08/10/07
I hate students -
Categories: When I was a student I could never work out exactly why people hated us. As far as I knew, I was studying hard(ish) in the hope of contributing to the world much like anyone else whilst drinking lots of booze.
Since leaving University however and doing student gigs I've realised that most students are naive, arrogant, rude bastards who, thanks to lack of life experience make performing to them complete hell. I'll admit that this is not by any means always true, but after this weekend I have discovered a new loathing for them, not least because they made me feel very old.
Saturday night I MC'd at a University Freshers Ball. I wont say which Uni, but its notorious for being full of sports a*seholes and little all else. From the second I and the other comics were asked to do the gig we were wary. This wariness was dispensed with the added offer of not just pay, but free booze and a hotel room too. There were 9 comics booked in and it was to last from 10.30pm until 2am. That's one hell of a long time, but when you also think that the students had been drinking since 6pm and watching crap such as McFly hype them all up, we all knew the last thing they would want to do is sit and listen to 3 hours of comedy.
And goddamn we were right. Walking into the Union bar, we saw the tiny stage in the middle of mayhem that we were to perform on. TV's were on all over the room keeping them occupied with the boxing and when they were turned off for the gig, that was step one in making the crowd very annoyed. Luckily myself and Carl Donnelly had agreed to co-MC, Spank style, which gave us an easy way out and back up against the vicious hordes. Attempting to get their attention and begin the show, we shouted a lot, got some cheering going but generally failed miserably because no-one cared. All acts were meant to do 20mins, with only one person achieving this (well done Pat Gallagher!) and Matt Green getting close. Poor James Nokise who was on first suffered horribly due to being a Kiwi and the days Rugby events. He still held out for 11 mins, which was damn good. Highlights included Tom Bell pretending to be American, Chris Martin getting people on stage to see who could bench press him the most times, and my favourite, Hal Cruttenden shouting at the audience ' I've got to perform to Army troops in Cyprus this week, and they've been to Afganistan and Iraq and they are still a much nicer audience than you c*nts!'
Thank god for the free booze as we drank our way to stupidity as the only way to survive and ended up staggering back after I managed to accidentally steal the sound man's car keys and then drive back to London with them and a mega hangover on Sunday morning.
All the acts that were on on Saturday were great acts and yet the vile students didn't give a single one of them a chance. I don't fully blame them. I remember my Freshers Ball and all I wanted to do was drink and chat to girls. Watching comedy would have a been a far stretch of concentration too. No, I blame the uni event organisers. Who would ever think it was a good idea? Its not fair on the comics to deal with something like that and it gives any audience who did care a bad view of live stand-up. I have since made a very quick note to myself to ask very carefully about agreeing to any of those gigs again.
Had a great gig at the Kings Head last night which made up for it. Very small audience but truly lovely. One man at the back was wearing a Japanese silken scarf so I started some banter. I discovered he was part of a band and thus automatically allowed to wear crazy things. Naturally asking what their band played, he said 'pop', at which point I proceeded to insult modern pop music with venom. Then, thinking I should, I asked what band he was in, only to discover it was Hot Chip, a band who I currently love listening to. Never have I had to backtrack my comments so quickly! Damn Crouch End and its genuinely trendy residents!
My kittens are still entertaining too. So far their destruction count in our flat equals: three vases, two plates, one set of headphones, a funny owl made of shells my uncle got me and I loved but my girlfriend hated and several kitchen rolls. It baffles me how something so small can be so dangerous. I'm only 5'5" and I'm relatively harmless in comparison.
Off to Belfast tomorrow! Truly love that city and looking forward to some mirthing in Northern Ireland.
Comments:
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09/10/07 @ 15:57 While I would normally delete uneccessarily vicious and nasty comments, I feel this deserves a response. While it would be arrogant to stick up for myself, by no means were any of the other comedians on the bill 'bad performers'. Most of the comics (and myself included) do gigs to great groups of students all the time and various other sorts of audiences. Comedians such as Hal and George who were on the bill and long time professionals doing everything from TV warm up to comedy festivals and gigs around the world. The performance shouldnt have happened as it was a bad place for comedy. I have done normal comedy gigs at the Uni in question and they are great, but no one wants to see or do gigs to a crowd of drunk freshers.
Out of interest are you a performer or student? Or do you just have no idea what you're talking about and due to the tedium of your life feel the need to criticise needlessly?
All the best
T
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10/10/07 @ 22:55 No need to be a dick about it.
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11/10/07 @ 12:08 · http://www.carldonnelly.co.uk Loughborough was probably the 10th freshers gig i'd done in the two weeks leading up to it and the 9 before it had all been fine. This however was not a gig, it
was a bar with drunk people and comedy as the background noise! Unfortunately comedy cannot work in the same way as music where it can just be in the
background while you chat to your mates, it requires the audience to listen and then decide if they find it funny and if so laugh.
Out of the nine acts on, we covered the whole comedy spectrum of visual humour, political, high energy, deadpan and nothing managed to get the room to sit down and
take notice so i think it is safe to say that it was beyond our control. Comedy was a bad choice of entertainment for the night and we just had to get through it
anyway we could. Luckily with the free drinks flowing, we had the easiest way of all!!
Carl
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13/10/07 @ 12:18 
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