13th July 2010

Tonight was another Comedy at the Royal Standard, I am as yet undecided as to whether I enjoy this night or not. As the compere (MC? I never know which to use) the focus isn’t on me I know but I can’t help feeling that the audience at the Standard couldn’t give a damn about my attempts at witticisms whereas the audience at Laughter Lines tends to accept me as another comedian rather than that bloke who drinks here who run the comedy night.

I was told after the gig that this was the strongest line up so far. This may or may not be true. Comedy gigs are like psychics, it’s about making the audience notice the ‘hits’ and ignore the misses. It helped that the first act on didn’t suck and then the second guy stormed it. That gives a little leeway for the rest of the acts. The rest of the first half was reasonable if never amazing. The second half started strongly but then audience apathy kicked in by the end so it petered out somewhat.

I wanted to use my own nights to get more comfortable with an audience and to work on new material but I’m not sure if it’s really working. I come up with new material each month but I never get the opportunity to expand it and develop it so I now have a load of mediocre material and very little gold. And I’m in desperate need of some gold. I need to start making the step up from someone who goes down well at gigs without being the stand out performer to always being one of the guys the audience always remembers.

This all sounds like I’m in the midst of a crisis of confidence and quite frankly I am. I’m struggling to find the humour in anything right now. It’s like living in a perpetual episode of My Family.