good warm up - bad show.

Two gigs this weekend - 18 and 19 if you're keeping count (I am obviously).

SAT CUMBERLAND ARMS -HOME COOKING.
THE GONG SHOW - DICKENS INN MIDDLESBOROUGH SUN 5TH FEB.

Saturday at the cumberland arms was a treat. It's a long time since I've been and I'd forgotten how good it can be. It's the first Saturday of every month and I will certainly be back. It's also where I did all my early sketches with Rich, and I remembered how some of that was a lot more inventive and risky than most of what I'm now doing on my own now.

Anyway - Al and I only went to the cumberland to rehearse for the middlesborough gong show, getting our 5 minutes sorted out. On Saturday we both did well, and as I'd run over - doing about 7 minutes - I clipped out some of the weaker laughs and was quite confident that I'd at least make it to the end of my routine before being gonged. After all, there are 3 red cards - all I needed was one person to like me of the 3 to get through - and on Saturday pretty much everyone was with me.

Well - it didn't work that way. I'd gone for the tactic of a lot of quick jokes at the start, hoping these laughs would settle the itchy trigger fingers of the card holders, but actually 5 quick jokes are 5 opportunities for people to find something they don't like. I thought the cards would go up if there was a big gap between laughs, but they were always willing to wait for the end of a bit. There's a 90 second grace period when people can't put the cards up - and I only made it through another 30 seconds or so before I was off. I think the first red card threw me, then I ummmed and arrrred a bit and the other two went up.

This seemed to happen quite often, the rules of the gong -and the power of the 3 card holders sets up a weird dynamic. Most people who were gonged got all 3 cards within about 10 seconds, which shows that the judges aren't really acting independently. And most cards went up not after a bad joke, but during a hesitation. If I was judging I think I'd put my card up after the first punchline I didn't like. But there were some people with (I thought) rotten material, but the cards went up not when the punchlines fell flat, but when this caused the comic to stall. The judges weren't looking for bad lines, but fear.

Anyway, long story short, I was shit. Again. Al got through his 5 but didn't win.

Still - two gig's this weekend when I might not have done any. One I enjoyed and one I learned from.


MY NEXT GIG:
Mon 6th Feb - Open Mic Night, Agora, Newcastle upon Tyne.
This is to scope out the Agora as a possible regular venue.

THE SUNDERLAND ROYALTY IS STILL GOING STRONG, EVERY WED.