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Corporate gigs are always a tantalising gamble for a comedian. On the plus side you usually get paid well, but on the down side there’s a good chance it will be a horrible experience in front of people who are drunk or awful or both. Some are brilliantly organised and some are seemingly thrown together. So when I got a call on Tuesday asking if I would host an evening in a pub today, I thought maybe it might be a bit of a mess. When they told me that I should pretend to be the pub landlord I suspected I might have got a job that another comedian wasn’t able to do. But apparently that wasn’t the case and the company involved had just left it very last minute to book anyone… Bad sign?
So it felt like it might be a mildly humiliating night, but doing a job like this means I can put out free internet content and still have money for my family and my hostility and suspicion towards the corporate world has fallen down to a background simmering, now I have accepted that some form of alliance between businesses and comedians is needed for podcasting to be a viable living.
I have done a few awkward corporates where I felt mildly embarrassed to be there, either because of the kind of people I was working with, or more often because I felt it unlikely that anyone would know who I was. But I have decided that if I am going to take the plunge into this kind of work then I should do so whole-heartedly, not half-heartedly. If you’d going to say yes, then you can’t then act like a petulant child and pretend you’re above it.
And tonight’s one wasn’t being run by horrible bankers, getting awards for jobs that I didn’t understand, but a cool training shoe manufacturer who were also raising money for charity and the night had a running and drinking theme. And I know loads about both of those. And I also know that if you want to run and drink then do the running first.
And what was weird about the lateness of my booking was that an awful lot of work had gone into the event. They had converted a shop on Charing Cross Road into a proper pub, which will be there until the Marathon and which runners with a certain app can pop into and get free beer if they have run far enough that day. This is basically how all my diets work and might be an answer for the NHS to the obesity crisis. If all food is free, but you have to earn it via exercise- I have a feeling that might actually be cheaper than treating the diseases caused by over eating and not exercising. You may call be a dreamer. Or actually you might call me some kind of Hitler. But I am not the only one.
It was an amazing installation and there were loads of games and downstairs (which you got to through a hidden door behind the juke box) some running machines and sports clothing. It must have taken months to organise and days to build, so the late nature of the hosting booking was almost admirable in the face of that.
And the organisers were friendly and helpful and clued up enough to realise that there original plan, to have me behind the bar, would not work as the sight lines would be awful. More people had tuned up for the launch than they thought is the tiny bar was packed and there was nothing like a stage. Which is how I came to find myself earning a very good night’s wage, standing on a cushioned bench in the corner of a packed pub, talking through a slightly ropey radio mic to a room full of people who I think thought I was genuinely the landlord of the pub.
But even though they were drinking and the set up was a bit ad hoc, they were polite and listened and laughed at my jokes and it all went much better than you could possibly have imagined. I got to interview four runners who were going to be doing the Marathon and was supportive but mildly sarcastic to them. Obviously interviewing is now my main job (for 2019 at least) and I got some proper laughs from the crowd for my ad libbed responses. This was that rare thing, a nice corporate and also a weirdly set up gig that I would have thought wouldn’t work, that actually worked OK. The organisation of the event may have been last minute, but it was solid and the organisers were both friendly and grateful, which is not always the case either!
In fact everyone was lovely - I milled around the pub in between my two official duties, running on the running machine and raising money for charity, playing on one of those claw machines where you try to pick up a prize, winning one and then discovering it contained a message saying “Better luck next time†(what a swizz) and giving out hints for the pub quiz.
Then I announced who had won and my two hour job was over.
Luckily I can still recognise that my work life is insane. I was most excited about the fact that as there was nowhere to change I got to keep the trainers and sweat shirt that I’d been wearing during the job. It’s still the small things that please me. Plus they got me a cab home and as Catie had been in town having dinner with friends I waited for her and we shared it.
I am a winner.
