Got the Global Hangover stuff finished today and am reasonably happy. It’s not an official business plan but gives a forty page outline of the company, and should serve to answer any initial questions people have.
I’ve got some meetings regards setting this baby up over the next couple of days and am absolutely determined that this idea shouldn’t fade and die along with so many others. In truth, the other ideas, i.e. scripts, have always been seen through and then lost in the midst of people’s in-boxes. So I’ve kind of lived up to my side of the bargain, but then let myself down by not chasing these things up as readily as I might have done or having one negative comment from a professional put me off changing the project and carrying on.
Callcutta is a good idea, even if it is being done in different form in India already. That was the sitcom set in an Indian call centre with a British manager trying to teach the diligent, hard-working and intelligent staff about the idiot English people and their habits. I still really like that. Tolerance is still in the planning stage but I’m ready to write the script now and it’ll not take too long as I already know most of the jokes in most of the scenes. That one I will follow up until I’m blue in the face because I think this is about my seventh sitcom script and I arrogantly think that not only is it potentially the best, it’s a very viable project. Just me moaning. You’d watch that, right? After all, you read this.
But Global Hangover really does have to happen. If it works, it will be sensationally huge. I’m thirty years of age in seven months and as the blurb at the top of this page says, one purpose of this Blog was to record me making ‘an international success’ of myself by that time. Global Hangover is an international company. Was me writing that back in August last year an unintentional and spooky omen? Let’s hope so. You mess about in your twenties. You make something of yourself in your thirties. I need to hit the ground running and celebrate my 30th birthday (sat alone in my car on a garage forecourt at 10pm with a can of lemonade) knowing that I’ve done something. We’ll know more tomorrow.
There’s a new cocktail bar opened in Liverpool that I had no knowledge of! Great Scott! I’ve never known my radar to let me down before. It’s called Room and it’s on Castle Street, in the space that used to be the dreadful Trials. It’s a bar and restaurant and first impressions seem positive. First of all the barmaid told me that they’d not even launched officially until the bar had been running for ten weeks because they wanted it to be perfect. That’s sensible and a lot of places don’t think that way – hence an expensive launch followed by weeks of appalling and incompetent service. Secondly they’ve nabbed Jamie from The Residents Lounge at the Hope Street Hotel who’s one of my favourite barmen and a cocktail aficionado. He lives and breaths them.
I sipped a gin and tonic, thinking what I was going to say to the gathering at Bang And Olufsen in a few minutes time. I cursed myself for agreeing to do this but then decided to think positively, and besides, it’s all work. The shop is just next door to Rome and so I went in, met a few people, and waited around to start. Rachel had come down from the Laugherhouse because it was she who had evilly booked me in for this, and I stood with her as the guests drunk their cocktails and accepted canopies off trays.
“Curse you for making me do this.�
“Oh, it’ll be fine.�
I did feel quite nervous, which I don’t normally before doing stand-up. It was just a strange set up, nobody sitting down aside from an old couple on a leather sofa directly in front of where I would be standing, a tiny amplifier which probably wouldn’t make much difference, and a crowd of people who’ve maybe never seen stand-up comedy in their lives. The potential for this to go wrong was enormous and whilst I could have had the ‘oh whatever, I’ll still get paid’ attitude that perhaps would have settled me, I didn’t want to humiliate myself and as my Mum had mentioned to me on the phone earlier, someone was paying for this and it wouldn’t be fare to be blase.
The manager of the store got up and said a few words, thanking people for coming. I was pleased that the room fell silent for him and he even got a few laughs. You could hear him well too. “But now, we’ve got some entertainment for you…!� he said. “A comedian….�
I realised he’d forgotten my name and couldn’t really bring me on without knowing it. Unless he said “And here is the comedian� or something.
“Who’s name you can’t remember!� I said, walking on and taking the microphone off him, which got a good laugh. That probably saved my bacon. It all went fine and people seemed happy. Don’t know why I was worried. Well, because it could have been shit, that’s why, but I got away with it this time.
Work over and payment in pocket, I decided to drink all their free booze with Rachel and then stumble up to the pub for more. There’s something rather nice about the post-gig drink, if the show went badly you can block it out and talk about something else, and if it went well you can remember it as being even more successful than it was with every sip.
Right, that’s that. Now onto Global Hangover.
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