28/04/07
Beside the seaside... -
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Couple of gigs on the coast since last we spoke.
I always look forward to going to 'the seaside', and always end up disappointed. I think it's because I always compare it to Blackpool. A lot of people take the piss out of Blackpool and do it down, but I have to say, I take people and places as I find them and I fucking love Blackpool. Had some of the best and worst days of my life there, and any place that can run you through every emotion and still put pretty lights on at the end of the day is okay by me.
So the first place I compared to Blackpool was Sandgate, in Kent. There is literally nothing there. I arrived for my gig two hours early thinking I'd be able to have a wander about on the sea front and ended up just sitting in my car, staring at the sea and wishing time away. I was that bored I bought FHM. That just made it worse to be honest.
Anyway, the time arrived for me to go to the gig. Sometimes you walk into a gig and think it's going to be lovely, the room is all set out nice and there's a microphone and stage and lights, and the audience are seated in front of it and facing the right way, and you know that your job is going to be fine unless you personally fuck it up. Other times, like in Sandgate on Thursday, you walk in and think "You have got to be shitting me".
How we got through that gig on Thursday defies all logic. There was a microphone. That was it. None of the other aforementioned plus points for good gigs were met.
I headlined (or rather I had to wait the longest with the dread of going on), and blagged it for 35 minutes. Proper blagged it though, literally not a word of material, the first ten minutes involved me finding and plugging in a light so that the 'audience' could actually see me, and the rest of my time relied predominantly on the drunkest man in the room (and that was saying something) facilitating my piss-taking.
Sometimes gigs are hard work because the audience aren't really laughing too much, and you are constantly trying to kick start them, sometimes gigs are easy because the audience are laughing at everything and you can relax. On this night, the audience were laughing at everything and yet it was still hard work, I'm not sure I can explain it, but I really worked my bollocks off on Thursday whilst outwardly appearing to be just fucking about.
By the grace of god it all went well, and everybody was happy at the 'gig', but I think it has taken about five years off my life. I was exhausted as I drove home, and had a real dull headache (but that may have been because I had a go on some poppers the night before in an attempt to look cool...Little Raji James who used to be on Eastenders told me off for this because apparently they lower your blood pressure but that's a good thing for somebody like me surely?).
Last night was Jokers Comedy Club at Southend-on-sea, and I was comparing.
Southend is far more comparable to Blackpool, and I got the satisfaction of seeing a row of arcades all lit up on the front. Didn't go in them - but just seeing them made me feel happy enough.
The gig is at the Cliff's Pavillion, which also houses a big beautiful theatre as well as the function bar room where they do the comedy. At the moment the tour of The Rocky Horror Show is playing in the main theatre.
For many years in my teens, I was obsessed with The Rocky Horror Show. It's still one of my very very favourites, it's an astounding piece of work in all of it's forms, and as I walked through the dressed up masses in the main foyer last night, I sort of wished I was going to watch it with them. So much so that I even bought some merchandise from the stall and spent a bit of time hanging around and looking at all the costumes and stuff.
Well...I say that...I've made that sound far less lecherous than it was. I noticed a really weird thing last night. When I have been to see Rocky Horror in the past, I have always been kind of immune to the people dressed up, there's so many of them and you're off to see the show and you just don't really notice. Last night, as I was very much an outsider I suddenly noticed that the whole place was full of beautiful ladies in just their underwear, and it took on a whole different feel. And they were all so friendly. How I ever got downstairs to the gig is beyond me, it played utter havoc with my libido.
So, onto the gig.
There's always the feeling in rooms like that, that the audience aren't going to be comedy savvy. In fact, without meaning to generalise (which means I am about to), whenever I go to do gigs in Essex I feel that. As though the audience simply don't know how to be an audience. Jokers Southend has been running for twenty years now, so as an audience they 'get' it. Well, most of them do. Safe to say, that if there's a person there who doesn't, I'll fucking find them.
Two hundred and fifty people, all up for a great night, I find the solitary humourless cunt in the room. In his defence he made it easier for me by sitting right at the front, his all black get up capped with dyed (I assume) black hair diluting his fifty-one years of age and his arm around his much younger pretty blonde girlfriend.
How could I not?
I chatted with his girlfriend first, and she was lovely and giggly and totally entered into the spirit of things. In my head I thought ahead to how much fun I could have with them as the night went on, a couple with a massive age difference, not giving a fuck what other people thought, sat at the front and taking my teasing with grace and humour, whilst the whole rest of the room laughed along.
Then I started speaking to him.
I knew instantly that something wasn't right. It took the rest of the room a little longer to realise, but eventually we were all on board together. The first give away to me was the fact that he simply would not make eye-contact with me. The second clue was the fact that he was not cracking a smile. Like, at all. The rest of his table were falling about laughing, but he was having none of it. As it got more and more awkward, his girlfriend gave me the most apologetic eyes I think I have ever seen, and I wanted to scoop her up and save her.
The thing was, I was going pretty easy on the dude. I wasn't even properly taking the piss, my teasing was 'gentle' to say the least, but the more he didn't play, the more the devil on my shoulder was encouraging me to push it further. In a complete turn around of character I showed admirable restraint, in the second part of the show I made no more than passing reference to him. I said to him "You really don't like me do you?", he said "Well, it just gets boring doesn't it?", I said "Yes...yes it does...".
It doesn't though. Not to me. I was lying. I like the awkward situations.
But on this occasion, I did leave him be. He'd gone by the third part of the show. The rest of his table stayed and had a great night, but his girlfriend departed with him. I felt for her, she'd been having a laugh but had to leave with sulky-probably leather-pants.
I really hate it when somebody gets the hump with me onstage when I genuinely wasn't meaning any harm.
Sometimes there are proper cunts in the audience and they get what they deserve, and I will go full tilt on slamming them down without any conscience about it, but this bloke just...well...took himself too seriously. He could have left that gig a hero, with all the audience thinking he was fantastic and big enough to take it on the chin and give as good as he got, but instead there was just a feeling that he put a bit of a dampener on it. I don't know, maybe I'm being harsh, I guess it's people's right to react however they do, and I don't know what's going on for him in his life or what sort of day he has had or whatever, but the very front table of a comedy club isn't perhaps the best place to plonk yourself if you're not up for a laugh.
I spoke to some of the people who had been with him after the show, and they put my mind at rest, and I sent a message with them for him and the girlfriend with them. I really wish he hadn't left. I didn't like that.
Other than that, the gig was a fucking belter - I may have made the sulky bloke thing sound like it was the whole story of the gig, but it was a very small part of it. Had a lovely night, and spent some time with Topping & Butch who I have never met before. Fucking top blokes - and a really brilliant act. I thought I would hate their act, but I really really liked it.
Tell you what though, you know when you have spent the evening socialising with a couple of gay fellas, and as the night wears on you start doing gay jokes and teasing them in a childish way, and then when you leave the gig and are driving home you notice that they are in the car behind you so you start waving and beeping your horn and doing immature gay signals out of your window, and then the car behind you overtakes you and it isn't them after all but two hard knock blokes?
That's fucking awkward isn't it?
Particularly when you are in Chelmsford...
The fact that I am writing this now would imply I survived it.
Bracknell Comedy Cellar for me tonight for a one-off Saturday gig, I practically live at that place now. Then tomorrow I am off up to Durham to do a gig as a favour to underdog Chortle finalist Ed Gamble at his Cool Fun Comedy Night. A fucking favour! To Durham. It's almost fucking Scotland. It better be sunny. Not driving all that way without the car roof down...
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