assume agrees.
Christ it’s tedious. You can see why I never really appear as “assertive” in business environments.
So. More advice on gig-getting: Try everywhere once. Look for “helper gigs” who will essentially (see! I can’t help it) give you stage time in exchange for manning the door, staying late to clear up, set out chairs, flyering the street etc.
Once – again, according to the very very knowledgeable Ginan – one has a few of these open mic 5-minute slots under the belt, time to step up. Infact, it seems, your tight open-mic 5 mins should only really be the greatest hits of your equally excellent 10mins that you already have written. Worst case (as I discovered back in 1992 when I did my second ever gig), the promoter immediately likes you (This was the Craic Comedy Club hosted by the legendary Dolly Dupree in Wealdstone) and asks you back NEXT week to do 10mins.
Fuck. I only had my 5 (mostly puns and jokes about dinosaur penises) Which I could sort of stretch to 6 if I gurned and twitched a bit. What I didn’t realise (and why doing a course like this 30 years ago would have been amazing) was Dolly expected me to get up and do my strong 5, adding bits along the way to get it to 10m.
Now I was terrified that the same people came along to the Wealdstone Craic every week, and so a repetition of ANY of my act would get grumpy booing and “heard-its!” So I, like an idiot, went home and wrote a brand new untested full 10mins. Which went…okayyyy. But when Dolly gave me my £80 afterwards (I know…) she said “it was a shame I didn’t do all that good dinosoaur penis material…”
One lives and learns. Or dies and learns in my case. Ooooh, Live and Learn, sounds like a Bond movie. Except it needs to have Die in it. So “You Die and Learn?” Naaaah. Perhaps a memoir titles.
Infact, perhaps the title of Tuesday’s upcoming blog, depending on Monday night goes.
Meanwhile, the idea. Yes. Have a really solid 10 minute act. Brilliantly tight and great. Bulletproof. Hone this down to an AMAZING five and get out there and do it everywhere that’ll let you. Film solid 5 mins and YouTube it as your calling card. Send it out to 5 promoters a DAY. Get on the “Mirth Control” mailing list. (not sure what this is, will have to check).
Other tips: There are still “gong shows” where one is essentially in a bear-pit and the audience votes for their favourite, who wins a 10 minute spot. Up The Creek is one of the most renound of these, created as it was a million years ago by the guv’nor “Malcolm Hardee.” Who – despite me never having met him or even seen his act – terrified me and I imagined was a bit like Brick Top from Snatch. But drunk. The Bearcat apparenty also has one of these. Am not touching them.
Then we moved onto Festivals, at which point it all got cold and muddy and drizzly and smelt of wet denim and dogs and joss sticks and I sort of lost interest. Because I am old stick in the mud. Or would be, if I didn’t hate mud. An old stick in the hotel-reception-area. The idea is get a few comics to pull together a full hour’s show and then present it as a single event. Give it a name, pretend you’re Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson and go take Edinburgh by storm.
This was all great stuff, that I wish I had been encouraged to do 30 years ago perhaps. Hmn. No. No, let’s face it Rich, you must be honest. You were a lousy hack comic. With lousy hack material. The 1990s were full of them. They are no-where now. Hello Charlie Chuck? Hello Dorian Crook?
Oh apologies. Just googled Dorian Crook. I was on the bill with him twice in my life, back in the day. Val Doonican Clinic (VD Clinic, see what they did there?) in Hampstead. He is still a comic. And apparently an air-traffic controller. Hmn. Okay.
We finished up, almost, on BBC Radio comedy, talking open submissions to NewsJack and such. My good pal Neal did this once and give him a pint of Guinness will tell you all about it. This was when he was mingling in the same Twitter circles as John O’Farrell and that other bloke. Y’know. Him. Posh-ish. Glasses. Dammit. Very Radio 4. Mate of Dan Maer. Fuck, gone blank. Him. Anyhoo Neal tells a great anecdote about the writers room on The Now Show and a very scruffy Punt n Dennis and lots of tabloid papers and biros.
A tip, it would seem, if one wishes to go down that “route” and I think it would make an amusing blog thing to give it a try, creeping up as I am on the age where one is supposed to have already done these things (more later on this, you’ll be nauseated to know) is to follow the BBC Writers Room and just pitch and pitch and pitch. Often one will be rewarded for sheer persistence. Not a problem Gerald Wiley had, one imagines.
Anyhoo, much more to say on all this! But time creeps towards “going to the gym.” It’s an hours round trip to walk there and back. And I want to do at least an hours-worth of low-impact, remember I’m 48 years old, sweaty nonsense. So That’ll get me home for 4pm or so. Unless I stop off and do more of this on my way home. Stinking the fucking place out, naturally, as I HATE to shower in public. Hmm. Okay, well this has got me back into the swing o’things.
I’ll shove all this away and pop my Stop-Smoking earbuds in and take my walk to The Gym in Kingston where, in the words of Woody Allen, I’ll “bend and lift and squat, really dismally. Nothing grew or anything and I’ll end up giving Vic Tanny my money and ask him to walk me home nights…”
Well it’s been too long, Johnny. Johnny is been too long. Or however Hugh Laurie’s song went. Something like that.
I always think (well not ALWAYS, but you know what I mean) that Hugh Lauries’ bluesy singer/songwriter career vanity whatever you call it singing thing (Millionaire Cambridge white male rowing blue in his 60s sings Delta Blues) was utterly derailed by him doing it at a joke on A Bit Of Fry & Laurie in 199-whatever it was. Plus, for your F&L nerds, all that while wearing what is clearly the Red Hat of Patferrick. (Look it up).
Anyhoo, welcome back blogites. It’s – can’t be bothered to check – about a week since we were together. And much has moved on.
Oddly for this, unlike writing teenage moony letters, a previous long lost blog (afewwordsonthesubject – a few words about that later) in the early 2010s, or a novel…I have no audience in mind. Firstly coz there is no audience. I have told about 2 people I’m writing again. And Also because I can’t imagine anyone really being interested.
Aging man does a pub quiz and writes puns. It’s not exactly Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster.
But I continue anyway because everyone needs a third thing.
A third thing. Not home domesticity, and not office wage-earning drudgery. A third thing. Some men have golf. Some have World Of Warcraft. Some have mistresses. Some have a pub darts team. Some have a pub World of Golfcraft mistress. I have this.
So where are we. Surprise sur-freakin-prise, it’s Sunday afternoon and I am back in a nice boozer with an ale and laptop. Not sure what the ale is. Its dark, which means chewy and gravyish and warm and British and will give me the major shits in about 4 hours.
I remember discovering the amazingly sloshy drinkability of a casky warm ale (as opposed to the freezing bubbles of a footie Carling) when I was on a holiday during my marriage. It would have been between 2010 and 2016 or so I think. Two Couples. Country pubs. Roaring fire. Long walks. Hiking boots. Card games. Roasts and Yorkshires. You get the idea.
Anyhoo, instead of the teenage lager, I opted for some award winning Stout or Casky guest ale. And so incredibly nourishing and drinkable and warming and velvety it was, at one point, I’d finished the pint by the time I brought the round to the table. Just supping and sloshing while the barkeep poured the others. Christ I was like a young Ulrikakakakaka Johnson.
Anyhow. We’re back in the Prince Of Wales (as someone might say. I don’t know. Camilla? Tampons? There’s something there). It’s the first Sunday in October, it’s my weekend before I have 2 weeks off, it’s the day before I have to travel to Plymouth, it’s the afternoon prior to hopefully going to see a Chinese Marvel Movie about Rings. (I keep wanting to say “Kobo and the 2 Strings.” What is that? A manga? No, a thingy. Whassit. Fuck, theres a word for it. Studio Gibli? Something like that). Anyhoo its not called that. It’s called something like “Charlie Chan and the Ten Rings of Notishika” or something. Claire has already seen is and says it’s a treat. And we ALWAYS try and see our superhero franchise movies at the cinema together. So we are hoping to put aside an evening of Brooklyn 99 (new fave sitcom) and Bolognese (the perfect evening) for an ACTUAL NIGHT OUT. Fuckadoo, how long has it been since we went to the movies together? Shit, it has to be years?
So depending on how Claire’s work goes this afternoon – I have left her to the quiet of the flat while I slipped out – clichéd old married couple style – to The PoW for a pint or two and some Cheddars (mini) and to write up my life.
So where are we?
Well records show last chat was…(he scrolls back for a moment). Okay it was the session I did on the 20th I think. Which means we are on the 27th, which was last Monday.
Again, I had practised and practised and practised my 5mins.
These were the “best” (or at least, the gags that got a response from the class) jokes, minus anything that got silence or a warm chuckle. Christ, I don’t need a warm chuckle.
In a creepy way, when I watch back the videos, I am listening most for a laugh from the “teacher.” Young Erich. Oddly – or perhaps not – I consider his laugh to be more of a sign of a good joke than I do the encouraging ripples from the class. I suppose that’s normal. Don’t try and impress the students, impress the teacher.
So last Sunday I went through all the videos so far (see earlier blogs) and just plucked the lines which I thought I could hear Erich laugh the most.
It ran just over 5 mins.
Gone was the Rolf Harris ROFL anagram paedo pun. (Apparently true, but not funny. This annoys me hugely. Infact, let’s dwell on the Rolf gag for a while.)
The Rolf gag. Perhaps it’s not funny. Perhaps it’s cleverer than it is witty. Perhaps it’s just a warming smug bit of wordplay that I more “proud of” than anything else.
Oh, just realised dear reader, you may not remember the joke. It’s this:
“I like to do quizzes online, text your answers. I won a Text chat game: Unscramble the BBC Paedophile Anagram. Couldn’t believe it! I typed ROFL as a response. Got the bonus round as well.”
Okay. So you see the gag. I hope. I am inordinately proud of this joke. But it got nothing. IN my early years (1992-94) I would have continually hammered this one out to silence, open mic after open mic. Convinced I was right. But doing it live in a “classroom” environment showed me it might be clever, but it’s not funny. Maybe written down? I don’t know. Anyhoo, no response. So out it came.
So I was left, after a chop and a cull and an edit, as I say, with a routine that ran just over 5mins.
Now that’s 5mins if you read each joke aloud. I feel weird about timing a routine based on “add space for laughs.” Despite the practicality of it, it seems painfully presumptuous.
“It’s 4 mins 20, but with laughs its about 5 mins.”
I don’t know. Perhaps I’m being very British.
I’m reminded also, as we discuss this (discuss? Ha!) about a rule of editing.
It was mentioned in that documentary I posted a link to a couple of blogs back. The one about Movie Comedy. The rule, according to those who know (and one HAS to believe that the Zukers and Abrahams know, given they created Airplane and Police Squad/Naked Gun) is that – when editing a comedy movie, you NEVER NEVER EVER leave a space for a laugh. Just cut it together as if its drama. The oh so talented and even more so Jewish writing double act of Loel Gantz and Babaloo Mandel (City Slickers/League of their Own/Parenthood) agree, so I’m happy to share this.
Does this mean that if a joke is a big one, there’s a danger the audience might still be laughing over the next bit of dialogue? YES. Fuck em. Let them see the movie twice. Let them be hushing each other. Let them be rewinding if they have to (home viewing being the biggest audience). NEVER leave a “beat” where the laugh is. If people are watching at home, alone, they will enjoy the joke in silence. The 2 secs of “nothing” after each gag will just make the movie slow and draggy.
Best example I ever had of this rule being broken and it ruining an otherwise snappy night out, was when I was invited to a preview screening of Ben Elton’s first directorial effort – the mind-bendingly tedious “Maybe Baby,” based on his novel Inconcievable and starring the unmistakeable comic instincts of Hugh Laurie and thingy. Y’know. British. Posh. Weird knees. A Richardson? A Redgrave? Whats her name? Fuck it. Google time…
Found the trailer on YouTube. Be back in 3mins…
Fuck it was a Richardson. Joely Richardson. (Spelling?) Gosh she’s SOOOOO posh. Her nose, her skin, her hair… I mean sexy-ish. In a boarding school head-girly sort of way.
Anyway. They had cut the movie together roughly for the screening. But, just as if they were doing a sitcom exterior shot and knew they had to time it for laughs, there was a good 3 seconds of silence after every joke. So the movie juts draaaaaaaaged on and on painfully. Like a bad best man’s speech. There’s probably a snappy 89min comedy in there. But fucking hell. NEVER LEAVE SILENCE FOR LAUGHS.
So I timed my “bit” and it ran I think 5min8 secs. Just feed punch feed punch feed punch. Which I thought would be a good 5 min set as I was likely to say it quickly because of nerves.
And I cut together an audio version on my phone’s MP3 recorder thing. And sat and played to over and over and over, trying to remember how the end of one joke lead into the beginning of the next…
And Monday came. I sat in the Grey Horse and sipped a Lemsip (still feeling sickly) until 7pm when I gathered my table crap and trundled into the dark room of The Ram Jam Club.
Fuck it. Just remembered. I had every intention of going to the Ram Jam (Grey Horse) open mic night tonight. Told Erich I would. Went utterly out of my head til now. Arse buckets. Missed it. He’s right, y’see. You can’t get good unless you watch a lot. And I’m missing an opportunity to see others do it well and learn something. Poo. Marvel night is already agreed. Dammit. Ah well. Next Sunday.
So the class had 2 special “guest speakers.” One to talk about the “amateur circuit” and the other to talk about “writing jokes.”
That’s what I’ve come out this afternoon to write about. But as you will have seen, 2hrs in and I haven’t got round to it yet. And the table I;m sat at doesn’t give me enough room to get my note book AND laptop out. Fuck. I’ll prop it on a chair and do my best.
My notes tell me the two female guests were called Ginan and Gronya. I can’t imagine for a second I;ve got the names or the spelling right for either.
I’m looking at the notes I made for Ginan’s little lecture. (She’d made a Powerpoint! Bless).
Okay.
So us hungry wane-be standup sat around the table in the club and she popped out her little laptop and began her short lecture/guide to “getting gigs.”
Wasn’t sure how I felt about this. I mean…great advice of course. But perhaps for the future. My head was still fizzing and snapping with my 5mins 8 secs of routine I had to learn.
Plus of course – and more importantly – this section of the course really does rely on one have big intentions of “doing more gigs.”
It’s not like doing a cookery / baking course and suddenly being interrupted by a 2hr lecture on how to build a business model and hire staff. Or maybe it is?
Depends why you’re there I suppose.
Still don’t know why I,m there. But I’ll tell you one thing, dear reader.
As the talk moved on to “making calls” and “finding clubs” and “meeting promoters” and “travelling the UK” and “playing The Store” (Piccadilly’s Comedy Store), a Lily Allen sized bucket of “the fear” began to slosh about in my tum.
Anyhoo. I squirmed and jotted. Jenan started her “how to guide.”
So a big name she mentioned was someone called Gaelle Constant. Who appears to run some kind of “Open Mic” review website/Facebook page. Thing. Am going to take a look now…
It appears there’s a website, or at least a Stand Up Comedy FB page thing. Where there are lists and maps of ALL the gigs currently running in London and beyond.
Have just thumbed “join group” so am waiting now to be “admitted.”
Okay, so cards on the table: this is terrifying.
Because the comfy cosy blanket of “I’d do it if I knew how?” or “I’d be a success if I knew what to do/who to speak to/what the process is…” is in danger of being tugged away.
If I’m about to be faced with a long list of promoters, gigs, times, locations and telephone numbers…then I have no excuse. The idea is, of course, to methodically go through EVERY gig and speak to EVERY club and try and get a half dozen or dozen open spots booked for the next 6 months.
Why is this terrifying?
Not sure. Let’s think.
I did this already. 1992-94 I spent the whole time on the phone. In the family home, standing anxiously twisting the cable, waiting to get through, mid-morning, to grumpy men with business diaries. Always feeling like an imposition, an irritation, a git. Not realising, presumably, that these people NEEDED acts like me to make a living. And I DID that. And nothing ever happened. (Well, apart from 2-3 gigs a week for 2 years. Which, for some reason, I am dismissing as “nothing.”)
Uhmmm. It means I’m doing it properly. I mean REALLY. And I don’t know if I am. Honestly, even at this stage – although it may be the Twiglets and IPA talking – what is this all about? Didn’t I do this once? What am I trying to achieve? What am I trying to prove? Who am I trying to please?
Worth saying, when I told Claire I was embarking on this whole thing, she was anxious. I read it, typically me, as “unsupportive.” But of course what she quickly explained was how I had told story after story after story about the humiliation, the battering, the crying, the beatings, the boo-ing, the self-worth pummelling I had taken in my 20s. And obviously she was not keen on
Seeing me put myself through that again
Having to act as psychological nurse-maid to a sobbing 50 year old three nights a week who got booed off by a load of drunk millennials who didn’t get a “Knight Rider” reference.
I do love her very much.
So here we are. In an odd mood now. Got PAGES of notes to type up. But am having a small crisis. Stupid I know. But am I embarking on something or not?
Feel a bit like that guy. Was obsessed with him for a few weeks. The sailor who faked his round the world solo sailing trip, got lost, faked his coordinates and went mad. Suicide? Accident? We can’t be sure. Great doc about him. Poor dramatization of it (The Mercy, starring Colin Firth). Donald Crowhurst. Typical me to get all over dramatic. But do I want to set sail onto another sinking ship with visions of glory? Is it all just un-prepared pipe dreams?
Am I a coward? Am I a realist?
Don’t know right now.
But I do know right now I don’t want to think about it.
Will sit quietly now with an audio book. Not a decision I want to face.
Silly, I know. But the more I write this, the more I think I am somehow “committing” to a path. Can you type up 4 pages of A4 notes on stand-up and NOT want to do stand-up?
Not sure. Everything’s a bit scary now.
Tomorrow night’s course I can only do “remotely” as I will be in Plymouth for work. Will just join in via a laptop and Zoom or something. No pressure.
“When you’re alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go…”
DOWNTOWN – Petula Clark
And here we are one sunny Sunday later.
A beautiful sunny afternoon and it’s all very British right here. The back door is open and a summery breeze wafts through the flat, fluttering the papers on the table. I am 3 cups of coffee in, after a blow-out of sausage, egg and cheese muffins. A sort of “McMuffiny” attempt to recreate that perfect salty takeaway breakfast.
I think the mc breakfast is an absurd greasy treat. Double sausage n egg, with coffee, juice and a piping hash brown really does something to the tum on a cold winter morning, especially if one has gone to bed without supper.
So I sort of make my own version, although it was a struggle to finish. I made 2 y’see. I made a couple for Claire also. And this has resulted in us lying prostate, bloated and groany, infront of episodes of Downton Abbey on Netflix. Man I can see the easy, chocolate box Sunday tea-time appeal of this fluffy Jeeves n Woostery upstairs downstairs Victoriana. Jim Carter is a fucking treat. His VOICE! Jesus.
I am something of a parrot when it comes to accents and idioms. Unable not to repeat them back to the TV when I hear a good one. But fuckideedoo I would have to go and bury my testicles in a sewer before I managed the bass baritone thunder of Carter’s grovelling gravel. Could listen to it all day.
Met him once. He was playing “Sire Chiffley Lockhart” in a production of Ben Elton’s GASPING, which I went to see 3 times. Twice with Hugh Laurie in the lead, and once with the gangly and charming John Gordon Sinclair. This would have been 1990. At the height of my fanboy fandom of all things Alternative Comedy.
1991 was the hieghts of this when my sister and I got tickets for the AIDS benefit charity comedy night “Hysteria 3.” A glittering showbiz night when the legendary Eddie Izzard launched himself on the London stage and stand-up changed forever.
He’s here at 41 min 50 secs
Anyhoo, it’s 4pm-ish. I was meant to be jumping into this much earlier but tea and breezes and Downton and a comfy sofa has kept me from the desk.
I have 2 things to do today:
Take the “best bits” of last week’s stuff from the Stand-Up Course and create a tight 5mins.
2. Create a 2.5hr pub quiz.
The quiz won’t take long, I have the questions written, I just need to choose and format and stuff.
The creation of my “act” however…well.
Hmm. Let’s think about that.
So last week. Usual Monday night but a poorly one if you recall from my entry (GAGGING ON EMPTY) which I was tootling around with from my sick bed last week.
Am looking back on the notes I made from the session last week. They’re a little sparse to be honest. Mainly because the nights have got more about “performance” and “polish” than about theory.
We discussed what we had all thought of our videos: how we have felt; what went well; how we appeared; what we learned.
Then it was up on our feet for a warm up. An improv’ game, much in the manner of Who’s Line Is It Anyway? A conversation that is ONLY questions. Professional comics and improvisors can do this with it:
These guys nail it every time. It’s a skill I don’t have.
Much like a lot of my delusions as a teenager, I would watch shows like this, (the UK one and later the US version) for hours and hours and hours watching these speed-of-light synapses firing with wit, shock and wow. And it spoke to me. I was – like most backseat drivers or Monday morning quarterbacks – convinced that, with a bit of practise, it would be something I could do.
Well I tried it properly on Monday. And y’know what. Blimey it’s tough. It really is. Sarah has a knack for it, as she’s done what used to be called “theatre games” before. So she has that 90 degree angle, spin-off, take it somewhere new, instinct. I’m quite ploddy with mine. Something I enjoyed but boy oh boy leave it to the pros. Stuttering and stumbling…
Next up we had to tell a story, just to warm us up and get our mic technique ready. Simple one. An embarrassing story. I didn’t really know what to tell so I over-did a tale of an embarassing fart/follow-through/turtles-head/runny poo incident that happened…not as long ago as I hoped. Pub. Friday night. Dicky tum. One too many real ales… Anyway. Told the story. Added as much anxiety and pathos by putting myself in a “hitting on a girl” scenario, which ramped up up the humiliation.
At which point it was material time. Again, we gather as an eager front row around the raised stage. Erich bounds on and whips us up and announces us one at a time. Up we jump, striding up to the microphone, elbow-bumping Erich, taking the mic stand and launching in.
So. What I’d done to prepare for this (it’s coming up below, hold your horses) I had waded through my black file of every one-liner and idea I’d ever had. Any joke that could be buckled,, bent, bruised and bundled into a “life story” topic I plucked with a Ctrl C Ctrl V and put in a new file. I then went through and scrawled out any that I felt I just couldn’t pull off. Perhaps old, perhaps tired, perhaps corny, perhaps too much of a stretch.
But I got about seventeen one liners. Ranging from the old:
We had a lot in commons as a family. For example, my brother and I both grew up with terrible inferiority complexes. His was great obviously, mine was shit.
To the new:
I have a niece now. She’s into PAW PATROL that’s her thing. Which for years, I thought was the follow up to BENEFIT STREET.
You get the idea. So I wrote them all down, recorded them into an MP3 recorder on my phone and played them over and over…
Here’ me bashing them out to…shall we say…mixed response…
So. What can we learn here.
Well in watching it back (which isn’t exactly a fun thing to do, as one is very aware of silly expressions and errors and stumbles), I can say this.
2 or 3 gags got nothing. I mean, not silence. But not that CRACK of laughter when the punchline hits. Of the remaining 14 gags, only about 9-10 got the response I was hoping for.
So that’s about a 70% hit rate. Not too shabby.
As I write this now, I’m uploading the videos and dividing the script into “yes/no/maybe.” Hoping there’s a good 5mins in if I ditch the weaker stuff.
Am I putting too much emphasis on the responses I’m getting from 5 strangers in an empty club? And 5 strangers who are, to all intents and purposes, “comedy writers.”?
Well maybe. But perhaps if I raise the bar only to the material that lands solidly, I can see what I have.
So everyone else did their “life stories” too. But it’s fair to say they did it “properly” and actually talked about their lives. Finding jokes and ideas in their life, rather than twisting the joke to fit the life.
We got some feedback which was good. Mine appeared to be, by and large, “good.”
But it was great to be able to discuss what worked and what didn’t. And more importantly, why.
Example: The dogging joke.
It got barely a laugh. Until I repeated the “splashed out” bit which triggered the memory and got a bigger response. The feeling was that ending the punchline on “second hand Vauxhaul” is confusing. Ending the feedl-ine on “car he’d splashed out on…” Works better. Which I then tried again to greater success.
I don’t like it as much that way round. I think it’s a bit “spoon feedy.” But I need the laugh.
Anyhoo, that sort of thing. Great to hear.
Then it was a fag and a break and some more Lemsip.
And back in to deliver our “actual 5mins.”
Our actual 5 mins.
Now with this, I had just pulled together my favourite lines from the “my life story” bit, and then added some “50 Shades Of Grey” stuff slightly extended. (Thank the lord for the double entendres of “paddle” and “shit creek.”). And I closed with a more extended bit about laundry racism. Again, thank the lord that Jews sounds like Hues and Airing sounds like Aryan.
I climbed up and. With the help of my notes, I banged these out. Which would work, which would not…
Here we go
First thing, naturally, is that I’ve trimmed down all the errs and uhmmms and the scrabbling around with bits of paper as I forgot most of the order of the routine. Not the jokes, but just which ones followed which. I’d focussed too much on learning the “My Life Story.”
Second thing to notice is that, even with the uhhmms cut out, the fucker runs 8mins 58 seconds. Which is about double the length of the 5mins I;ve got.
This is good I think in most ways. It means I can pull together ONLY the jokes that land. And probably still have 5 mins.
Christ 5 mins is no time at all.
Other notes:
Apparently a “racist” observation – even when jokingly attribute it to an aging snooker commentator for comic affect – is still a racist comment. Calling a Chinese player “the tricky yellow” as an example of old fashioned 1970s prejudice crashing into the 21st century is STILL a troublesome observation. So that comes out.
Also, “hues” sounds enough like “Jews” that it doesn’t need the addition of “6 million” or “Solution” to hammer the point home.
So now – at 5.42pm on this Sunday evening – I have the “pleasure” of going through both of these videos and seeing if – with only HITS – I have 5mins worth.
I tell you, it beats the hell out of a blank sheet of paper with “Stand up routine?” written at the top.
Tomorrow night I have the pleasure of getting up and delivering a solid 5mins. So that’s my evening now.
Its exactly how I thought I would enjoy my life, to be fair. I mean, as Sunday night’s “evening’s work” goes, beats the living crap out of Excel or Powerpoint.
Oh, and a call to my mother which is overdue.
And a pub quiz.
Perhaps a shower next, a call to mum, and then the quiz. That’ll give me a couple of hours to pull an audio track of the “set” together for me to learn for tomorrow.
Thanks for watching. In 25hrs I’m gonna get up and smash out the act-proper and see what the hell happens. I think there might be a special guest joining us. About “getting gigs” and such.
a novel approach 