Green on...

The Camden Heads Off

2011-01-17T17:55:00.000Z

On Wednesday I performed for possibly the last time at The Camden Head pub in Islington. I was the final act, and as my set came to a close, I began to feel a little nostalgic.

It is a room that I have performed in many many times over the years. I did some of my very earliest open spots for The Comedy Brewhouse club there, including one where I had my first heckle (I can't remember what it was, but I remember that I told the heckler to fuck off and that seemed to work). I did my first ever 20 minute set there for a poetry and comedy night, and I learned how to compere there when I ran the weekly 99 Club Islington gig from 2005 until 2009. I previewed all of my solo shows there and tried loads of new jokes over the years, many of which never saw the inside of another club...

The Camden Head has hosted comedy nights in its upstairs room for many years. I'm not sure exactly how long ago it started, but I know that The Meccano Club used to be held there at least fifteen years ago. Since then dozens of promoters have run comedy nights and it has remained an important venue for comedy newcomers and acts in need of a good room to try new material. I always felt that the management of the pub didn't really understand what a good thing they had going with the comedy, which brought a large and diverse audience into their pub most nights of the week. If, as it now seems possible, they have finally decided to shut down comedy completely then another little piece of comedy history will be lost.

The Camden Head's upstairs is a good room for comedy. It has a corner stage, simple lighting and enough chairs and tables to seat about 40-50 people, although we sometimes squeezed in more than 70 on a good night. The audiences tended to be a mix of Islington folk and people from further afield, and were usually polite but not easy to please. I often heard it said that getting a laugh there was a good indication that material was strong: they wouldn't just go for any old rubbish!

I ran a weekly club in that room for nearly four years and saw many great acts perform there. Rhod Gilbert was a personal favourite of mine: he closed one early show with a blistering set including his Ryanair luggage routine that would soon make him famous. A couple of years later Wil Hodgson held a packed room spellbound with an hour preview of his hypnotic storytelling. Marek Larwood from We Are Klang experimented with all sorts of characters and routines, usually to hilarious effect. Simon Brodkin played Lee Nelson and many other personas as he produced prolific amounts of new material. Lenny Henry had an assistant set up an autocue at the back of the room and tried out jokes for a new TV show (which never saw the light of day).

One show in particular sticks in the mind: it was the night of the Champions League Final in 2006, and Arsenal were playing. The pub was showing the football and it seemed unlikely that anyone in Islington would want to come to our little comedy club. Then we got a call saying that Jimmy Carr wanted to try out some stuff and we were the only club listed as running that night. We sent some flyerers out with the information that a big TV star would be performing and gathered a small but respectable audience of football-avoiders. The gig itself was quite surreal. The bar downstairs was completely rammed and every movement in the game inspired huge cheers or groans. Upstairs it felt as though we were riding on top of a seething mass of lunatics who might break through at any point, and several punchlines were swallowed by the downstairs din. But the show happened, Jimmy tried his jokes and the audience and I laughed a lot. Then soon afterwards I saw Jimmy fall down the stairs. Which possibly made me laugh more. To myself. Later on.

There were times when I loved performing in that room. As the compere I felt like I held the night together and made friends with the audience, trying out new jokes and improvising brilliantly. Other nights were like wading through treacle: I couldn't connect with the crowd and had to work hard to raise even a smile. I learned so much about compering there: working the room, keeping it fresh, talking to people without scaring them, getting people to quieten down if they were too boisterous.

I undoubtedly had some of my best gigs in that room and some of my worst. There was the night when a large group of women were asked to leave because they wouldn't stop talking, and then one of them attacked the person on the door. Then there was the night when almost the entire audience was made up of Spanish students who smiled silently throughout the whole first half. When I asked them at the interval if they were having difficulty with the language one of them said: "No, we understand the words. We just don't understand why they are supposed to be funny." And I'll never forget the night when I was having difficulty getting much response at first, until I caught my foot on something on the stage and fell over in a properly slapstick way, which brought the house down. Marek still says that's the funniest thing he's ever seen me do. The bastard.

It's a pity that the Camden Head will not be doing comedy in the future, although there is already another Camden Head actually in Camden that also runs comedy, so maybe it will simply lead to fewer confused people going to the wrong place!

Comedy needs small rooms for new acts to learn their craft and more experienced acts to try new material, and I hope that this isn't the beginning of a trend. I wasn't a frequent visitor in more recent times, but it's sad to think that I'll never perform on that stage again. And never fall over on it again either.

Triple Crowd

2010-11-09T14:49:00.000Z

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

2010-11-08T15:12:00.000Z

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

2010-11-04T16:38:00.000Z

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

2010-11-02T12:19:00.000Z

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!”

University Blues

2010-10-30T16:56:00.000+01:00

I’ve just read a very powerful attack on the Browne report on University funding:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble

Essentially Collini argues that the press has missed the point by concentrating so hard on the questions of individual student funding. Of course raising tuition fees and loans is an important issue. However, it is more important to realise that Browne has recommended the removal of the majority of the government grant to fund teaching in universities and suggested replacing it with a market system.

All decisions on the teaching and funding of courses will effectively be left to the market to decide. 18 and 19 year olds are going to determine what is taught in Universities, which sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. This will surely lead to courses in playing video games, watching Murder She Wrote and how to cook a meal for four using just a tin of baked beans, some rice and a courgette. And no tin opener.

Students are the very worst people to decide what they should be studying! It’s like asking prisoners how thick they want the bars or how secure they'd prefer locks. Education should be about what people need to know, not just what they think they want to know.

Also, if we have a market forces system, that won’t improve the quality of the universities’ teaching. It will simply improve the quality of their advertising and marketing departments. Universities and colleges already advertise for students, boasting about their better facilities or cooler alumni. This will just get worse. Universities will start ripping out libraries and replacing them with cinemas, and their advertising will get more ambitious. I can just imagine new posters on buses: “Male graduates from Warwick have bigger penises.” Or: “Did you know that David Cameron went to Oxford? What a wanker.”

The bigger question must be: do we need so many students in so many universities? Labour’s aim to get 50% of young people into university was laudable to an extent, but only if the degrees were rigorous and useful. Degrees are now being devalued because the number of graduates has risen so much in the last few years. Jobs that never required a degree in the past are now asking for a 2.1 or above.

This means that poorer and less academic young people are hit with a double-whammy. Either they go to university, getting into a large amount of debt in the process, in order to have a chance in a crowded job market, or they decide not to get a degree and find themselves shut out of low paid roles that would once have been a good first step on the job ladder. It’s hard to see who wins in this inflationary environment.

The only thing that is clear is that the Browne report will do nothing to improve the situation. Elite universities will become more elite, but only in social terms. As Collini says:

“it is a necessary truth about markets that they tend to replicate and even intensify the existing distribution of economic power. ‘Free competition’ between rich and poor consumers means Harrods for the former and Aldi for the latter: that’s what the punters have ‘chosen’.”

Beautifully put.

Universities are a public good, like a health service, a road system or a collective understanding that Simon Cowell is a prick. They should be funded and supported properly, not abandoned to a free market experiment that could quite possibly lead to Cambridge and Oxford charging £40,000 a year and the University of McDonalds offering a six month course in advanced burger-flipping techniques. Applying a market system to the public sector is almost always a failure. Remember the railways. A free market university system will be a similar disaster. Lectures will be cancelled due to a lack of available staff or leaves on the lectern.

In terms of funding, we don’t need loans or a graduate tax. We already have income tax, which acts as a basic graduate tax already. If you earn more, you pay more. The Government always claims that graduates earn more, so therefore they pay more. Yes, non-graduates pay more too, but that’s just the price to pay for living in a progressive society. I don’t have children so I don’t use schools, nurseries or maternity services. However I have no objection to helping to pay for them.

Sadly this sort of thinking doesn’t appear very popular at the moment, in the rush to save money and slash budgets. I’m just very glad that I went to university before all of these reforms. Students are going to have to make some very difficult decisions in the years ahead. Universities will be very different places. Although they’ll have cool cinemas and amazing bars so the students probably won’t care.

C*ts and B**kers

2010-10-29T14:01:00.000+01:00

I heard someone on the radio after the cuts were announced saying: “We’re in this together. We have to think of it like wartime. Get a bit of the Blitz Spirit.” Well, perhaps, but there are some crucial differences. For example, in 1940 we didn’t blow up our own houses and then give bonuses to the Luftwaffe.

Banks are trying to smarten up their act. For example, online transfers are now very fast. I had one the other day from my friend that took less than a minute. So why did it used to take so long? I think they’ve simply removed the “take out the cash and roll around in it for a while, screaming I'm rich, I'm rich, rich beyond my wildest dreams! Mwhahahahahaha!” section of the process.

When you look at the economic chaos they have caused, I don’t think the banks have suffered enough. If we can’t stop their bonuses, then we should try other methods. Every time you take out money from a bank ATM you get offered an "advice slip". That should change to an "apology slip". And it can’t just be a standard apology. Every one has to be different. Handwritten. Banks should be forced to start employing people to come up with ever more elaborate ways of saying how dreadfully sorry they are. If nothing else, it might help boost employment figures. Plus sales of pens.

So I probably won't do that gig at the zoo...

2010-10-26T13:05:00.003+01:00

There is an old showbiz cliche that you should never work with children or animals. They are unpredictable, hard to direct and likely to shit everywhere. Although I've worked with kids a couple of times on TV shows and they were both actually scarily grown up and professional. And had CVs significantly longer than any of the adult actors they were working with. Possibly they were vampires.

Working with children is one thing. Doing stand up comedy for children is something very different. It's a growing genre. James Campbell is mostly responsible for this. His "Comedy Club 4 Kids" has demonstrated that it is possible to perform stand up for even quite young children without patronising them and without completely alienating their parents as well. I've done a few gigs at "4 Kids" and generally found them enjoyable. I've found that by playing to the children but also throwing a few references to the adults you can get the kids laughing with their parents and vice versa. It can be a hard gig, though. I've had a couple of experiences where the children simply stared. Paying attention, but lacking the social training that suggests that you should at least smile if you are enjoying something. In those situations it's usually time to bring out the poo jokes.

So comedy for kids is now relatively well established, and there are clear rules: no swearing, sex or drugs references etc. However, in the last few days I've performed at two gigs that have been somewhere between comedy for kids and comedy for adults. In other words: comedy for teenagers.

The first show was on Friday at a school in Sudbury: the gig had actually been organised by a sixth form drama class as part of their coursework (you never did that in my day, etc.) and the audience was a mix of 15, 16 and 17 year olds and quite a few adults. Due to traffic nightmares I didn't get there until the interval and so missed seeing how the acts had fared in the first half. I enquired as to the rules. The promoter said that we should keep it reasonably clean, but that actually none of the acts had so far so I shouldn't really worry. In the end the gig was fun. I simply did the kind of material I normally would, just without as much swearing as I might use at a rowdy Friday night gig, and without some of the more adult sexual references. I enjoyed myself and the audience seemed to have a good time.

This turned out to be merely a warm up for a far more challenging gig. Yesterday I performed at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich at a special "No Adults Allowed" gig. It was a big room (300+) and nearly sold out, and as the title of the night might suggest, the whole audience were in the age range 12-17, with no adults allowed in the auditorium. The average age was about 14. Too young to do normal "adult" material to, but too old to do family friendly kids material to. All of the acts were backstage wondering what to open with, what to have in reserve. Again the rules weren't entirely clear: swearing was probably frowned on, but not totally banned. And after all, the parents weren't in the room so they wouldn't hear what was going on anyway.

In this situation, the real problem is not about what the management wants, it's about what the audience will understand and respond to. So many jokes that work at a normal gig will sail over the heads of a younger audience. Stuff about relationships, money, politics, history and any popular culture reference to anything made before 2006 will simply be incomprehensible to the vast majority of the crowd. Easy, even hack, jokes about the A-Team or The Godfather will seem like accounts of ancient history to people born after Oasis released their first album.

The stress of the evening was slightly increased by the fact that all 3 acts were present but the compere was stuck in traffic and running increasingly late. I was supposed to be closing the night but at the last minute was drafted in as replacement compere. From thinking that I would have the advantage of seeing how the rest of the comics dealt with the crowd and tailoring my set accordingly, I was suddenly about to go on first without much of an idea as to what to say. I took a deep breath, a few swigs of water and stepped on to the stage, hoping that I'd be able to make a connection with the audience.

Thankfully, the first section of the show went very well. It took me a couple of minutes to get the night going, but eventually the banter began to click. I realised early on that I had very little to talk to them about. The standard questions of "what do you do?" and "are you in a relationship" have no relevance to that age group. Asking "what do you want to do when you grow up?" was simply met by a shrugging "dunno" on the couple of occasions I tried it. But I kept plugging away and the room warmed up. At first I was a bit tentative about content, still not sure how far I could push it. But when I asked a boy on the front row what he liked doing when he wasn't at school, his friend shouted "wank!" and that brought the house down. I remembered that there were no disapproving adults in the room and relaxed - I could play the part of the mischievous older brother, being a bit naughty whilst also keeping them under control. I threw in a few jokes that got a good reaction, got some clapping and cheering going and introduced the first act, who proceeded to have a really good gig. I breathed a sigh of relief. The show was up and running and so far, so good.

After the first interval the audience was now fully stocked with ice creams, lollies, sugary drinks and sweets. I had a brief flashback to my days doing Christmas shows, and it dawned on me that this crowd was going to get more and more hyped up on sugar throughout the evening, unlike an adult audience that tends to get drunker and slower as the night goes on. The beginning of the second section was a bit of a struggle at first, almost as though the crowd had reset, and I had to work hard again to get some energy in the room. I hit a seam of gold though when I asked what people wanted for Christmas. One boy said: "my school to burn down", another just said: "cash" and a third said: "surface to air missiles". I was reminded how twisted children's imaginations can be and launched into some slightly darker material which they lapped up.

It was at the beginning of the third and final section that things got a bit weird. I again commented on how many sweets and ice creams seemed to have appeared in the crowd, and the kids, bolstered by sucrose and E numbers, and possibly feeling properly relaxed at last, started shouting out what snacks they had bought whilst I commented on whether I thought they were any good or not. It was quite fun, and I said something like: "this has just turned into a game of let's shout out any food, hasn't it?"

Then someone threw a sweet.

It landed next to me on the stage. I'm pretty sure it was a friendly gesture. There was no hostility in the room and I think someone simply got a bit over-excited and wanted to share their sweets with me. I looked down and said: "Right. Someone appears to have thrown a sweet at me."

Then someone else threw a sweet. I said: "Er..."

Then someone else threw a sweet.

Then someone threw an ice cream.

Then everyone threw something.

Within seconds, I felt like a pop group at the Reading Festival. Sweets, bottles, ice creams and choc ices rained down on me from the auditorium. What had started as a nice gesture had become a hysterical competition. With no adults to tell them not to, the kids just copied each other and threw stuff. Some girls threw their shoes. A boy near the front threw his hat. Another boy even threw his coat.

It was quite a surreal experience. It wasn't like I was being booed off. They were just over-excited and being silly. I decided to stand my ground and simply act surprised. Luckily none of the sweets hit me - someone caught me with a glancing blow with a Calyppo but that was the extent of the damage. After a few seconds of madness the stage was littered with day-glo debris. I picked up a couple of wrapped sweets and a Mars bar and put them in my pocket. Then I calmly said: "Literally stop now."

The barrage petered out. There was an odd, giddy atmosphere in the room. I knew my job as the compere was to bring on the next act to a warmed up but not riled up, audience, so I had to take some time to sort it out. I needed to keep it light, and not act like a nervous supply teacher. After all, what could I actually do? If one person throws something, you can get security to chuck them out. If everyone throws something, you just need to calm them down.

I cleared the stage as quickly as I could, kicking the debris to the back or sides and throwing back the various bits of clothing that had been lobbed, all the while berating the audience for being stupid. There was one more brief flurry of sweets when I started to explain that they really shouldn't be throwing stuff, and for a split second I did begin to worry that I wouldn't be able to control them and I would be like a supply teacher and have to call for help. But I was a supply teacher with two secret weapons: a microphone and the ability to swear. A couple of well placed "fuck"s got them laughing again and slowly the audience began to settle down.

I told a couple of stories, explained once again that throwing stuff really wasn't cool, and finished with one final joke before introducing the closing act. She came on wearing a hard hat she'd found backstage, which made me smile. She then proceeded to do a reference to the Chilean miners, which went straight over the audience's heads, proving that current affairs is another area that is hard to make jokes about for teenagers. But they didn't throw anything during her set and she went on to have a good gig.

As I left the stage I felt elated that I'd managed to deal with the situation well enough that we could continue with the gig and I didn't have to call on security. At the end of the show I thanked the audience for coming and said they'd been lovely all night, except for a couple of minutes when they'd been dicks, which I think was a fair assessment. The gig had turned out to be challenging in a slightly different way than I was expecting, but in the end I was pleased with how it had all gone, and the promoters and theatre staff seemed happy. Job done.

I'm looking forward to playing to adults again though.

Not even a double entendre on "bust"...

2010-10-18T14:14:00.000+01:00

It has often been said that comedy does well in a downturn. Alternative Comedy started in the dark days of the late 70s/early 80s, and in our current economic crisis, stand up comedy has never been more popular. Michael McIntyre’s Roadshow, Live at the Apollo and many many panel shows dominate the TV schedules, and comedians seem to be filling more arenas around the country than rock stars these days. The rest of the country may be in recession, but comedy is booming.

However, if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that if you have a boom, you’re going to have a bust. Why should comedy be any different?

The signs are already there. The open mic circuit is bursting at the seams with new, young comics desperate to get their chance in the spotlight. Unscrupulous promoters, the Bernie Madoffs of this world, exploit naïve newbies with pyramid scheme-like deals – bring a friend nights, pay to play deals. And yet still the new comics emerge from more and more stand up comedy courses, rushing into the lower levels of the circuit in an unregulated torrent, like debt-burdened graduates flooding in the job market just as employment opportunities dry up. It’s a supply and demand disaster waiting to happen.

The internet could also play a part, just as in the dot.com crash. Sites like Twitter and Facebook spread new jokes around the world in seconds. Topical humour saturates our daily lives – trying to come up with original material is getting harder and harder as everyone is surrounded by comedy all of the time. From Youtube clips to text jokes to clever status updates, comedy has become democratized and therefore devalued. Why pay for laughs when you can listen to your mates mucking around on a new podcast?

Within a couple of years this could all come to a head. Rates of laughter will suddenly plummet. There’ll be a run on puns leading to a collapse in the value of observational material and the government will have to step in to prevent the collapse of large scale comedy clubs.

This will in turn lead to massive cutbacks in humour, with only a few wry remarks allowed as we have to pay back a huge chuckle deficit that will leave the next generation of comedians struggling under the massive weight of public frowning. Once famous comedians will be forced back into tiny comedy clubs and thousands of hopeful wannabes will have to find jobs in other devastated sectors such as teaching or banking.

And then with a single one liner it will start all over again.

On the board

2008-08-17T13:08:00.002+01:00

It's been a strange week for my show. From getting pretty nice numbers every day, on Wednesday I walked out on stage to see just five people in the audience, plus a reviewer sitting at the back! It was a particular shock because I'd been told that I'd sold at least 15 that morning, so something must have gone wrong with the box office system, or someone was looking at the wrong figures. Playing to that few people is always difficult, especially in a big room in Edinburgh, but because I knew a reviewer was it was important that I just deliver the show as well as possible, and I performed with as much energy as I could muster. It actually went well, and led to a nice review. But it was odd.

The next day I had a larger, but weirdly much harder audience. Lots of older people in, who didn't seem to get some of the references or enjoy the slightly ruder material in the show. Something I've noticed over the years is that even if older people enjoy a comedy show, they often don't laugh out loud - that seems to be something that younger people do more often, so ideally you need a mix of age groups. It was definitely the case on this night. I even had a couple of friends in who said things like: "I really enjoyed it, I don't know why we weren't all laughing!" A bit frustrating. I think I had a reviewer in that night as well: in some ways I'd have preferred him to be there the previous night!

Friday was ok, although I didn't feel on top form - I think the exhaustion of doing the Festival was suddenly beginning to hit me, and at one point near the beginning of the show I felt really light-headed and spaced-out. Quite disconcerting when you know you have to do another 40 minutes of material! I was probably a bit on auto-pilot for the rest of the show, trying to get through it without literally fainting... Thankfully I got some sleep that night and felt a lot better for Saturday. That was a relief, because on Saturday I finally managed to get on the board!

It's a phrase all comics talk about at the Fringe: if you sell out your name gets chalked up on the Sell Out board. I wasn't sure that I'd ever manage it this year because I'm in quite a big room and relatively early in the evening, but yesterday was a busy day with many shows selling out, including mine!

It made such a difference playing to a large audience in that room. There was so much more energy from the start, and I really enjoyed the show again. I even added some adlibs and little bits here and there which I haven't used for a while. I felt relaxed and in control for the first time in a couple of days, and I'm now really looking forward to the final week of performances. If I can get on the board another one or two times, that would be brilliant. And hopefully I won't have to play to five again...

Day Off

2008-08-13T12:53:00.002+01:00

Monday was my day off. Everyone told me that I should make the most of it - get out of Edinburgh, do something completely unrelated to the Fringe, generally escape the madness for a bit. What I actually did was go and see two shows that clash with mine, then spend the evening drinking with other comedians in Brookes Bar.

It was fun though. I really enjoyed Richard Herring's show The Headmaster's Son, and then had a good time in the bar chatting to various people I haven't seen all festival. Doing a full hour every day has been quite tiring, so I haven't felt that up for socialising every night. However, now we're over half way through I feel like I can relax a little bit. I've also just made a list of shows that I really want to see in the next couple of weeks. If I get to half of them I'll be impressed!

The evening before my day off I performed at Spank, which was brilliant. It's the only really late gig I've got booked in this year and I wish I was doing more of them. It was great fun performing to a big, rowdy audience, even if the microphone wasn't working for the first minute...

Ten years on

2008-08-09T13:29:00.002+01:00

I had a good day yesterday. The weather was warm and sunny (well, grey, but I'm now working on Edinburgh expectations so it felt warm and sunny) and I had a really enjoyable show. I think it was the best of the run so far, in front of one of the smallest audiences. There were only about 20 people in, but they were really nice and I enjoyed performing for them. I think there might have been a reviewer in as well, but I didn't spot anyone writing notes, so if they were there it was in disguise...

The strangest thing about the show yesterday was that during it I discovered that a family in the audience had previously seen me ten years ago in Edinburgh when I performed in my first student show. It was nice to think that they recognised me and decided to see what I was up to now, and quite bizarre to realise that it was a whole decade since my first show here. Someone also came up to me in the Dome and said that they really enjoyed The Big Briefcase, a show I did six years ago. The nostalgia just keeps on coming!

I had another very enjoyable gig at the 99 Club last night, and then tried to get a bit of an early night, which in Edinburgh terms means before 2am. I just about managed it. I've got quite a busy weekend, with two shows plus several extra gigs including a very late one at Spank! on Sunday night. Then Monday is my day off - I have no idea what I'm going to do!

A break in the clouds

2008-08-08T13:34:00.002+01:00

The weather in Edinburgh this week has been awful. Really awful. Cold, windy and very very wet. I saw horizontal rain on Wednesday. That's the Scottish summer for you. I'm pretty sure that at least one pair of my shoes has been ruined by being saturated on the walk home a couple of nights ago. I wish I'd brought the Wellington boots I bought for Glastonbury! I saw people on the Royal Mile flyering for the country of Spain the other day. They couldn't have picked a better time. If they were selling tickets on the street, I imagine they'd have a lot of takers.

On the other hand, I'm having a much better time this week than I did last week when the weather was nice. Despite the optimism of my previous blog entry, the following couple of shows were very quiet, and it was getting to a point by Sunday where I was beginning to despair of getting the show to work as well as it had done in previews.

Then on Monday I did a couple of late extra gigs (99 Club and Electric Cabaret) which were a lot of fun and I relaxed properly for the first time since I got here. I remembered that my show is just stand up, and I've been doing that for ages, and with that realisation I began to enjoy it more. The last few shows have been a lot of fun, and the audiences have seemed to be a lot more engaged as well. I don't feel like I've completely nailed it yet, but then there's still a lot of the festival to go.

I'm going into this weekend looking forward to doing the show and also doing a few more extra gigs. It also looks like the weather is going to be a bit nicer. Maybe this time I'll be able to enjoy it!

Third time lucky

2008-08-02T16:08:00.004+01:00

Three shows in, and I feel like I'm beginning to hit my stride. Last night we managed to get the heat/noise balance just right so the room was actually quite cool and I could hear the audience. Bonus!

I tried a slightly different opening to the show as well, chatting a bit to the crowd before launching into the show, and that seemed to work better. It's strange getting used to doing an Edinburgh show after working in clubs: the atmosphere is very different. Audiences in Edinburgh seem to come in and sit back, expecting a theatrical "show". Audiences in clubs are often just there for a night out, and usually come in bigger groups and are already in a good mood before the show starts. Both types of audiences have good and bad points, and I'm beginning to work out how I need to approach the Fringe shows in a different way to my club style. My show felt a lot better generally, although it still took a bit of time to warm up. I can feel myself getting more confident though, and that can only be a good thing. I'm relaxing into the festival a bit more, and I think that is translating into a better performance.

I also managed to catch my first other show last night: Dan Antopolski's Penetrating Gaze. I really enjoyed it. Dan is one of my favourite comedians, and his shows are always a great mix of cleverness and silliness. He's also added some "white rapping" to the show this year, which is both hilarious and genuinely impressive.

The PR stuff is beginning to kick in now as well. I've done a couple of interviews for podcasts, which were fun, and have got a radio interview today before the show. It's all useful practice, even if you never really know how much it leads to actual increased audiences.

The city feels busier today. It feels like the Fringe has finally begun. Only three more weeks to go!

Fans

2008-08-01T10:59:00.003+01:00

The big news for the second show was that I managed to get a fan installed on the side of the stage, which made the show a lot cooler. Unfortunately it also made it harder for me to hear the audience, which considering that it was a slightly quieter show anyway, made it a bit disconcerting to perform. I concentrated on performing it with the correct pace and timing, and felt like I did a good job, even though it was sometimes difficult to tell what was going on in the audience. People tell me it was a good show though.

I'm looking forward to the weekend - so far this year has been very quiet across the whole city. It's an early festival this year, and I get the feeling that a lot of people don't really know that it has started yet. With any luck that will change soon...or we'll all be having a very quiet year!

And we're off

2008-07-31T12:16:00.002+01:00

In time-honoured fashion, my first show did not go entirely without a hitch. There was a fire alarm in the venue earlier in the day (caused by a smoke machine apparently - idiot technology that can't distinguish between real smoke and theatrical smoke!) which meant that my show was delayed by about twenty minutes. Not the best start.

The venue was also incredibly warm. I was sort of expecting this, as it tends to be the case across all venues in Edinburgh, but it was still strange and uncomfortable performing in a sauna-like atmosphere for the first time in a while. I'm sure I'll get more used to it, and the nice venue staff are sorting out some extra fans and stuff, so I think things will probably improve as the run continues.

The show itself was ok. Not amazing but fine. I had quite a few people in, but I think most of them were the result of "papering the house". This is a theatrical term that sounds like the kind of thing you do whilst redecorating a new property, but is in fact just giving away free tickets to bulk up an audience. Most shows do this for the first two or three performances; once the weekend starts you shouldn't need to anymore. Famous last words.

I didn't start brilliantly because I was a bit thrown by the delayed start and the heat and felt like I needed to talk about them at the start. It was a bit stupid, because I just sounded like I was apologising before I'd done anything. Once I got back on track with the show things improved and I was reasonably happy with it. Some bits worked better than others, and I fluffed the odd line and got a couple of things in the wrong order, but that's to be expected for a first show, particularly considering that I haven't done a preview for a week. So overall I think it was a decent start with a few things to work on for tonight.

The weirdest thing was getting used to the fact that it's just me in the show. None of my "people" (promoter, director etc) could make it to the first night so afterwards I just said thanks to the venue staff and walked outside, feeling strangely anticlimactic. I'm so used to doing shows in Edinburgh with other people, when you can immediately dissect the show, discuss what went well and badly, whether it was a weird crowd etc. I just wandered around for a few minutes before heading over to the Pleasance Courtyard to meet some friends. A very odd feeling. I think I've got some people I know coming to the show tonight, so at least I'll be able to discuss it with them afterwards. Also I believe that I have my first reviewer in, so with any luck it'll be a bit tighter and, crucially, on time.

Or I might have to sabotage the smoke machine...

It begins

2008-07-29T18:37:00.002+01:00

In the last 24 hours I have encountered the following things:

- Freezing mist
- Blazing sunshine
- Torrential rain
- Roadworks
- A bus being towed by a truck
- A shop that only sells booze and one carton of orange juice
- Comedians with brittle smiles but still strong voices
- My venue technicians
- My venue
- My face on posters

I must be in Edinburgh.

I have yet to encounter the following things:

- Audiences
- Reviewers
- Flyers
- Flyerers
- Beer
- Really rubbish food
- More beer
- Comedians with destroyed voices and dreams
- Fruit

That is all still to come. Except perhaps the last one.

Here we go...!

Comedy, music and mud. But mainly mud.

2008-06-30T15:31:00.003+01:00

So Glastonbury was a success. I performed some stand up in the Cabaret Marquee alongside Arthur Smith, Simon Munnery and Isy Suttie, and really enjoyed myself. The crowd seemed to enjoy it too so I was glad that I made the effort of getting there. The journey was quite epic, involving taxis, trains, buses and lots and lots of walking through mud carrying a massive rucksack.

Within seconds of arriving at the site, I was very glad I'd invested in some proper Wellington boots and waterproof clothing. It was very wet and muddy, and it was a long walk in the rain from the entrance to the Cabaret area. I came from London with Isy, who had brought a purple suitcase with wheels that soon got bunged up with mud. It was quite funny, although I did end up being the gentleman and carrying it some of the way! It was great to have a companion who had also never been before: it felt like we were going on an adventure together.

Once we had done the gig we were free to wander around and get a sense of the place. The main thing that struck me was just how big the Glastonbury festival is. It really is massive, and can be quite overwhelming particularly if you're not sure where you are going. It's bizarrely difficult to find your way round as well. Despite all of the sign posts the stages are cunningly situated around corners and down slight hills, so they are easy to miss. Even the main Pyramid stage took a bit of finding.

It is deeply smelly, particularly near the toilets, which are predictably horrific. I was so glad to be camping in the Cabaret performers' area, which was really quite civilised in terms of facilities. However either way there is no running water, so the only way to clean your hands is by using wet wipes or antibacterial gel. That means that within a few hours your hands feel strangely sticky and not-quite clean, with dirt trapped under your fingernails. The first thing I did on getting on the train back was thoroughly wash my hands! When a train toilet feels like the height of cleanliness, you know you've been to Glastonbury.

There is a pervasive sense of friendliness at the festival which is definitely endearing. People are very smiley and chatty. There are also lots of people on drugs. Those facts may be connected.

Perhaps the most noticeable thing for me was the noise. Being there is like having tinnitus. You are constantly bombarded with music from every angle, from the stages, stereos on stalls, bands playing in cafes, etc It's hard to distinguish between all of the different sounds, but they are unrelenting. Without earplugs there is no way I'd have been able to sleep at all, as the cacophony carries on all night.

Because I was only there for one evening, I didn't get to see much actual performance. I watched some comedy. Glenn Wool was great, as was Ian Cognito, playing the final set of the night to an almost comatose audience, and yet still imbuing his performance with energy and style. I also caught some of Estelle and Jimmy Cliff, who were both fun, although Estelle did that annoying thing of playing her recent number 1 song (American Boy) and yet getting the crowd to sing most of it for her. Really badly.

I didn't go and see the first night headliners The Kings of Leon, mainly because I had never heard of them. I would have gone to see Jay-Z and the Verve if I'd still been there, but by then I was back in London doing gigs in comedy clubs with walls not made out of canvas. Maybe next year I'll stay for the whole thing, if they'll have me back!

Festival spirit

2008-06-17T16:06:00.006+01:00

So Edinburgh suddenly feels very close. Not geographically, obviously, but temporally. And by "Edinburgh" I of course mean "The Edinburgh Festival", or more precisely "The Edinburgh Fringe", or more precisely still "My first solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe". It's a quirk of comedians that we all refer to August as "Edinburgh". I know the city exists outside of the Festival - I've been there many times - but every time I visit not during August I'm faintly surprised and disappointed, as though waking up from an amazing dream to discover a greyer, less colourful reality.

But before Edinburgh comes preview season. Previews are generally a bit of a nightmare. As the comedian you're trying to mould your material into a show, discovering flaws and ideas in front of an audience. It can be exciting but is more often than not just a bit dull and frustrating, at least until the show is basically ready. Getting an audience for a preview is very difficult. Hot weather, football, exams and various other factors conspire to make it the worst time of the year for comedy anyway, and persuading people who don't know you to come and see you for a whole hour is teeth-grindingly hard. I've been flyering at gigs I've been compering, sending out lots of emails and Facebook messages, and still I've already had to cancel two previews because barely anybody turned up. The one preview I've done went well and I'm excited about doing the show: all I need now is for audiences at all of my other previews!

Before Edinburgh I'm also doing two other Festivals, and they couldn't be more different. I'm doing a full hour at the Filey Festival in North Yorkshire, and I'm also doing a ten minute spot in a show with Arthur Smith for Radio 4 at the Glastonbury Festival. I've never been there before. In fact I've never been to a proper music festival before, so I feel a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I keep thinking about muddy fields as far as the eye can see and trench foot. Watching Radiohead in the pouring rain from the comfort of my front room, thinking "Wow, that looks unbelievably awful!" Equally, I don't like the sun very much as I burn very easily.

I'm hoping it's cloudy.

That might be why I've never been to a music festival before.

Oh, and Happy New Year etc...

2008-01-07T17:17:00.000Z

So I was in a Pound Shop today and noticed that a rolling pin was on sale. But it wasn't labelled "rolling pin". It was labelled: "Movable Stick".

Movable Stick.

Surely every stick is movable. Unless it's really massive and heavy, in which case you'd be hard pushed to call it a "stick". It would be a log. Or a tree.

Who was making that packaging and decided that the description "rolling pin" was too specific? Did they think that it was limiting the possible customer base?

- "Hmm, 'rolling pin' sounds a bit too kitchen-specific. Maybe if we call it something else other people might want to buy it as well. Any ideas?"
- "Wooden cylinder with handles?"
- "Not catchy enough."
- "Pushable plank?"
- "Not quite..."
- "Movable stick?"
- "Yes! That's the one! Now all we have to do is get it into Pound Shops and sell a million and we'll have made a million!"
- "A million movable sticks?"
- "Exactly! You'd better get your lathe out."

A slightly rubbish Samaritan

2007-11-21T15:55:00.000Z

I was standing outside the library today chatting on my mobile when I saw a man fall over. Now, normally I'm a fan of the al-fresco slapstick scenario: I enjoy You've Been Framed as much as the next bored person on a Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately this wasn't very amusing. I had been watching the old, clearly drunk, man totter slowly across the road for at least a minute before seeing him fall very slowly to the ground, almost as though he was lowering himself down.

Assuming that he'd get up quickly, I carried on with my phone call, but after at least a minute of watching him struggle on his back, like an upturned tortoise, I finished the call and went over to help him. As I got closer, I began to smell alcohol, urine and general grime. For a moment I considered putting on my gloves before helping him up, but then chastised myself for being such a prissy middle class idiot and just got on with it.

He didn't seemed injured so the obvious priority was to get him out of the road so he wasn't going to get hit by traffic. He was surprisingly heavy; luckily another passer-by saw my (and more importantly his) predicament and helped me get him to his feet. I thanked her, he thanked her and she said something like "Stay strong and everything will be ok" and then kissed him. I suspect she was a Christian. There's no way I would have kissed him. Not that I tend to kiss old men generally.

She then turned to me and said: "Are you okay from here?" I just replied "Yes, sure" and she walked away. It was at this moment that I realised that I had no idea what to do next. I asked the man if there was anywhere he needed to go, and he said "The hospital? I've got rheumatoid arthritis you see so I can't walk." Okay, I thought, I'll go in to the library and see if anyone in there can get him some help. "What's your name?" I said. "Peter Paul Behan" he replied. I didn't expect him to give his full name. He sounded meek, used to being talked down to by people in authority. "Okay, Peter," I said, "I'll see if anyone in here can do anything." I helped him lean against a wall so he wouldn't fall over and went inside. "You've got a good heart young man!" he said, smilingly, as I left.

I don't know what I was expecting from the library staff. I suppose I thought that as they work in a library they must therefore be good and decent people who know what to do in that sort of situation. Unfortunately, the first person I talked to set the tone. I told him about the man outside and he just replied: "Yeah, he was in here just now and I chucked him out. He was very drunk and being a nuisance." When I pushed him for any help, he said I should speak to the attendant outside.

The attendant wasn't much use either. He just said "Yeah, he comes in here a lot." I told him that he'd fallen over and he suggested calling 999, although then said there was probably no point as he was drunk and homeless and would just waste their time. "Anyway", he went on, "if it's happened out there it's nothing to do with us." I pointed out that he'd just been chucked out of the library and he just smiled a sad smile. I guess he sees that sort of thing all of the time. For me it was a bit of a shock.

I went back outside. If I'm honest, I was hoping that Peter would have gone, at least that would have suggested that he was okay. He was standing leaning against the wall, in exactly the position I'd left him. I wandered over and smiled. "They suggested I call 999" I said. "Would you like me to call you an ambulance to take you to hospital?"

He smiled ruefully. "To be honest with you, young man," he said, "I'm an alcoholic." No shit Sherlock, I thought. "Thanks for your help, but you don't have to do anything else." "Are you sure?" I said, half-relieved but also saddened by the fact that this was clearly a common occurrence. "Thank you. You've got a good heart," Peter said again. And with that, he turned and began to totter back across the road. I watched him all the way across, until he turned the corner and was out of sight.

I went back into the library to look for some books to read. Didn't find anything. Felt a bit sad. I kept replaying the situation in my head. Should I have given him some money? Offered to buy him something? Called 999 anyway, even though it wasn't an emergency and he didn't want me to? Maybe that's why the other people just walked past him when he fell over in the road; they didn't want the hassle of dealing with the consequences. Maybe helping him up was my good deed for the day. It's not as though I can do much else for him.

So there we go. A long, slightly sad story with not much of a conclusion. I haven't blogged for nearly a month and then go and inflict this on you! I promise next time I'll write about something funny. Unless I see a bird with a broken wing or something...

Broadswords must be carried

2007-10-22T16:22:00.000+01:00

The strangest thing I've seen this week was a young woman on the tube in rush hour with a bow and arrows slung over her back. I'm amazed the staff let her through the barriers. I wonder if she's ever tried that at an airport? It would probably just inspire confusion.

I started to speculate about why she had the bow and arrows. I hope it wasn't for self-defence, because I think in a struggle you'd be better off with a can of Mace or a fistful of keys. With a bow and arrows you'd barely have time to pull back the string before the mugger would be half way down the street with your handbag.

On the other hand, it might actually be a pretty good deterrent. It's easy to see from a distance, and you'd have to be a pretty confident attacker to decide to pick on a girl with a bow and arrows. After all, she could be a Vampire Slayer. Or an accidental time traveller from the Medieval past with a bad attitude. Or simply insane.

Topical Schmopical

2007-10-16T15:11:00.000+01:00

I had a (nice) gig at Hull University on Sunday night, and returned to London on Monday early afternoon. Practically the first thing I saw as I got off the train was an Evening Standard billboard reading:

"DEADLY SKUNK FLOODS LONDON"

For a couple of seconds I thought I might have entered a B-movie! I half expected to see terrified people in masks fleeing from a massive Pepe Le Peu creature spraying his lethal gas around. It turned out to be about drugs, which was disappointing.

I immediately wrote it down as an amusing observation, and indeed got some good laughs from it at my gig last night. However, I was well aware that as a topical joke it had a very short half-life. Other, more well-known, people were bound to make the same kind of observation so if I mentioned it too many times I might end up being accused of stealing it. It turns out I was right. Oh well. Great minds think alike, etc.

There was another great headline yesterday on the front of thelondonpaper:

"TORIES LOSE £8.2m FROM INSANE DONOR"

I considered writing a joke about that, but then thought I'd just wait and listen to the News Quiz on Friday instead. Or read Private Eye next week.

The traveller returns

2007-10-10T18:16:00.000+01:00

Well thankfully the Scottish gigs were lovely. Dundee was a particular pleasure, and Edinburgh was nearly as good. They restored my faith in student audiences. To be fair, most student gigs are fun - it's just badly set up ones at late night balls that should be avoided!

It's always odd for me to return to Edinburgh for the Comedy Network gig, because it's held in the Pleasance Cabaret Bar, where I performed in The Comedy Zone at the Fringe in 2005. The room is laid out slightly differently, but the smell is identical, and as soon as I walked in it immediately brought back memories of the great gigs and the not-so-great gigs we had that month. It feels like a very long time ago. The little dressing room at the back is almost exactly the same as well. It's plastered with posters and flyers from Edinburgh shows and the Comedy Network from around 1997-98. Most of the names are familiar, indeed many of them are very successful now. It's strangely inspiring to know that people like Lee Mack, Chris Addison, Al Murray, the Boosh etc all performed there. And then there are a few names that I've never heard of, which is conversely slightly depressing.

The city is much quieter without the Festival. Instead of lots of tourists wandering around there are a few students. Most of the venues have reverted to being cupboards, store-rooms or holes. And the Pleasance Courtyard is not a bustling centre of excitement, networking, drinking, whinging and flyering. It's just a car park. Quite disconcerting. The only reminders of the madness of August are a few weather-worn posters on abandoned properties; most of them are ripped down within days. That's why the Cabaret Bar dressing room is fascinating: Edinburgh posters are usually transient and disposable. That room is a snap-shot of a particular moment in comedy, which also happens to be around the time I first performed in Edinburgh. I hope they don't re-decorate any time soon.

A tale of two gigs

2007-10-07T19:36:00.000+01:00

My last two gigs could not have been more different. Stand up is a weird job because before every gig you have no idea what might happen, who'll be in the audience or what the room will be like. Although in the case of these two gigs, I had a pretty good idea what the night would be like when I got to the venue, and I turned out to be absolutely right.

On Friday I performed my first full 20 minute set at Banana Cabaret in Balham. It's a lovely club and I've always enjoyed my time there. This time was no exception. I played to a near sell-out crowd of people who were attentive, playful and intelligent. Everyone on the bill had a good gig and I enjoyed myself on stage more than I have in ages. I hadn't played to an audience of more than a hundred for a few weeks, and it's always very rewarding to be able to take a bit more time with the jokes, leave longer pauses, play with the timing. As I left the venue I thought: "That is why I do comedy!"

And then on Saturday I was at Loughborough University Freshers Ball. The contrast was extreme. The comedy was placed in the middle of a noisy bar that was also a thoroughfare between a smoking area and a dance floor. It didn't get going until nearly 11pm, and there were several of us booked to perform until 2am. Within seconds of the first act going on it was clearly a write-off. Nobody in the room was listening, partly because it was difficult to hear above all the ambient noise, and partly because they were very drunk students. They immediately started to shout, chant, heckle and jump in front of the stage. All of the acts tried to make something of the situation but it was a lost cause. By the time I went on at about 1am the room had calmed down a little, but my time was still spent dealing with 5 or 6 persistent, drunk and stupid hecklers and trying to tell a few jokes for the benefit of the 4 people who seemed to be actually listening. It wasn't exactly a tough gig - it just wasn't a gig at all. As I left the venue I thought: "That is what I hate about comedy!"

I'm going to Dundee tomorrow and then Edinburgh afterwards. I hope they're more like Friday than Saturday.

Otherwise I might cry.

Too Soon?

2007-09-28T17:36:00.000+01:00

Stand ups causing offence are in the news again. It's a familiar sequence:

An emotive story dominates the headlines for a few weeks.
Comedians try to make something funny out of it
Some of them come unstuck with unsympathetic crowds.
The press treat them as public enemy number one.
Repeat until story fades from public consciousness.

Billy Connolly was attacked for joking about Ken Bigley a couple of years ago. Stewart Lee, no stranger to controversy, wrote perceptively about it at the time.

This year it's the turn of Patrick Kielty and Dave Longley.

I have a tenuous personal connection to both of these stories. The more tenuous connection is to Dave. I've seen him perform a couple of times and enjoyed his work. He has always seemed to me to be a comedian who tries to push boundaries, both in material and style, someone who wants to produce something a little different to the usual. I've also performed at Baby Blue, the Liverpool club he was booed off at. I did ok at my gig there, but remember it being a pretty tough crowd; lots of city-boy types who liked the sound of their own voices. I also heard about a recent gig that had to be abandoned there because a stag party got out of hand. And it's in Liverpool, a notoriously difficult city to perform comedy in. It's the last place I'd choose to try a risky topical joke about dead children. But that's me. Dave is clearly someone who enjoys pushing a crowd's buttons, and he often succeeds in getting the balance right.

I completely understand this impulse. All comedians have the devil in us sometimes, which dares us to say the funny thing, regardless of whether or not it's the sensible or sensitive thing to say. To some extent, that's our job. Laughter is often a response to surprise, and to get the biggest laughs it can be necessary to surprise an audience by straying out of the usual social comfort zone. For many comedians this involves talking about sex or other mildly taboo subjects, but a topical reference has the added novelty of immediacy. I managed to get three laughs when I was compering at a gig last week just by mentioning Northern Rock. I didn't have any jokes written about it - all I needed was to say the words and the crowd laughed. Everyone was talking about it, and we were all a little worried about it, so by referencing it I was releasing a little bit of tension. In the aftermath of the London bombings, I heard many comics start their sets by saying something like "Great to see you haven't been put off coming out tonight - after all if we stop watching comedy then the terrorists have won!" It's become a hack joke now, but for a few weeks it almost always got a laugh. When a big story is dominating the headlines there is a pre-existing tension in the room that, as a comedian, you feel that you have to try and defuse. The problem is that sometimes addressing it works and sometimes it makes things worse.

In Dave's case, I think that his biggest offence was really about football. By establishing that most of the audience were Liverpool fans, he was trying to implicate them in his observation about Everton shirts. The Rhys Jones case has caused understandable horror across the country and has also become strongly linked with football throughout the media. Liverpool and Everton fans have made very public declarations of solidarity with the family. Trying to exploit the traditional football enmity in this situation was misjudged. If the joke had been framed more as an idle observation, and had crucially not been delivered in Liverpool, I doubt it would have made much impact. But then maybe it wouldn't have been as funny. It certainly would have been less shocking. After all, to an outside observer, joking about Catholics in front of a comedy club may be funny, but joking about them in front of a congregation is hilarious and joking about them in front of the Pope is hysterical. Only to the observer, though. To the rest of the audience, it's not so funny. As Dave found out to his cost.

Onto Patrick. I have a slightly less tenuous connection to this story. At the end of the usual strident Mail nonsense, a spokesman defends him by saying: "He performed the exact same material last week in London with no complaints whatsoever." That's an interesting statement, because I was at one of his warm up gigs in London that week. In fact, I was compering it. And although it's true to say that there were no "complaints", there weren't that many laughs either. I was surprised that he opened with his Madeleine material, because the audience weren't very keen on it, and he then struggled to engage with them for the rest of his set. I didn't resent him doing it, because it was a small warm up gig and everyone needs to try stuff out, but I was surprised to hear that he'd proceeded to do it again in front of a much larger crowd where the likelihood of people taking offence is much higher.

This all comes down to one big question: should comedians make jokes about these kind of stories? My position on this has always been clear: You can joke about anything, but if you're going to joke about something very sensitive it had better be a really good joke. Or to put it another way: weak puns about sex or Easyjet are bad enough. Weak puns about dead children are unacceptable.

Personally I haven't made any jokes about the McCann case and I haven't heard many that have even made me smile. I think we are all so aware that it is a tragedy and unlikely to have a happy ending that I can't imagine many jokes working except in a very dark and shocking sense. The media circus that surrounds the case has provided much more potential for humour, but even so it's hard to bring it up in a comedy club without alienating the audience. I've seen a few semi-successful attempts to do it, but have never felt comfortable addressing it myself.

Despite all this, I feel strongly that comedians should have the right to address any issue in a comedy club. They should be special places where taboos can be confronted and sick jokes can be told. This doesn't mean that an audience has to laugh at them, but the comedian shouldn't be pilloried for them either. Unfortunately this increasingly seems like a unrealistic prospect, but it's a nice ideal to aim for.

I just hope I never end up having to apologise for a joke in the national media.

Not unless it's really good.

On a (hopefully) unrelated note: Am I the only person who thinks that dog-walkers and ramblers deliberate go out looking for bodies? After all, they're the only people who ever seem to find them. I imagine a dejected dog-walker returning home one morning:
"Morning dear? How was the walk?"
"Rubbish."
"Oh dear. No body?"
"No. And Jeff found two last week. All I found was a dead pigeon. And I had to kill it first."

"Here, Five-A-Day! Eat your Whiskas!"

2007-09-20T17:55:00.000+01:00

The Blue Peter cat deception has been getting a lot of media attention today. I happened to turn on Newsround this afternoon and it was the lead item. It was fascinating to watch how they dealt with it.

The story was treated like a massive political scandal. Po-faced presenters said sentences like "the name chosen, Cookie, was ignored for reasons that are unclear." There was an interview with a chastened-looking head of CBBC, in which the anchor asked "How are children supposed to trust CBBC now?" and the head replied that they had made only 3 mistakes in 3 years, although "that is clearly 3 mistakes too many". It was brilliant. The number of entirely confused children across the UK must have been huge.

Essentially it's a tiny version of the David Kelly scandal. I just hope that Socks isn't discovered next week face down in the Blue Peter pond. Then we'd have to have the equivalent of the Hutton Report. Perhaps conducted by Gordon the Gopher.

The strangest thing about this whole story is why they changed the name in the first place. My only thought is that they felt that the name "Cookie" wasn't promoting a healthy diet. In which case I'm surprised they didn't end up calling the cat "Salad".

I may be a bit bored today

2007-09-20T14:45:00.000+01:00

When I was shaving this morning I noticed that the shave gel had instructions on it, which included: "Take a hazelnut sized blob of gel on your palm..."

Why hazelnut? It will put off anyone with a nut allergy. I'm also not entirely sure how big a hazelnut is. It's probably smaller than a Brazil nut, but I can't be certain. However, everyone knows how big a peanut is, which I'd also guess is approximately half as big as a hazelnut. So instead they should have put: "Take a blob of gel about the size of two peanuts on your palm..."

Or perhaps they should just let us decide how much gel to use. If I want to use a walnut sized amount, or even go crazy with a coconut sized amount, I shouldn't have the dispenser making me feel guilty about it. It's not a medicine. It's gel.

However, I do approve of the word "blob". It's a word that should be on more packaging. Other words I'd like to see more of include: "squirt", "dollop", "squidge" and "sliver".

I had it a minute ago...maybe it's behind the sofa?

2007-09-19T16:44:00.000+01:00

This caught my eye today. It's an amazing story, and one close to my heart, because I am a Yorkshireman born and bred but now speak with a pretty much RP accent. In fact, in several castings I have been asked to speak "less posh". Not asked to do any specific accent. Just "less posh". At that point I tend to go into a awful Mockney/Northern cross-breed accent and invariably don't get the job.

I get asked about "losing" my accent all the time, particularly when I'm interviewed for a local paper or something:

"So where are you from?"
"Yorkshire."
"Really? You don't have much of a Yorkshire accent."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Er..."

I don't know exactly why not. It's probably a combination of factors. My parents aren't from Yorkshire originally. I didn't pick up much of an accent at school for some reason, despite the fact that most of my friends had quite strong accents. And then I went to Cambridge, where I've noticed that people seem either to hold on to their accent very strongly or lose it altogether. Plus I've always been interested in stage performing and public speaking, and I think that often encourages you to develop RP.

However, that's not a very interesting or concise explanation. From now on if anyone asks I'll tell them it was the result of brain surgery. Much more exciting.

In other news, I saw a brilliant headline on Ceefax today:

"Churches in gay bishop showdown"

Now that's a confrontation I'd pay to see! I wonder if it's no holds barred?

May Contain Dancing

2007-09-13T13:00:00.000+01:00

There is an advert in Time Out this week for a new dance piece called Touch Wood. It shows two naked dancers entwined, and the tag-line is: "a season of naked ideas danced on a bare wooden floor". Then at the bottom of the advert is a small note: "Warning: may not contain nudity".

It's pretty unusual to have a negative warning like that. You can't imagine the same sort of thing for a film. The poster for Shrek 4 probably won't have the note: "Warning: may not contain violence, sex or real people."

They probably had to put it there because of a case a few years ago when someone complained about the lack of nudity in a dance production at Sadlers Wells. I'd love to have been there when he made the complaint:

"When I saw the production I was dismayed and disgusted! The only reason I went to this show was because of the nudity."
"You went to Sadlers Wells for the nudity?"
"Yes. I could have gone to Soho or the internet but I saw the poster and expected to see hot naked babes in the premier dance theatre in Islington."
"Right. Presumably you'd want this complaint to be anonymous?"
"Oh yes. I'm a theatre reviewer."

You couldn't make it up. Well, you could, but that would be weird.

2007-09-12T12:25:00.000+01:00

Two stories that made me smile today, for quite different reasons:

1. The twins from Big Brother are recording a song - a cover of Barbie Girl by Aqua. They are quoted as saying: "It's a dream come true for us to record our favourite song of all time". Barbie Girl? Favourite song of all time? The apocalypse may truly be upon us.

But the quote that really made me smile in that story came from their new record company:

"It is a measure of how much viewers identified with the twins that they were the only Big Brother contestants never to have been nominated for a single eviction."

Now, I'm not exactly an avid viewer of the show, but even I know that the nominations are decided by the house mates, not the viewers. "Nasty" Nick Bateman was never nominated for eviction either. What the quote should read is: "It is a measure of our desperation for a quick buck that we take the opinions of a random group of freaks not to vote to evict the twins as somehow suggesting that they can sing and/or dance. Fuck it, it's only a cover."

And the follow-up quote is in some ways even funnier:

"They are also the only Big Brother contestants ever to have signed with a major record company."

Right. So the record label is trumpeting its own decision as somehow momentous. Translated: "They'd better sell some records or we are going to look like proper idiots."

2. A region of Russia has announced a "sex day". I think there could be some awkward conversations in H.R. offices:

"Vladimir?"
"Yes, sir?
"I've just got your holiday form for next week. You want a day off?"
"Yup."
"To have sex?"
"Uh huh."
"Right. I suppose your wife will need the day off too, then?"
"Probably just the morning to be honest."
"Okay..."
"Actually, can she just come in an hour late?"

Also, no elephants with knives attached to their legs

2007-09-11T11:49:00.000+01:00

Spotted at the bottom of a poster for the Last Night of the Proms in Hyde Park:

"In the interests of safety, please do not bring glass items, barbeques or flaming torches."

Flaming torches? I know that Chico and Will Young were performing, but surely nobody was going to organise a mob of angry villagers to attack them?

When was the last time anyone went to an event with a flaming torch? It seems like common sense to me. I'm surprised they didn't add: "Also, no broadswords, Gatling guns or anthrax".

Thank God there was no Cod Liver Oil Boy

2007-09-10T12:05:00.000+01:00

I've just read this. I think I might be one of the three people she's referring to. Bananas are one of the few things I cannot eat. I can eat banana flavoured things if I have to, but not anything containing bananas themselves. Apparently they are a great source of potassium. Well then I can live without that particular metal. It also means that I can't drink smoothies, because regardless of what flavour they claim to be on the bottle; "mango and strawberry", "cranberry and raspberry" etc, as far as I'm concerned what flavour they actually are is "BANANA and mango and strawberry" etc.

My most horrifying memory of bananas goes back to when I was about eight years old and a massive fan of the cartoon series "Bananaman". A series I now regard as sinister fruit-based propaganda. After watching a particularly good episode, I rushed into the kitchen and ate half a banana without thinking, hoping to turn into an amazing superhero. Instead I turned into the amazing vomiting boy.

Ironically, the first single I ever bought was "Guilty of Love in the First Degree" by Bananarama. I saw the video for it again the other day. All I'll say is that videos have got better in the last two decades. And that as a ten year old boy I had no taste.

R.S.V.P.

2007-09-10T11:35:00.000+01:00

There are two types of people in this world. Those who love fancy dress parties and those who hate fancy dress parties. I am firmly in the second camp.

This thought struck me on Saturday night, as I was walking home past various groups of revellers wearing ridiculous outfits. I realised that when I get invited to a fancy dress party my one aim is to spend as little time as possible thinking about what to wear, but still manage to look like I've made an effort. Making an effort for a party is the equivalent of "it's the thought that counts" for a present. Nobody really believes it but we have to pretend that we do, otherwise society will break down into anarchy.

My top three fancy dress party triumphs, in reverse order:

3. Anything with the word "green" in it. It's my surname, so it'll do for a costume. I've used this pathetic excuse at "Tube" parties ("Yes, I'm Green Park! Or Parsons Green, or Turnham Green...") I've even dressed as "Reverend Green" in the past. A dog collar is easy to make with a single piece of plain A4 paper. And I have two green shirts.

2. At Edinburgh one year there was a "come as your favourite popstar" party. That's a major problem for the "making an effort" brigade. Why "your favourite"? I like Kanye West, but I'm never going to look like him, at least not without causing some serious offence. Ditto Beth Ditto. In the end I chose Bowie. Not in the Ziggy Stardust years, or even Aladdin Sane. No, I went for a mix of Heroes and Hunky Dory. Or to put it another way, I wore a jazzy shirt and put on eye liner. That's the good thing about Bowie. He probably looked like that at least once.

1. At college I was invited to a "come as your hero" party. That's even more difficult than favourite popstar. I didn't really have any heroes, unless you count sportsmen (too much effort) or comedians and writers (not enough effort). I'd left this one very late, and was sitting in my friend's room that evening bemoaning my lack of costume. Then I noticed that he had an empty flowerpot in the corner of his room. I don't remember why - I think it was a prop from a play he'd been in or something - but it gave me an idea.

So a couple of hours later I arrived at the party wearing a green shirt and a flowerpot on my head. The host opened the door to this absurd vision and looked bemused.

"Hi Matt!" she said. "Er...what have you come as?"
"Bill or Ben!" I replied.
"Who?"
"The flowerpot men!"
"They're your heroes?" she said, visibly worried.
"Yes! Now, where's the booze?"

I think that was the nadir of "making an effort". In order to avoid having to make or pay for a costume I pretended that characters from a children's programme I didn't even watch were my heroes. It was a rubbish party too. Nobody seemed to want to talk to me. Possibly because I was wearing a flowerpot.

And pretty soon I discovered that the flowerpot had been decorated in silver paint that was coming off on my head and face. Within an hour I could take off the pot and claim I'd come as the Terminator. But the Terminator with robot alopecia. In a green shirt.

Look! Words!

2007-09-07T14:26:00.000+01:00

So the South End gig went ahead and was fun. A decent crowd although smaller than usual according to the management. That's what promoters always say, although in this case I believe them. I look forward to returning when it's full.

On the way there I saw a brilliant billboard headline in the Evening Standard:

"Russian Bombers Head for Britain"

It looked like the kind of horror-headline people feared during the Cold War. What the headline failed to point out of course was that the bombers then turned around and went back to Russia without actually, you know, bombing anything.

It reminded me of the headlines you regularly see in tabloids such as the Daily Sport:

"Outrage Over Nude Britney Photos!"

The "outrage" being because the photos are fake. Doesn't stop them printing them though.

I suspect that what they really want to use as a headline is: "Look! Tits!" but I guess they've decided that would eventually get repetitive and lose its impact.

I think they might be overestimating their readers.

Not a real sports injury

2007-09-06T13:15:00.000+01:00

I don't have a lot to report from the last few days. I've had a bad run of gigs, not in the sense that they've gone badly, but in the sense that the last three gigs I've been booked to do have been cancelled due to lack of audience. I think it's the worst run I've had in years.

It's a vexed issue, whether or not to go ahead with a gig with a small audience. When I was starting out, anything above 5 people was great, but now even the smaller gigs I do tend to have a "double figures at least" rule. Obviously you don't want to disappoint the people who did turn up, but trying to do comedy to what looks like a panel of judges is pretty dispiriting. The audience tends to feel uncomfortable too; laughter is a social response, and if there aren't enough people to laugh out loud, the gig will be very very quiet. Comedians stand at the back of rooms and mutter darkly about "smilers". When the lights are strong we can't see people smiling. As a response it's as useless as nodding on the radio.

So the gigs were cancelled. Whether it was because of the tube strike, the nice weather or lack of publicity, I don't know. Audiences for comedy are notoriously hard to predict. For example, is rain good for a gig, or bad? Every promoter has a different answer. What I do know is that having three gigs in a row cancelled is very annoying. Every time you build yourself up for the gig, think about the kind of stuff you're going to talk about, consider whether or not to do some new bits, and then there's a massive sense of deflation. Sometimes all the comedians hang around afterwards and have a drink together, which can bit a lot of fun, but not this week. I think everyone's tired from Edinburgh and just wanting to get home.

But tonight I have a last minute gig booked in South End. Gigs outside London tend to be more reliable in terms of audience, so let's hope it's fourth time lucky!

In other news, I have been playing Tiger Woods Golf on my Wii and have a sore arm.

Transport for Lateness

2007-09-03T12:12:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I tried to access some information on a government-run website, only to be told that the website isn't "open" at the weekend. How unbelievably pointless is that? I thought the whole idea of a website was that it was available 24/7. What next? On-line banking that you can't access on bank holidays? It seems that the government has the idea that computer systems also need the weekend to rest, see the kids, do some DIY. It would be quite a sweet image if it wasn't completely bonkers.

I also saw a Transport for London poster at a bus stop yesterday which read: "Important Thing: The more you walk, the more you smile!", followed by a diagram showing an unhappy face next to the words "10 yards" and a big smiley face next to the words "1 mile".

The more you walk, the more you smile! I'm not sure that's entirely true. I'm not sure women in Africa would agree that walking an extra mile a day to collect water would make a massive grin break out on their faces. If anything, I think the reverse is probably true.

Even for people actually at the bus stop it seems a strange message. It implies that the bus may not be coming so you'd be better off walking. That way you might actually get to your destination, then presumably smile ruefully. It's odd. You wouldn't have posters at train stations saying: "Take the bus! You'll be much happier!" Although I suppose you might this week, as there's a tube strike on...

A trio of trivia

2007-09-01T11:11:00.000+01:00

1. Spotted in the London Lite: Jamie Bell quoted as saying that he would never go nude on stage like Daniel Radcliffe did, because "he's got a lot more balls than I have". Which raises the question: does Jamie Bell have no balls? Or does Daniel Radcliffe have more than two? I didn't see the production so can't comment. Anyone?

2. The Bishop of London said that people should stop using the memory of Diana "to score points". I'm not sure what game he's talking about there, but it can't be Scrabble. "Diana" would be a rubbish word to play. It's mainly vowels. Even on a triple word score you could get a maximum of 18 points. Ironically, "Queen" is quite a good word to play.

3. At Oxford Circus station last night the fire alarm went off and a recorded voice began to repeat on a loop the announcement: "Will Inspector Sands please go to the operations room immediately". I was amazed that they're still using that name. Surely we all know what it means by now? It's been used for years as a "code" for a fire alarm, so as not to frighten the public. The fact that the fire alarm was going off at the same time was also a bit of a give away.

I think they should bring the system up to date, use a few different names. How about Morse or Wexford? That would make everyone feel safe. Or even better: Gadget. "There might be a fire, but it's about to be put out by an idiotic half-robot-half-man-thing, albeit in an amusingly haphazard way, and really because his clever niece knows how to use a fire-extinguisher!"

Yes, they looked a bit like goths

2007-08-31T10:27:00.000+01:00

On the tube back from a gig in Camden. I was sharing a carriage with a man and a woman having quite a heated discussion. The man seemed bored of the conversation when I sat down, and said with a sigh:

"The thing about brain death is that you can't recover from it." The woman tried to interrupt, but he ploughed on: "Once the higher brain functions have gone, that's it."

Impressive, I thought. An unconventional topic of conversation, but anyone who can use the phrase "higher brain functions" at 11pm, and sound like they know what it means, deserves some respect.

Then it became clear that the woman was arguing that she had once been brain dead. Quite recently in fact.

"I was definitely brain dead. I couldn't see or move!" she said. But when pressed by the man she admitted that she could see a bit, although it was all blurry. And she could also move, just not very easily.

I think she might have confused "being brain dead" with "having a hangover".

When I got off the tube a few stops later, the discussion was still in full flow, and I was beginning to feel a little brain dead myself.

Making friends through comedy

2007-08-30T12:10:00.000+01:00

Heckling is an occupational hazard as a stand up. It's actually quite rare, particularly at small gigs, but you have to be ready for it at all times. However, that readiness can sometimes lead to problems when you take it off stage...

A few weeks ago I was compèring a small gig and it was going well. I was doing the usual chat to the audience to warm the room up a bit before bringing on the first act. I noticed that a couple of women in the middle of the audience were ignoring me and chatting to each other and I said hello to them and asked them what their names were. One of them replied: “I'm not telling you. We’ve been working all week and have come here for you to make us laugh. So tell us some jokes.” Fair point, perhaps, but it was a very aggressive way to react considering the fact that it was a friendly room and I'd already got a few laughs from banter.

I reacted in mock horror and said something like “God, you remind me of my mother!” Not exactly comedy gold, but it worked in the circumstances. However, the woman seemed really offended by that and continued to heckle. I managed to shut her up eventually, but I felt like I'd lost my authority with the audience and the atmosphere had been soured. It slowly turned into a difficult gig and for the rest of the night I didn’t really enjoy it.

Unfortunately the two women hung around at the end of the show. The one I had spoken to came over to me as I was packing away the stage equipment and started complaining about what I'd said to her at the beginning. By now I was tired and just wanted to go home, but she was quite drunk and aggressive and wouldn't stop berating me. Then she said the following sentence:

“You were lucky how I reacted! You were lucky I took it on the chin!”

And I couldn’t resist. I just shot back:

“Which one?”

Now. She wasn’t fat. I don't think I'd have said that if she had been. I’m not sure if that makes me better or worse. But she was obviously not happy.

That was the moment I remembered that I wasn’t a comedian on stage any more, but just a man standing in front of a woman being rude about her appearance.

If I'm honest, the main thing I regret is that she didn’t say that to me during the gig, because then my response would almost certainly have got a big laugh and I would have regained my authority. As it was, she was slightly stunned, and I was slightly embarrassed, although pleased that I'd finally managed to get her back for ruining the gig for me.

I also got away without being attacked, which I thought was quite a result.

The Happyslap Hypothesis

2007-08-29T10:00:00.000+01:00

I find myself increasingly irritated by some of the terminology used in the media. One example is the phrase "friendly fire". It's a horrible mix of euphemism and oxymoron; we wouldn't say "lovely murder" or "chummy rape", at least not in mixed company.

It's strange how these phrases get lodged in the national consciousness. Even when most people would agree that they are offensive or even nonsensical, they survive. Do we secretly enjoy the tension created by using them? Is there a clever irony at work? Or is it, more likely, because newspaper editors prefer alliteration and assonance to accuracy?

I also saw a sign saying "Slow Children" but I can't think of anything funny about that.

2007-08-28T10:36:00.001+01:00

I'm always on the look out for odd things to put in my stand up routine. I think that in some ways I'm an observational comedian, but only in a very specific and personal sense. Instead of saying "have you ever noticed that..." I tend to say something like "I noticed something weird..." or "something weird happened to me". I like to tell a little story instead of referring to a general truth. Some audiences, particularly in big clubs, prefer to be told about things they already know - hence the tendency towards "hack" or cliched subjects. These can be boring and repetitive if you go to lots of comedy but seem completely original if it's your first time. Many times I've heard the same joke from several comedians, and I don't think any of them stole it - it's just a pretty obvious idea based on a common observation.

Anyway. Here are three signs I saw recently which I thought were quite funny:

1. "AAA Balloons - For All Your Decorating Needs!"

Presumably as long as those needs only involve balloons. I saw this on a billboard next to the pitch at Wivenhoe Football Club, when I was there for the lovely Wivenhoe Funny Farm gig. Brilliantly, I also saw two other adverts for local balloon companies whilst I was there. There's obviously not a lot else to do in Essex.

2. "Please don't open windows too far as birds may fly into toilets."

This sign is in the toilets at the offices of The Spotlight, where I was for an casting. It really made me want to open the window just to see what happened. I imagined the conversation later in the office: "Another bird got in the toilet! That's the third this week! Perhaps the sign is being counter-productive?"

3. This one needs a bit of context - I was filming some scenes for a TV show in the reception of a magistrates court when I noticed several big notices saying:

"ARE YOU GUILTY? If so, tell us now!"

Is it just an attempt to trick stupid criminals into admitting it? If so, it's a bit lacking in subtlety, along the lines of Baldrick's "Are you a German spy?" interrogation technique, or the US Immigration forms that ask "Are you a terrorist?" I flew to America for the first time earlier this year, and, although I'd heard many jokes on the subject, I still found the forms hilarious. However, I wasn't tempted to express this hilarity to the Immigration officers. My quest for comedic originality doesn't extend that far.

Next week: fluffy bunnies must die!

2007-08-27T10:39:00.001+01:00

Good to see that Germaine Greer has finally found a target truly worthy of attack. What has she gone after this time? Muslim fundamentalism? Nah. American imperialism? Nope. Men in general? Not this time. No, Germaine has focussed all of her considerable powers of invective on...cuddly toys.

Now, I know that newspaper columnists have to earn a living too, but I can't help thinking that this piece might be a little counter-productive. I can just imagine the Daily Mail headline: "Fanatical feminist trashes toys". But then again, Germaine lost any intellectual credibility she once had when she flounced out of the Celebrity Big Brother house a couple of years ago, complaining that house mates were "bullied" and had "an agenda", two revelations that were hardly a surprise. I mean, even my teddy bear could have told her that.

'king apologies

2007-08-26T19:12:00.000+01:00

I read recently that the Danish minister of culture has apologised for the Viking raids that occurred 1200 years ago. At last! Better late than never, eh? I bet he's glad he got that off his chest. 1200 years is a long time to feel guilty about something. It's the latest in a long line of recent bizarre apologies, from the Fijian tribe who have apologised for their ancestors' amusingly direct form of theological argument with missionaries (eating them) to Tony Blair's apology for slavery. The one thing that links all of these apologies is that the apologiser had nothing personally to do with what he is apologising for. It's at best a cynical political statement and at worst a pointless PR exercise. I'm just waiting for Jonathan Sacks to go on Thought for the Day next week and say "Ok, yes, I admit it, we did kill Jesus. Sorry!"

The mention of Viking raids takes me back to my school days, when I was a huge fan of history and Vikings in particular. My family regularly visited the Yorvik Viking Centre, distinguished from all other local museums by the "authentic" smell of shit that pervaded all of the exhibits. At the time I found this delightful. With the benefit of hindsight I wonder if they just built it next to a sewage treatment works. The exhibits I remember include some slightly shoddy waxworks, some bored actors pretending to be Scandinavian but sounding suspiciously Yorkshire, and a machine that could convert modern currency into Viking currency, essentially by flattening it and making it smell slightly of shit.

I also read a lot of books about Vikings, and remember clearly a children's history book that contained the sentence: "The Vikings raped and pillaged their way across Northern Europe". However, being a children's book, it failed to explain what those key words meant, so I had to try to work it out from the context. As a naive ten year old I assumed they meant something like "hiked and explored". That was fine, until the following year when my school went on a trip to the Yorkshire Dales and I inadvertently made some pretty inappropriate suggestions for what we could do whilst we were there...