I was back at Spank tonight, one of my favourite comedy clubs. ItÂ’s in an underground, hot room in a pub near Great Portland Street and
as IÂ’ve mentioned before has a wonderful variety of acts and dancing after. ItÂ’s a whole heck of fun.
Though as many of those of you in England will have noticed in the last couple of days (and be well used to if you live in any other part of the UK) the smoking ban has had the unexpected side effect of allowing one to smell what a pub full of people smells like when not masked in a cloak of cigarette smoke. ItÂ’s not very nice. Every sweaty armpit and every clandestine fart is now sharply defined. ItÂ’s going to take some getting used to. I mean I prefer it to being a smoky environment and itÂ’s got to be better for my health (though many of the farts tonight did seem pretty noxious, not least my own), but it is another reminder of one of the many truths of humanity. We all stink.
There was some incident tonight as well, when Men in Coats came on for a surprise performance. It’s a terrific visual act which is hard to explain if you haven’t seen it, but essentially two men mess around behind a curtain and… no I am not going to be able to do it justice. Go and see it. When I did Talking Cock in Melbourne the guys were on in the same theatre as me, so it was good to see them again – although in fact it is a slightly different line up, but white haired Mick who is made to appear to be three foot tall and able to fly (see it sounds good doesn’t it) was one of the original guys and I hadn’t seen him for a while. I’ve seen the act a few times, but something seemed different early on and I thought I must have missed something when Mick’s face seemed to have had some red juice spilled on it. And as the act continued the redness continued, dripping down his face and streaking through his white hair. After a few minutes the act ground to a halt and it became clear that Mick was bleeding. He had hit his head on a low bit of ceiling that jutted out from the back of the stage and which clearly no-one had noticed when setting up. It was quite a frightening and worrying sight and Mick disappeared off up the stairs to see what the damage was, though kudos to him for carrying on for a good few minutes after what must have been a painful crack.
It turned out that he was OK and that there had just been a tiny cut, even though it produced a good deal of blood and he had soon cleaned himself up. And after a little break the guys came on and did the rest of their act. I donÂ’t think it is hyperbole to say that what this man did was braver than anything achieved by any soldier in Iraq, Afghanistan or World War II. There are no people like show people.
I got a bit drunk before I went on, partly due to the party atmosphere, partly to cope with the nerves of trying out such new material and partly in the hope that if I was drunk my nasal receptors would overload and I wouldnÂ’t be able to smell the stinking public. The gig was OK, though I was a bit thrown by a man shouting out one of my mini-punchlines. He did the exact wording of the joke, which I have only been doing for a couple of weeks and I couldnÂ’t work out if he was following me around trying to spoil my set or if I had inadvertently come up with a joke that existed already and that everyone knew. He was drunk and wasnÂ’t being malicious and in a way the way I dealt with it was as funny as what I would have done anyway, but it unsettled me at the time. It doesnÂ’t matter even if that bit of the joke is old, as the really funny bit comes afterwards where I take it further (I wonÂ’t write the joke here as many of you get annoyed that everything turns up on here first), but my confidence was slightly dented as was my sharpness by the alcohol and it wasnÂ’t as good a gig as I hoped. It fell apart a bit, but hopefully in quite a good way and I was a little annoyed with myself, though afterwards people were pretty complimentary, so maybe it wasnÂ’t as bad as I thought and I had allowed myself to get annoyed unnecessarily. Anyway it didnÂ’t really matter as I was followed by the amazing Hoola-Girl and then everyone got to dance and I pogoed around to Nirvana, my olfactory organs filled with the stink of sweat and sphincters and had a great time.,
Spank – we love it.
