Thank fuck for that.

I have just got back from my very last Christmas Corporate, a private party in Solihull that took 5 hours to drive to (in fog so thick I had to lean forward in the car to see more road). I'm euphoric just to have got it out of the way, to be frank. I've had 5 corporates this month, which is more than enough; I've been offered one tomorrow as well, but they can have big fat slice of the no-thanks cake.

However, this blog is not going to be a spittoon for my incessant whinging about the misery that is the Christmas party (or even the bizarre show I had on Tuesday, where, along with light and sound problems, and a blazing row with a Komedia employee, the one woman I picked on in the crowd just so happened to be *the vet who put my cat down two weeks ago* - can you honestly believe that - what are the chances). No, I'm going to talk about the very genuine question concering when it's OK to mention stuff going on in the news that could be considered 'no-go' subjects.

And of course, I'm currently talking about the Ipswich murders. Now, I'm not going to pretend I'm the first person to start telling jokes about them - there's been a score of recycled and generally poor efforts flying about on the email and texts most of this week. Even when my cleaner came round on Wednesday (long story, it's to do with resolving an argument with my other half about the *quality* of my housework needing more 'attention to detail') and I said "cold, isn't it?" she immediately replied back with "it's minus 5 in Ipswich".

I've written - and now said on stage - a few original jokes and observations about what's been going on with this. As with all these things, I try not to be judgemental or even too derogatory because I know people will be upset, and that's not my objective. I'm trying to be original and current. Judge for yourself - my line last Friday went along the following lines; "They won't arrest the right bloke - the police are all over the shop. Yesterday morning, they said the killer was a local guy, with good knowledge of the area, but by the afternoon, they said he was a suffolk hater. They should make their minds up."

It got 'ooos' and laughs in equal measures, but I think the delivery here was key. If it appeared I was laughing AT the murders, I could have lost the crowd. Also, it had already been a week by then. Now, I'm not saying that's a sufficient period beyond which people don't care; but it certainly takes the sharpness off.

But why should time make any difference? Lets take some case studies here. Martin Coyote did the first Cutting Edge immediately after Diana's death. Did the crowd want it to be discussed? Hell yeah. Were people offended? Some. Was it funny? Hugely. But a lot of that can be directed at both the skill of the Cutting Edge performers and the kind of comedy-literate audience the Store attracts.

On the flip side, I've seen comics highlighting this discrepancy in a way that has sometimes split a crowd as well. Mitch Benn does this lovely little routine about a University Student Union advertising their forthcoming 'Titanic Party'. I can't remember the exact words, but the observation goes along the lines of, "There you go. Biggest maritime disaster in History - let's boogie. Is that what it takes? Three generations for it to be OK to laugh at? 70 years from now will there be 'twin-towers' parties where students throw paper aeroplanes at Jenga? Some old bloke in the corner going "that's not funny", Students replying "piss off grandad, we're just having a laugh". I love this routine - but some people still get mildly offended by it (even though the focus of the joke is the fact that 'time makes a sick joke acceptable', not the tragedy itself).

Personally, I'm never going to be in the Jim Jeffries mould in that I won't revel in my ability to shock a crowd. My main attraction to doing this material; is firstly, the fantastic focus it gets you in a slightly rowdy room (on Wednesday's Komedia Christmas show, I just paused, and said, "Ipswich". That was it - they were suddenly silent), but secondly, I like being topical. Actually, I love it - and I'm quite competitive about it.

When the Queen Mum died on that Saturday afternoon at 3pm, I went on stage and did a series of gags about it during the Komedia's early show - right at the top. Bearing in mind we start at 7pm; I must have been the first comic in the country to do jokes about it. It was utterly pointless though; as it was a hot summer's afternoon, the majority of the crowd had just come off the beach and had no idea she'd snuffed it; so the crowd erupted into conversation about it as people slowly realised I was telling the truth. Professionally it was poor judgement to open with it.

And when Richard Whiteley died (at 8pm on a Sunday evening), I got the message just before starting the 2nd part of the show that night, and went straight on doing jokes I'd just written about it. Again, I was obsessed with the topicality of it; and again, it was mostly pointless as I was telling a crowd of people who had no idea he'd died anyway.

Clearly though; when the joke is near the knuckle but well executed and done with enough charisma and confidence to convince your audience it's bereft of malice, it'll be a winner. The only thing I've genuinely learnt though, is that *local* tragedies are completely off the menu. I'm always winding up Brendan Riley when in Liverpool about how I'm going to mention Jamie Bulger, the Heisel stadium, and Kenneth Bigley in my opening gambit. I don't - it would be signing my own death warrant - but it's worth pretending I will just to watch his face screw up.

And even in Brighton I fell foul of that trap when mentioning the fire at the fireworks factory in Halland a fortnight ago. It was a lazy joke on my part; reused from a joke about the fireworks factory explosion in Belgium two years ago that I wrote at the time which got a pretty good laugh. This time; the truth was too close to home. Very few laughs, and a pertinent reminder that the decency line is something the audience draw, not me.

The real knack is to know how much time you can leave before doing that material. Too late, and it's not current enough. Too soon, and it's considered offensive. Knowing where the 'sweet spot' is, is obviously a skill I'm still learning.

My other half has a comment she uses when something bad happens to me, that she feels is deserved. "God's punishment". I'm not sure if that's actually what it is; but if you think of it as the most righteous sentencing available when convicted under "sod's law", you won't go far wrong.

So before I go into the details of my castigation, let's look at the crime. Over the last two weeks, my blog has made some dismissive and desparaging remarks about Christmas comedy shows, and what a poor cousin they can be of your standard stand-up fayre. Kudos-wise, I may have made them out to be hovering around the bottom rung of the comedy ladder.

Well, there's a new ladder in town, and it's offering a direct flight to Hades. I should have said that Christmas gigs, while tricky, are still better than Corporate gigs (which I have also berated on my blog). But I completely forgot to mention the big one; the bastard offspring of the christmas gig and the corporate gig; the Christmas Corporate gig. (shudder).

It's hard to explain why an experienced, professional comic doing his or her best tried-and-tested material will elicit (at best) 20 mintues of staring, head-shaking and muffled, followed by unabashed, private conversation, but it'll happen. A corporate party is never the best place to tell jokes anyway; but combine that with the christmas party, a social occasion where employees are *contractually obliged* to attend, and suddenly 'doing jokes' is so out of place you feel embarassed to try, and then embarassed to even speak, and finally, just embarassed to breathe. But because, every now and again, one of these gigs DOES go well, you live in a perpetual state of belief that it could, and should, be fine. Which gives you an even greater distance to fall when you quickly realise your presence is, frankly, the last thing their evening wants, and ever wanted.

Now, I've learnt from previous blogging escapades, and I've not named names, or dates, or even confirmed that the experiences described were undergone by me. But let's just assume, that for (possibly) a completely unrelated matter, I sent the following text tonight to 5 of my close comedy friends:

"Ever done a corporate so horrific your *soul* hurts?" (And yes, I did insert asterisks to infer the use of bold text).

I won't go into the details of the replies; but suffice to say, a quick reminder of how much you get paid for these shows went hand-in-hand with similar tales of woe from around the UK. I cheered up a bit then. The best way to deal with suffering is to know that other people have undergone it too - and to remember that the money is always good enough to stop you saying no in the first place.

But I can't wait until January to get these all out of the way, and to go back to being a comedian who plays mainly to people who want to hear comedy. I know; greedy, greedy me.

When I started writing this blog, I promised myself to keep updating it regularly when I had something to say and to keep away from it when I knew I'd just be padding things out - but I have bitten my metaphorical tongue this week so I could get a good distance between me and that which I wanted to talk about.

So, here we go. On Tuesday 5th December, Somna died.

I find this hard to write about on two levels; firstly, I don't have the deft touch for describing sensitive subjects with the tact to stop it becoming either too cold and clinical, or alternatively, too maudlin. And secondly, it's hard to write about because it hurts; though nowhere near as much as it would have done, had this been Wednesday, or even Thursday. In a nutshell; since my last blog I got three consecutive phonecalls from the vet, spaced out by 12 hours, describing her continuingly deteriorating condition. On the Monday, my wife went over to see her, but I had a gig at the Tattershall castle in central London. The lack of incoming texts seem to indicate that no news was bad news. I'd buried myself in the gig though, and it proved the distraction I needed to not dwell on it. When I got home Anneliese was fast asleep (she had a 6am start) and I wasn't about to wake her to talk about something so upsetting.

Tuesday morning started with the phonecall I was dreading and expecting; that she wouldn't really make it to the next day. Our cat wasn't breathing well and there was a big build up of fluid in her lungs that was leaving her in terrible distress. I phoned my wife at work in Newbury to tell her the terrible news. What is it about bad news that makes the act of saying it the hardest part? I'll tell you an overused adjective; gutted. You understand the etymology of it when you are truly upset, and it's a perfect description of how we both felt.

The vet had told us that we needed to make the decision no pet owner ever wants to make, but it was an inevitability. However, the really tough decision was if I was going to go and see her to say goodbye. Anneliese had got off work early and was driving home to do exactly that, but I had to go to Jongleurs Bow on Tuesday for the first of 5 consecutive Christmas shows. In some ways, I felt going to the gig was an easy cop-out. The day before, the blanket distraction of a high profile gig (the Monday club had featured a stellar line-up of Harry Hill, Dave Fulton, and We Are Klang) had meant I was able to switch off worrying about my cat for nearly the whole evening - and that escape clause was looking good for tonight. I also didn't want to see my cat, so ravaged by the sheer evil that is FIP (a terrible disease), stumbling, struggling, unable to breathe and in agony; knowing that would be my final mental image of her. And picking up a phone to tell Jongleurs head office at 2pm on the day of a show that you can't go because 'your cat is very poorly' sounded pretty pathetic when I thought about it. So scuttling off to do the gig seemed the best bet.

But then, the thought of my wife, on her own, having to say goodbye, while I did the coward's route, stuck in my throat. I didn't need the 'closure' of goodbye (I was sorting that out in my head already), but I did need to give what small comfort I could to Somna in her final hours - she deserved that, no matter how tough it was going to be for me (i.e. very).

So I tentatively rang Jongleurs and told them what was happening, and asked that if anyone rang out of the blue today saying they were free and they felt were up to the job of compering Bow in my absence - could I have the evening off. I could hear myself, and I felt stupid. I only ever pull shows for two reasons; 1. it's clashing with another show (common), or 2. I'm too ill (uncommon). I have to say it, the guys and gals at Jongleurs are just great. All of them - Rosie, Julia, Donna, Ian, everyone - were totally supportive and helpful. They rang around off their own backs and one hour later they had cover, and I had the evening off to do something that I really didn't want to do, but for the reasons I described, felt I had to.

I won't go into too much details but it was heart-wrenching stuff, stroking the near-lifeless shell of my panicking, wheezing cat, who still had years in her (she was only 7), while I whispered goodbye and cried silently for what must have been an hour. I didn't last long in the consultation room, and had to go for a walk. The receptionist offered me a tissue - "Rubbish, isn't it", I said, very aware of how crap I must have looked. "No - it's real", she said. It felt it.

And so Wednesday, it was off to Jongleurs Bow for compering the first of 4 consecutive Christmas shows. I was dreading them, but I shouldn't have. In a strange sort of way, it was exactly what I needed. The gigs were difficult, but doable, meaning I had to bury myself in focussing completely on getting it done. And I was strangely on good form; even on stage, I still felt the hollow feeling of the Tuesday night, but it wasn't making the job any harder. In some ways, it was making the job more welcome, and easier to commit to.

In fact, by Saturday night, I was thinking to myself that if I blogged 'how tough it was concentrating on a rowdy Jongleurs Christmas show when suffering personal loss', it would have been a lie. With 4 days gigging under my belt, my attention had been steered firmly onto my work, and I felt a lot better - in retrospect, they were pretty good gigs. Often hard and heckling in places, but I wasn't caught out once. Good.

Therefore, I wasn't expecting last night's Sunday at Komedia (a normal, non-Christmassy, peach of a gig) to be anything less than a breeze. However, that was not the case. At Komedia, I relax a lot (I'm unlikely to be sacked, as I book it), and usually this allows me to play around more and get a great rapport going. But the effects of that comfortable environment - relaxing on stage, not having to dictate proceedings, voicing my comedy thoughts out loud - meant that the feelings of the previous Tuesday actually surfaced out of nowhere. Without the more direct and confrontational scenario of Bow during the previous week which completely focussed me, my mood and approach slumped. It was by no means a bad show, but my usual joie de vivre was utterly bereft and I can't help feeling it showed.

In a very small way, I'm pleased. Yes, I'm glad I have the professionalism to carry off a good performance when all is not well 'back home', but equally I'm also pleased to see that emotionally, I'm not a fucking robot.


RIP Somna. We both miss you terribly.

Things have a habit of linking together. But not always for the best.

Last week was a wholly rubbish week for me. I have this phrase I use, called the 'Shidas touch', which is the antithesis of the Midas touch in that everything I touch turns to shit. Last week it was in full effect; I got a minor electric shock from a broken bedside light that fused the whole electricity upstairs, with no evidence of a tripped breaker (annoying); my cat, who was staying at my mother in law's while I was in Hungary, had become worryingly ill soon after me picking her up and had to be taken to the vets (upsetting), and a big clump of my hair fell out for no apparent reason (worrying). On top of that, my local council is taking me to court for a minor parking offence that has spiralled out of all control. In actual fact, I'm quite pleased that my diary is full between now and Xmas day because the one thing I need right now, is distractions.

I'll be honest - the major issue has been my 7 yr old cat, Somna. She's part of the family; and a large chunk of my sanity too. Cats crave what comics ignore; routine. Whereas I would normally get up when I wake up, sleep when tired, and eat when hungry, she would always force me to do those things at set times (I eat when she does). It's a large portion of my mental health. I love her to bits. And things were not looking good for her over the weekend; the vet had transferred her to an animal hospital for blood tests and monitoring, and she had been placed on a saline drip. Every phonecall was more upsetting than the last one.

So when today started with a text message from Lisa my agent with preview dates for my 2007 Edinburgh show, it dawned on me that I should really start thinking about if I should go - and that would be a distraction from heaven. So, I took advice from myself - and read the post I made on the Chortle Forums while in Edinburgh so that I could commit to it all with a clean head. It's called, "Why go to Edinburgh".

And herein lies the circularity of it all. Shortly after reading this passage :

I've only cried 3 times in the last 5 years - once when my cat disappeared, once when I was hit at 40mph by a full-sized Go-Kart, and once when I found I had no tickets sold on a Saturday night in 2003 when all other shows that day had sold out.

...I got a phonecall from the senior vet. My cat has feline infectious peritonitis, an often fatal disease that in the 'wet' form causes huge discomfort and massive organ complications. The prognosis is pretty desperate. She probably won't be coming home, and I've been advised to prepare for the worst.

OK, I'll admit it. I cried a little. Once after putting the phone down after taking lots of notes; once when phoning Anneliese to let her the bad news, and once when I went downstairs and cleared up her toys. Even writing right now is making me a bit wobbly. It's safe to say I've not been this choked in years.

And yet tonight I'm gigging - at the Tattershall Castle. And in a tiny, selfish, way, I'm looking forward to it. Comedy's an emotional job, and yet despite being 'quite a lot like my normal self on stage' (as per my Chortle review), I find the escapism from whatever's going on in my life quite welcoming. This is true of quite a few comics - Mandy Knight's 98 Edinburgh show described how she performed on the very night she heard of her Dad's death. To me, it made perfect sense.

The big question is if it affects my act tonight. It might. On the way home from Heathrow in May 2004 to do my Sunday gig at Komedia, I arrived seconds after a horrific pile-up where 8 people had died. We saw a dead body on the road - amongst other things - and my wife couldn't sleep properly for a week. When I went on stage that night, I was brutal. Funny, but brutal. Somebody started texting while I was on stage and I went completely over the top laying into them. It was still getting good laughs, but quite out of character for me, and certainly a reaction way beyond what the situation called for.

Amongst my many emotions right now is guilt. Guilt, that I'm so unhappy about something as 'comparatively' trivial as a pet dying. That story above involved the horrific death of 8 people with a huge amount of life in front of them - but for some reason it doesn't get to me nearly as much as what's happening to my poor little cat, who's suffering terribly.

The main emotions are tough to determine though. I don't know wether I'm angry or upset. Though I did just chuck my PDA at the carpet for not accepting 'sealion' as a word in Pocket Scrabble (bollocks is it hyphenated). So, more than angry than upset. If you're at the Tattershall Castle tonight, I apologise in advance, but I claim mitigating circumstances.

So, a date has been set. On July 1st 2007, smoking in public places in England will cease to be (source: BBC). In fact, Wales gets it first on April 2nd - the day after april fool's, so as to make sure the smokers don't think it's a wind up.

The potential ramifications for the stand-up comedy circuit are huge, and the news could easily portend major problems for the stand-up industry as a whole, were it not for the test beds of Ireland and Scotland, where I'm happy to report live comedy still exists.

Firstly, the facts; there is no 'private club' cop-out; all public places will have it banned. And no, the 'only places serving food' rule was just a suggestion, that's not true either. And the Mel Smith press opportunity from Edinburgh this year that was the 'Churchill cannot smoke on stage' uproar is equally apt here; acts who smoke on stage, can't. I can already think of about 5 comedians who will have to lose small routines based on their on-stage puffing, though in the grand scheme of things, this will be nothing compared to the wave of 'smoking ban' observations that will replace them on the circuit, for the short term at least.

When I first heard about the smoking ban, I had mixed emotions. I believe it's a good rule; when I think about all the people I work with in comedy clubs; front of house, barstaff, doorstaff, and the like, I find it hard to justify why they should be made to put up with that environment. But as a booker, I was genuinely concerned about numbers. I heard a rumour that the laughter lounge in Dublin shut down as a direct result of the smoking ban in Ireland meaning that audience figures plummeted below the level where they could still operate. I'm not sure if that's a true story, or if it was used to cover other failings, but it still hung heavily in my mind.

And in Edinburgh this year, I feel the smoking ban changed the demographic of where punters went. The rule allows smoking in open spaces; and this seemed to have some bearing on where people went. The Underbelly's passage, the Pleasance Courtyard and the Udderbelly's forecourt were all 'open spaces' and they were packed throughout the festival, as was the performer's-only terrace on the roof of the Gilded Balloon. Conversely, the cafe area of the Assembly Rooms and the interior bars of the Gilded Balloon Teviot were conspiciously quiet. Other factors may have been involved, but clearly the smoking issue was a major one.

But on the flipside, this rule - or elements of it - is already in place in some venues already. My club, at the Komedia in Brighton, only allows smoking once the show has started so people eating before the show begins can do so in a smoke-free environment. Nobody complains about this. And I was recently closing a gig at Carey's in Coventry - and before leaving home I heard that the venue was now completely smoke-free. We were also performing on a night of an England game. I drove up expecting the place to be empty, but it was impressively packed (and not just with football-hating health-freaks).

There are other side effects of the ban as well. Legendary comedy teacher Jill Edwards believes the smoky, gritty atmosphere in a club venue lends itself brilliantly to stand-up, and we'll be poorer without it. But then there might be legions of potential comedy fans out there who will now want to go see a night of stand-up, free from the discomfort generated by scores of carcinogenic punters.

Assuming it doesn't destroy audience numbers, personally, I think it's a good thing. As a reformed ex-smoker (according to my wife, the worst sort or non-smoker), I'm looking forward to being able to work in my place of business without inhaling vast quantities of 2nd hand smoke. The main advantage to me will be my throat and voice, which gets such a battering from my performance style as it is. And at least after a weekend away my suitcase will cease to smell like an ashtray. In Edinburgh, the smoke smell was completely eradicated - unfortunately being replaced with the smell of sweat, which for years it had been masking.

However, I am also expecting to be a touch tetchy through this. While I was away on my honeymoon last September, I started getting edgy about the fact that those three weeks was the longest I had not been performing in 9 years. I was desperately missing the stage, and felt a massive need to get up and do my thing. Initially I was thinking, "Hey, I must have comedy in my blood to be so needy of my craft!", but then the rest of me realised that I was addicted to the regular dose of passive smoking I get in this job. What my blood was actually craving, was nicotine.

The toughest job of all will be to get fellow performers to stop smoking backstage though - something I've never even attempted to ask people to do, and probably won't. Smoking and the rebel instincts of the more maverick elements of stand-up go hand in hand; look at Bill Hicks. On one hand, you could argue that if the ban existed in his day, he'd still be here. On the other hand, if the ban was there in the first place, the chances are he'd never have started performing anyway.

(blog subjects that didn't make it today: Christmas shows, my Alexander Technique lessons, people upset with this blog, the fall-out after Ray's gig on Saturday, my final Edinburgh accounts, the two Polish people who were apoplectic with the ribbing they got last night, and my cat's serious illness which is making me utterly miserable)

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