I played the State Bar tonight, let me tell you all about the State Bar The State Bar has been on the map a long time, and It had taken me 18 months to get a gig in there, seriously. I asked to get a spot there pretty much at the same time I started asking The Stand for gigs. In that time I have had a lot of gigs at The Stand, but noe in the State Bar, and I thought for a wee while somebody somewhere had it in for me or didn't like me or whatever didn't like my act or my comedy or something, I had no idea what, and couldn't get any answer back so I didn't know what to think. Anyways cut a long story short I went down to see the gig one night about six months ago, and spoke to the Compere, Chris Broomfield, who's a very established Comedian in Glasgow with radio appearances and all sorts of stuff, so he earns his living from Comedy, he's a professional Comedian.
So I ask him about doing a spot, and he's like yeah sure and a couple of weeks later I got an email with a booking to do last night. Now considering this was away back in May I was a bit surprised to be getting a booking so far in advance. I'm saying that now, I suppose partly because I now run a weekly gig myself, and I'm finding it hard to get enough acts in, let alone booking them six months in advance! Turns out they only have four comedians on, two do ten minutes, and two do twenty, I was one of the ten minutters obviously, but I've done ten minutes lot's of times, so I was ready for that, no problem.
So Chris the Ram, goes on gets the crowd rallied, he's a great compere, and introduces Daniel Webster, the first act, Dan does ten or so minutes and then there's a break. Danny I really like, he's very funny, but he's surreal, and I've talked about surreal comedy on this website many times, it's difficult to pull it off well, and tonight Dan had to work really hard because there was a fairly rowdy crowd sat right in the front table. Chris had had to spend a lot of attention on them himself, so backstage we're all comedians chatting away obviously identify this happening in front of us, because there is no backstage at the State Bar, you just stand at the bar and watch. So, they were a bit troublesome. We go for our collective fag break. I've just had a fag outside, I come in, and literally 1 sip of red bull, and its gone straight to my gut, and I've gone to the bogs to clear, cause I've had a bad gut for a couple of days, diarrhea the whole bit, and I'm not going to let this fuck
things up. So I'm in the bogs and there are two of the lads from the rowdy table and one says to the other I can't wait to see what Jimmy's going to do to the next cunt.
So, that'll light a fire under your arse if you were ever in need of a little extra push as a comedian. So I'm back to the comedians corner, straight away and tell everybody what I’ve just heard in the loo, and we're all like ok yeah this'll be fun to watch. So Chris goes on and introduces, warms the crowd up beautifully, but then introduces me as a new act, and goes on to say how I'm going to do 5 maybe 10 minutes, and asks if they'll be nice to me. Which was very nice of him, that's his job as a compere you see? Sort the room out. So I go on and I'm firing away ok couple of punchy lines I’ve got but then I always settle into a story telling style about 30 seconds in, and as soon as I do these fuckers on the front table are heckling shouting go on then do something, and they’re all saying do something! So I grab the ringleader by the shirt and I'm reaching through his pals to get to him, and I says gonnae fucking shut it or I’ll kick your fucking cunt in big man, and all in a perfect Glaswegian accent, and the guy was flabbergasted everybody laughed it was brilliant, he apologised and give me his hand, and of course I shook it, and I'm like its cool big man, it's all fun mate, and everything was cool but they continued to chat to themselves and were a bit distracting you know, and I'm trying to banter them, but then
I stopped and I turned to everybody else in the room and said we could just sit and watch these fuckers couldn't we, fuck the comedy, this'll be like River City, you know, on crack, cause they were all shit faced so they loved all the attention and everybody else was laughing with me, so and this is the important bit, everybody was happy, and the table shut up a bit, enough for me to get through my set, and deliver the laughies, you know, that’s my job. I did quite well actually and got a big cheer woohoo, hurray for me. Had a big finish too so I did everything right in terms of ticking the boxes you know. Think I finished with haw haw haw whit man so I get everybody involved in that so that went
well.
SO anyway, at the end, Chris said in his close to the audience let’s hear it again for John Stanley, he was only supposed to be the new guy and he was brilliant wasn't he. Hear that, I was brilliant. So at that point I'm already smiling like a basket of chips because I knew I'd done well and everybody enjoyed my set obviously, because I got good laughs, so that was enough for me, but then Susan Calman comes past, and said well done that was an excellent set, quite a revelation actually, well done. Gobsmacked. Susan won a BAFTA earlier this year. Uhu, that’s no small achievement right? Go and see her show by the way she’s on fire right now, her set was amazing.
So, I think I can safely say that tonight was a landmark. Now that won't mean anything to you but it means something to me, I've been trying to get a handle on what sorts of thing to try to aim for, and doing the State Bar tonight was one of them, it was hard to get in, but when I finally did I was really ready for it, and now I really appreciate it, obviously, I mean you couldn't pay for better feedback than that, how nice is it to hear something like that. So. Ego massage aside, right, it's difficult to know what to aim for, you can't just blitz every news paper and say hey I'm a comedian I'm really funny, want to make me famous, it just doesn’t work like that, you can't just promote yourself endlessly, there's a queuing system, and besides, so what, what are they going to print? So they print events don’t they, there is a time and space element, fixed details to be discussed.
There are lots of comedians trying to get open mic spots at a limited number of comedy nights, and you have to serve your apprenticeship, and if you are good, people will take notice, but they will wait for you to have earned certain stripes, before allowing you into their gig to, perform. That analogy works across the board, Radio, TV, everything, but there are other filters at work too, you won't get on with some people, so that acts like a kind of filter, some people are very selective about who they will work with. Rightly so, some comedians are a pain in the arse obviously, hence the old adage, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, which is also true.
Anyway I digress, so yeah I've been trying to identify what these different stripes might be, so the performing at the Stand is definitely a landmark, getting ten minutes at the Stand is a landmark, doing the Fringe (twice), ditching the speedos was definitely a landmark, doing your own show at the fringe ( yet to come probably not in 2009, but never say never, costs too much money for me just now. Unless I'm clever of course, watch this space ok?) What else is there, oh podcast is probably one, but then there're others and it's getting to know what they are. I'm guessing that writing is a big part of it. Write a screenplay. See now we're back to writing again, I tried writing before when I was younger and my brain worked faster and fuck me it's hard. It is such hard mental work, it's killer; I'm petrified, I am seriously petrified of it, utterly daunting thing to try is writing for a living.
So, yeah, writing hey, I can hear you thinking, you crazy comedy starved zombies, you want me to write something don’t you, I can hear you thinking it, yous are all maniacs by the way!
