I played the Bear Cat comedy club in Twickenham last night. It's a venue that I last played maybe 15 years ago and I haven't been back since, so it was a weird sensation going back.
My early stand up career was not particularly notable and I was at best inconsistent. For every good gig I did there would be a horrible death and I can remember doing two open spots at this club. The first went horribly badly. I was introduced as an open spot and was being booed before I even stepped on to the stage. I wasn't confident enough to recover from that, but remember facing up to the barrage of insults and vowing to stay on stage for my full five minutes. This was my only way of getting any kind of victory from the situation. But it was a lonely walk back to the BR station and I still remember sitting on the platform feeling broken and depressed.
The next time I did an open spot there it went a lot better and I managed to outsmart the hecklers and ad lib and it went really well. So the Bear Cat pretty much sums up how those early days were. One terrible gig, one good one. I'm not sure that I ever went back for a 20 minute spot, so if that's the case it has taken me 15 years to go from open spot to paid spot, which is quite impressive.
The place was packed and apart from the fact that the guys running the venue have a few more grey hairs and wrinkles (as do I) very little had changed. There was an open spot in the dark and tiny back stage area, pacing around, going over his lines. He was going to be on directly before me, and it brought back all those memories into sharper focus. This was his fourth gig and he was dressed in a funny striped comedy jacket and I thought to myself, "They're going to eat him alive." Although everything is friendly and civil there is always a tension between established acts and open spots, which I have experienced from both directions. Essentially a new act has to earn his stripes (even if he is wearing them already) before he will be totally accepted. This can seem unfair from the open spot perspective (and I remember resenting it a little) but it's fair enough because often new acts are strange or rubbish and you can't befriend them. But there's more to it than that and like any job you need to prove yourself before you will be accepted.
I briefly chatted to the new guy anyway and told him of my bad and good experience which seemed to shake him a little, but he was pretty focused. Lightheartedly cruel bets were going on amongst the crew and other acts as to how long the new guy would last. Apparently the open spot earlier in the show had had a terrible time and only lasted 3 and a bit minutes before he walked. Would this fella go the same way: did the audience have blood lust and need another victim, or were they satiated and would give the second guy a chance?
He went on to a few jeers and a couple of good natured heckles about him resembling Screech from
Saved By The Bell, but he wasn't too phased and went into a confidently delievered series of impressions and funny faces that won the audience round quickly. He cemented this good start by playing the Indiana Jones theme by making fart sounds with his hands. The crowd loved him and he'd proven himself and earned another gig in the process. He came off and was accepted into the fold.
It was slightly nerve-wracking to step back on to this stage that had so many old and mixed emotions, but my opening joke got a great reaction and it went well from there on in.
A couple of the newer routines didn't go as well as the punchier gags and they didn't seem to go for the potarto or the pomme de terre stuff as much as other audiences, so I did a bit about how it was upsetting to find that my written material wasn't going as well as a bloke making fart sounds with his hands. I had written this esoteric routine about the intricacies of the French language, but all the people of Twickenham wanted was fart sounds. I tried to do it myself and even though I was rubbish at it I still got the best response of the night. I'd spent all that time working on stuff and yet that's all I needed to do. My mock outrage went down well.
I headed home, now 15 years later, being able to drive rather than having to wait for the train. It was good to be back.
