11/11/07
On the Home Turf -
Categories: After last week's heinous example of a gig, I'm pleased to say this week has, on the whole been pretty good gig wise. Starting with an audience of people who stared more than laughed in Cheltenham which wasn't immense amounts of fun, then a truly lovely gig at Reading University, and lastly a succession of nice gigs back in the capital.
A large part of being a comic is travelling. Considering that often on stage you are only doing 20-30 minutes most of the time, or if you are MCing it may stretch to a tad more, then the comedy part of your day is very small. In comparison, on Monday for example, it took 2 and half hours to get to my gig then 2 and a half to get back (bloody windy A roads!), that's a whole 5 hours of travelling with no actual comedy involved. I often quite enjoying all the travelling. Driving through places you've never heard of before, sniggering at ridiculous town names (Bungay, hee hee hee, Gaydon, ha ha ha, Bapchild, ho ho ho) and having time to just listen to music and think up gags. But for every good journey there are 10 'stuck in traffic' journeys or excessively long ones of sheer tedium like driving to anywhere near Torquay.
The plus side of all this travelling I suppose is that I reckon I'm now a relatively good driver. Not that I wasn't before, but now I'm pretty much a road master. In fact, what is worrying, is that I might well be better at driving than I am at comedy due to the hours I've put in. If the comedy dries up, expect to see my small face behind the wheel of a white van in 10 years time, grey faced and listening to Queen and Capital Radio while cutting everyone up and generally being a shit.
I travel so much now that in fact I've gone to such lengths as deciding I have a favourite motorway, and favourite service station. While this may be useful at 2am on the journey home, I also know that its inherently sad and that the only other people who would appreciate that are other comics, or the sort of people that corner you at social do's and talk to you about how exciting accountancy really is.
So to gig in London for a few days is a lovely relief. Extra time appears in the day and I have used this extra time to be cultured this week. Apart from Tuesday and Wednesday which were spent doing some filming work, and Thursday which was spent on the sofa. But whilst on the sofa I did watch various comedy DVD's, which is, to an extent more cultured than someone at home watching Jeremy Kyle. Friday was much better as I went to see a truly brilliant play reading at the Trafalgar Studios. It was an amazing script about a couple whose teenage daughter had died and their inability to cope with their loss. Very well acted too, and on the whole a great change to my usual viewing of humorous things. The only bad thing was that it was a very quiet moving play, in a very small studio space. I have a knack in situations like these to accidentally make a loud noise and instantly become the most hated person in the room. The noise in question was a coughing fit brought on by downing a glass of diet coke that went down the wrong way, just as the characters were discussing in depth their happy last memories of their child. Needless to say, I slightly ruined the moment. I always do it though, but not intentionally. Its like a superhero power, just not a very good one. Captain Inappropriate Noise or something.
Yesterday I went to see Ratatouille which is a brilliant film. It was only mildy tarred by the fact that I was accompanied by an entire party of 7 year olds that my girlfriend had agreed to help with. Never have I seen more split popcorn and balloon violence in my life. The film is brilliant though, and its scary exactly how much they can do with animation nowadays. I fear that they wont need actors at all in the near future and that the reality of the Matrix may all happen over Equity rates for artificial intelligence performers.
The week culminated with last night gigging at the Red Rose, which is literally 3 minutes walking distance from my house. The gig was great, and a lovely crowd, but it was even nicer knowing that I would stroll home in a matter of minutes afterwards. Why cant more gigs be that close? I say scrap the travelling and build a Las Vegas like strip of comedy clubs in London. North London. By my house. Well we can all dream...
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