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An afternoon jaunt out to Newport for another one night stand and the second gig on the Happy Now? tour. No tour manager with me for these autumn gigs so I was driving myself like in the old days (and to be fair occasionally in the new days too, but I don’t tend to do two three hour drives in a day very much any more). I was tired on the way there and exhausted on the way back, but I listened to Adam Buxton’s excellent new podcast to keep my spirits up. Buxton is the English Limmy, super-talented, ridiculously funny and weirdly mainly ignored by the mainstream. But he’s a self-contained concentrated piece of super-dense (in that he’s compact, not stupid) matter and able to produce amazing music and videos by himself and maybe that’s too threatening for TV executives who increasingly want to be the guiding hand in TV comedies, even though most of them are chancers (but maybe we all are). In this mainly quite serious podcast with Jon Ronson, they got to the guts of internet shaming and eviscerated them and there was a disarming discussion about a critical email that Buxton had received which had surprisingly got to him. It’s incredible to think that someone as good as he is might doubt his abilities or be affected by a passive-aggressive and slightly snide critique of his work and style by a stranger, but it’s a very human reaction. But why someone who has created so much great comedy would be wounded even slightly by someone who has created none is hard to fathom, though I know the effect of a sharpened twig of an underhand comment, especially when it is laced with half-compliments. I know I get remarks from strangers about why RHLSTP is boring or I am irritating or what I am doing wrong, from people who have never even tried to create anything. That doesn’t mean they aren’t allowed to have an opinion or even that they are wrong, but just because you personally don’t like something doesn’t mean that it has no value, but it’s not like RHLSTP is floundering around with no one listening. Clearly I am doing something right for at least some people.
But any sensible performer (and there are those who lose all sight of reality and believe they are infallible geniuses and can never be wrong) will have enough self-doubt and self-criticism to think that the one voice in the crowd belongs to the little boy pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. I certainly find myself irritating and don’t listen back to my stuff if I can help it. I think sometimes people assume that every performer believes in their God-like powers, partly I suppose because it must seem a bit that way, if you’re brave/foolhardy enough to put yourself and your opinions and jokes out there as if they mean anything. But most performers will have critiqued themselves much more harshly already (there are some exceptions to my mind, but maybe I am just being as short-sighted as the internet critics there) and maybe that’s why a barb can hurt.
I have got to the stage where most of it is water off a duck’s back now, largely because I have accepted that I am an acquired taste and assume that people won’t like me, so am pleasantly surprised if anyone does. Certainly it’s not a revelation to me that a stranger might not like my stuff and I largely just find the people who come out of nowhere to give me their opinion are strange and arrogant in themselves. Why do they think their opinion of something is so important and what drives them to tell someone they don’t like that they don’t like them? I now get pleasure from replying that they might be right, I might not be funny. Or it could be that they aren’t clever enough to understand what I am doing. It could be either (or indeed both), but it’s nice to hold up a mirror to them and attempt to make them consider the deficiency might be with them. Which they will never admit, largely because I think, the only reason you would get in contact with someone you don’t like to tell them you don’t like them is that there is some deficiency in yourself that you are attempting to repress. It’s the only real explanation.
It’s fine not to like something, but it’s weird to seek that thing out to inform it of your subjective opinion. I take comfort in the fact that I don’t want people who think that’s a good thing to do (or to leave deliberately shitty comments on a youtube video) to like what I do, so I am glad when they turn up because it means I haven’t got to the point where that kind of idiot thinks I am funny. The worst thing they could do to me is to not leave those comments. That would be the only thing that could hurt me. Ha ha, now I’ve got them.
Anyway, amazing that Adam worries about stuff like that, because his serious interview was followed by a delightfully stupid song about James Bond, which is exactly why he is brilliant (to the people who think he is brilliant) and it would be a shame if he let one comment from someone who doesn’t get what is ace about him stop him from doing that.
Details of the podcast here and I am not mentioning it because RHLSTP gets a mention, partly because it very nearly doesn’t and comes almost as an after thought at the end of a very long list of recommended podcasts! Also it's much better than RHLSTP and thus dangerous competition to my whole fragile internet empire. The annoying decency and sense of fair play instilled in me by my stupid family mean that I still have to tell you about it, even though it's self-defeating. Hence my career.
The Newport gig went very well, even though it was a smallish audience, with a much more confident performance of the new material, which is getting better all the time. This show has the potential to be my best one I think, though having not doing the Fringe I am in the weird position of touring a show that is in some ways still at a preview stage (though most of the routines are now quite solid, it’s just the way I link them that needs more work, plus I need to extend it to 90 minutes by February).
And having got up at 6 o clock this morning and most days this week, I found the drive home a little bit hard work, but felt I’d earned the large whisky that I had when I got in, which perked me up considerably!
