Busy busy busy, then a week off where I've slept for an average of 11-13 hours a day. but after a month where I had two nights off from either gigging or going to watch comedy I think I've deserved the break.

Ok last week was busy as hell, I spent most of the week trying to find some way of getting somewhere to stay On Friday night as I was heading down to Bristol. No one in Bristol came to my rescue. Nor did anyone in the surrounding area. In fact by the time I set off, not even anyone in Birmingham was returning my texts for somewhere to stay. (I later found out that Ashley Freize had offered for me to stop wtih him in Reading.) Now I'm not normally that unpopular, except with the sort of comics who aren't doing as well as I am hate when someone's doing better than them, this is an incredibly small demographic though.

Anyway I leave on Friday afternoon with the full intention of being home that night. As I pull up to my house on Tuesday morning at 10 am, barely able to keep my eyes open I remember why it is that I do this job.

Ok so Friday I drive dowwn to bristol in a couple of hours, it doesn't take as long as I remember, then I remember that the last time I drove down that far I lived about another hour north, so from where I now live Bristol's about as far away as Birmingham used to be from where I used to live. If that makes sense.

Anyway I get into the Dressingroom and meet Windsor the compere, I've never worked with him before but he's the sort of guy I've known and hung out with for years, an ex street performer, the kind of guy you see at glastonbury or any major protest, lovely lovely bloke.

that night was fairly quiet but the audience were well up for it, after doing 8 minutes of new stuff in Nottingham the previous night I felt really in control and it all worked superbly, afterwards sitting with some of Windsors friends we chatted about the evening's entertainment and what I was doing. I told a story about my attempted suicide on stage in such a way that it gets a massive laugh, I'd not considered doing it on stage until I was telling Michael J Dolan Britain's favourite funnyman(tm)* about how I'd told my friend Bex about it and that she'd really really laughed at it. So he told me to put it in my set. Essentially he, Dug and myself are currently working on the writing theory that if it's really difficult for us to talk about and if it's sommething that we feel really uncomfortable about facing in ourselves, then we turn it into comedy and talk about it on stage.

This worked and I was so pleased.

Later on that evening Windsor's friend Les said that rather than drive home I should stay over at his, so a whole bunch of us went down there after the show.

We were just chatting and I was made to feel very very welcome, at one point a fox came to the patio window and started scraping at it, and Les said that they came there all the time and would I like to feed it? Well of course, how often do you get to hand feed a fox?

So far this evening was turning out to be so much fun. then whilst we were talking someone mentioned les' second name and I just stopped dead. Les Bubb had been one of my childhood heroes, I'd seen him on all sorts of shows over the years from Saturday Live to Hububb, there's even a joke in my set which is partly in slight tribute to him, and now here he was without knowing me letting me sleep in his spare room. This is why I love this business.

We had a great night and the next moring I drove Les to get his plane to Holland. and headed back to his for some more sleep.

Rob Reilly had told me that whilst I was in Bristol I should check out one of the Isambard Kingdom Brunel Museums but by the time I woke up it was a bit late in the day for that. Wandering trhough Bristol I bought my nephews some wooden pirates as an Easter gift. I then was texting Bex as she'd asked what I was up to, her reply was "Isambard kingdom Brunel was a railway engineer who also suffereded from kidney problems all his life, I bet you didn't know that!" To be fiar I didn't, and replied "I bet he didn't, If he had then I'm sure he would have invented the Steam Kidney. Though George Gershwin did suffer from cronic constipation throughout his life and I think that it shows in his music."

Later in the afternoon I went to the Pub with Ian Cognito and Paul B Edwards, I had a lovely chat as Cogs is just setting up a club at the Horn and Trumpet next door to the Bristol Hippodrome and so we talked about that for a while. Eventually he had to go back to his boat with his sons and I had a gig to do.

As I got into the dressing room I just wasn't feeling it. I was supposed to be meeting up with Ray peacock after the gig and at that point in the evening that was what I was looking forward to. As it got closer to showtime though I started to get my head in the right place, right up until I went down at the start of the show and saw the venue packed. About three times as many people were in as last night.

Suddenly, because my brain hates me I started to get nervous, the thoughts that always go through my head when I'm doing a big gig when I get nervous started again "No one likes you, you've never thought of anything original in your life, they're going to hate you. You know how everytime you've done this material people have laughed? Well tonight's the night that they're finally going to see through all that and realise that you're just a pretender up on that stage, that none of your stuff makes sense!" this is followed by my mind going "I don't want to do this I don't want to do this I don't want to do this I dont want to do this."

After the compere's on stage that's it, I'm in the drop zone and I'm shaking like Ozzy osbourne mixing Pina Coladas on a waltzer.

This all happens for no reason that I can figure out, It's the same room as the previous night and it's not that there's more people in, I think it's that I've looked at them and thought "They're not my kind of people" but that's stupid. I think it's in part because the previous night the small audience had been really quiet and in that situation I know what I'm supposed to do, make them loud, tonight's audience was laughing and giving applause breaks all over the place, they seem really easy to please, so my job at this point is "Don't fuck up" which I think is what causes the nerves.

Anyway my name gets called and Black Sabbath - Paranoid starts to play and I take to the stage. I put my glass down adn fake confidence Like I have done a thousand times before and do my opening couple of lines, Laugh, Applause break, laugh, laugh, laugh dragged out to applause break, death.

I get into the beginning of a joke and I'm building enough confidence to get over the nerves and deliver the performance of my life when suddenly, further proof that my brain hates me, I go blank. I can't remember the gag, I can't remember anything I've ever written other than the joke before the one I've got stuck on, the audience laughs when I say I've forgotten.

Phew, I remember the joke, I start it again from the beginning and get to the end and try and manufacture a cheer and... Nothing.

The audience looks at me like "you done fucked up good" and I realise that I've lost them, if I'd just moved on and not repeated the whole joke they'd never have known I'd backed down and suddenly the confidence was taking a knocking.

There are several theories about what you should do in this moment, throw in a banker to try and win them back as quickly as possible, acknowledge the tension in teh room and say something to release it, in none of the advice that anyone gives for that situation is "well, at this point you should try your most challenging and personal material."

It's material that splits the audience, when I'm storming it and do this stuff I can see that 25% of the audience will sit and stare at me and go "We hate this, we hate you, you're not funny get off that stage now", 50% of people seem to go "Oh? Wow! I didn't expect that, but ok, she's funny!" and carry on laughing as they have, and the otehr 25% just nearly fall off their chairs, often a number of these people will come up to me afterwards to tell me how much they liked the show, how it meant a lot to them etc. However, the mood needs to be right for this.

As I go into this material I can feel them slipping further and further away from me. then I do the Suicide joke, which I've noticed over the last two nights has got one of the biggest and most honest laughs I've had in my set, surely that'll win them back.

No.

The response I get is worse than anything I could have ever imagined. Not being booed or bottled or having someone try to invade the stage, not even chatting or silence. a sound much worse than that. Pity.

I heard a whole bunch of "Awwww's!" coming from somewhere in the back. and then when that bit withered and died a group of girls on the back did something that'll stick with me to the day I die, one of them shouted out "Oh, come on, give her a round of applause for trying!"

I manage to get my head back together after that and work my arse off doing two bits that I've done everywhere and I nail them, getting the audience back on side, though not totally, but enough to salvage the gig, again though, not enough to make me feel good about the gig.

After I leave the stage I get my money and decide to head over to see Ray as quickly as I can, there's nothing worse than hanging around at a gig where you've just died on your hoop. As I get to my car I hear my phone ring and it's Ray "Listen Beth, this gig's horrible, it shouldn't have been a gig, I'm getting out of here as fast as I can the last thing we need is a 6 foot Goth Lesbian turning up, We'll meet you at Jesters"

I'll continue this as soon as I can, but for now that's all I've got time for.

Sorry about the grammar.

Bethany xXx

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