Leicester Comedy Festival
Pulp Boy only really exists becuase I was booked in to do this gig at the Leicester Comedy Festival. And after hurriedly writing a draft and performing it here I was cautiously sceptical about what might happen.
I also knew I had some BBC folk coming to watch, so was hoping to not be shit.
The day started not so well, unable to find a local internet shop thing near my flat that was open and letting me print out the script I’d just re-tweaked… I was dangerously close to being late for my train, so threw laptop in a bag wondering if I was going to have to read from the screen like a comedy version of the Pet Shop Boys.
Thankfully I found a little internet place in leicester that charged more to print off an A4 page than I could ever hope to earn from the words therein.
The gig was not empty, not full and I would have been fine about this second ever showing of this had it not been for Steve Bennett, editor of www.chortle.co.uk, in the audience. I afeared that my little Pulp Boy was going to be miscarried far before her ever got to the birthing canal.
I left my hat on, did some warmy up stand up and then started to read out the story – every last page. By the time I was three double spaced A4 pages in I knew I was in a sticky spot. I had 25 pages left, but my comedic instincts were telling me that the audience were drifting off, mainly because I was feeling a bit uncomfortable reading from a piece of paper – this is not what I normally do on sage. But also knew that drifitng in and out of this story would kill it. So I ploughed on, looking up whenever I could and then not liking what I saw, convincing myself they were bored stiff.
However, everytime I got to a funny line they all laughed – ergo they were all paying close attention.
The gig was only let down slightly by the crap early ending at this early stage of the draft. And I got the sense they liked it, but ultimately one to forget.
Oh well…
…and then this slightly different than my own interpretation of the gig went on the interweb…
In Pulp Boy, young storyteller-stroke-stand-up Terry Saunders imagines a typically moody teenager who vows, for a while, only to speak in the lyrics Jarvis Cocker made famous.
Under the lad’s bizarre logic, it’s a way of tackling the feelings of being displaced, misunderstood and unloved  and a rebellion of sorts against his killjoy mother who’s dragging him on a budget break to Spain while he’d much rather be going to Glastonbury with his pals.
While his self-imposed affliction could lead him to ridicule, it also leads him to the first flushes of love, sparking a holiday romance with a girl equally enamoured with the band.
Saunders’s touching tale  which he reads unapologetically from a printout  is remarkable in the way he captures the feelings of being lost and alone when 15, combining the certainty that you know all with the frustration the rest of the world doesn’t see it, for a reason beyond your comprehension.
Our protagonist is at once romantic and crassly unsympathetic, seeing himself as a complex not contradictory. Saunders excels at recreating that maelstrom of conflicting emotions, speaking in the authentic tone of a defiant but confused young man.
Pulp Boy is wonderfully written, poignant and quirky. It’s not a side-splitting romp, nor is it intended to be, but there are plenty of moments of rich humour, mostly in the struggle to find just the right lyric for the occasion.
This is a fulfilling, grown-up piece of comedic artistry, warm, sincere and worthy of a wider audience.
maybe Pulp Boy does have some life.