My gig in Morecambe was really enjoyable. It wasn't a massive crowd but they really got into it and I had more fun with the show than I've had for ages. Perhaps because I've done it a few times recently I was confident enough to leave the script and ad lib. Not just that, I thought I was doing it well and still moving onwards as a performer. It was enough fun for me to forget the gruelling tedium of the six hour drive to get here. I felt quite proud of myself for doing so well.
I was part of a short comedy festival in the town that spawned Eric Bartholemew (one of my favourite comics, but I hope the local council relents and allows a statue of his friend Ernest Wiseman to be put alongside his own) and there was another gig in the same venue after me, so I hung around to watch. The first act was the great and rude Canadian comic Mike Wilmot. His bit about cunnilingus was so funny that I reached that marvellous point where you are laughing so hard that you slightly lose control of yourself. I don't see myself as a stand-up, and I'm not sure I would be much good as one. It's a very difficult discipline and it's easy to be rubbish or boring or predictable. Mike was none of these and he both made me want to try to be better and to not even bother trying to compete at the same time.
Phil Nichol was next. I had met him briefly before the gig and he looked terrible and he told me that he was extremely unwell. He didn't have to say this. I thought he might actually die (literally), he looked so bad.
Yet once on stage he was full of fun and energy and looned and capered around like he had just won the Mr Healthy competition at the Healthy McHealthy's Health Farm (a real health farm that is notorious for its eccentric policy of only allowing exceptionally healthy people to stay). Again feeling good from my own gig I marvelled at the job I do and the people who also do it and thought wistfully about how lucky I am to be doing it and getting better at it.
Phil came off stage to huge applause, and although I was by now drinking with Mike Wilmot, Phil did not join us. In fact we didn't see him again from the moment he stepped off stage. He may have keeled over in the dressing room. I hope not. He is a nice man and doesn't deserve to be dead yet. But if he is then at least I got to see his last gig.
I didn't really want to stay for the last act. I was keen to move on elsewhere for a drink. But Mike insisted that we watch.
The last act of the evening was Mr Methane.
Like the French music hall act, La Petomane, Mr Methane makes his living by doing amusing farts on stage. I thought I was above such an act - after all my show is about cocks, not farts. I think I am in a position to look down on him.
Yet it was quite interesting to watch.
Mr Methane is a thin man, I guess in his forties. It's hard to be sure because he wears a brightly coloured superhero costume during his act, complete with a mask around his eyes. Presumably there is a part of him that is ashamed of what he does, but I'm ashamed of a lot of what I do, but do not attempt to disguise myself.
I also fart quite a lot. I just did one then. But I don't have the audacity to charge people to come and watch me do it.
The fart act consists of impressions (of people's farts), farting to music and creating a huge talcum powder explosion precipitated by a guff. One has to at least admire his ability to let off at will (I believe that if he is like his French counterpart, he is able to sort of breathe in air through his anus, which he then releases. So the farts supposedly don't smell, but I wasn't going to get close enough to find out).
It was difficult to believe he was going to get 45 minutes out of this ability and the whole thing did make me feel slightly nauseous. But the audience simply adored it. They laughed and laughed and laughed. I had been proud of myself for holding their attention and making them laugh at some quite complicated comedic constructions, and then this skinny blokes comes on in pink tights and does a smell and has the crowd eating out of his hand (or more accurately eating out of his arse).
Suddenly the act seemed not like a harmless, puerile diversion, but a sophisticated satire of me and all the other comedians in the world. We had stayed to watch and mock and feel superior, but this strange fellow was showing us what our jobs fundamentally boil down to. We can create the most perfectly worded joke in the world, take an amusing concept to absurd heights of twisted logic, but however much people enjoy it, they will laugh just as much (and probably more) at a bloke just blowing off in a small variety of ways.
I had committed the cardinal sin of pride and this was my punishment. To be literally blown off stage by something so unsophisticated, which also held up a mirror to my own pretension. And then fogged up the mirror with a fart. Which was then applauded by an audience as being better than the best thing that I had ever done in my life.
I couldn't stay to the end. Just as Mr Methane farted into the ears of two willing audience members I made my excuses and left.
The cab that took me and Mike back to our hotel passed the statue of Eric Morecambe on the sea front. He was illuminated in the darkness by spotlights, caught in mid leap of his trade mark dance. He seemed to be heading off towards the murky sea in front of him.
I felt like joining him.
But then I felt proud again, to be part of a profession that encompassed both him and Mr Methane. In a way the fact that we make a living from essentially just making fart noises on stage is sort of impressive in itself. And I was in the company of another comic who truly loves his job and the absurdity of what it involves.
We went back to the hotel, laughing all the way.
