Ideas truly can be dangerous things.
Two and a half years ago I had an idea for doing gigs not in comedy clubs.
That idea became laughterinoddplaces and we did gigs in libraries, museums, charity shops and launderettes.
On the way we won an award for innovation from chortle and lots of praise from lots of people.
There didn’t seem to be a low point for that original idea.
Until last night. Last night made me want to go back in time with a terminator robot and kill the young naive me that had such an idea.
It was for charity, via the lovely comedy critic Mr Bruce Dessau there was an auction for a laughterinoddplaces gig in someones house. It seemed like a nice idea, we’d done one in the past in Bruce Dessau’s house no less, it was lovely.
The winners of this auction were not in london as originally hoped, but out in Epsom in Surrey, and the gig was to take place on a Saturday early evening. This made it tricky, esp as we couldn’t pay anybody.
Not that we do pay people normally for laughterinoddplaces, mostly people willingly do it for free. But from the outset this wasn’t a normal laughterinoddplaces.
My heartfelt thanks and apologies go to Brett Goldstein, Fergus Craig and Tiernan Douieb who (somewhat foolishly in hindsight) stepped up not only to the plate, but right over it landing into comedy sludge in no mans land.
I thought that a house gig in surrey with ‘a marquee in the garden’ was going to be a nice big posh affair, I had no idea that epsom was in spiritual collusion with essex and that a £9.99 argos gazebo passes for a marquee in these parts.
Tiernan explains the full horror of the actual gig better than I ever could as I battled to compere not only the gig, but my dignity as a dog larger than my postcode farted next to me and got my biggest laugh.
I could say so much about the people there, but the main two problems were that they didn’t really seem to want the gig there at all, most staying under the marquee (as when you are under it it’s harder to tell that it’s really a gazebo) and openly chatting amongst themselves as us four poor sods tried to remember material that might work amongst our collective back catalogues.
The other problem was that they were actually nice and welcoming (except for when we were onpatio) food was flowing, beers were offered, before we started I had a slight feeling that actually this might go rather well and we were just snobs.
It didn’t and we aren’t.
One lady (sic) decided that any pause left by a comedian was not for technique, nor comic effect nor timing but for her to shout out something about her liking, liking, sucking or holding a penis. I don’t know how, just being in the same county made mine wilt.
The original plan for everyone doing 20min sets and two intervals rapidly diminished until we were left wondering if we all got onpatio together and just said a word each whether we’d be contractually fulfilled.
suffice to say I didn’t enjoy a single moment of it, aside for a tinier dog following me round, presumably hoping i could help him escape.
The acts all did better than we expected (that is to say, we are all still alive, even if some part of us all has died on the inside) and like a gangster film I now owe them all a favour, no matter how grisly it is.
I got home and wanted to have a bath to wash away the horror, but I don’t even own a bath.
The next laughterinoddplaces is going to have to be so fucking twee and nice I might hold it inside a scatter cushion.
I await dessau’s review with interest.