23/04/07
Peacock's Compering Theory -
Categories: So...
Friday evening I did the Boat Show at the Tattersall Castle which isn't a castle at all but, as the name of the gig suggests, a boat.
Boats have one of two influences on me, they either knock me sick or send me to sleep. Matter of fact that rule can be applied to most things in my life, like girls and stuff, but let's stick with boats for the time being.
When I was younger my family used to have a boat called the Brenrickian (cleverly amalgamating my real name, Ian, with the names of my parents - and that served as a great name until my brother was born and ruined it with his stupid new name), which would be hauled up to the lake district most weekends for water-skiing and just general driving around Ullswater in. When I sat down in the green room at Fridays gig, that familiar water lulling from my distant youth came back to me and I started to feel drowsy.
There is no worse feeling before going onstage than fatigue, twice as bad when you are the compere (as I was on Friday) and you think ahead to just how long it will be before you can go home and get the sleep that will cure you. Whilst the audience sit a few feet from you, anticipation of the show ahead giddying their senses, all you can think about is "fuck, I've got to go on, then come off, then go back, then come off, then go back, then come off, then go back, then come off, then go back, then come off, then go on and close the show, then come off, then get the tube, then pick up my car, then drive back to Hertfordshire..." - and that doesn't even take into account the time one may need to spend with groupies and stuff...
One of the best ways of being snapped out of the tiredness is to be told before you go on for the first time that the first act hasn't arrived and isn't picking up their phone. This is especially effective when you are playing a new club that you haven't played before and so are already a little nervy about whether or not your brilliant style of comedy will be best suited to the hundreds of London people gathered. To think you may have to fill the first section of the show on your own is enough to spark anybody into life.
As it turns out, the first act did arrive after I had been onstage for about ten minutes so there wasn't anything to worry about and the show went as nicely as it could.
The reason I am telling you about this though is, during my thinking time on the tube back, I made a bit of a discovery about myself when I compere. Well, I say discovery, it was more of an observation really, but it did feel like something was clicking into place. I worked out what I do when I am compering.
My approach to compering, as anyone who has seen me do it will confirm, is apparently very haphazard. I don't fanny about trying to work out a way of doing my material - I certainly don't do the thing that lots of comperes do and just slice up my act into three segments, I fuck about a fair bit, and to (I believe) my credit, I always try to set the room into an applicable mood for the act I am introducing (assuming I know their stuff) and set the microphone stand to the right height for them. These last things, incidentally, are known as stage-craft - and there are more than a few comedians out there who might consider getting to grips with it but anyhow...
Despite the (very deliberate) outward appearance of not really knowing what I am doing, subconsciously I appear to have been working to a theory.
On Friday (before recognising the equation) I went on, talked with the audience, pinpointed a man named Dorian, took the piss out of his name (which he defended, saying it was derivative of ancient greeks), brought on the first act, returned after the first break and pretended that I had been online and found out about the name Dorian (when in actual fact I had spent the first interval writing a fictional essay about the name, whilst my fellow comedians bitched and gossipped), read out my work, brought the second act on, and then after the second break came on and did seven minutes of material.
Somewhere in there I was harangued into taking my tshirt off by a very sexy yet forcefull young hen night too.
So here's what I worked out. Here is what I (up until now, subconsciously) do.
In the first section I find things out. I go on, no material, have a chat, find something out. This is normally volunteered without duress by an audience member.
In the second section, I go back on, and with the information I have gathered earlier, do something that could not possibly have been pre-planned. Even if this isn't the funniest thing in the world, it makes an audience credit you with being able to think on your feet, and flatters them into believing that you are tailoring the show specifically for them.
In the third section, having established the trust bond with them, I do material. The third section of compering shows is always the easiest I ever find 'selling' my material.
The second section however is the most important one - some comperes may tell you that the first section is the most important because it is your first impression on the audience that will count, but that is utter bollocks. That counts for fuck all. The first section is where you do your homework - it is the second that really establishes you.
I have always felt (and I mean always - going right back to the old Big And Daft shows) that what an audience likes more than anything in the world is to feel as though what they are watching is unique, that it only applies to them and on this particular night. That is why people like to see heckling battles, or see people fuck up or forget where they were up to, it makes the money they have paid seem worth it, because that money wouldn't have got them the same show on any other night. It is why Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson would fake corpsing and forgetting lines in the Bottom live shows, it is why I 'enjoy' onstage deaths almost as much as I do the supreme gigs. In a sense it can't fail, because even if the 'comedy' aspect of it doesn't hit, you still provide the audience with the whole schadenfreude thing, and whether they realise it at the time or not, they get the same rush from that as they would from something that is just balls out funny.
I was slightly worried that the fact that I had pinpointed my method so precisely on Friday would mean that I could no longer do it. I had a compering gig on Saturday in London which would prove to be the proof in the pudding, but when I arrived I was told by the staff (eventually) that the show had been cancelled earlier. You'd think somebody would have thought they should perhaps tell the fucking compere, particularly given that his whole weekend had been altered for the gig and he would have been in Leeds had it not been for the fact he was meant to be compering in London, and he also had come out of his house at half time during a very exciting rugby match and missed the second half (when his team went on to lose because, he is convinced, they lost his support from afar) to do a hundred mile round trip for a gig that had already been fucking cancelled, wouldn't you?
Sunday I went up north to watch a special rugby league match which was the St Helens 1996 team versus a Legends team in aid of a player called Steve Prescott who used to play for Saints who has been ill. It was cool - very very good - not taken seriously by anyone involved, lots of cheating and fucking about, and there were shirts from every other rugby league club at Knowsley Road (Saints' ground) yesterday. I'm really not sure you would find that in any other sport. I'm often reminded of why I am very proud of my association with rugby league.
And that's that - I'm off tonight, and then tomorrow I have to go back and do some more work on Doctor Who somewhere in London, and then tomorrow night it is Fopp again at the store on Tottenham Court Road, and if you are in the London area I would seriously advise you to come, because it is an extraordinary secret special bill. Incidentally, my theory of compering does not come into effect at the Fopp nights. I really do just play that one by ear.
And yes, I really did just drop the word schadenfreude into this entry, to make myself look clever...here is a link to it on dictionary.com in case it threw you.
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