21/11/06
Oxford Gong Show -
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Hello
First off - I found out today that I did in fact get one of those castings that I went for. I'm filming it next week. I'm not allowed to tell you what it is. I really want to though. It's a really small part but that doesn't matter in this case. Oh, let's just not talk about it...
So, Saturday night was the Oxford Gong Show and I was the 'professional compere' according to the poster.
Have to say, I'm not a fan of gong shows - the concept is sound as long as the people involved are made of strong stuff and don't take it too seriously, but there's always the risk that there will be a potentially brilliant act destroyed forever because their vulnerability could not stand up to the pantomime. With that in mind, whenever I have compered them I have always taken a fatherly approach.
Not, you understand, to the point of being condescending or patronising to the acts off stage, but more to being overly vociferous and confrontational with any members of the audience who smell the fear and bully. I am good with hecklers - not bragging, just from experience I am - and the fact that the pressure is really off for a compere at a gong show given that they have untouchability only adds to my surly confidence.
I like to think that no matter what abuse some of Saturday's contestants took during the show, it was nothing compered to what certain sections of the audience got back from me.
Technically though, the audience were pretty well behaved (or scared into behaving) and only two of the ten contestants actually got gonged, which I found quite a relief as the process of removing somebody from the stage does not sit well with me.
My conscience is so fragile on the matter that I even instilled a rule of a post-set 30 second amnesty for anybody who was gonged off to redress the balance. If anyone in the audience heckled in this time then the contestant would be reinstated and their gonging off over-ruled. The judges also had the opportunity to reverse their decision based on what was said during the amnesty, but as said-amnesty tended to consist of spewed vitriol...well...there was no reversal. It did restore the power balance though which I thought was fair enough.
I've been to (mercilessly few) gong shows where the compere has been become an extension of the audience but I don't think that is the right approach at all. Perhaps because that is a good rule of thumb for conventional compering (to convince the audience you are one of them) it is all to easy to slip into that role, but that is not my personal conviction with gong shows - not least because there is a decent chance that many of the contestants will pretty soon be your contemporaries and you don't want them thinking you are an arrogant cunt. Even if, like me, you actually are. Sometimes.
In all it was a good evening - not overly laced with badness and taken pretty much by acts and audience alike as the theatre that it should be. The audiences at the Free Beer Show in Oxford (who ran it) tend to know how it is. It's an amazing and diverse club, free of clique and all about the comedy. There aren't many clubs where you wouldn't at any point use the dressing room to escape attention (which is lucky - as there isn't one), you just hang out with the audience, get up and do your thing, then hang out with them again. There's no airs and graces.
And also, I would like to point out that the lad who won the show had also been a contestant during the last Oxford Gong Show and faired much worse on that occasion. I believe he lasted about thirty seconds on that night. On Saturday he was triumphant (if fifty quid and a case of beer is any measure of triumph). Which is my clumsy way of telling any acts that have been booed off at gong shows to not take it as a definitive assessment of your ability.
That's not to say it isn't...I mean, you really might be shit - they might be right...just bear in mind that it's not neccessarily so.
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