A pharmaceutical make-believe cushion I’ve created for myself?
Plus Gong show success and a troublesome library book
I’d had a sleepless night before last night’s Gong show. I’ve done so many gigs in the last six months, as documented previously, it’s curbed my stage fright, but I was starting to feel a tiny bit of anxiety without crossing over into the debilitating level of dread because I know from Up The Creek, these nights are a challenge. Of course, the Daddy Gong is coming up in the August Bank Holiday at The Comedy Store in Piccadilly, but ahead of last night’s Vauxhall DingDong Gong, I knew I was in for a challenging night. Funnily enough, once I got there, I was absolutely fine. It’s a case of, “Well, I signed up for this. No one else is responsible. Get on with it.” A bit of self-tough love.
My primary concern with these nights, and competitions too, is that they’re not really suited to the storytellers. I’ll give you another of those tennis analogies I’m so fond of: these nights are the domain of the serve and volleyers, rather than the clay court specialists.
By the time I arrived in Vauxhall just before 6.30pm, my mind had been somewhat distracted by a troublesome library book I’d started on Sunday morning. On page 12, I found a hair, not mine, small but big enough to see. Lying in bed as I read with my latex library book-handling gloves, I was alarmed to see it whilst in the most intimate thing in the flat. Had that hair landed on the bed, I would’ve had to strip the bedding, shake it all down and wash it before that particular bedding was back in circulation, as well as vacuum the carpet, assuming I’d managed to shake the hair from the bedding onto the bedroom floor.
I tried to remove the hair with the wrapping of one of my Halls lozenges (my heroin and currently on offer in Asda at 45p a pack, 20p cheaper than Sainsbury’s) but the wrapping was too slippery to properly grasp the hair. I had to make do with trying to trap the hair within the folds of the two pages, hoping it was sufficiently small for pages 11 and 12 to hold it. To find the hair so early on in the book was a huge blow and I know I’ll have to be careful reading the book at home. It may end up being one of those library books I can only read outdoors. If there’s one hair so early on in the book, a 300+ page book at that, how unlikely is it that the rest of the book will be free of hair?
It was a small hair, a fine hair, which makes me think the hair fell from the hirsute hand of a male reader. This bothers me a little more than were it a woman’s hair.
On the bus to the gig, I made another effort to lose the hair, shaking the book vigorously though I couldn’t see that there was anything trapped within pages 12 and 13. As is often the case on the upper deck of a south London bus, CHICKEN and weed were battling for supremacy to establish themselves as the default scent on the bus, while several empty glass bottles rolled down the aisles and a moron chatted loudly on his phone. A horrible journey but one sadly all too common this side of the river. A soundscape of transpontine moron audio.
The book hair situation reminded me of the time one of my oldest friends was rehoused by the local council, him and his mum forced to move onto another block on the same Brixton estate. He almost has as many OCDs as me, in fact he might even have bested me in an OCD-off during our peak OCD days of the noughties. In 2005, he’d spotted that the redecorated bathroom in the new flat had seen some pubic hairs painted over in the corner of the bathroom, belonging, presumably, to the previous tenant. He badgered the council for the best part of a year to redecorate the place again, with the priority being the removal of the painted over alien pubic hair. The correspondence between him and the council was protracted, and I’m assuming, ground-breaking. I don’t know how he managed to do this, or why it was even relevant, but he was able to narrow down the offending body hair as having once belonged to a French man who had lived in the property. His argument was that so long as this hair was in the bathroom, albeit in a tiny corner, he couldn’t fully utilise the bathroom. I don’t know if he ever made an attempt to chisel away at the hair himself, perhaps even bough a pair of single-only use pliers, just to rid himself of the hair and take charge of the situation. That could’ve resolved the situation much sooner.
But back to the gig. I’d never been to this particular SW8 comedy club. I’d always thought it was just a ‘club’ because every time I walk under that bridge, apart from hurrying under it because of the high potential for a pigeon strike, there’s always a long queue of revellers who look more suited to a club rather than a ‘comedy’ club. What I finally grasped yesterday is my hunch had been right. It is a ‘club’ or more a series of different bars within one big club, like a series of concessions, and a comedy club has been built into it. It works well, though the frequency with which people were coming and going into the comedy club, in terms of audio, made it for an occasionally difficult evening for the comics and audience alike. Every time the door opened, the comedy club was overwhelmed by music.
The security at the main entrance had no idea where the comedy club was located, and directed me further into the development, telling me to ask the next security guard for directions. She didn’t know either and directed me back to the main gate. I told her I’d been directed to her, so I ended up escorting her back to the main entrance as she tried to get specifics from security at the main entrance. Then, as we walked back to where she’d been directed, there was a horrendous moment where we had to navigate our way through a dance floor of women seriously gyrating to a very saucy song. I consoled myself that this would be as difficult a moment for the white security guard as it was for me, a middle-aged white man who unlike most of his ethnic grouping accepted he couldn’t dance from the age of 8. Much to my horror though, the security guard began gyrating too and was soon enveloped by the women on the dance floor who appreciated her joining in, a bit like when you see those clips of some white police officer trying to join in with the dancing at the Notting Hill Carnival. All of which meant that for some moments, I found myself stationery, on the periphery of some very steamy dancing with not one of the dancing women even shooting me a glance.
The comedy MC was the same MC who’d presided over my first gig back earlier this year after a 9-year-hiatus. I won’t name him, there’s no need to name anyone, but he is a very funny man with one of those smiles that can light up any room and perhaps buy him grace with certain gags. He had a few hecklers to deal with yesterday and he got himself out of every situation with these half-drunk punters with the aplomb I suspected he possessed.
Whereas Up The Creek has a three light system in place for its Beat the Blackout Gong show, Vauxhall Comedy Club has a three-dildo system. It might actually be four. I can’t recall. But three of the dildos are huge. I don’t know why they need to be so big. Is there some technical reason for that? Does that work better? All I know is I feel about dildos the same way I feel about statues. They should be life-size. Realistic. Their size yesterday just struck me as make-believe.
Knowing that a panel was on hand last night to provide immediate feedback whether you beat the gong or failed, that I think gave me greater cause for concern than not actually beating the gong. It wasn’t that I didn’t welcome feedback. Of course, any negative feedback can be painful, but if long-term it helps you kick on, I have no problem with it. My problem was simply to do with being an introvert. I can handle being on stage so long as I’m being this comic caricature of myself, but that would have to be abandoned for the panel and that made me uncomfortable.
The night was, at times, brutal, as expected. Chunks of the audience were tanked up, more so probably in the heat, and one or two acts really came off badly, but I had complete respect for anyone going up there. I wasn’t quite sure when I was on, only that it was on after the interval. The MC had told me, but as readers will know, my hearing, after a decade and a half of audio work, is tanking, so I wasn’t quite sure of when I was on.
I’d stood for the first half but during the interval, I grabbed myself a seat and mentally prepared myself. I felt very calm. Only one act had beaten the gong in the first half, and it turned out that she was, despite her youth, a Gong veteran. She’s even won the Comedy Store Gong, so she is a Gong leviathan.
The second half of the show saw another act picked out from the bucket. Seven of us were pre-booked but another three were drawn out of what I think was a glass rather than a bucket, for transparency, from what might’ve been another half a dozen or so comics I’d recognised hoping for a walk-on spot. This walk-on spot was the second act to beat the Gong, just, from what I recall.
By then I’d risen from my seat, sprayed some deep freeze on my troublesome neck, and was ready to be called on as and when. This is definitely the meds at work. This has never been me before. I sometimes feel like I’m cheating. This long-time suspicion that the meds would help me conquer the stage fright that ruined my first foray into stand-up in the early 2010s has been confirmed. What I wonder now is if I ever come off them, will the last six months count for something? Have I conquered these nerves for good or is this a pharmaceutical make-believe cushion I’ve created for myself?
I felt good up on stage. I know right now this is the only set I have that stands any chance of succeeding at one of these gong nights. I felt I owned the stage, standing right at the front and holding my position in a way I’d most recently failed to do, inexplicably, early last week. I know when I’m at the front of the stage, I’m on form and last night was good. Of course, there are things I still need to work on and improve. Also, I’ve got to remember as an older comic I’m at a different stage of my life to not only the comics, but most of the audience, and there are times in my set when there’s a danger of losing them.
Two dildos, including one of the big ones, were raised into the air by an audience fully behind the dildos all night. But I held my nerve and confidently made it through to the end then had the feedback, which was invaluable. I felt once I could see the panel laughing and smiling to my left, that at least I had three professional comics who I respected on my side. They got my material. It doesn’t always happen. I beat the (DING DONG) Gong and made it through to the final where unfortunately I didn’t win a place on a pro night. I was disappointed and felt I could easily have done so but it’s a measure of how far I’ve come that inside six months, coming up against more experienced comics, I more than held my own and left feeling like it should’ve been more. The standard of my fellow finalists was very good, by the way, and I’ve gigged with the winner before. He’s impressive.
I didn’t sleep until about 5am last night. It’s the usual old story of a gig, good or bad, leaving me too hyper to sleep. I moved between listening to several podcasts and reading Hanya Yanagihara’s brilliant epic novel ‘Little Life’, a book I shamelessly am nowhere near finishing owing to the text being so small.
I know for the sake of my health, especially given how close I’ve been sailing to the wind in terms of health scares the last eighteen months, that I’ve got to find some way of curbing the insomnia, but man, I HATE sleeping. I really do. It makes me sound like a kid, but that’s how I’ve always felt. That dread probably stems from sleeping in one room with the whole family until I was 17. It also strikes me as even stranger, given I’ve always battled to be a glass half full guy, that despite my often-melancholy outlook, better these days in my defence, that I’m still someone who looks to embrace each morning. I still see every day as an opportunity to correct this life. To finally get to where I believe I should’ve been and would’ve been with a different background. So, for a guy who many dismiss as negative, I’d say that’s pretty positive, but it does come at a cost physically.
With my café closed until the 26th, this morning I returned to last summer's borderline passable back-up café, also on South Lambeth Road. After last night's comedy success, and another night of insomnia, it was back to the writing this morning. My latte was delivered in a cup. Now drinking out of a cup, or a mug, really does and can rile me. Growing up in a Spanish family long before 'Friends' made (overpriced) coffee a thing in the UK, coffee always came in a glass. The irony of coffee finally becoming popular over here in the mid-90s is that by then, Soho had lost most of its finest cafés. I made sure that my second latte would arrive in a tall glass.
This time there was no saucer though, so I had nowhere to place my tall spoon. Presentation-wise, the nadir was the waitress delivering it with a hand wrapped high up on the glass. I wouldn't want that peak-Covid.
The waitress remembered from me last year when my regular requests for a side of extra warm milk regularly irked them here. Without a glass, I have no way of seeing where the latte stands on the colour chart and regular followers of my work know that not many people are likely to outpale me in the pallid latte stakes. Requesting my second latte in a tall glass though, I did feel would mean the request for extra warm milk would irritate them even more as it would be a second request after not being here for a year. Hopefully a decent tip might mean my return here, probably later in the week, doesn’t set their jaw into a jut when they next see me.
It was a pleasant enough late morning, lunchtime writing session though, jumping between working on my book and this post. I’ve been writing a bit more this last week and am hopeful that when the café reopens on the 26th, I’ll be more focused and will be able to return to writing there with the same flow as I was before the Friday in January when I received a rejection from a literary agent.
These rejections always seem to come on a Friday. Clearly, it’s the day when agents catch up on emails, and there’s no consideration for how such an email is likely to ruin your weekend. If I was an agent, the thing that would set me apart from other agents is my rejections wouldn’t be sent out on a Friday. Come to think of it, they wouldn’t be sent out on a Monday either. Mondays can be hard going. For most people, it’s the day that sets the tempo for the rest of the week. You don’t want the week getting off to a bad start.
Now it’s well-documented that since the café’s bizarre 2018-onwards Tuesday closure, Tuesdays are my difficult day, but I accept that for most people, they look forward to Tuesdays. The week is underway. They’ve got their groove. For me, the day is a significant bump in my week. Back to my literary agency, ‘David Tuiz Tizon and Associates’ (named after my latest introduction to the stage), would only send out rejections on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
I ran out of time this afternoon to head out for a run before tonight’s gig in Farringdon. I’ll try and catch up with the running tomorrow though my feet will welcome the extra rest.
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