I have been given some stand up comedy advice from God (kind of – let me explain…
And I’ll close that bracet – ) (yet won’t be completely sure how to spell bracet
So I’ll close the parenthesis)
And get on with the story.
On Friday night walking back from the pub with Oscar and Lis, we bump into esteemed comedian Adam Bloom. I had met this same Adam Bloom in Edinburgh on a night with Oscar. I had told him that I was about to start the murky world of stand up and he gave me some advice, as in where to do the first gig (Kings Head – and I did). So after recognising me straight away (kind of – well, not). He asked me how it was going. I told him I’d done two gigs and he said that when he had done two gigs Eddie Izzard had given him some advice…
You’re not a comedian until you’ve done 100 gigs. At about the 70 mark you suddenly realise you know how to read a room and be yourself.
Or something like that, I was a bit pissed. Anyway. This is just what I’d been talking about earlier in the evening, that I still feel like I’m reading stuff out, and that I’m not being me. I also (now it seems correctly) though that this was more to do with stage time. and now I have had it confirmed, by Eddie Izzard speaking through the medium of Adam Bloom.
Which makes me wonder whether after two gigs some famous comedian had given Izzard advice, maybe an ageing Ernie Wise, or Bob Monkhouse, or Jethro.
Perhaps Bill Hicks had told him this same advice, which had in turn been told to him by Richard Pryor, who heard it first from Lenny Bruce who had been told it by Flanagan and Allen (ok, I know the chances of Flanagan & Allen meeting Lenny Bruce are slim, but you never know, and apart from George Formby I can’t think of any more wartime comics).
Charlie Chaplin (who didn’t do gigs) would have passed this advice to them via Laurel & Hardy (ditto, you see how I’m grappling for comedians from the early 20th Century, I said I had this advice from God because the plan was to link it all the way back – I was going to mention Astrophanes – he was greek and ancient – but even I can see that the resultant leap of faith between he and Charlie Chaplin, they could never have met, shit, this is still in brackets…)…and obviously, despite my atheism the God I envisage is the little old english christian one with beard, not a greek god. And then to link the Greek Gods with that God is a feat of metaphysical debate that I don’t think I’m up to at half eleven at night when I should be concentrating on my gig tomorrow.
Suffice to say it was good advice and it made me feel better