How's your 2007's been?

Mine had some ups and downs, my car got broken into 6 times, I had my childhood photos stolen, I went through emotional hell trying to keep an ex in my life as a friend because she was worth holding on to. I ran out of money, I got knocked out in the final of several competitions and didn't manage to get an agent. I had a TV executive have to be introduced to me 4 times at the same party a few hours after she'd seen me perform because as far as she was concerned I was totally unmemorable. I got led on by several people and gave up on looking for love. My parents moved out of the house that I was born in, and I finally had to grow up and fend for myself. I suffered permanent nerve damage and now have lost skin sensation on about 5% of my body. I had some friends and co-workers die and was there for friends who were going through some really horrible stuff. Two close friends were diagnosed with degenerative diseases, and one had a fairly serious AIDS scare.

But,

I started making a living doing the thing I love the most, I got good reviews and more interest than ever from the media, I grew as a person and finally became comfortable in my own skin. I returned to the Edinburgh festival and cemented my reputation as the festivals biggest blag-slag managing to achieve an incredible amount through networking and hard work. I wrote stuff for two of my heroes at opposite ends of art form, and got naked in front of 800 people. I ran my own successful gig and built a fan base gaining a number of superfans who travel to see me, and I wrote and performed my own one hour show to 60 people who'd all paid to see me, which was pick of the day in the metro and the journo from the Guardian wanted me to let him know when I'm in London so he can watch me and put me as his pick of the day too. I finished changing who I am to suit others and realised that I've changed me to make me happy and that means I can change the world. And then I found Rosanne, a woman who I love and who loves me and who I miss whenever I'm not around her.

So what does 2008 hold? More success, more of everything, more love more happiness and more weird and wonderful things happening to me. I don't know what 2008 Holds really, but I know one thing, this is where it starts to get really interesting!
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Well the last blog was about dreams, two in particular, and I've had them analysed and sorted them out. I've now got a way of making sure that I dream so that I can look at what they're saying and do something about it before they become nightmares. Apparently dreams are your unconcious trying to make sense of the world and telling you to sort stuff out in your life. Nightmares are your unconcious screaming at you and saying "Right you cunt you weren't listening were you? Maybe you'll listen now when I fill your head with rats and spiders and make you wake up crying and feel like that for the rest of the day."

I always knew my mind was vindictive, but not that vindictive. It's the reason I freak out when I'm sat late at night at this computer, because even now my brain is telling me that there's some big scary zombie walking up behind me ready to kill me and that the second I turn round it'll hide, only to come back out again. A couple of weeks ago Jonathan Mayor managed to make me nearly have a full-on autistic spazz out in the car when we'd gone up a winding country road to a pub where he had a gig. As I was trying to turn around on a dark unlit county road he said "well as long as you don't see a figure in a hood you'll be alright. referencing the scariest ghost story I've ever heard. I was trying to hide the tears as I dropped him off (fairly unconvincingly). It's because this is what my head's full of. I think it's part of the reason I love the Gothic, and Horror films, and why I don't get freaked out watching images of real horror. I worked processing forensic photos for a while and I'd rather look at photos of families burned to death in their beds or bodies left in badly ventilated flats over three months of summer than be left alone in my own mind. that's where the true horror lies, and when I watch horror films or read about serial killers or any of these macabre things I'm into when I'm not being comedy or studying, it's like I get a break from this.

Ironically I'm a night time person with poor social skills. It means I get to spend a lot of time on my own in the dark. And that's hardly fair.

Anyway, my point was... My nightmares were about abandonment issues, fear of a sudden change in my life, fear about losing my creativity, fear about allowing myself to fall in love and that I might get hurt or heart broken, or that I might cause hurt or heart break. So there you go.

The last time I left my story I was kissing a girl out in the street outside Vanilla, since that it's all been about internal monologue, thoughts and feelings, which whilst real are probably deathly dull. I know I hate hearing other people twat on about their dreams etc. they're rarely interesting. This next bit however will involve not only what I got up to, but also a lot of me using this as a forum for trying to sort out some of my other fears, one of which was in the last dream. Psychoanalysis the easy way. Just putting the thoughts out there.

So I went on a couple of dates with this girl, and she's fantastic. She's intelligent, she's got a great sense of humour she's artistic, we have loads in common, and she's absolutely stunningly beautiful. Like you look at her and go "wow!" at least I do. And I fall for her quite quickly.

This relationship is a healthy one. For the first time I feel like I'm actually getting this one right without falling into the horribly needy trap that I've fallen into in the past and which has destroyed my previous relationships.

Between going out with her and facebook though I've discovered I'm not as attractive as I thought I was. I'll explain. I added the "Hot or not" application and put up a good picture of myself thinking "I've got friends who've got faces like a bucket of smashed crabs and they all get 8.6 or above, so this'll be a nice confidence boost." Haha. No. It doesn't work like that. I put it up and after one month I got 5.1. That's just 0.1 above perfectly average looking. I thought, well that's because not many people have voted and it's early days I'm obviously going to get a higher mark soon enough. Haha. No. a month later and my score has gone down to 4.8. I'm officially a hippocrocapig.

So to get rid of any further chance to have my self esteem damaged I removed the application, instead just keeping the "Compare me" application which overall has been quite complimentary, but more on that in a minute.

I start seeing Rosanne and people keep coming up to me, friends no less and saying "your girlfriend's well hot." and I say with a smile "yes I know, yet again I'm punching well above my weight." expecting people to laugh at what is clearly a joke, because at the end of the day love and relationships are not about looks unless you're very shallow, it's about a number of things of which physical attraction whilst important is entirely subjective as she thinks I'm hot and I think she's hot. But the reaction I get to telling my friends that I'm punching above my weight isn't a smile, nor a laugh, it's an almost emotionless "yeah." Woah, woah woah! You're not supposed to say that! One of my friends even said "well you've got a good sense of humour." which is what you say about people who whilst not ugly have odd shaped faces who don't fulfill the remit of "classically beautiful", Sarah 1, my ex's response to me saying this was "Well, you're not bad looking." AND I WENT OUT WITH HER!!!

The compare me application starts to let me down too. Whilst I'm the 13th Bravest (patronising cunts) and 17th most famous. I'm 114th most attractive, and 142nd most kissable, this one's doubly damning because the reason I'm so low on most of them is because no one's had chance to vote on me, whereas with this one 10 people were given the option of kissing me or someone else, and all 10 chose the other person. This isn't fair, as I'm a very good kisser. I'm also 220th funniest out of my friends. Now I am aware that I've a lot of comedians in my friends list, I don't know for certain but I'm guessing 219.

Anyway this blog's supposed to be about comedy. so I'll tell you about a couple of gigs I've had recently, which I really should talk about. There's 4 that spring to mind. Two that I did well at and two I died on my stinking hoop at. Though as I'm now aiming for artistic purity and attempting to do something different than anyone else I was expecting my death rate to go up, to about 50%. What I wasn't expecting was some of the things that this would bring.

About three weeks ago I drove down to London to do the Vauxhall Tavern, I've had gigs pretty much every night in November and earlier in the week I'd done the Iguana in Chorlton where I'd been asked back by popular demand. The first time I'd played there I'd had a horrible gig that I hated. It was the first time I got heckled with an audience member saying "are you a man or a woman." and I just didn't have fun. Des persuaded me to go back and this time I had the best gig I'd ever had. One woman laughed so hard she fell off her chair, and another had to walk across the stage to go to the toilet because she said "I've laughed so hard I've wet myself a little bit." So I went back there having been asked by Des yet again, though this time it was because I'd been one of the most requested acts. the gig was OK, not my finest and I lost them a little in the middle when I was trying to figure out how to do the transsexual material without doing it in the same way as my one hour show, I forgot that it needs different pacing and timing and needs editing differently for a club set. Also the microphone was crackling and putting me off. either way those are excuses. I did alright, and after when Des was paying me he said "you brought a lot of friends with you tonight didn't you?" I said, "no, not really, just two." and he said "Oh, it's just I noticed there were quite a few lesbians and teenagers in the audience." and so this followed on from something I've started to notice. I appear to be getting a following. If I'm gigging somewhere there are a number of people who'll turn up just to see me. And this brings us onto the Vauxhall Tavern gig.

I was desperate to do well here and I was looking forward to it. The Vauxhall Tavern has a hell of a reputation, it can be quite rough and the sort of audience who don't take any prisoners. Also it was going to be the first time I'd been on the bill with Zoe Lyons since a gig in West Hampstead nearly 4 years ago which I still think of as my worst death ever. And dying with a cold I arrive at the venue and head back stage.

About two minutes later Zoe comes back stage and says that my biggest fans are in the audience and would like to buy me a drink, and that maybe I should go out and talk to them. This is getting odder. Like seeing people putting me down as their hero on myspace and stuff I really quite like it but at the same time, my lack of self confidence doesn't allow me to think that I deserve this on any level.

None the less I head out there anyway and get talking to these two guys, Mike and Xan who are lovely and tell me that they've travelled for several hours to come and see me. they're quite excitable and we have a great chat and head outside for a cigarette. they ask the sort of questions I'd have asked my heroes should I have ever met any of them, what their favourite films are, who their favourite bands are all these things that you ask just to see if their answers match up to yours.

On my way back in I see Corrie who I think now works for Pozitive sat at a table talking to Jonathan and Zoe so I head over, Corrie I like very much, but she seems to be an albatross for me. I met her about 8 months ago at a party and we had a chat and she seemed really nice, but since then every time she's been in the audience at a gig that I've done I've died on my arse. Tonight I need to change that pattern.

Anyway I head back stage again and get ready. I sit there listening to Zoe effortlessly bring the audience up and get them laughing, and soon enough she announces me.

I walk out into the bright lights on the stage that's a little too high and trot out my opening salvo, and they don't get much. By the usual first belly-laugh point I get a sound of shock and disgust, which normally follows the laughter but in this case is on its own. after this quick turn around line after line die in the air and I'm only 3 minutes in when I realise that this is going to be a long 20 minutes. I settle into telling the stories and the audience listens without heckling, but without laughing either. The worst response, even worse than chatting. It's a response which says "we get what you're doing, we just don't think you're funny." I talk about my suicide attempts and get genuine horror and sympathy from certain members of the crowd, I break off at one point to talk to a heckler, forget where I am and a guy at the bar shouts out where I was. I find myself unable to get anything workable out of this. It's made worse by the fact the mic stand is fully extended and I don't take the mic out usually but it's a good 8 inches too low even at full tilt.

In my head something gives up. poof. Like that I'm no longer trying to be funny. I'm 8 minutes in to my set and I realise that I'm not going to get anything from these guys so I decide to just tell them the stories and not expect any laughs. 12 minutes later I leave the stage thinking "I've driven 220 miles, to play in front of a gay audience, who should usually be my target audience, had two superfans turn up and died on my arse. Why am I doing this as a job?"

As I leave, the audience, just to add insult to injury start calling out "More!" and "Encore!" in some bitchy sadistic game of bullying, as if they've not had enough of making me feel bad they want me back out there so I can suffer some more for their entertainment. I sit back stage. a bit broken by this, feeling down. Corrie comes in whilst I'm filling out the form for my pay and I say "I'd just like to say I'm not always like this." She says she's seen me do well before. Both Zoe and Jonathan give me good advice and I sit there still feeling like shit. Mike comes to the stage door and says "Oh my god, you were brilliant, they're all obviously tasteless arse-holes, you were fab, well worth the journey." They later leave before the next act, and before I can give them the autographs they asked for.

On the car journey home I talk to Jonathan about this, about my feelings about suddenly having fans. It's weird. I really feel like I don't deserve it. When I was a kid I thought all I wanted was to be rich and famous. as I grew older that faded and all I wanted was to be successful, and for me success can't be measured in monetary terms nor in the amount of people who like you no matter what, it's about giving all of yourself to your chosen art, in my case comedy, about opening up and bearing your soul. The Wrestler Mick Foley is a hero of mine, he wasn't the best physical specimen and he wasn't the best technical wrestler but he was the most committed to his art. He could take a bump like no one else, he could endure more pain than anyone and he'd take more risks because he felt that if he didn't go that extra mile, if he didn't put himself in grave physical danger by being thrown 15 feet from the top of a steel cage to the floor, if he didn't wrestle on drawing pins, if he didn't take 30 hits to the head with a steel chair whilst handcuffed, then he wasn't earning his money and he was doing the fans a disservice.

It's how I feel about comedy, if I'm not going all out to try and find the things at the very core of my soul that I can bare, the inadequacies, the down sides the bad points of my personality, my failings as a human and the broken wreck of a shell that I've managed on occasion to become, then I'm not doing what I need to be. And in exposing those raw nerves to an audience I feel like I'm gaining some level of artistic purity, and therefore a level of success. That's more important to me than money or fame.

I tell Jonathan about this and about how for the last month or so every gig I've been to I've had a bunch of people who've been there just for me. And that my average for people coming up to me after I've performed to tell me how much they enjoyed it is never less than 6, even when I die on my arse. and that the whole fans thing is freaking me out.

There's a good reason it's freaking me out, actually I tried to explain this thought in the last paragraph and got side tracked. The reason is this, I don't feel like I'm there yet. I don't feel like I deserve to have fans whilst I'm dying so frequently, or when I see comics who I know are much superior to me, either due to being around longer or due to being a lot more technically proficient or whatever. When I see them and see that they don't have fans who do this. Also because I thought when I was a child that if I became famous I'd feel different. And I don't, fame doesn't really exist, it's all bullshit.

Jonathan told me off. He said that it was rubbish that I didn't deserve it, the fact that people were willing to travel just to see me die and still tell me I was great meant I deserved it. If it's happening you deserve it, and if it's not then you don't and you'd better get used to it because this is only the beginning and if you don't get your head round it, it'll drive you mad.

Since then I've had people at every gig either ask me for an autograph or their photo taken with me or tell me that they're a big fan of mine and that they'd come to see me (on one occasion a girls family bought her tickets for her birthday to go and see a show I was on at because I was on at it), and I keep trying to tell myself I deserve this, but it's hard.

Even writing about it here is hard. It feels like it's arrogant or showing off, which is the last thing I'd want to do. I managed to get a group of comics early on when I started this have a go at me for getting ahead of myself or being arrogant and getting gigs I didn't deserve, and their words really stuck with me. I'd hate to be that person the way they made out that I was. I just honestly am starting to get a response I'm not entirely comfortable with yet. Weirder still my girlfriend was at a gig earlier this week watching the band CSS, I was working but when I spoke to her on the phone she said that after the gig as she was leaving and the 400+ people were filing out one girl came over to her and said "oh my god! you're going out with Bethany Black aren't you? do you think there's any chance you could get me something signed?"

So that was the first of the four gigs I'm going to talk about, don't worry the others are all fairly short in comparison.

So I'd died on my arse, though over the next week I'd had some good gigs and some bad ones, the Friday night one though was really important for a number of reasons.

Firstly it was in Preston. My home town. The place I'd not gigged for two years. I'd died on my hoop there, and had one gig where one audience member shouted out "Garlic bread" for the full 20 minutes I was on stage, I'd later left the stage and burst into tears as I left the building before crashing my car into the pub carpark wall.

Secondly there'd be friends there, I'd not told them I was doing it so as to minimise the number who would be there.

Thirdly this is a lovely gig, run by Agraman who doesn't seem to think that I'm suitable to play many of his gigs. Maybe he's right.

I need to make sure that this one doesn't get buggered up.

I'm on the bill with Dug, it was Agraman's concession to allow me to play here, that dug and I had the bill split, so that we between us took up on 20 minute spot. Back stage waiting to go on the compere heads out and does one of the worst jobs of compering I've ever heard, just ploughing through material rather than trying to warm up the audience, not really laying out the rules of the night so much as hoping they already know, and then just when I think it can't get much worse I hear him use a joke that I know belongs to another act. He brings Dug on to one of the coldest rooms I've seen in a while. Dug takes one for the team.

Someone at the venue, who doesn't know much about comedy seeing that the opening 20 has been split into two 10 minute acts writes on the running order that the first act (dug) will introduce the second act(me), which is a terrible idea, but one which the compere goes along with whilst not remembering to tell the audience to turn off their mobile phones, in spite of the organiser on the night telling him to do so. His response to this is "I'd better write this down, do you tell all the comperes this?" the organiser says "we don't normally have to, they do it as a matter of course."

As dug manages to get the audience something like a comedy audience he introduces me and I head out onto the stage and into one of the nicest gigs I've had this year, I stop thinking about being funny and am just funny, the laughs come and I build and build them, at one point getting a laugh every 5-8 seconds each successive one getting bigger and bigger, I finish with a story that builds to a natural round of applause and leave the stage to a brilliant response.

Vindication.

I head on out into the audience to talk to my friend Jude who's there, she tells me that I should have let her know I was performing and they could have printed the big interview that she did with me (she works for the big local paper) and we have a great chat, Bik also, who I've not spoken to for ages comes over to talk.

After a bit I head to the back of the room to where Dolan and Dug are as I watch the compere fail to maintain crowd control or even address the level of noise there is at the back of the room, over the noise I hear a Bill Hicks joke done in Bill's speech patterns, I can't believe the cheek, as I head to the bar I hear him do three Sarah Silverman jokes in a row as I get my drink. He introduces Andrew Lawrence and I watch him for a while, he's fantastic and I really like his work, but I'm trying to text Rosanne, and as the venue is a big steel box I've got no signal, so I head out into the smoking area for a cigarette and to send the message I've just written. Whilst I'm out there a group of about 5 students come over and tell me that they thought I was great and that they want to see me do a full set "you're much better than him" they say pointing to if.comeddie award nominee Andrew Lawrence. I'm not but it boosts my confidence somewhat. I chat to them and it's fun then one of the girls asks for my autograph, this time in my head I'm repeating over and over "you deserve this, you deserve this, you deserve this" as if repeating it will make me believe it's true. At this point I get a text from my sister telling me one of her friends was in the front of the gig and said I was excellent.

Heading back in I feel fantastic.

Later on, after the gig, Dug, Dolan and myself are in the green room, I'm furious with the compere, I hate the idea that people can get away with being joke thieves. I work really hard on my writing. I spend months getting stories just right so that I can use them in my set and the thought that someone could steal that and use it as their own makes my blood boil. It's like stealing the food from my table. Both Dug and Dolan are trying to stop me from saying anything to him, as it's not my place. On top of this I'm furious at the way he introduced Dug, pointing out to the audience that both he and I were "new acts" and then this thing about how they were to be nice to us and supportive as we were brand new, it's in essence the same as saying "these first two acts are dog-shit, they really are, they've not been going long so they'll probably not be funny, but you know, sit around and watch them there'll be real acts on afterwards."

So Dug's saying "don't say anything, no one's making it anywhere in this business by stealing other people's material." And Dolan's telling me that it's not my place to say anything because I'm lower down the pecking order than he is. As he goes to leave, the compere shakes my hand and says "Excellent work, that was excellent, you've got some really good material." I say "thank you." through gritted teeth and every fibre of my being is trying to stop me from saying "Thank you, don't steal any of it."

In this game you can only be concerned with how you're doing, because jealousy is a pointless game, but it's hard. It's really hard. There are those who think that being a comedian your job is only to get laughs and how ever you do it as long as the audience is laughing you're doing your job. it's the struggle between being an artist or an entertainer. Whilst I sometimes get jealous of those who have a natural affinity with a crowd, those who can just work them effortlessly, those who can write big crowd pleaser style jokes, whose observations are shared by the majority because even though they started after me and do less gigs than I do they can make a living from this easier than I can, at the same time I know that it's just a different skill, and that what I do is different and, as Jonathan says "Is a stronger flavour."

It's like, being the crowd pleaser is like being mild Cheddar, pretty much everyone likes it, or will at least tolerate it, whereas my act's like stilton, some people hate it a few are indifferent to it and there's a number of people who really really love it and will go to the ends of the earth for it.

See, I don't really care what anyone else is doing, it doesn't effect my job, but what I do hate to see is someone who's not very good at the job they've been paid to do, who then steals other peoples work and passes it off as their own.

I said I was going to talk about the other two gigs, I will do next time, it's 5am, and time for bed. I'm off to see Marylin Manson later and need the sleep.

Next time I'll talk about the two gigs for Warren Speed, and a gig in Exeter. One of these gigs fell apart on me in spectacular fashion.
I'll tell you about gaining and losing dyke points, arguments with security guards, and some more about my fantastic girlfriend including her birthday night and a comic at my club managing to accidentally pick on her at a gig not realising she was with me.

There's also the horror, the horror at Dolan turning 30 and responses to my new hat. I promise I'll get that all up here before the week's out.

until then, I love you all.

BB xXx