I don’t know about you, but my idea of sheer heaven is to stand in the middle of Leicester square with a huge stick for two hour on a Friday night.
Tonight I found myself in heaven. All for the name of comedy, I get to advertise the gig and in payment get paid and 5 mins of your finest stand up time.
On paper it sounds great.
In practice it’s just not.
I was told I’d be flyering, was unaware of the 8foot Golf Sale type pole that I’d have to carry. Upon realising this information, I was not aware of just how much it can act like a sail in the busy windy climes of central London.
But I was there to do a job and I did it. It’s amazing that ain intelligent person like myself can be reduced to a moron just by holding a big pole in the street and shouting. Not only were people not taking the flyers, they were avoiding my eyes, my mad staring eyes, completely.
It was depressing and reminded me of Edinburgh last year, 6 hours a day handing out bits of stiffened paper to people who weren’t going to see your show.
Then a bunch of kids, all between the ages of foetal and 14 with their burberrry caps and tracksuits and chunky gold earrings came up. One tried to take a flyer, he thought it would be funny to try and grab the whole lot. But me, being at least ten years his senior had a better grip on life and the flyers, I held on, he got a few, ran off and threw them in the air with a menacing laugh.
“Funny.†I said. “You should be a comedianâ€. Alright, I admit, hardly my best putdown, nut the kid made eye contact. I looked at them, there seemed to be at least eight of them. It was Blazing Squad, I reckon, I have no idea what they look like, except that one looks middle class and out of place.
It occurred to me that although I am older, there are more of them and they will all (including the baby chav in the pushchair) be harder than me. I might get beaten up by the Blazing Squad tribute band.
But, as kids are wont to do, they just ran off.
And I gve out some flyers, slightly more subdued than before.