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I continue to dip my toe back into stand up and today drove down to Islington and the excellent Bill Murray pub to perform stand up for the upcoming podcast version of “Can I Have My Ball Back?” I’ve been considering doing a tour show on this subject and that’s still a possibility, but at the moment feel that book, podcast, puppet and sitcom plot about this (along with a couple of possible film ideas) might be enough. There is obviously a lot of crossover in what I’ve done already. But we’ll see and I think it’s certainly the case that a couple of the bits from the set I did tonight could at least become staples for my stand up (if and when I start doing that properly again). I do miss performing stand up. The reasons for this long break are partly due to the success of the podcast and how much time that takes up for me, but also a conscious decision to not be away from home too much whilst the kids are little. The life style of the stand up comic does not fit very well with the 6.30am start time of the parent.
It’s still a bit unbelievable that I haven’t done any significant stand up for about five years (though of course Covid didn’t help matters) and it’s a slight shame that I haven’t exercised that muscle as I had got to a point where I was pretty good at it. It’s never been the be all and end all of comedy for me though. Being a stand up is the most immediate and possibly best form of doing comedy, but I’ve always been interested in exploring all forms of laughter-making and partly due to my complex history with stand up comedy and stand up comedians, I have a lot of affection for more collaborative areas and also weird areas involving puppets or stones or solo snooker. It’s not like I’ve stopped doing comedy because I’ve stopped doing stand up. I may not have been in the top tier of things as a stand up, but I am probably in the top ten worldwide of improvising 45 minute podcasts whilst clearing stones. In some senses the stuff I’ve done over the last five years is more interesting and varied than what I achieved in the 13 stand up shows I’ve done. But it would be a shame if I stopped doing long form live shows forever.
Tonight I had my script on my iPad, which made the prospect of doing 60 minutes of new stuff a bit less terrifying. My memory is not as good as it was, but even so I felt a bit baffled by the idea that I used to keep two hour comedy shows in my brain (and even managed to recreate old ones when I did all my stand up shows over 6 weekends back in 2016). As this material is for a podcast I had to keep it a bit tighter, so reading it was the only real option, but I managed to move off script a bit and also, because my teleprompter software had also imported all of my producer’s notes and cut off a few sentences, I had to do some filling and discuss why I was floundering! Though these were some of the best bits.
It’s not like I haven’t had stage time or am not used to making comedy out of nothing, so I was equipped to deal with it. The small room was full and the audience seemed on board. I love this club and its ethos and the comedy literate audience, who are a great sounding board to discover if something is worthwhile or not. I am delighted that you and I were able to help the club continue through lockdown by giving them some of the kickstarter money we raised in 2020. It feels like this venue might be the spiritual home of things like live Twitch of Fun - it’s certainly about the right size for that limited audience. But equally it’s a great place to try out ideas for stand up and tonight did get me itching a little bit more for at least a partial return.
