I’m trying to make an effort to book more gigs outside of London, because I live right on the very southern tip of the city and it’s just as easy to drive to any number of smaller towns as it is to slog through the city traffic to get to central gig. Also, they don’t get a lot of live entertainment out in the sticks, so usually a small gig will have more of an audience than a typical London bar-show.
So on Thursday this week I did a ten spot at Sunday Service Comedy‘s mid-week open mic, in Folkestone. It’s an interesting venue. Keppels bar is in the old Grand Hotel, which used to be an upmarket Victorian beach-front hotel, but recently seems to have been converted into apartments – and the hotel bar (once favoured by royalty) is now open to the general public instead of just guests.
Things didn’t get off to a great start when three of the six booked acts didn’t show up. That amazes me – stage-time is so valuable to me that I’ll cross deserts and mountains to get to a gig I’m booked on, or at least spend 90 minutes driving down the M20. I can’t fathom being given a spot and then just noping out at the last minute.
The audience was OK for an open mic, I’d guess about 20-25 punters, although half of them didn’t seem that interested in the show and did that thing where they chat amongst themselves quietly enough so that it’s not really distracting, just kind of annoying because they’re sitting right in front of you but obviously not engaged.
It wasn’t too bad – some of the audience were listening, and I got a reasonable response from the new set I’ve been building. Would have been nice to get the whole audience on-board, but I got enough feedback to make the journey worth doing.
The host/promoter, Jo Phaure, was a little apologetic and told me the audience was usually a lot better, but I’ve done far, far worse gigs, so it was worth the trip as far as I’m concerned.
Sunday was a very different picture. I don’t really bother with comedy competitions any more, but a local promoter, Whole Lotta Comedy, is running a small comp close to where I live, so I entered the heats just because.
It’s been a while since I did a five minute spot, so I spent all of Sunday afternoon tightening up some of my new material, adding in some tags, and practicing to get the whole set committed to memory. I didn’t expect to win the heat, but I was feeling confident of putting on a good show.
Fuck was I wrong.
I don’t get very nervous at gigs any more, but for this event the host picked acts at random to take their turn – so you don’t know when you’re going up until your name is called. That makes me twitchy because you’re stuck in this cycle of mentally preparing yourself to go up and then cooling off for a few minutes every time before it’s finally your turn.
In the end I was the seventh act to get called up. The guy before me killed it (Atharva Pharande) so the audience was warmed up and I was feeling good about life – but then I absolutely shit the bed.
I have a rule that I almost never deviate from my planned set once I’m at the gig – too many times I’ve had a last minute idea that just hasn’t worked out and completely derailed me, so I stick to the plan. Only 2 or 3 times in hundreds of gigs has an improvised opened worked well for me, it’s not worth the risk.
But just before he called me up, the host (Dru Cripps) did a bit about nurses and the Clap for Carers during lockdown – it just so happens I have a bit about that too, and it used to work brilliantly when I was using it. So I though it would be great to open with that, because it would look like a smart off-the-cuff callback, and surely they’d reward me with their love and applause.
Nope nope nopity fucking nope. It got a muted half titter, nothing more.
Never mind, I charged into my prepared set. But nothing was working, I just got minute after minute of painful silence. I got to my closer and checked my watch, I still had a minute and a half left – how was that even possible?
I ploughed on with some older, well tested, reliable material, which also did fuck all for me, and cringed away from the mic as soon as I hit my five minutes.
Bad gigs are inevitable, but this just didn’t make sense to me.
I stayed to the end of the gig to watch the guest headliner (Diesel) and commiserate with the other acts, who didn’t even try to polish the nasty stinking turd of my failure because there were literally zero positives to take from it.
And it was only as we were walking out of the bar that it hit me – I’d derailed myself by fucking about with my opener. There’s a whole bit near the start of my set that I completely forgot to do – it’s solid, it’s proven, and, fucking crucially, it sets the theme for the rest of the entire set.
Also, by doing my Clap for Carers bit, which involves being married to a nurse, I sabotaged a later bit which relies on the audience thinking my wife works in an office. The root cause of the whole trainwreck was me being a stupid fucker and not sticking to the plan.
I’m past the point of beating myself up over the occasional bad gig, but I’m really annoyed at myself for making such a dipshit mistake after doing this for so long now.
I’ve got Compulsive Comedy and The Comedy Centre booked for later this month, but nothing for the next two weeks, so I need to hunt for some spots to get over this disaster.