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I won’t know until the end of the tour whether I have sold enough tickets to pay off the rest of my Edinburgh debt and provide me with income to keep my family alive. My guess is that I have done OK. I seem to have sold slightly fewer tickets at the bigger venues, but slightly more at the smaller ones and overall I think things have held pretty steady in the face of being up against 120 other touring comedians. There was always the risk that I would go out to 80+ theatres and end up earning no money, but for now I am keeping my head above the water in this volatile and fickle business.
Tonight I was in Harlow where I got just under 100 people (for only the third or fourth time and one of those times there was only room for 70 people) in a theatre that seated 400. I guess if this had been happening all the way through the tour it would have been hard to not let my head drop, but I did well in my other Essex gigs in Colchester and Southend and I haven’t played Harlow for a long time (if ever) and as it turned out the 89 people who came were a top notch and clever audience and it was a pleasure performing to them.
April, whilst not being the cruelest month, has had a lot of smaller and slightly trickier gigs in it - just by coincidence really, I played most of the bigger spaces last month and there’s a lot of arts centres at the moment- but as Robin Ince discusses in his
recent honest (though by his own admission slightly melodramatic, but it’s good to see him discussing the rollercoaster ride that most comedians have to endure) blog, it’s weird to be playing to 600 one night (I wish) and 40 the next. Tomorrow I go to Bristol where I comfortably sold the 500+ tickets (for two gigs) months ago and could perhaps have actually had a shot at being in the actual Colston Hall, but then the next day I’m back in a big theatre in Monmouth to general local indifference. I know that I have built up the big crowds by going back year on year and gaining new fans along the way, so have to remind myself that it will take time to conquer areas like Harlow and Monmouth. It’s probably time that I don’t have though and I am not sure the theatres will be chomping at the bit to have me back, but having been through the same doubts as Robin (and all comedians) I am currently in a place where I can see all this in a positive light. It’s not terrible that only 89 people saw me tonight, it’s actually amazing when you think about it (especially if you think I am shit). But it’s a greater challenge for a comedian, it was a really enjoyable gig (for me) and I reckon most of those people would tell their friends to come and see me if the Playhouse booked me again. That would be a more palatable scenario if I was 27 rather than 47 and it'd be nice to think that I had done enough in quarter of a century to ensure a decent crowd everywhere I went.
it’s certainly easy to vacillate between wondering why I am not doing better when I think I am a pretty strong and original and interesting act and assuming lack of interest must be down to the fact that I am actually shit. Comedians generally exhibit these contradictory qualities of over-confidence and total self-doubt: it’s what makes us who we are, infuriatingly cocky and pathetically vulnerable.
But for the moment I feel pretty good about the way things are going, as well as paranoid about who it is who is ensuring that my genius goes unrecognised. Sometimes it’s like I am two different people fighting it out for predominance. If only there was some arena that I could allow those two to battle it out.
I had been playing a lot of Addams Family Pinball today - I have discovered that on the exercise bikes at the gym I can lean my iPad against the handlebars and play as I cycle. This might be the biggest boost to my slightly flagging fitness I could hope for. If only I could fix it so that my iPad would only work if I was peddling on the bike then I think I might get in 15 hours of cycling a day. The game still has challenges for me. I wanted to beat my high-score of 790million, I want to tour the mansion twice in one turn and I’d like to actually complete the full tour of the mansion before losing the ball (which I have never achieved on the computer version). Typically with 15 minutes before the show I started a game where I was playing very well. I even secured the difficult extra balls for getting to 50 bear kicks and a fourth train wreck (what do you mean you don’t know what I am talking about? If you don’t like Addams Family Pinball then you’re not allowed to read this blog and you’re not going to enjoy my next live show which is going to be all observational comedy about the game). With 2 minutes to stage time I was over 600 million, with balls in hand (not like that, though it is an exciting game, but you need both hands on the screen) and approaching a second tour of the mansion (having come tantalisingly close to completing the full mansion feature on the first tour. I had to go on stage. I am not saying I reset having to perform, but what’s more important here?
I left the game paused.
At the end of the first half I explained the situation to a slightly confused crowd and went back to my dressing room, hoping that the break would not mean that I had lost pinball focus.
I managed to surpass my high-score and get to tour the mansion a second time, but with an extra ball lit and the chance of a big point score, I bottled it right at the start of the tour and lost my final ball, checking out at 924,393,660. With that additional ball and a bit more staying power on the mansion tour I could have cracked the billion. And all the adulation, accolades and sense of important and genuine achievement that would come with that. So this was a triumph that felt like a disaster. Only Rudyard Kipling could be pleased about that.
No one can say I am wasting my valuable writing time.
Retro RHLSTP with Isy Suttie now up in the usual places
