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Belfast tonight and a rare comedy club gig made things a bit more spicy than usual. There were three men in at one side who were making such strange noises that I couldn’t tell if they were drunk or disabled. I think they were drunk, but even now I am not sure. They were throwing in the occasional heckle, mostly weird grunts (but as I observed, as an Englishman it’s hard enough to understand the accent here), but they were also chatting to each other. I am always aware that the people around such disruption are having their nights unfairly ruined, so tried to shut it down by being blunt about being good enough at my job to not require any assistance from the crowd and to suggest that if I was in the audience and they were ruining the show I might want to beat them up in the interval. It would work for a while, but then twenty minutes later they would forget.
Presuming that they were drunk this was an impressive level of inebriation to get to so early in the night. It threw off my timing on quite a few of the routines that are building up to something. Just as I was deliberately doing a bit that tanks in order to get a pay off at the end there was another incoherent shout that broke up the flow and made it impossible to make the bit work. I thus had to change the routine to a discussion of what I had been planning and my skill at making it look like I’d suddenly forgotten how to do comedy. It’s one of my favourite bits. However well I am doing, it’s amazing to see how quickly a crowd becomes worried if you’re doing a bit that doesn’t work (except it is working of course because they’re meant to have that reaction).
In the second half there was more commotion and talking and it turned out one of the party had fallen off his chair and was on the floor. “I’ll tell everyone I had them rolling in the aisles†I said, “Doesn’t matter if they were drunk. It still counts. No one needs to know.â€
The men were clearly fans of mine and just misjudging how idiotic they were being. I did suggest that they could all leave. After all they could roll on the floor for free anywhere else in the building and it seemed a shame to have paid to do it during my gig. I told them that if they left they would experience an amazing ovation as a roomful of people applauded their decision - a cheer from the rest suggested I was not wrong. It could be the highlight of their lives. The night a whole theatre (admittedly not a very full or very theatry one) would applaud them. They’d be like gods.
They stayed.
But it was a good gig, even though I was feeling a bit disorientated and tired. I involuntarily burped at one point and then a bit later farted, which is quite rare on stage. It was a really smelly one too and it completely threw me as I worried that the front rows were suffocating in swamp gas. But hopefully I was high up enough above them to save them from that fate. Yet it was so dense that I bet it sank rather than rose. Sorry if you smelt it. It was I who dealt it. I am not very well. As you probably worked out. Even I thought it was horrible and it was one of mine.
It was a good gig in spite of all this and it’s fun for me when things go so differently (apart from when I am in a cloud of my own marsh gas). But a third day away on my own, feeling displaced and if not lonely, then at least solitary, and I was in a weird fug and tiredness and ennui. I didn’t get to see anything of Dublin or Belfast and I was too weary from the travelling to get any real work done, so even more stress.
Up early tomorrow to get home to celebrate the sixth anniversary of my marriage. And see my stupid family, who I’ve missed more than they’ll ever know.
