I did a gig in Farringdon tonight at a place called "Freakshow". It was in a tiny room above a pub and had an audience of about 30 and most of the acts were trying out stuff that was new, dark or experimental. It's what stand-up is all about for me and it was great to be here.
From early on there was quite a persistent female heckler who was unusually at least over 50. She was fairly drunk from the off. In fact as I arrived she asked me to help her carry drinks up the stairs. She had three large vodkas, but as it turned out only one friend, so I think they were intent on putting some booze away tonight. Why not? First of the month. Cause for celebration in my book.
She chatted away to most acts, in what was from the beginning only a slightly disruptive way. She confessed that she had never been to a comedy gig before and to begin with her heckles were rather sweetly supportive, "Go on, you're not doing so bad" and so on. I got the impression that she would spend a night at home having conversations with people on the telly. She would insist on conversing with each act and then usually complain when after five minutes of chat the comedian hadn't done any jokes. But she seemed to be enjoying herself and to begin with it was more charming than annoying.
But the more drunk she got the more constant her interjections became and the less actual material the comics were able to do. She promised the compere that she would be quiet for each act and then immediately broke her promise.
I had noticed that during the first half, a much younger man had sat in the seat next to her and they were now holding hands. I remember thinking that it was an odd pairing. Could she be his mum? In which case the hand holding was a little inappropriate, seeming in too intimate a way to show a healthy mother/son relationship. So I assumed this was her toyboy, even though it was a surprise to see these two together. She'd done well.
I was delighted to see my old friend Trevor "small-face" Lock on the bill. He's been away and I haven't seen him for a couple of years. He was on before me and coped admirably with the inebriated old lady, though I could sense the audience were getting annoyed that they weren't hearing any material because the acts were all having to pander to this now irritating force in their midst. Even she herself seemed irritated that Trevor had been on stage five minutes without doing a "joke", though he'd coped very amusingly with all this and with another girl who had said he looked like "Ken Clark" (which he doesn't) before she explained that she meant superman and we gradually realised she meant Clark Kent. Which was closer. Though a Leonardo di Caprio with a smaller photocopy of his own face stuck over his actual face would have been a more accurate description.
The compere tried to calm the old lady down before I came on and told her off a bit. "Oh, am I not allowed to heckle?" came the wounded reply, "I've never been to these things before. I thought I was allowed to heckle." It was more the constant commentary that was the problem. This seems to happen quite a lot at gigs, especially I have to say with drunken women.
She played the martyr and said she'd be quiet from now on, just like she'd promised before.
She did indeed start up again the minute I was on. When I discussed the graffito in the gents saying "Suck My Cock", she said, "I wrote that!"
This was unusually witty for her and we all laughed and I made some crack about not being all that surprised that she had a cock. But then she was wanting to come in at the end and in the middle of everything. I suggested she made notes and then at the end of each section I would deal with her individual remarks one by one. But I decided that as the audience had had quite enough of this, and seeing as I had a microphone that could drown out her inane ramblings, I would just press on with the act.
This was a tactic that worked pretty well and the lady was forced to shut up and I got through three or four elaborate routines with reasonable success. Then it came to the yoghurts which I decided to push to its very limits to see what would happen. As usual some people liked it and others were confused. I don't think I have to tell you which side the drunken woman fell into.
About ten minutes into the routine I discussed the check out girl not leaving her comment and having to act out lifting up all the objects in a pantomime fashion and looking into my basket in a satirical fashion. I said I wouldn't have minded if she'd just made the comment and left it at that, but that she'd had to try and stretch the joke beyond its natural endurance. I said I hated it when people did that and that I preferred jokes that just had a punch-line and that was it, rather than when people took one idea on for much too long. Most of the audience laughed at this, but the drunk woman who had been silenced for almost twenty minutes by my ignoring her did not appreciate this irony. "Yes," she said, "So do I."
"I am not surprised," I replied sarcastically, "Because all night you've been coming up with pithy one liners rather than just rambling on like an idiot, so yes, I can understand how annoying I must be, with this stream of nonsense about yoghurts."
She didn't understand what I was getting at.
"You're not funny," she told me, "I've been asleep for ten minutes through your act."
"Then it has had some purpose and success," I told her.
I told her that people not liking the yoghurt thing just spurs me on to do more of it, because I like annoying those people more than making the others laugh. So the more she talked the more I would carry on. I told her if she said one more word I would continue the yoghurt routine for another half an hour (until quarter to twelve). There was a pause and then she started to say something. "Right, I warned you. That's it!"
Having found a gap to squeeze into, she launched off again about how boring and unfunny I was. So I offered her a joke and did my Rhypnol line about her, which went down a treat. But she was beyond caring or understanding anything by now and was criticising me, so I decided that I would take the opportunity to air some of the frustrations that the audience were feeling and start to criticise her in return. Unlike the telly I could talk back and offer my own judgements on her.
Which is how I ended up ad libbing a routine about how this woman was a horrible old gnarled witch who baked children in pies, and how I had had the opportunity to turn her from her evil ways through laughter and made her realise how wonderful the world is, but I'd failed so the child killing would continue. She attempted to interject. "Don't have a go at me," I interrupted back, "You're the one who bakes the children in pies! Morally you don't have a leg to stand on. I agree that the pies are delicious. I'm not saying I can't understand your motivation, but I only eat the pies because they are there. They are a by-product of the child-killing industry. You're the one who kills children, not me."
And so it went on. I was able to use my amplified advantage to drown out the woman and it became clear that she could dish it out, but she couldn't take it, because she got offended by being compared to a witch (and also Myra Hindley - strange reaction) and her and her friend started to leave. She was still shouting at me, but I just kept being louder and I was clearly winning in the audience's view. "If only we'd known all we had to do to get rid of you was talk about yoghurts..." I told her. And as I finally bid her adieu the audience clapped and cheered. And then there was calm.
Normally I would never be so rude to a lady of any age, but it's a weird thing in this situation. I felt a bit like a swan protecting its young. Even though this lady was never going to be much of a match for me, she was threatening my environment and she had to be dealt with. And after politeness and trying to join in with her had failed (and let's face it she started with the rudeness), only rudeness was going to defeat her.
She had taken her female friend with me and then with a jolt I noticed the man she'd been holding hands with was still there. Maybe he wouldn't take it too well that I'd called his girlfriend (well oldwomanfriend) a gnarled witch. Maybe he was waiting behind to hit me in the face.
"Can I just say something?" he said, noticing me looking at him. Shit! Now I'd catch it.
"I don't know that woman and I have nothing to do with her."
I was flabberghasted.
"You don't know her? Why were you holding hands with her? I was looking at you thinking, admittedly he's not all that good looking, but she's still done pretty well. Why were you holding her hand?"
"She just started holding my hand and I didn't know what to do."
"Ask her to stop," I suggested.
But the man had been intimidated in the same way as the rest of the room had, until I had come and freed them from the witch's curse.
"To be fair, she did shut up a bit once he was holding her hand," said a bloke next to him.
So it had been a selfless gesture from him. I think he was lucky that I managed to get rid of her, or she might have taken advantage of his pliant nature in even more upsetting and unthinkable ways. I think being baked in a pie would have been getting off lightly in comparison. If you're reading this mate, I saved you from a fate worse than pie.
The strange thing about all this is that I actually felt really good about all this. I had been extremely rude to a middle-aged lady and made her upset and yet still felt like I'd stood up to a horrible school bully (like when Michael J Fox's dad punches Biff in "Back to the Future"). It certainly brought the gig alive and was, I imagine, fun to watch. On the positive side, I don't think the lady in question will remember much about it in the morning.
It's a shame I don't get heckled much by elderly women, because the children in the pie stuff that I riffed was really funny!
