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A gig today, at a Festival in the shadow of the massive telescope of Jodrell Bank. I told the crowd that I hoped everything we were doing was being beamed into space and that it would cause an intergalactic wars a la Pixels. It was a crazy gig to take given the circumstances, but then I didn’t entirely know the circumstances when I took it - thinking I would have moved by now and not knowing about the sitcom script, so thinking it would serve as a good warm up for the new show. Except it was 190 miles away and I needed to get there and back today.
Part of the fun of playing festivals is (or used to be at least) the fun of getting to hang around in the Festival, but today, as with Latitude next week, I aimed to be in and out of the place in the shortest possible time. It was a pity because this was a place filled with my people - the nerds.The stage manager commented that he had heard the Doctor Who theme played four times during shows just today. I hoped that might mean I had a good gig.
It’s sort of insane doing an eight hour round trip for 50 mins of work, but I am glad that I did it. It was a brilliant crowd and I was able to combine new and old material pretty effectively. In my usual opening joke about my enemy’s enemy there is a little tester in the set up which allows me to test how switched on the audience are. I say “There’s no point in having a philosophy if you’re going to change it halfway through your life, based on some new evidenceâ€. It that gets nothing then I know that I am probably safest just to do my broadest routines and hit the cock jokes. It it gets a bit, I think I am safe to try something a bit more adventurous, but still hit the cock jokes, cos, you know, clever people like those too. Today that line got a proper belly laugh that I had to wait to subside. It was so extraordinary I had to break off to let the audience know how good they had been.
There were, as usual with festival gigs, some young kids sitting near the front. I informed the audience that I was not going to alter my act based on this and did that one clean joke at the start in order to give parents the time to get their kids out of there. No one did. Though on the second joke, about my apparent desire to be urinated on by a woman I was chatting up, I saw a mother make a bee-line for the front to try to persuade her young son to leave. She managed to do so, with some difficulty, admitting as I pointed out her situation that he thought I was funny. One kid stayed on. Later I would congratulate him for his staying power, whilst mocking the kid who had left for having to do what his mummy said.
It was a hugely enjoyable gig and one where all my adlibs and commentaries came out really well. Goldfrapp were on the main stage and as always at these things I was fighting against the pumped up music. I claimed that Alison Goldfrapp was always doing this, following me around, setting up in car parks outside my gigs, trying to disrupt them.
The boy in the front row had blue teeth and I wondered if he’d had a raspberry slush puppy, but in fact it had been a bubble gum ice lolly. I gave him a free Emergency Questions book for his staying power, though that probably just added fuel to the flames of inappropriateness.
I had a terrific time, surging with the confidence and self-belief that destroys the personalities of so many formerly non-dickish comedians. Fortunately I don’t take cocaines, so I think I can keep successful gigs in perspective. The crowd were behind me, but the conditions were tough. It’s only taken me thirty years, but I am finally getting quite good at this. Until the next time anyway.
I was home at about midnight and it had been a twelve hour working day if you include travel and waiting around. It wasn’t exactly what I needed at the moment in terms of not knackering myself out. But it was great for building confidence.
