My Edinburgh Ballache. Part 3.

Thank God for Lach’s Anti-Hoot. It’s an open mic showcase which is usually on every night in Edinburgh. This year it’s only on Mondays. Last year I met a lot of great comics and performers there including Eric Hutton, Tim Renkow and Jen Carnovale. This year, I go back to see them again. Eric Hutton is a treat to watch. He’s consistently hilarious with his full blown death metal parodies, but off-stage he has such a modest, laconic, personable way about him. It’s my oasis away from the usual crowd of comics and festival nightmares. Tonight it had everything. At this point I’d put a ‘from’ and ‘to’ to conform to lazy journalistic standards. But highlights included a Korean guy talking to a toy seal, a French outfit called The Neighbours with their faltering English and songs about how Paris is shit because it doesn’t have ravioli. At one point we swiveled around to listen to the soundman sing Tony Bennett. I closed my eyes and let my scotch and coke do its work. It was a total joy. Five stars.

Today’s show was much better. I hardly left the crowd in ecstasy, but everyone had palpably enjoyed themselves which left me pleased enough to go sit in an internet café and scratch my head about a website which I still haven’t successfully fixed, but stopped being profitable long ago.

There was a guy on the Anti-Hoot today who was good to listen to (he wore a cowboy hat and played a harmonica and sounded like Jethro Tull) but off stage he kept bemoaning the fact that he was in constant demand for gigs. I sat and nodded and chipped in when necessary. He was being a self-aggrandising bore but I didn’t roll my eyes or look away once, because I’m not a douchebag. See, other people? Be decent.

Earlier I was walking along looking at Bo Burnham’s posters announcing that the guy is a five star prodigy and I thought to myself that I didn’t have that natural star quality that makes a great performer. This may be true. But it’s also true of many fine comedians. For most people it just takes work. A lot of work. Not for Mozart, or Burnham or others. But for most. I think when I was a teenager, I wanted to be exceptional at something. Now it seems pointless. You don't have to be a genius anymore. We have the internet. After I die, two people can look me up and think "I like this guy's stuff. Bookmark." That's more than enough immortality. It'll all be dust in a few generations anyway. I’m in a much better frame of mind today. I think it’s called sleep and not drinking. Now I’ve had moderate drinking and I’m planning on sleep. Tomorrow may be great or it may not, but I will have to let it unfold as it chooses. I’m sure it doesn’t matter so much one way or another. This may be the moderate amount of scotch talking. Half the fun's in finding out. The other half is in not.

My Edinburgh Ballache Part 2: The Big Whinge.

Today I woke up hungover and demoralised and gave myself an impromptu day off to really get to grips with how shitty I felt. Yesterday’s show was yet more hard work. It’s all very well me concentrating on the show and not worrying about people’s reaction, but when the people are straight in front of you, that’s something else. One man on the second row was actually stifling laughter. He was too uncomfortable about laughing in a quiet room. That is the true Borg mentality of an audience. There is probably a psychological study about this. Audiences have no idea how much they can alter a performance. People seem to have an idea that an audience will laugh when something is funny. That isn’t the case. They will laugh when the collective mood allows them. The audience do not play a passive role in a good performance. They are its fuel. They sit there in silence wondering why they are sitting there in silence. Okay, it wasn’t silence. But it was underwhelming. And it made my material feel underwhelming. And it isn’t. With the right crowd it’s funny stuff. I felt the energy draining from me. Someone from the Theatre Royal in Nottingham asked me to email him after Edinburgh has finished to talk about the show. I don’t know what will come of it. What was worse is that firstly, someone was taking pics of me on a big SLR, which suggests press. On the strength of that show, I’d be lucky to get 2 stars. Again. Unless the reviewer can see passed the audience. They rarely can. Even worse is that two hungover girls came to the show. These girls saw my show last year and have stayed in touch since. Last year’s show was about insecurity, and they laughed like drains. (Strange expression. Don’t drains just drain?) This year, they sat at the back and mostly looked bored and hungover.

After the show I changed my pound coins from the pint glass for notes and looked around for the girls. They had gone. I hate feeling shit after a gig. It pervades everything I do. I imagined they had hated the show and fled to the hills, then I found them outside. Festival paranoia. I may not come to the Edinburgh Festival next year unless I have something to gain. So far, it feels like I have gained nothing at all. Sometimes the show feels like it's better but then I have a bad day and it knocks me over. Especially with the reinforcement of bad reviews. In London during August, there are more gigs available and mini-fringes. I may do one of these instead. I can spend money and feel tired and ignored and then go home on the tube.

On the plus side, I had Ron Swanson's favourite whiskey. That was nice.

*Note from August 2014: I edited this blog a lot. I talked about going out with these girls and how I ended the night feeling annoyed and disappointed. I guess I hurt the girls feelings. One of them got in touch, so I removed some stuff.

The Fear Blog. Part 16.

Aug 20

It's strange what we take away from things. The performance from the night before was probably my best and there was wall to wall praise from my crowd, as well as an audience review and a tweet. Yet one of the audience members came up to me and said “You have a lot of good ideas. You should get a writing partner.” This is the same basic criticism as my brother Phil made. He said that some ideas were cut short when you expected them to be taken further. I think it's legitimate criticism, but I wish people would give me specific examples. The problem is that if you embark on an idea and no one is on board, it's a long ride. If you abandon a joke halfway through, it's a sign to the audience that you have no faith in your material. I'm naturally quite “faffy” and clumsy with my expression. Thus I find smaller ideas less risky for me. Throw a lot at your crowd and see if anything sticks. Hence the youtube channel: “Hit n Run.” That hardly defines my act, however. My grandma story is about 8 minutes long on its own. When I was a year or two into stand up I would usually do 2 things in 5 minutes, whereas most people try to cram in 8 jokes. The building story is my favourite, but it's a gamble. When you have an hour, I guess you have more time to develop something. Maybe that was his point. I've abandoned the show structure, and now just talk about each thing as it comes to me. I think it has improved the show no end, and makes it feel less like some scripted slog.

I went to see Alex's shed. It's not a show. It's a large former taxi shed that my landlady has bought and is converting into a massive house. By next Edinburgh she says I will have a 'des res' in which to stay. Alex and her friends are basically doing the whole building project by themselves. Zeinu was racing around in a powerful-looking forklift truck. Sheer terror. While I'm worrying about my delivery and wondering if I could get free IT classes if I went on the dole (which is a post-Edinburgh possibility) Alex had bought a large property and is building it herself. The gulf of achievement between us is epic. We're the same age and yet she displays all the signs of someone who has got entirely the right idea. By the time she's 40, she'll be drinking coffee in her superhouse. I'll be scribbling notes on the back of a bus ticket in a bedsit. If I'm lucky. Hats of to Alex, though. It's a proper Grand Designs. Shame she didn't get the TV team up. I could have had the jump on that ballbag Kevin McCloud. “What I've done is something fundamentally important. It's more than just a project. It's been years of planning, passion and patience. A labour of love which unites both dream and aspiration. That's right. I've stuck Kevin McCloud's head up his own arse.” I got up on a bit of scaffolding and started scraping rust off a beam. 12 minutes later Alex called lunch. Phew, a well deserved break. I finally got a taste of what it must have been like working at British Leyland in the 70s.

The weather was nice again. Apparently there's a HEAT WAVE in London. Temperatures of up to 31 degrees. Of course there is. Scotland doesn't suffer the same indignities of heat. Here you can see the sun on such days, but it has no apparent effect on anything. It just sits in the sky like a pilot light. It's rather like looking at a shark through some aquarium glass. Looks powerful, but no threat. “Great, but what now?” Sun, rain, it's all the same to me. Five shows left. Weird. What have I learnt? Deliver the material like you're discovering it. Smile even. You're never going to be edgy. Might as well go down the “winning personality” route. Perhaps if they like me enough, a reviewer may one day say “funny.” Newbury Today once said “Clever, well-structured jokes.” I'm clever and nice, apparently. Possibly my future lies in Dictionary Corner. I was watching Eric Hutton's gig and he said “You look like a happy person” so I just smiled. Sure, why not? What is happiness? It's a feeling, rather than a state. I don't think people need to find happiness. I don't think it works like that. I just think they need to be capable of feeling happy.

I thought about calling my next Edinburgh show “Be. More. Funny.” What do you think? That is my target for the rest of my life, after all. It's based on the idea that reviewers say that I'm clever and self-deprecating. Charming even. But funny is nothing they seem willing to give to me. It's a Simpson's quote. Homer bangs the TV on the top and says “Stupid TV. Be more funny!” It also means I can do banter and I don't have to stick to a rigid structure.

I am working out how to nap. Ready? First you male sure you're properly tired, then you eat some food, and then you go to bed. Eating food takes it out of you. The blood moves from your brain to your stomach so your brain has no energy to ruminate. When I feel like that, I think about something abstract but immersive. I think yesterday it was flying. Then you're brain takes you to weird places and I try not to realise that I'm falling asleep or your brain says “Hey, wait a minute. What gives?” and wakes you up. I slept for 45 minutes. I woke up feeling like I had been on a cross-channel ferry. God bless you nap-time nausea.

My show started with 5 people and swelled to a mighty 8. There were never any super laughs, but people went from looking bored or sceptical to looking engaged. I got £6. The lowest amount ever, but festival goers are running dry. There was a woman who might have been a reviewer. Reviewers are supposed to announce their presence, but the Three Weeks person didn't. Never mind. I recorded the show. The recording worked. Of course it did. I deleted it after. I don't want to sit and listen to long periods of quiet. It's hard for people to laugh in a quiet room. The bar staff came up and they were almost red from holding back laughter. Weird that. I went to the Eric Hutton gig after and it was kinda quiet too. One person laughing in a quiet room is like setting off a car alarm. Eric Hutton is a brilliant comic by the way.

I wish that Sunday night's gig had recorded. It was the perfect show for laughter and thus my best delivery, because I wasn't chasing the laughs. I knew they would come. Oh well. Maybe the recording exists somewhere lost. Well, enjoy my best Edinburgh show Atlantians. They always get the best lost stuff. Using my headphones right now, I'd wager.