23/08/07
When laughing goes bad... -
Categories: As a comic I like to think that I am constantly striving for laughter, pleased when a gag works and actually successfully entertaining people as per the job title. However, for the first time ever yesterday, I realised that the wrong kind of laugh can ruin everything, and be worse than a cold deathly silence.
We had both an agent and a TV scout come along to our show yesterday. We were happy about this as we've had really good numbers and crowds which has been great. Sadly, not only was it an emptyish gig, but of the few people that were there, two of them were completely nuts. Perpetrator number one wasn't so bad. He was brain damaged or something and sat in his wheelchair going in and out of consciousness, while mumbling nonsense. I didn't mind this so much. Perpetrator number two however, had a laugh like some sort of a jackal being molested and/or attacked, and he would laugh at loudhailer volume. He chose to use this laugh before and after every punchline, and in every possible place where it made it possible to throw our timing out of the window and kill all atmosphere in the room. It was such a horrible intrusive sound, akin to having a fire alarm go off right next to you. There wasn't much we could do either. If we were nasty to him it would have created tension, if we acknowledge it nicely its almost like we've asked him in as our canned laughter. So we just pushed through what was possibly the worst show this month and left feeling like we should hang ourselves.
I have subsequently heard that the TV scout couldn't concentrate after 15 minutes of that noise and therefore didn't pay any attention to our show. Another reason the laughing man must be killed. How can a laugh be that selfish? I aim to find this man and torture him with the recordings of his own laugh for 24 hours a day out of punishment. Grrrr.
The word on the street is that this last week is a bit quiet for the festival. We've had a sudden drop in numbers since Tuesday, and so have lots of other acts I've spoken to. And the Royal Mile really doesn't seem as packed as normal. Very strange. What is it that the punters know that we don't?
Although there is a chance we have low numbers due an occurrence with poster sabotage. Being rookies at the postering lark, we decided to go pasting the other night all sneaky like with a bucket and handfuls of deviancy. We do have poster distributors but we have 100 left so we thought we'd get them up. Turns out that despite trying to paste them to the side, above or below other posters, we were hitting someone else's turf. They retaliated by the next day sticking big 'CANCELLED' stickers over all of our posters. Ouch, what a sting. Luckily the misunderstanding has now been sorted and our wrong posters have been removed. I cant help thinking though how vicious and nasty that is. Needless to say we wont be putting more up anywhere.
Nominations have now all been made. I'm so so pleased for Pappy's, I loved their show, so its very well deserved. Also all the newcomers are great. I saw a preview of Micky's at Fat Tuesday and it was brilliant, Zoe's show two weeks ago was great, and Tom's show on Sunday was excellent. Despite this though, I went to see Jon Richardson the other night, and it was hands down one of the best shows I've seen this festival. Truly funny with such lovely touches about his OCD. That man definitely deserves the award.
Other good shows. Saw Waiting for Alice, with Jupitus and Vincent in, which was brilliant, and very funny. Also saw a Pinter play my friend is in, called the Collection. Very mad play, but great production and worth it to see just how scary my friend Sam can be.
Last night was We Are Klang - Dickparty. Their sketches will endlessly be hilarious. Really great show if you can catch it, despite their 'arrogantly short run'.
I saw a Scottish goth the other day who was wearing all the usual moody black gear, but combined with a leather black kilt and black leather sporran. I wanted to high five him for sheer comedy genius. I hope that around the world Goths are gothing (not a word, but I like it) traditional wear everywhere. I didn't high five him though as I have been distributing high fives everywhere recently far too freely. This needs to stop as it will only lower their celebratory value.
Only 3 shows left!!! Hooray!!!
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