17/08/06
My first ever gig -
Categories: This is the story of my first ever gig. Don't worry - it's not that long a story.
When I was in the last year of junior school (so about ten years old) I got obsessed with Laurel & Hardy. I'd always watched them avidly up until that point but then my Grandad (who was from Cumbria) took me to the L&H museum in Ulverston. The man who ran the museum, who I think may now have died, was so impressed with this little kid liking the duo so much that he let me try on what he said was one of Oliver Hardy's hats. It may not have been really, but I choose to believe it was. After this my obsession with L&H blossomed dramatically and has never really left me to this day. The most happy I have been in the past few years was the day I purchased the box set of their movies on dvd last year (even though "Flying Deuces" and a couple of others aren't in there due to different copyright ownership and all that bollocks).
Anyway, I'll get back to the point of this, I started - the more obsessed I got - to do short plays during assembly on a Friday morning at school. Me and a lad called Ian Duke (don't really know what happened to him - but I think he may work for the council in London somewhere - but this bit really isn't relevant) would do Laurel & Hardy 'plays' and they became quite the anticipated event as I recall (I may recall incorrectly). The headteacher of Burtonwood County Primary School at the time, Mrs Lyons, used to love them and encouraged me to always do them.
At the same time as all this, I used to really enjoy watching "Live from Her Majesties" on a Sunday night. It was the successor to "Sunday Night at the London Palladium" for those of you old enough to remember, and was a genuinely brilliant variety show hosted by Jimmy Tarbuck. If that has just made you sneer you can fuck off now and never read this blog again. You are not welcome. I will not be drawn into an old school versus new school of comedy argument. It's as difficult a job for everyone and, in my opinion, there should be respect for what has come before regardless of whether it fits into our own remit of what is nowadays 'credible' comedy.
Anyway again, on one of these Sundays, Tarby introduces an "exciting new comic". For the next five or so minutes I laughed and laughed. For some reason I was videotaping the show, and as soon as the comic left the stage I immediately re-wound the tape and watched it again. Then again. And so on.
The following Friday I did my first ever gig, in school assembly. Me on my own for the first time on a stage, doing word-for-word the material of the comic from the previous Sunday. It brought the house down (and I am certain that I haven't remembered it with rose coloured erm, memory...) and a seed was planted in my head and heart to recapture those laughs at some point. I've probably never had a gig like it in my professional career, but I think I may subconsciously be striving for it.
The reason I am telling you all this, is because - despite him becoming a bit of a hero to me at the time, and despite me seeing him perform live and in panto and stuff as he got more successful - I never met the man. It's odd for me that. As a teenager I would go out of my way to meet my heroes. I once spent an incredible evening in deep comedy discussion at the age of seventeen with Rik Mayall and Ben Elton after a gig that they did at the St Helens Theatre Royal. I was always one for waiting backstage for autographs and stuff. I'm still not too proud to get an autograph - I think it's really exciting. But I never met the guy who wowed me on that Sunday night.
Until tonight.
And I am genuinely thrilled that I did, and - you can call me wanky but - I feel like there was a genuine karma to me meeting him upstairs in the Gilded Ballon loft bar. I've done an awful lot of looking back so far during this festival, remembering times when I've struggled to sell tickets up here and times when I have really not enjoyed my job because of the stupid, often self-enforced pressures that accompany the Edinburgh Fringe. You may have got the impression from me recently that I am enjoying doing my gigs up here this year and that would be true (except tonight's show which was truly shit - but let's not ruin the magic of this sentiment I'm imparting to you).
Seeing that comic on "Live from Her Majesties" was a major catalyst in my eventual choice of career. I told him this tonight - he liked that. He reminded me to have fun doing it. He was friendly, and interested, and asked about my show and whether he could come and see it. He shook my hand several times and was genuinely touched by how he had unknowingly influenced the ambition of a ten year old twenty plus years ago who has now begun to (painfully slowly) realise that ambition.
So look, if you don't like that I'm a comedian you can blame him, but I won't hear a word said against him.
Go on.
Blame Bobby Davro.
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