It was a late start in the café today. I switched my day around after two gigs last night and arrived here at 14.43hrs. I figured spirits-wise, on a miserable wet day in London like today, it would be more beneficial for me to push back the day’s high spot to the afternoon rather than the morning.
On sitting myself at the far window table, I opened with some below-par SMALL talk with The Beard regarding his current injury. Normally we’re better than this but I think the injury has affected his patter recently, and in turn impacted upon our exchanges. He seems a little frustrated with the NHS. Understandable. I have been for a long time.
To my right, three table have been pushed together for a very international-looking group coming from at least three continents, many speaking that American-English which often grates. Let me clarify that. I got no problem with American-English when spoken by Americans. When it’s spoken by non-American, it just sounds like those irksome MTV VJs who rose to prominence in the early to mid-90s. What happened to all those foreign people who would speak English in an accent other than American?
Last night’s gigs were enjoyable. The second night, the promoter got my name right. This rarely happens so fair play to him for making the effort. The first night dropped my second surname, the maternal name which I took on as a young man after losing my mum in tribute to her. I’d dropped it originally at school because I was desperate to be English, yes, desperate, and not stand out from the other kids. ‘Daniel Ruiz Tizon’. That’s my stage name. I sign off every comedy gig correspondence at the booking stage with that name and still promoters get it wrong nearly every gig. Some months ago, a promoter, made aware most of them were butchering my name, told me to get a stage name.
“That is my stage name,” I told them.
Now, I even break down a simple phonetic pronunciation for them. I don’t expect it to be perfect but it would be nice if some of them made an actual effort. It’s two short surnames, packed with vowels. All it requires is some flexibility mouth-wise and they’re almost there.
Many years ago, I anglicised the pronunciation because from a young age, I was aware English people struggled with it. Curiously, the promoters that do get the name right, most of them have actually gone with a more Spanish version. In recent months, this has had me thinking that I maybe need to revert back to that. But last night, signing off from the first gig (I now tell audiences my name if the promoter’s made a hash of it – after all, if you’re going to get anywhere in this game, it’s going to help if people actually know your name), I got caught between two stools and was going for the Spanish pronunciation of the maternal name only to distort it. I ended up going back to the English version I’ve used since I was a kid and ended up disfiguring my own name.
I’m also having to deal with promoters regularly omitting me from their promotional blurb. I’m fine with that if it’s consistent and applies to all the acts, but all too often, as has happened in recent days, I find every other act mentioned on the social media posts and then included on shots from the night itself, while I’m not. It happens time and again.
It’s curious. You learn not to let it mess up your day, but clearly it does irk. You wonder what’s behind it, because it always seems to be me. I’ve even had posters go out several times in recent months with my name misspelt. You point this out to the promoter and in some instances, that’s not ended up well. I’m even on some comedy club’s YouTube pages under the wrong name. Again, if you’re trying to get your work recognised, and all of us doing anything creative, of course we want our work to be recognised, this isn’t good.
Anyway, I’m going to crack on with some work. I’m hoping for a big writing session this afternoon. The session has got off to a bad start in that I forgot my PC glasses, but my reading glasses, which I didn’t forget to bag, should be okay for the laptop. If I’d nailed the varifocals back in late 2020, I wouldn’t have to travel with multiple pairs of glasses but those six weeks trying to get my eyes to multi-task via the compartmentalised lenses were an ocular nightmare.
Meantime, the door to the café, often broken over the last 21+ years, is making a curious sound every time someone comes in. Yesterday I thought someone had a dog in here, which normally isn’t allowed. Coming in today, I realised it’s the door making this canineesque sound as it scrapes across the marble floor. ‘Back in the day’, the late owner’s husband, a late-in-life George Best lookalike, was mending this door every other week, the bar flies, with nothing better to do, gathering round to watch like this was the most interesting thing ever.
The desktop PC started again this morning and I was able to have a productive few hours on it, including working on the latest episode of my historical football show, When Shorts Were Short. My friend Joff, a talented presenter himself (Find ‘Joff Show’ on Spotify and elsewhere, an insanely funny show) and a wiz on the production side of things, has rescued the problematic audio on this 90-minute episode and done an incredible job levelling everything out. It actually meant that for the first time with WSWS, I could enjoy the editing. I could just concentrate on the content rather than worrying about the levels of every single second of what often are very long episodes. This particular guest was one of the guys I wanted to get on the show when I first launched it in 2020, the man behind one of my favourite ever pieces of football-related work that I came across as a boy. To have a chance to speak to these people when you’re an adult, well, you never expect that to come along.
By lunchtime, having switched the PC off to have a light workout, I found it wasn’t starting up again, so the editing will have to wait. Another friend is pencilled in to come and fix the PC this Saturday afternoon. I think I already mentioned that in an earlier post. I repeat myself a lot, I guess.
Over at the international table, one of the group, a camp Chinese Man in a cherry-red v-neck jumper and sporting a curtains hairstyle last popular around Euro ’96, speaking in an American-English accent, not a US native, is holding court telling humorous anecdotes that has his audience in stitches. What I think the audience is appreciating is that he’s doing all the different voices as he tells his stories. Personally, I’d rather just have the story. I’ve had a couple of exes who used to do all the different voices when retelling some story, which I felt made the anecdotes go on for longer than they needed to.
A regular, sat at a single table, an associate of Not Mick’s, is evesdropping and looking like he’s enjoying the various voices from Mr Cherry Red Curtains. This admiring regular is an interesting character. His dad was something of a local villain, a one-time associate of the Krays, and he’ll often tell Not Mick some dark tales involving his dad. All in the one voice. I think Mr Cherry Red Curtains could learn from this.
That’s it from me today. Please subscribe below if you’ve enjoyed this piece. It helps, obviously, if I can grow this Substack.
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