I didn’t feel at all well this morning and sat in a café having a trendy yoghurt drink and some fruit. The last thing I wanted to do was travel all the way down to the West Country for a gig, but I didn’t really have much choice. I’m ever so lucky, most people have to struggle into work for 9am and all that faced me was a long train journey though the countryside to the market town of Gloucester before standing on a stage talking nonsense for half an hour. There are harder jobs. But being a comedian makes even the most determined soul lazy and idle, we’re too spoilt by our cushy hours, and I really would have done anything to get out of this given the opportunity. I’d had too much to drink with Monica and Mark last night (the martinis made an appearance again, curse them to the fire lashed pit of hell) and having stayed in a hotel you need to be up and on your feet earlier than I would have liked and then out on the street with your bag.
There was no point in hanging around London. This trip has become an epic and really did want to just get home to Liverpool, sort some keys out, and make a cup of tea. But Gloucester it was, and so I set out from Paddington and tried to make the best of the pleasant scenery. I tell you somewhere I’ve never been; Stroud. But it looks lovely from a train window. Hopefully one day I’ll be successful enough to do a show in Stroud. Only the best comics do. You might think that the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester is maybe the performing pinnacle for an entertainer, but no. It’s Stroud.
Even some really famous comedians like Lee Evans still haven’t managed to do a show in Stroud. They approach the theatre but they get laughed at, and not in a good way, in an evil ‘who do you think you are?’ way. Apparently Jerry Seinfeld wanted to play Stroud and even offered to cancel his entire residency in Las Vegas if given the opportunity but a local Stroud woman, Mrs A. Frosbourne, wrote to the local Stroud paper and said ‘If Mr Seinfeld, with his poor quality observations and delivery, thinks he can just waltz into Stroud and have people pay good money to come and see him, he’s got another thing coming. Just because he once had a moderately successful sitcom, which I loathed, it doesn’t mean he can just act like the King of Stroud and play a theatre that, I might remind him, hold more than 500 people. He can bugger off back to wherever he comes from, and then some. We only want the best in Stroud. Sincerely. Mrs A. Frosbourne.’
On reading the letter, the local theatre agreed that it was folly to allow Jerry Seinfeld to tread their boards and sent him a letter written in excrement to say so. Sadly, Jerry has yet to fulfil his ambition of playing Stroud and has even thought of retiring from stand-up, such is his anguish at never being able to truly get to the top.
I arrived in Gloucester, had a look around, felt the town was – how shall I say – unremarkable but perhaps that’s unfair and only a first impression. I booked into the very reasonable New Inn Hotel, which is inappropriately named (and why call it The New Inn Hotel, why not just the New Inn? Hotels and Inns are the same) because it’s a medieval building built around a court yard, meaning you can walk it’s corridors for ever because you’d just be going in circles. Apparently lots of ghosts do exactly that in the building. The confused ghost morons. Still, ghost or no ghost, £40 for a big en-suite room is good in my books and I lay on the bed trying to get some energy back.
I’ve been carrying this suitcase around with me for so long. I want to go home. But to work it was and checking the details noticed that the gig wasn’t in Gloucester at all, but a small town called Lydney – a twenty minute train ride away. How do I get to play these places?
I can’t even remember the name of the venue. I got there early and saw a big stage with a mic and PA system on it which all looked fine but nobody I spoke to seemed to know there was even a comedy night on. I hate these venues. I hate any comedy venue which isn’t a comedy club. I took a walk around the tiny town, people were walking around in fancy dress on their way to stag nights, and there was an uneasy air of semi-menace in the air.
Eventually Danny Deegan, the compare for the night, and a new act called Jane Hill arrived at the venue. Then an act who’s name I shamefully can’t remember but is very pleasant. We all agreed this looked rubbish. There weren’t even chairs set out by the stage and everyone was at the bar drinking and shouting, there were only about five people in the room allocated for the comedy night. Then we found out from the manageress that this was the first time they’d hosted a comedy night. Oh Christ. That’s never, ever a good sign.
We asked what time we were supposed to start. The manageress said ‘I don’t know, but if you could finish about 1am’. To hell with that. I had a train back to Gloucester to catch at eleven. This was a joke. Eventually, the comic who’s very nice but whose name I can’t remember got on stage to say that it was starting in five minutes, and could people move through from the bar? He got nothing. Eventually he was standing there for 30minutes, getting abuse, and then decided he’d go home! The manageress came over to us and said “Um, I don’t think is really working. Would you mind if I paid you but you didn’t do the show?�
Fine by me. Envelope of money. No work. Few pints. Got a lift with Danny back to Gloucester and got drunk in the nightclub below my hotel which was full of odd people. Somebody asked if I was an estate agent. A very drunk girl tried to kiss me. Gloucester is truly, truly strange. I went to bed. When can I go home?
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