03/11/06
Sick jokes -
Categories: If Britain ever succumbs to a deadly MRSA style virus where close contact with work colleagues is the most virulent form of infection, the stand-up circuit will be dead in a fortnight.
I can qualify this with the fact that last Monday at 'Outside the Box' one of the performers was ill; and since Tuesday, I've been feeling pretty groggy and rubbish all week. Sharing a 'stage' seems to have the same viral impact as a needle or sexual congress. It's Friday now, and I'm on the up, but I still feel like I've been gargling with fibreglass.
I'm fairly hypochondriacal anyway, but it never stops me working. For two reasons; firstly - even with the worst cold or stomach bug, you can usually hold it together for 20 minutes of performance, and secondly - getting up on a stage makes you feel a whole load better. And also, I dread pulling a show through sickness as much as the sickness itself, so it's often the lesser of two evils.
So despite this, it was odd to have two gigs this week; one that I didn't think was happening that I performed at, and one that I did think was happening, that I didn't.
On Wednesday, I was supposed to be in Hastings at Steve Furst's/Wendy Wason's 'Venue M' gig. (The more eagle-eyed amonst you will see that my MySpace diary has this down as a double-up in Sheffield, but that got pulled mutually when one of the gigs disappeared and Anthony J Brown agreed that a 500 mile round trip for a single gig in Sheffield probably wasn't very realistic for me).
The Hastings gig was put in the diary during a brief conversation with Wendy, a newish act who is the partner of comedy stalwart Steve. And that was it - no details other than the venue name, nothing. I realised that the gig was a dual effort between both Steve and Wendy when Steve rang me a fortnight ago to say it had been moved to the Wednesday. This was now free, so I shifted it across, and thought nothing of it.
Normally I let the promoter contact me with details of the gig, so I was surprised to have heard nothing by the end of Tuesday, when I was beginning to feel the worst of my cold. On Wednesday, I made two phonecalls and two emails to Wendy, with no reply. A search of the internet found no line-up for this gig, and no mention of comedy at the venue's website. I even went through my phone's logs to find the home number she called from, and rang that too. A woman answered, and told me that Wendy had gone to America today. Eh? I told her I was supposed to be doing a gig with her. This woman told me the gig was yesterday. So obviously the message from Steve moving it was wrong, and I'd missed it. No worries. Secretly I was pleased, knowing that I had a night off to rest and try and recover. I got into my pyjamas and went back to bed...
... to be woken up by my mobile at 8pm from Steve Furst, asking me where I was, as I was on stage in 25 minutes. Yes, the gig was on, but nobody had sent me any details. Steve thought Wendy would, and vice versa. The subsequent note of panic in Steve's voice showed that my non-appearance was going to be cataclysmic.
So I agreed to go. Honestly, if my wife was at home, she would have locked the doors and tied me down, but for some reason I felt like I'd be disappointing too many people. So within 5 minutes, I was changed, dosed up on sinutab, and racing across the southcoast for the 45 minute journey to Hastings. I got there with 10 minutes to spare until my slot; and ranted and burbled my way through a hazy, ponderous, yet surprisingly funny 20 minutes that had me pausing every other minute to wipe my nose. I think they thought I was a coke addict. Good; that's a damn sight more rock and roll than 'the sniffles'.
In fairness, the drive home was tougher than the gig. That's the problem with performing when ill; the car bit. It's six times longer than your set, with much more serious implications if you can't concentrate on the job in hand. And yes, the adrenalin of performing gives you a little 'not feeling ill' buzz, but the flip side is that when that wears off, you plummet back to sickness, and that feels even worse than when you were just 'a bit ill' beforehand.
Thursday was going to be tougher, as I was compering Jongleurs Battersea. Compering when ill is bloody odd. You get the roller coaster of feeling up, then come down, then feelilng up again, then come down, each time you take to the stage. And with Battersea being a good gig but one where you can't relax as it's technically a trickier room to play (for a few reasons, including it being wider than deeper), this was going to be more of a challenge. Added to that, the fact that I felt worse (probably not helped by the gig the day before), meant that I was dreading this show from the moment I awoke.
By midday I was really considering pulling it, as I wasn't sure the show I would do would be up to muster. But I knew the arseache that would generate with Jongleurs would be far in excess of the one created by me being a touch off-colour on stage. So I focussed on getting as much rest as possible for the show that evening.
And then later that afternoon the phone rang; it was Jongleurs, to tell me that the show tonight had been cancelled, as it had clashed with a corporate booking. I tried to feign disappointment, but sod it, this was great news. There was no cancellation fee, but on the basis of how I was feeling, I would have probably paid £240 to have the night off. All of a sudden, it didn't matter how ill I was that evening, as I could spend it under a duvet on the sofa watching box-set DVDs. Strangely, I perked up immediately.
I'm there tonight though, and looking forward to passing the virus through another dressing room in the time-honoured fashion of the circuit, and possibly dealing with hecklers by sneezing on them. It's an experimental new tactic.
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