23/05/07
CSI Middlesborough -
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Travelling is the best and worst part of my job. I sort of look forward to a few days away, then once it actually begins it gets on my tits.
Can't please some people can you?
I pack a bag and get loads of dvd's and books and work and stuff together, with every good intention of spending some quality time with myself, get in the car, drive to my hotel, then sit and stare at the wall. Not one of my books was read, not one of my dvd's were watched - I just lugged around a heavy bag for two days, and after succumbing to the charms of Forbidden Planet in Middlesborough I actually came home with more stuff than I left with.
So first up was the university of Northumbria on Monday.
I'd been to Durham on my way up to visit my friend and Chortle Student finalist snowball in Hell Ed Gamble, who was in the middle of doing revising and needed distracting by a comedian who selfishly just wanted to break up his journey. We went and had coffee with Pete and Tom from the Durham Revue, and the fact that it was proper exam time began to dawn on me, everyone around us was stressing and had their heads in books. Proper exam time and I was off to do two uni gigs...I know from experience that not all students are as easily distracted from their work as Ed Gamble...
My fears were confirmed on reaching the gig (after going to three seperate Premier Travel Inns before finding the right fucking one, and I would end up in the one without it's own bastard car park) - about forty people in a room that would hold three hundred. Compere Lloyd Langford and Lee Bannard were already there and Lloyd was already hatching a plan to do the gig in the dressing room, which would have been nicely filled with forty people...and so began one of those odd nights that I seem to end up always being at.
Lloyd went onto the stage in the main room and began the show, informing the audience of his plan and then leading them like the infants of Hamelin out of the door and to their new destination. It was like a genuine underground secret gig - no mic, no stage, no lights really, but it turned out good and felt clandestine and unique. Very informal, very off-the-cuff, but an absolute pleasure, the front row in particular entering into the fun and spirit and being proper supportive (I even had a lightsaber duel at the end with one of the lads from the front row - even though he only had a stick and I had my brilliant proper one).
After the gig we went through to the bar with them and had some drinks and stuff. I fell a little bit in love with a lass from the front row but she was dead posh and any prospective marriage to me would be quashed by her parents and she would probably be better off with the president of the student union or something.
On Tuesday we travelled over to Middlesborough for the gig at Teeside University, which sadly didn't have a dressing room as such, and so we had to go ahead with the gig in the proper environment.
After the gig at Northumbria Uni it was an adjustment to go back to stage, mic and lights comedy, but we got through it. I realised that I get very bored on stage sometimes, and that really is the crux of why I end up in 'situations' at gigs. As I've said many times before on here, I really don't see the attraction of ploughing through the same words night after night. Whenever I do a 'set' and don't deviate from it in any way I always feel slightly hollow afterwards, no matter how spontaneous it can be faked to look, it never really is, and even if I am the only person in the room to know this, it still makes me chalk the gig down as one that I didn't enjoy. I like to try and find something unique to do in the room, something I wouldn't have been able to do the night before, and won't be able to do again. Doesn't always work, I don't claim to be an expert, but I like to try for at least my own amusement and usually end up with something to talk about and the audience go away happy and with the satisfaction that they have been a party to a genuine one-off night.
Last night, there was a lass in the audience who was in her final year of a course of a Crime Scene Investigation course. Yeah? Who can't see this one coming?
I had chatted with her early on in my 'act' and she had been a little bit confrontational - nothing ridiculous like, she was joining in and that, but there was just the slightest edge to her that she had taken against me in some way. Not to be dissuaded, I decided to construct a crime scene for her to investigate. I got Lloyd to take her out of the room and out of earshot and I went about making the scene with the help of a couple of audience members. When I phoned Lloyd to tell him to bring her back, the scene that met her was as follows:
At the back of the stage there was dead body #1 (well I say 'dead' - he was sitting up and laughing when she came through the door, but he was meant to be dead) with my lightsaber next to it, clutching my Access All Areas pass and blood (Pepsi) streaming from a head wound. On the steps at the front of the stage was dead body #2, again surrounded by blood (Pepsi) with a crisp packet on the floor, an arm missing, and a badly broken neck (as opposed to those 'good' broken necks you can get sometimes).
Pretty obvious what had happened I think, but she didn't have a clue. She didn't even notice that dead body #2 had a fucking arm missing! Didn't dust for prints, didn't take witness statements, didn't check the bodies properly, just looked at the Access All Areas pass in dead body #1's hand and then shrugged.
So here, once and for all, is what happened. I considered not telling you and letting this saga go on like Twin Peaks for weeks and weeks, and you could all write in with your suggestions and there could be a prize if anybody got it, but I can't be arsed. I'm not known for my patience.
So...body #1 had rushed the stage and taken my Access All Areas pass so security couldn't stop him being there. He grabbed my lightsaber and went to attack me. Body #2 ran on to protect me and took the full blow from the lightsaber, losing his arm in the process. I pushed body #1 away and he hit his head on the wall at the back of the stage, falling dead and bleeding to the ground, still clutching my Access All Areas Pass and my lightsaber leaning beside him. In the meantime, body #2 had slipped on a discarded crisps packet, falling back against the speakers, his missing arm meaning he could not break his fall, smacking his head and falling to the ground, breaking his neck (badly) on the steps and blood streaming from him.
It's fucking obvious if you just fucking think about it.
The CSI girl said that a broken neck wouldn't bleed...I had to point out once again that he'd had his fucking arm cut off.
There's going to be a lot of unsolved murders in the Teeside area in coming years...
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