The first out of London preview, and also the first gig in which I’d be doubling up with another Edinburgh preview, and its someone of a slightly (read much) higher calibre of act than me, the one and only Pat Monahan.
I jumped on the the plush new Virgin train after work and settled into my cheap very small, agonisingly cramped seat. And then promptly fell asleep.
About an hour in I woke up, the window pressing against my face, I knew this was cramped, but was there any need for it to get more so. The train was whizzing through somewhere or other and I sat up straight, the window was still pressing into my face. I had to conclude that either the train was crashing , or that this was one of the new tilting trains…or both.
In Crewe I made my way to the limelight and got ready. The audience wasn’t huge and I actually chickened out of wearing the silly trousers and so instead went for the ones I was wearing, but with the boots.
Chris Brooker compered the night and it was me and my little show up first.
An odd gig, there was a table of people that worked in the club at the front, they were very loud, not in a heckly cunty way, but just chipping in and commenting lots. I had to make a decision, I could see they were pissing people off and I knew that once I kicked into the main part of the show I’d need full attention or it all might get a bit lots.
So I sacrificed about ten minutes to go for banter and big tired and tested stand up material crowd pleasing laughs, I won them over and, more importantly, shut them up. I even convinced one of them to buy me a pint whilst I was onstage, not bad.
I went back into the show proper, and it was working well, the audience were of a varied age range and I was worried how the Torture Garden stuff would go down, but down it did (in a good way). And by the time I got to the story (still a tad too long, but nearly there…think the problem is I need to rewrite the ending a bit) I had complete full attention as I read it, not a whisper, and from start of show this was no mean feat.
The only error of judgement in the night (apart from not wearing proper trousers they would have gone down well I feel in hindsight) was that I didn’t compensate for the ten minutes I sacrificed near the show, and so my hour was up and I rushed the conclusion important part again, and got the whole thing throughly muddled up.
Aside from this I felt good, I know that the promoter, Wayne, had taken a bit of a gamble on me, not really knowing who I was and booking me against the other bigger name acts, but I think I punched a bit above my weight and pulled out a good hour…