Friday 12 August 2011

Day Eight: #fml

This blog is being written, once again, to the sound of what appears to be some kind of singing rally. There's a lot of whooping and singing which is far enough away for me not to be able to recognise what it is but it sounds like there's a lot of them. I am due to get up at a reasonable hour in order to fly to Dublin for my holiday within a holiday, like Inception, but not a dream. Probably more like a Russian Doll but not a freaky Romany lady that is a really rubbish toy... there might be material there. Note to self.

I had a lovely afternoon. Josephine Lacey and Chris Dangerfield invited me round for lunch. I sat with them and we had a lovely time. Their house looks like fun. I hopped on a bus to Slappers and noted that I had never seen so many white people since my Stockholm trip last year. This being Scotland, with its low job prospects, rain and general hatred for anything not Scottish probably wasn't an ideal destination for the West Indian migration of the 1950s.


Tagline: Josephine and I after our chicken curry lunch. I look like I have a 48 inch neck, like a Harry Potter monster. I haven't.

We are all pissed off with Comedy Slappers. Just to re-cap, shit location, shit time. I still can't remember agreeing to be such a big part of it. Josephine said that the idea was that Slappers Edinburgh was going to be for the over-40s on the circuit but they couldn't find enough over 40s to get involved so Hannah, Darren, Jonathan and I were roped in. In hindsight, I should have said no as soon as I was asked to make a financial contribution towards the flyers etc. But why have an uncomfortable conversation for 5 minutes when you can bitch and moan about it on a blog for six months? 

The audience today was the same as it has been every day, About 12 of them, some foreigners and no one really laughing. There were some Spanish and Polish in today. I found out that "transvestite" is pretty much the same in Spanish and Polish and joked that the tv community are universal. The Spanish and Polish laughed.

I then went off to a meeting and tried to stay awake as a Scotch man spoke for 15 minutes. He had a thick accent and I couldn't understand a word he said. It was a nice enough meeting but lit with candles which made me feel sleepy. I shared about the loneliness. There was someone who used to be famous in there. She was quite rude when she said that she couldn't understand what the guy was saying. "You're the foreigner love!" I thought.


Tagline: Location of the AA Meeting. I ain't even joking.


Tagline: So tough are the Scots, that they take an extreme view of handwash. "Carex? Do me a fucken' favour pal. You want clean hands or no'?"

MJ and I went to get cake. The shop across the road from him wanted £3.50 for a slice of cake. Fucking cheek. So we went to Sainsburys, paid £2.50 for a Victoria sponge, punched it into our faces and headed off for another caning from the Gagstronomic! audience.

Hatty Ashdown opened and the small audience went with her. On went Mark who lost his confidence and way a bit and the room was dead. Dead I tell you. I went on. Struggled once again. Got a few laughs from the one-liners. Tried to banter - nothing. Referred to the fact that I was dying - nothing. Fucking soul destroying. Introduced Hannah, she got a little bit out of them but it was horrid. Five people walked out. One girl looked back to say sorry. This gig is a disaster. A comic was in tonight and he suggested that we should have an MC, so that if one of us dies, they can try a level it out. Historically, people have done ok there apparently. The comic said that he thought our stuff was good, it's just that the room wasn't for laughing and he'd be right.


Tagline: Hannah flogging a dead horse for the fifth time. "Move closer, this is going to be like a shit Jackanory." 

Tomorrow, we're going to try Hannah MCing. Mark needs to go on later if he's going to get angry and start shouting at the audience but because he's committed to another gig that starts just as ours is finishing, he has to go on early. I think we need a generic thing to say at the beginning about the space and the noise, so that the audience recognises that it's shit and come with us. I'll think about that over the weekend.

Feeling ready to quit stand-up altogether, I trundled along to Late Night Slappers in the downstairs of an Italian Restaurant. It's a good venue because it's AWAY FROM THE RESTAURANT and THE AUDIENCE ARE IN THE DARK and THE COMICS ARE IN THE LIGHT. These simple things make it a world away from Gagstro. We had Scott Capurro headlining tonight - for free, so we managed to get a load of people in. I went on third before Scott and *fanfare* had a great gig. People laughed loudly, people clapped and cheered. Sanity restored temporarily. I felt great, my timing was there, I was in sync with the audience. Ah! This feels better.

Scott Capurro's people were laughing. I am a friend of a friend of Dorothy after all. Scott also said on his way out, "that was great, Gemma." There you go people of Globe Bar, Scott Capurro said I were great so fuck you. Laugh! Fucking laugh!

Scott came on to a straight guy in the front row which he usually does. But he ended up taking his trousers down and stood just in his pants describing what he was going to do with this poor guy. (See below).

I skipped home listening to Kylie and felt funny again. I've not tried to think about stupid Gagstro and its shitty venue. If the three of us can turn that around, that would be incredible. I think the key is to have a funny admin bit at the beginning.

I am away in Dublin spending some much needed time with Jon until Sunday so will not be posting on Friday or Saturday.

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