Triple Crowd

One of the great things about being based in London as a comedian is that there are loads of gigs every night of the week. Monday is traditionally the night of new material, where acts of all levels ry to work up new jokes into polished routines. Last Monday I went to the new material night at The Hob in Forest Hill, where I was also lucky enough to perform alongside acts of the calibre of Micky Flanagan, Daniel Kitson, Celia Pacquola and others trying out new stuff in a small room for no money.

Last night I had two new material nights in the diary so headed to Leicester Square with about ten minutes of new jokes. I've been writing some more political and topical material over the last few weeks and it's been interesting to see which bits work and which bits audiences either don't understand or don't find funny. Testing new jokes is always interesting. I find some jokes hard to let go of even if nobody laughs. I'm convinced they're funny and I'm determined to make them work. Sometimes this pays off. Quite often I admit defeat in the end, but only after trying them out a dozen times! Other times a joke I came up with on the bus to the gig gets the biggest laugh of the night, or an ad-lib suddenly lets a whole routine make sense. I don't think it's possible to write stand up in isolation. You have to keep testing it with audiences, moulding it according to their reactions. At least half of my favourite jokes came as the result of an improvised moment on stage, or an audience reaction. Hence the new material nights.

I was opening at 99 Club @ Ku bar, a lovely little room in the basement of a gay bar. Unusually for that gig it was quite a small crowd, and, despite the best efforts of the MC, by the time I went on they were pretty quiet and not a little resistant to the idea of smiling, let along laughing. This is always a tricky situation at a new material night. There's no point trying out new stuff if the audience isn't warmed up, but if you spend too much time warming them up you have no time for the jokes you actually wanted to do. In the end I went for a compromise of spending the first few minutes bantering and warming them up and then slipping in a few new routines towards the end. I had to work pretty hard to get them laughing, and it felt like a useful test of the bits I did get to try. And at least I had got the night up and running, for which the other acts would be grateful. Opening any gig entails some responsibility not to fuck it up for everyone else. I felt happy that I'd got it off to a good start.

On the way over to my other gig I got a text saying that Old Rope needed acts and was I around? Old Rope is a brilliant new material gig and there are usually great acts on, so I didn't hesitate to agree and dashed over to the Phoenix near Oxford Circus. I was on almost as soon as I arrived, and had a good gig. It was a bigger audience than at the Ku bar, and they were already a bit more warmed up, although they were still not the easiest crowd in the world. I did most of the new jokes I had planned to do, and some of them worked very well. I was particularly pleased with a new bit about banks having to apologise for their crimes. Some routines didn't work so well, or I fluffed them a bit because I couldn't quite remember the right wording. But overall it felt successful and I was happy that I'd had a chance to try everything new at least once that night.

The final gig of the evening was back in Leicester Square, in a tiny room above a small pub called the Round Table. The Round Table holds a special place in my heart. I have performed in there many times over the years, for many different promoters and many different clubs. It is ludicrously small, about the size of an average living room, although I've been in there with an audience of 60+, which was the very definition of a health and safety nightmare. I've performed in there with a mic, without a mic, with a huge spotlight, without a huge spotlight, and over the last seven years have seen at least three refurbishments of that room. In fact, one of my first ever gigs was in there. It was in August 2003, in the middle of a heatwave, and all I can remember was that the room was unbearably hot and I was sweating profusely, both during and after my set! I've seen a few big name comedians perform in that tiny space as well. I remember a couple of years ago Lenny Henry being completely freaked out by the close proximity of the audience and the fact he could see them all - a bit of a change from the massive theatres he's used to!

Last night the room was quite busy if not crammed, and the club had gone for the no mic and no lighting option which is probably sensible in such a small space. It's amazing how much difference not having a mic can make, though. I was the penultimate act in a very long night and I could feel that the audience were quite tired when I went on. It took me a while to adjust my delivery to the room. Without a mic it's quite hard to throw away lines and still be heard; you have to project more and be slightly less conversational. My other challenge was that about half of the audience were not from the UK and therefore were not quite as quick to pick up my topical or political references. I ploughed on though, even doing my new jokes about The Only Way is Essex, despite the fact that almost nobody seemed to have seen the programme! Overall the gig was fine: I finished with some tried and tested material so as not to bring the energy down, and left happy that I'd given my new jokes a decent run out at least twice and in some cases three times.

On the way home I popped back into Old Rope to catch the end of the headliner's set. Nina Conti was absolutely hilarious and just a little bit disturbing; the perfect mix for a ventriloquism act. Her use of an audience member "puppet" was absolutely inspired. It was a great way to end a hectic night.

Itchy Stitches

So I went to my GP a few weeks ago and mentioned that I had a mole on the side of my chest that was a bit itchy. She looked at it, said it was probably nothing to worry about, but that she'd send me to a dermatologist to check. Just to be on the safe side.

I saw the dermatologist a few weeks later and she had a look at it, said it was probably nothing to worry about but that perhaps I should have it removed. Just to be on the safe side.

So on Friday I went to the hospital to have it removed. The doctor looked at it and then she said: "why are you having this removed?" And I couldn't really answer. I wanted to say: "you're the doctor, why don't you figure it out?" But that seemed unnecessarily aggressive, and besides, she was just about to cut a chunk out of me, and I didn't want her to slip "by accident".

But to be honest, I wasn't really sure why it was being removed. Nobody had seemed that worried about it. I suspect there was an element of arse-covering going on. Much better to remove it than leave it and then get blamed if there is a problem later. In the litigation-happy US I imagine there are thousands of unnecessary operations every year because a doctor would rather be seen to be doing something than not. Just to be on the safe side.

The operation itself was very quick and straightforward. The doctor injected me with a local anaesthetic, which very quickly made the area numb. I could still feel the cold of the sterile wipes, though, which I found interesting. I thought anaesthetic was meant to cover hot and cold as well as pain, but apparently not in this case.

She then cut away the mole using a scalpel. Well, I assume it was a scalpel. I couldn't really see so it could have been a blunt spoon as far as I know. Someone on Twitter said their doctor used scissors. I think that would have made me quite queasy. Once the mole was removed she stitched me up.

I wasn't expecting stitches. I don't know why; it seems obvious now. I think it's because the way the operation was described to me beforehand was so offhand, so "just to be on the safe side" so "it'll only be a local anaesthetic" so "it'll only take 30 minutes" that I didn't think it would involve any consequences apart from a small scar.

But no, I have stitches. I had to keep them dry for 48 hours, which wasn't very pleasant considering I had 3 gigs in that time and got quite sweaty. Now I can wash again (to the delight of those in close contact with me, I'm sure) but I'll have these stitches in for nearly two weeks before they are removed. It's not a big deal, but they are quite itchy and I'm slightly worried about bursting them whenever I lie down or stretch for something. There is also something very odd about having a length of spiky blue thread inside your skin. I feel a little bit like Jeff Goldblum early on in The Fly, when he starts getting little coarse black hairs growing on his back...

Also, because it's not visible unless I take my top off, I don't get sympathy from people unless I specifically tell them about it. Which seems a bit gauche. Unless of course I happen to write a blog about it.

So, what have we learnt?
1. All of the medical professionals who saw me were women.
2. None of them seemed very concerned about it, but decided to do something anyway, which is certainly better than the opposite situation.
3. I should think a bit more carefully about the consequences of operations, and maybe not book 3 gigs in the 48 hours after one.
4. I am very very brave.

Blue and Yellowy blue

So we are now a few months into having a Coalition Government. Whenever I hear that phrase it somehow sounds wrong. I think it’s because I’m so used to hearing about Coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I imagine a squad of twenty aggressive fuckers wearing blue, excited and ready to take on the enemy, and three or four soldiers wearing yellow hanging out at the back and quietly wondering if  there’s a more civilian-friendly way of attacking the stronghold. But in the end they are flattered by the attention of the others into grabbing the grenades and leading the assault.

I read yesterday that the welfare minister said that the Government wanted to come up with "a new definition of homelessness". Presumably to save money only people actually sleeping in cardboard boxes will now be considered worthy of help. Any plastic covering will make you ineligible for benefits.

What next? Education ministers coming up with a new definition of clever? To include anyone not actually stupid enough to cause themselves harm without constant supervision?

Health ministers coming up with a new definition of illness? To insist that the NHS doesn’t need to treat you unless you are actually going to die in the next 3 hours?

They may not have done that, but the Coalition has done something pretty damaging.  They’ve abolished NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. I always thought that acronym was part of its problem. It sounds too suspicious. At primary school we were all told not to describe something as simply “nice”. It sounds weak and pathetic. Maybe the organisation would have been more secure if it had been called the Society for Pharmaceutical Organisation and the Rationalising of Therapies, or SPORT. No Government would ever dare abolish SPORT!

But NICE was always in trouble, because it was hated by the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, who seem to base much of their coverage on the basis that everything causes cancer and everyone is going to get it. NICE is there to decide which treatments are affordable for the limited resources of the NHS. To the Mail and Express this smacks of communism. The idea that a drug that costs millions and might only extend life by a few weeks is perhaps less affordable than one that can help many people have a better quality of life, is seen as some sort of fascistic rationing, and must be stopped.

The Government has acceded to these demands, and wants to introduce a free market system for drug sales in the NHS. If a GP decides that a drug is necessary, he can prescribe it, regardless of the cost, as long as it stays within the overall budget of the GP’s practice. It's the wonderful free market in action again!

In theory this might work, but only in a world without advertising, marketing, over-worked doctors and above all the Daily fucking Mail. Because in reality GPs will be pressurised into providing drugs that they can’t afford as a result of slick marketing from the drug companies and in the fear of being attacked by the tabloids.

This will lead to scenarios where you might go to your GP with a cut on your hand only to be told:

“Sorry. Ideally I’d give you some antibiotics for that, but we’ve got no budget left this month. I spent it all on a new drug to keep Mrs Smith alive for another 2 months. Yes, she is the Mrs Smith whose face was splashed all over the papers recently, demanding that I treat her, despite her being 98 years old. Yes, she is also the Mrs Smith who said I was “worse than Hitler” for suggesting that our inner city practice might have some priorities other than her case. But I can assure you it has nothing to do with our budgetary situation. Why not come back next month and I’ll see what I can do, assuming you have any of your hand left by then…”

We need things like NICE. In the same way we need the Health and Safety Executive, the Office for Fair Trading and many other organisations. Yes, in a perfect world a free market would provide many of the services we need for a reasonable price. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world where Simon Cowell exists and yet hover-cars don’t. A world where a billion people are in poverty and yet Piers Morgan has a job. A world where bankers can make up money and then get given billions of pounds of real money to replace it when they realise they can’t spend their made up money anymore.

Essentially, our world is full of dicks, and a free market will only allow the dicks to prosper. If we want the occasional nice (sorry!) person to do well, without having to become a dick, we need to have some regulation and organisations to do it.

Or we could just redefine fairness as: “whoever has the money gets more.” And leave it at that. 

Trick or Treat

So Halloween has come and gone again, like the over-commercialised, Americanised excuse to dress up like a whore and eat enough sweets to give diabetes to an elephant that it is.

When I was younger, Trick or Treat used to be quite scary. You'd get teenagers in hooded tops banging on your door, saying: "give us some sweets or we'll break your house." Not so much trick or treating as demanding money with menaces.

But now I live in quite a posh area of North London, and it's very different. You see parents leading round small children dressed as Marie Antoinette, or The Credit Crunch. And most of them won’t accept sweets. You have to give them couscous.

I discovered recently that it didn't used to be trick or treat, but trick for a treat. That’s gone now. Presumably because of child prostitution laws.

Egging seems to be the method of choice for tricking these days. Yesterday morning I saw the remains of various yolk-based attacks littering the streets.

In fact, I heard that in some areas of the country shopkeepers are told not to sell eggs to children around this time of year. They become contraband, like cigarettes or alcohol. I love the idea of teenagers hanging around outside greengrocers, approaching adults saying: “buy us half dozen free range, mate? Go on…just half dozen! OK, three? We just really want an omelette, innit!”