Thursday 7th December 2006

This morning I went over to Hope University to be interviewed on their radio station. I couldn’t really see the point in being interviewed on a radio station that would only be broadcast to the rest of the campus and was doing it as a favour (I am a Godsend to Liverpool students, if I’m not recording a TV show for free like last week I’m appearing on their radio shows) but apparently it goes out all over Liverpool. Either way, I like radio studios and talking rubbish on the air and this one looked very professionally equipped and modern.

It was a fun chat and despite me accidentally swearing once I think I am competent now at radio banter. I used to do it quite regularly on BBC London but the last time recently was on XFM (Can’t remember the date but it’ll be on here somewhere) and so it was nice to be reminded again of the feeling of speaking into a microphone and knowing nothing is retractable. You listen to yourself speaking, you know those words are instantly being broadcast, and so you have to control and shape this stream of consciousness as it comes out. Slowing it down, making it concise, not repeating yourself, and on top of that being funny or at least interesting. As I think I said over the course of today’s interview, having your own TV show is for idiots whilst radio really is the best entertainment medium. I’d love to have a radio show. LOVE it.

One other reason for doing this radio programme today was to vainly promote a stand-up show tonight in Liverpool.

The curious and wonderful thing about doing stand-up comedy for a living is that, whilst it goes without saying that no two shows will be the same, it’s remarkable just how different they can be. Not just in terms of the audience’s reaction, how much they appreciate you and that sort of thing, but just what extreme behaviour they can lead you into. Some of the best nights of my life have been spent on a stage, with everything going perfectly and knowing you could take these people down any avenue you want, but also some of my lowest and worst nights have inevitably involved a stage too. Nights when you feel so unfunny and so stupid. Amazingly, these two extremes can be presented to you in two consecutive nights. I once had a night when I was doing two gigs that evening and they couldn’t have been more different. Naturally the rubbish, low, horrible one had to be the second of the two, and I went home feeling depressed, unable to conjure up the recent memory of the first. In comedy, you are as good as your last gig. Simple as.

And so when I think of the triumph-against-the-odds adrenaline rush of Grimsby on Tuesday night, it is really odd that I’d have such a different experience tonight when the intention was to use pretty much exactly the same material. I had my doubts raised when I learnt it was in the First National Wine Bar on Queen Street. The First National is a cavernous pub normally full of undesirables that has never served a glass of wine in it’s lager-fuelled life. I turned up at about 8pm to learn I was closing the show and wouldn’t be needed for a while and so I went for a walk. The show hadn’t started but there didn’t seem to be much of an audience and the organiser, the always very pleasant Paul Smith, was getting worried.

When I returned the show was just starting and the situation looked dire. There were only about 30 people in the crowd, if you can call that a crowd, and they were spectacularly disinterested. One drunk old man at the bar was dancing and making strange shouting noises.

By the time it got round to me going on at the end, quite a few people had walked out and the remaining audience were 90% women. Not that I minded this, but it was 90% women who didn’t want any comedy. They wanted a dance or something. So I jumped on and piled into rapid fire material, winning them over with some basic stuff. Then I knew I would be getting into more ‘story’ material and they wouldn’t stick with me for this.

“Tell you what, I’ll take off one item of clothing for every three minutes attention you give me…� I told the women.

Naturally this wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had and they were no longer interested in what I had to say, but only how many items of clothing I would remove. I was quite enjoying myself though, lost cause gigs like this are intrinsically funny for a comic if not the audience, and before long I was standing on stage in the smallest pair of pants I own. It was laundry day – all I had left.

This situation was clearly insane, you can’t deliver any sort of an idea or story when your standing in your pants, and so I took those off too, threw them at one of the women, and, completely naked, left the stage.

It was ace! I’ve seen my favourite comics get their kit off on quite a regular basis – Phil Nichol being the best of them and he won the damn Perrier this year – and I do think it’s a genuine option. I’ll not do it again, and I’ve never done it before, but… I don’t regret doing it once. Nakedness is funny. This gig was funny by it’s impossible and absurd nature. It was the correct thing to do at the end of the night. Well… Not ‘correct’ because there aren’t any rules, comedy is a very ‘of the moment’ thing. And if there had been a comic on after me it would have been wrong because the night would have been changed irrecoverably, but I was headlining, I’d done better than could be expected up to that point I think, and so…. Let’s get naked. It was a good end to the show.

It was.

My agent Paula who was in attendance didn’t seem too impressed, but I reiterate, comedy is of the moment. Paul Smith was happy. He loved it.

The woman kept the pants.

I will make my family proud yet.

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit