12/03/07
Loughborough, Shootings & Aldershot -
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I would place Loughborough University pretty near the top of my favourite gigs list. My stand up showreel for when I was doing the character was filmed there, and with a full house it was a pleasure to play, brilliantly run and perfectly set out.
Over the last couple of times I have been there it has fallen off a little bit - it's still a great gig - but you get the feeling that perhaps the comedy night is no longer as high up on their list of priorities anymore. After the events of Saturday evening, they should perhaps consider re-establishing it's importance.
It is usually one of those brilliant "fighty" gigs that I so adore. There is a pretty high percentage of students doing sports studies and the like there, and they are not known for backing down in a heckle battle. The downside of this is that it can perhaps get a little bit 'laddish' in there, which I have always attempted to diffuse, oddly with full-on agressive assertiveness in previous performances, and I have never come off that stage in second place to the audience. Never lost, never will. Denny Crane.
I've had support acts crash and burn badly, on one ocassion the barracking from the drunken throng reduced one of my support acts to tears in the dressing room afterwards. Going onstage and doing well after this has happened was bittersweet to say the least, my conscience sensitive enough to be prickled as I entertained the idiots after they had behaved so badly towards a fellow jester.
There was none of this on Saturday night though. It was much quieter than it has been in previous years, down from peaking at 600 to around 250 now. I was told that it was the busiest it's actually been this season, which cheered me and made me feel less like the shortfall was because I was on. There were sections of the room closed off so it still felt reasonably full in fairness.
The audience were kind of laid back and the hostile bantering was pretty much non-existent as I went through my set, got the laughs where they should be, had a bit of teasy casual chat with a couple of individuals in the crowd (who took it as it should be took and returned fire with similar good humour - can you believe there were two blokes called "Giles" in the same audience in 2007?) and the night went off without a hitch. There was the feeling that it was a 'nice' gig. Nothing flash, nothing that would set the world on fire, just a run of the mill, gently-paced, no frills comedy show.
In the dressing room afterwards I felt a bit disappointed not to have had the rush of blood that only a proper comedy battle provides, especially given that I had sub-consciously prepared myself for that what with it usually being the norm there.
The following morning the disapointment turned to relief. Fucking major relief, when the news reached me that somebody had been shot after the gig, in the very room that I had been so well-behaved in a few hours earlier.
Now, regular readers will know that I am not adverse to winding up small sections of audiences from time to time, but I have always considered that if this was going to end badly they would shoot me - not each other. I don't know how I feel about the possibility that somebody who had been in the audience on Saturday night was carrying a loaded firearm and, more worryingly, was willing to use it. I'm trying my best not to get overly thoughtful about the whole thing and it's implications to the way I conduct myself onstage, I was just so so relieved that I hadn't had a "fighty" gig. Not even because I could have been on the receiving end, but more that I can't be blamed for getting people wound up. If somebody had pulled a gun after the show at the Krater in Brighton the other week for example, then my manager would be warranted in ringing me up (as he did today) and saying "What did you do to cause that?".
He gets funnier and funnier doesn't he, boys and girls?
So, as far as I am aware, the receptive party was a security guard who was shot in the stomach and he is doing okay by all accounts. Nothing life threatening I'm told, and the trigger happy individual dispensing his own warped justice is in the secure company of the local constabulary. I'd also like to express my apologies publically to those folk who had left me messages in the early hours of Sunday morning that I didn't reply to until Sunday afternoon. It told me a lot about myself that you were all so certain that it must have been me that was shot.
It's only a matter of time, but until then let's not concern ourselves with it.
On Sunday night I had a gig at Hecklers Comedy Club in Aldershot, which I've not played for fucking donkey's years. I very nearly didn't get to play it on Sunday either as a Lorry driver forgot how to drive his Lorry the right way up on the M25 and lay it on it's side for a bit. Three hours to do forty miles - it really wasn't looking good and panicky phonecalls were being regularly exchanged with the venue, but once the road was cleared I put my foot down drastically and got to the venue at 8.35, just in time to walk onto the stage at 8.40.
The relief on the face of compere Michael Legge on seeing me in the wings was lovely, and as I walked on he whispered in my ear that he has never been happier to see somebody. I thought he meant this to be about the gig, but as he carried on cuddling me after I'd been on (he tried to do a kiss on me too) and then eventually steered the conversation round to me being in Doctor Who, I realised that it was more about that. It's been a curious thing to have people who I have known on the comedy circuit for many years suddenly start acting slightly star-struck just because I have a little role in Doctor Who. And make no mistake - it really is a little role, I have no doubt it will disappoint (if it manages to escape the cutting room floor that is). When I did XSMalarkey in Manchester the other week, Toby Hadoke (the compere) had his fucking photograph taken with me.
Tell you what though, traffic stresses aside, I really liked turning up at a gig, going straight onstage and then just leaving the venue again. I was in and out in about 40 minutes. It was productive, that's why I liked it, didn't give me a chance to think and meant that I was literally thrown into a situation where I was almost in shock. I remember standing on the stage and thinking "Fuck - I've started" and just relying on my considerable charm and wit (and my top notch material, natch) to get me through. They're such a nice audience at that gig though, they own it but they aren't territorial and are more than happy to welcome strangers (acts) to the party with open arms.
And that's about my weekend summed up. I have spent this evening attempting to build a home gym and it has already paid for itself as the fucking workout that just building half of it has given me should see me through till next year. I have also got around to putting a Star Wars poster that I have owned for twenty years into a frame. I can't believe it has taken me so long - it's been blue-tacked up on more walls than I care to remember, including my parents house and my houses at University, but only now is it properly encased in glass and on my office wall as it should be.
Shootings, traffic accidents, home gyms and framed posters...yeah, you fucking wish you were me...
A run of gigs at Fopp Music Store on Tottenham Court Road in London begins tomorrow (Tuesday) with me as resident compere. It's a kind of new material thing but with an established headliner (tomorrow's being Andy Zaltsman) and for those of you down in the big smoke, it would be perfectly agreeable to see you there.
No guns please.
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