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I do a lot of work for charity, but I don't like to talk about it.
This week I got drafted in as a last minute headliner for a fundraiser for Great Ormand Street Hospital at Alexandra Palace. I don't know if someone dropped out or I was just brought in because the obvious actual headliner Greg Davies was trying out new material and didn't want to close the show. I didn't feel like my own material was necessarily headliner stuff because a) it was all about balls and cancer and b) it's still relatively new and untested stuff. Would they go for it? Would this be how they wanted their evening of fun to end.
As I was added late an no one else on the bill knew I was on, let alone the audience, I can confidently predict that my presence made no difference to the charitable donations and all I served to do was make the evening 15 minutes longer (and sure, gave the gift of laughter and sure maybe persuaded someone to do to the doctors and saved their life).
No one had told me where to go when I got to the venue and I wasn't sure I'd driven through the right gate and was in a dark car park to the side of this imposing building. There was a big metal staircase up to the venue, but no one was around and it felt a bit like a horror film, but finally someone showed up to get me to the green room. And it was fun to be on a mixed bill again, mainly for the social aspect. Greg had arrived early too and it was good to catch up with him too. He is reassuringly grumpy about his success and has very high standards for his own comedy. He did a very funny set which the audience loved but which he called "dogshit". He is such a naturally funny man. He tried out a couple of stories back stage and I was even laughing at the serious bits, in anticipation of how he was going to prick that bubble. It's endlessly fascinating to me with comedy that the same material delivered by different people can be with extremely funny or wholly unacceptable. Which is why censorship of comedy doesn't work so often. Or why things seem worse out of context or written down. Because it's not about what is said, but who is saying it and how they're saying and as Barry Cryer observed, whether you like the person. Greg has the likability factor and piles of it to spare, so he can be viciously rude without being hurtful and tell a story about someone being murdered by a crossbow and you trust it will be worth it in the end.
He did tell me one story backstage that was funny, but I still agreed that due to subject matter it was probably best to leave it. Which he did. But he knew that himself. I think he might have got away with it.
I was bizarrely calm before this huge gig. I had the responsibility of closing, I didn't know if my stuff would work in this environment and there were 900 people in the audience. Why did I not feel nervous? I talked about my balls. I got some laughs. It went OK. The 15 minutes flew by. Contrast that with the insurance conference I did where I was mostly met with bemused silence and however much I talked I always seemed to have at least ten more minutes to go and had to reach for more things to talk about.
Comedy is strange, though it's not that strange that a gig in a full theatre in front of an audience expecting comedy at 9.30pm goes better than in a half full conference room in front of people who want to go and start drinking and flirting at 5.30pm. I was paid in laughter tonight and in money at the previous gig and you know which one was best. Money obvs. I can't buy kids shoes with laughter.
