I had a very relaxing day where I did little but sleep and watch the entire 5th series of the highly enjoyable Peep Show (
I got all five DVDs here for under £17) - should have been me and Stew though.
Tonight I was gigging at
The Tattershall Castle, which is on a boat on the Thames, right opposite the London Eye. It was a boisterous Saturday night crowd, but on my fourth gig of the year, I felt confident and focused and back in control. I had fun. There was the captain of an oil tanker in the audience. As the compere,
Dave Ward pointed out this was a bit of an unimaginative way to spend his day off. He spends all day on a boat and then thinks - where can I go to have some down time....
The boat, though moored to the shore, does tend to roll a little in the wake of river taxis and tugs as they pass by, usually giving the impression of being giddy or tipsy, which can make people giggle slightly. But halfway through my set I was in the middle of a routine, when the boat rocked rather more violently than usual. It caused some consternation in the crowd: most people laughing, some expressing anxiety, a couple of voices jokingly suggesting we were all about to die. I tried to ignore it and carry on, but then we were hit by another wave, that actually made me stagger and the reaction was so great that I had to stop the routine and comment on it. "Yeah, looks like this might be the end, folks," I said, "It's a shame because the punchline to this joke is brilliant. I'm trying to be professional and carrying on even though this thing is about to turn over." Everyone was laughing, slightly nervously, but still laughing, which gives you a little insight into how it must be in the moments before a disaster. Everyone cheerfully giggling about the fact that something might be about to go wrong, not making any attempt to save themselves. You wouldn't want to look stupid. Better to drown than run the risk of people thinking you were over-reacting to an actually harmless situation.
Still at least they were laughing. I was going down well as we were going down. I chose a different "going down" joke on the spur of the moment though, which I suspect you might be able to reconstruct without my help. And being professional, like the band on the Titanic, I carried on. I still had ten minutes to do and if I had to do the last ten underwater, shouting out swear words and seeing if people could hear them, then that is what I would do.
As the boat continued to rock I turned to the oil tanker captain, "This must be a pisser for you," I remarked, "Presumably even though it's your day off, you still have to go down with the ship. Occupational hazard."
The rocking subsided, but there was no point in trying to complete the joke, so instead I complained about the difficulty of coping with a heckle from a wave. There's no way of responding when nature attacks.
But luckily there was no Poseidon Adventure end to the evening. And I finished my spot, had a beer and then left the boat feeling pumped up and happy. I'd rather do this for a living than captain an oil tanker.
