22/10/06
The Comedy Box, Bristol -
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Right, gonna try and keep this brief today as I am tired and have to drive to Birmingham in an hour or so. Starting to hate driving to Birmingham I seem to do it so often.
Anyhow, last night I was at The Comedy Box which is at the Hen and Chicken which is in Bristol (www.thecomedybox.co.uk).
Interestingly enough, the Hen and Chicken is where the final Big And Daft show was almost six years ago to the day (final one in England, the very final one was in Dunfermline at Carnegie Hall...in the bar) and there is still a framed poster on the wall at The Comedy Box (at the time of going to press). My picture is hardly ever up at clubs that do that sort of thing so something inside me likes that, even if it is just that they haven't got round to taking it down yet.
It's a really great room for comedy, set out brilliantly, cool stage and a warm welcome from the people that run it. A benchmark in how to set up a gig I would say, it is little wonder that there has been a speight of prolific comedy talent emerging from Bristol in recent years, given the care taken of comedy there.
So the gig the gig the gig. What happened?
Fuck knows.
I think it was good. The more I have thought about it the more I have thought maybe it wasn't as good as I thought (brilliant sentence structure there).
Ok, here's what happened as I remember it; I was headlining and got off to my usual meandering start, finding my feet in the room as it had been an up and down gig in terms of the audience getting onto any sort of a roll. Nothing to do with the acts, just one of those Ford audiences (a Ford audience are relatively reliable but ocassionally need to be jump started).
So, all was going surprisingly well given how the audience had been. I was chatting away, doing old and new material, playing with hecklers (nice ones), threatening violence (nicely) and thoroughly enjoying myself for the first 35 minutes or so.
Then...
An old man started shouting at me.
It never became clear what his actual issue with me was, but from what I could gather he had a problem with my shirt. For the record my shirt was a red, St Helens RLFC T-shirt, with a white "stickman" Saint logo. We established that it wasn't a team rivalry problem he had because he kept asking me where I was from, despite the fact that I had said it twice at that point in my 'set' and, as I said, was wearing a t-shirt with "St Helens" written on it. No matter how many times I said I was from St Helens, he kept saying "come on - why won't you say where you're from...?".
Thing was though, he was sort of threatening. Well there was no 'sort of' about it, he was being vicious. Not in the sense that I felt he could physically hurt me, he was about a hundred and was a scrawny fucker, but he just seemed very angry, very quickly, and wouldn't stop.
Then a woman fell off her chair and hurt her arm and blamed me. She said that she'd been laughing so much that she'd fell off her chair, which would be sweet if it were true but I have it on good authority that she'd actually been to the bar and then just sat down in the wrong place (ie. not where her chair or indeed any chair was). Now, this interaction was all quite amiable, but then somebody in another part of the audience shouted at her to shut up. She stood up, said to me that she had been enoying my act but was going to leave as she wasn't taking that from a "Norwester" (I think I've got that right) which apparently is some sort of Bristolian local rivalry. And out she went - straight out the door in a strop.
The whole thing felt like one of those nights when you're out with mates and having a lovely time and then one of them, for reasons best known to themselves (usually beer), gets into a mood, gets stroppy and angry, and ruins the evening.
The gig ended fine, got myself a big cheer for my collection and the vast majority of the audience went home satisfied.
I had an interesting chat with Steve who runs the gig in the dressing room, where we discussed, amongst other things, why I get heckled so much. In fact, not 'heckled', rather why audiences talk to me so much. My style, such as it is, is very conversational - I try to perform on stage like a chat (I think this blog is written in a similar way too). We sort of deduced that audiences buy into that to the extent that they actually feel that they should be contributing to the conversation too, so really I guess it's a sort of flattery. My heckles are rarely people saying I'm shit - that does happen of course - but mostly people just 'joining in'.
I like it I think. I can't remember the last time I did a gig where I didn't feel like I had 'met' certain members of the audience. There have been some that I wish I hadn't met (like that old tramp cunt last night), but also many more that I'm glad I did.
So there we go. Gonna go to Birmingham now and make some more friends. It's a more hands on and satisfying approach than MySpace.
(Although if you can't make the gigs then MySpace will do - www.myspace.com/raypeacock - oh pleeease like me...)
Comments:
The girl was accusing the guy who told her to shut up of coming from "Knowle West" - white trash area of Bristol.
Thought it turned surreal but thoroughly enjoyable. We all had a good time. I was one of the guys heckling
(short mike cable etc.)- just wanted to ask you what order you watched the six Star Wars movies in?
Would that have been a good heckle?
Cheers for a good night.
Blaine
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22/10/06 @ 22:31 · http://www.myspace.com/raypeacock Ray x
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23/10/06 @ 00:32 Was at your H&C gig in Bristol and my interpretation of the 'old man' situation was very different to yours....but then comedians aren't known for sticking to the facts I suppose (okay, I know, if I wanted an evening of factual entertainment I should have gone to see Simon Schama). However, you've missed a crucial part of the story which, I think, gives a very different slant to what happened. He first piped up with a reasonable, if not hugely funny, riposte to the start of your story about having a threesome. If you can't remember it was along the lines of, "I've had a threesome with your girlfriend as well". Okay, not exactly Perrier material but it raised a laugh. You then shared a bit of banter over whether your girlfriend had or hadn't which was funny enough but after that it then descended into two blokes not knowing when to give it up. I think you were the only person in the room who found him threatening. The only threat I felt was to my ability to remain interested. Sadly, neither of you knew when to stop and thats why it got boring. Think on - I don't think you'll think it was as good as you first thought. Not a bad night out all the same.
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23/10/06 @ 16:54 Thanks for entertaining me so thoroughly amazingly at the Bristol gig.
I've been to a good few comedy nights in my life but that was by far the most surreal that I've ever experienced. I mean, the hecklers, what the hell were they doing?! One bloke was trying to have a private conversation with you (immune to the fact that there were another hundred people in the room), another bloke was finishing your lines for you, and that old man was just clincially insane. Thought you handled it brilliantly and as someone else said shame we didn't get to see much of your set - I'll have to catch you again soon.
As far as we could tell the girl who fell off her chair had it pulled from underneath her by her 'mates'. She kept going on about having to leave to go to the hospital to have her arm checked. It was as if you'd put a plant in the audience but what she was coming out with was a hundred times better than anything a plant could possibly have said. I doubt any of them even remember being there
Sounds like Birmingham was fun too...
take care
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23/10/06 @ 17:16 · http://www.myspace.com/raypeacock Okay, well, to be honest, if people wish to hear EVERYTHING that was said at a gig then they should come to it rather than relying on me to provide a transcript of it on here. I did leave that bit out, not to alter events - I don't think it does alter the events, but we can agree to disagree on it. In the post I said that his tone was threatening, not that I felt threatened by him. I actually said that he could do me no physical damage.
The thing is, if we are to be honest, he had decided to heckle and also decided the way he would heckle, which was in a hostile way. Not jokey hostile as I believe I had been up to that point with the 'hecklers'. But the problem is, that didn't fit with the mood of the room and so it felt out of place.
As far as two blokes not leaving it alone, I would have liked nothing more than to carry on with my set, but if you recall, it took a long time for him to stop saying "Why won't you tell us where you are from" and after that we had the incident with the girl and her arm. I had already run over my time by ten minutes.
Sorry you got bored though. I didn't. And I'm all that matters.
Thankyou for your comment mind
Ray xx
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23/10/06 @ 20:11 · http://www.myspace.com/raypeacock See, weird isn't it? How different people see things differently (I suppose that's not weird really...It's probably obvious).
You probably saw more of my 'set' than I would have you believe, but you're right, they couldn't have been 'planted' better.
Thanks for your comment, and no, Birmingham wasn't fun, but the whole weekend could be described as 'eventful' on the professional front.
Cheers
Ray/Ian xx
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