In the past I lived by a rule of thumb that if a taxi driver or hairdresser asked me what I did for a living I would lie about it. Because you are in a situation where you are trapped with that person for a period of time and you don't know them and it usually just leads to the same scenario. They ask you to tell them a joke or try to tell you jokes that you can use, or tell you all about their favourite comedian who is usually someone you don't like. The problem being of course that I don't have many actual "jokes" and that even if I did it is hard to tell them out of context to an audience of one and I write my own jokes so don't want them from someone else, especially when the person telling them seems to think it is funny to do gags with the word Paki in them.
So experience has told me that it saves time and energy to just say I work in an office or I am unemployed or anything other than telling them I am a comedian.
Yet for some reason recently I have started being honest. Why? I don't know. What's wrong with me?
Tonight on the way back from my gig in Crouch End I got a cab and the driver was one of those affable and bubbly fellas who clearly want to chat. He was from South London and joking about how far north he had accidentally found himself, saying he only usually comes this far when he is on holiday and commenting how cold it was this far up the country. This should have been enough of a clue to me to not give this "joker" the ammunition to carry on by letting him know I was funny for a living. But when he asked me if I had been working, I couldn't resist telling him I had. I was a bit drunk and maybe vainly thinking he had recognised me. Surely most people he picks up at 11.30pm with Guinness on their breath have not been working. In any case, I told him I was a stand up comedian, which led to a long drive home with him fulfilling all the stereotypes that I would expect. He didn't ask me to tell him a joke, but wanted to know what kind of comedy I did. And I knew from his reaction that when I said I was what one might call "alternative" (I wouldn't call myself that, but thought it was the easiest way to let him know the vague ballpark) that that was not the kind of stuff he liked. Indeed he told me of his love for old school comics like Bernard Manning and Roy Walker. He then told me one of Roy Walker's jokes, quite badly. I didn't find it that amusing, but I was still in North London and had to be polite and said that whilst they weren't my kind of thing that they at least knew how to tell a joke.
Then the cab driver asked "What's a shitzu?"
Of course I knew the vague answer he was looking for. After all I am a comedian. I have probably heard most jokes in the world. Most jobs you don't get this. If you meet a cab driver you don't ask them to tell you how to get from Balham to Islington or spend the evening telling them how you would do it.
But the man was affable and friendly and I played along, wishing that I had just lied to him. "It's a rubbish zoo or something like that."
The man was slightly crestfallen. "No it's a dog," he said. "That's what you say if they get the answer, but if they say dog you say it's a zoo with no animals."
Were we home yet? Not even close.
Of course the cabbie had always thought that maybe he could become a comedian, though he wasn't sure he could stand up in front of all those people.But he took me through a few of the gags he had done for a Best Man's speech. I laughed along, even though I had worked out the punchlines long before he got to them.
He also told me about the best comedian he had seen (and this is quite a common story too from cab drivers) who was part of a night involving strippers, where audience members were dragged up and performed sex acts with the girls on stage. The comedian was married to one of the strippers and did a joke which involved doing a head-stand and performing cunnilingus on his wife.
"I don't really do anything like that," I commented. I guessed the cab driver probably wouldn't like my stuff, but he wasn't interested in hearing any of it or indeed of really listening to what I had to say.
He wasn't a horrible man and all this was my own fault for telling him what I did and this half an hour cab drive was my punishment and a reminder not to be honest again.
As I got out of the cab he told me another joke. I can't remember what it was. I am quite bad at remembering jokes.
