If you enjoy this post, please share it on social media to help this newsletter grow. Thank you.
Wednesday.
A mid-morning visit to my aunt and uncle’s, thankfully brief, saw me having to check various items for them on eBay that they were looking to sell, if similar items were fetching good money. Inevitably, they weren’t. I’m grateful for that as that would’ve meant a whole lot of admin on my part.
Among the cack they were looking to flog, or rather, looking for me to flog, there was a quartet of Royal-themed thimbles, part British Royals, part Spanish, the highest of which was going for £4.80 plus postage. My uncle then decided he was an elite level art collector and that perhaps some of the cheap prints in their front room could be sold for silly money. Once again, I had to go on the eBay app and check. £12 was the highest for one of the prints.
“Have a look at the painting behind the door,” my uncle said. “That’s going to be worth quite a bit.”
This would be the painting that highlights the disregard my uncle and aunt, art collectors extraordinaire, have for the art world. Like most of the pictures hung up in their council flat, little photos of the kids and grandchildren are stuffed into the frames. That’s not quite how art is displayed in galleries.
Within ten seconds, eBay had shown me that this ‘superior bit’ of art that my aunt had picked up in Brixton market back in the late 90s was worth £22. Thankfully my uncle realised at that point that their final years on this planet weren’t going to be transformed by some lucrative eBay sales.
I didn’t sleep much and really need to find time to watch one or two of these sleep videos Tweeters have kindly highlighted. I threw on another duvet and was up to 76 togs last night. It’s easy to pull a muscle just trying to emerge from under all those duvets in the morning. I also had three tops on AND long johns AND tracksuit bottoms. I’d rather not have gone so early with the toggage given winter is still not upon us, but Planet Hoth is just stupidly cold for this time of year.
I’m only wearing the more autumnal long johns for the moment and won’t bring in the thermal beasts until later in the year. The prospect of another winter in this flat genuinely worries me. The bathroom is incredibly uncomfortable, and it can’t be much longer before I at least try and whack the heating on pre-shower. The thing is, as mentioned on here recently, since the doomed window refurbishment at the height of the pandemic back in late 2020, the new windows in the bathroom have made it in even more inhospitable. Like so many ill-thought-out bathrooms, the windows are right by the shower so you’re showering right up against the glass. It’s painfully cold and I wish I had the more hirsute coverage of Early Man to get through winter.
I had a gig last night that was ridiculously far and hard to get to for a London gig, beyond Bethnal Green, which when travelling from south London on buses, you need to allow for a couple of hours journey time. People will tell me all the time to just tube it, but if I tubed it to gigs, I wouldn’t be able to afford to do as many shows as I’m doing. As it is, having picked up two gigs in Brighton for next month, I really need to find a way of bringing in more money to finance the gigging.
The second of the three buses were where I ran into problems last night. The 343 dropped me off at Aldgate which I had decided was pretty much Liverpool Street, which is where I needed to be to get the final bus to my destination. Once I realised the 343 was heading through Tower Bridge, I realised I’d made a mistake. It wasn’t. I ended up having to run from Aldgate to Liverpool Street Station.
It was just a mess of a journey, having already forgotten my glasses. I like to read on buses and do a bit of writing to and reading was out of the question. Thankfully these days, I’m printing in a size 14 font so at least I was able to go through my stand-up rough set ahead of next week’s 10 and 20 spots. There’s a lot to learn and tweak and I’m behind schedule. I would later get home to find my glasses on my desk at home. How I managed to forget them, I don’t know what’s going on.
It would’ve been easier had I adapted to varifocals back in late 2020, but I just didn’t have the common sense for those. I think they required similar eye-related coordination skills to what you need to drive, the lenses compartmentalised into different screens for say your PC and a book. I couldn’t get to grips with them and after six weeks, had to settle for three different pairs of glasses. If I could afford any surgery, I think I’d definitely have laser surgery on the eyes to try and restore the good vision I was lucky enough to have most of my life. I find it’s harder to learn my sets now that I have to wear glasses to read. Even wearing glasses on stage is something I haven’t done yet. At this point, I should add, I’m even struggling to adapt to shaving with glasses, particularly when the lenses steam up. Mind you, a couple of weeks ago, after my trainers (specifically worn to deal with an old fracture) were heckled at a gig, I wore shoes at my gigs for the first ever and I found I couldn’t get my footwork right on stage. I do like to move about a bit on stage, but I felt I was wading through treacle.
Last night’s gig definitely wasn’t worth the effort. I’ll try most non-bringer shows once. If they’re no good, I never return. The last of my buses stopped at the top of this long East London road right outside number 1. The venue was in the mid-300s. At least I knew I could run to the venue, but the road was another of those long roads I’ve encountered in that part of London. It was pockmarked by estates, so the door numbers would stop and the road seemed to go on forever. Every time I came across what looked like the venue, it was another place. That moment happened at least half a dozen times and unless it was going to be a paid gig, and a good one at that, based on the journey, I wouldn’t be doing the night again. The problem is it’s a one-way street. So getting home last night, I was lucky to have the bus stop just ten metres from the venue. But there were no bus stops on the other side.
At the gig itself, there wasn’t much of an audience and what there was, was very young. I could’ve fathered pretty much everyone in that room. It can be a real problem for me at this level, less so hopefully on the club circle I’m trying to break through to. But for now, it’s a challenge.
As soon as I uttered the first line of my new set, to be met with silence, I knew it was going to be difficult. My opening lines usually get a good laugh, even when, certainly with one of my sets, I can’t fathom why it gets a laugh.
One comic had been called out for doing Sudoku during the first comic’s set. The same Sudoku comic – and I should add here that they’re a nice guy and a comic with some serious potential – then yawned during my set and I thought it would be fun to acknowledge it. I had visions of every comic last night calling out the same easily bored comic as he watched their sets. It’s never great performing to a room full of comics who can’t wait to get home.
There’s one comic on the circuit who will watch the other acts whilst chewing on a toothpick, which really irks me. Toothpick and I did a gig at a terrible arts festival back in the summer. The gig was so bad that towards the end, only a handful of half cut punters were left, the other acts had gone, and those acts that were left had our spots severely cut, which was no bad thing. But I remember struggling through my set (I was so pissed off about the night and the way it was run, I told the promoter afterwards) and catching Toothpick working away at his dentition with the toothpick during my set, and thinking, “Come on man, this is a hard enough night as it is without the toothpick. Put that thing away.”
Still, a bad gig or a quiet one anyway, doesn’t kill me these days. I’ve built up, at least at this level, a thick skin and all stage time is valuable. What disappoints me is how too many nights are poorly promoted. It’s not enough for a promoter to advertise the show on Eventbrite and think their work is done. I see that all too often. You really need to use those advantageous tools we have these days – i.e. – social media – to sell the shows. I don’t think any creator can truly be happy at the number of social media stuff we need to do these days and I was dropped by my last agent for not using it enough – but social media is ideal for publicising one’s work.
I often check how well a night has been promoted in the run up to my gigs and what I will see is social media posts relating to the night tend to be the posts I’ve put out. I’m frequently doing a better job of pushing a night than a promoter. That can’t be right. People tell me to put my own nights on if I know so much. I’ve been there, done that. Made lots of mistakes before I made them a success, so I like to think I know what I’m talking about. I also charged at the door. It’s about valuing the arts. I accept it was a bit healthier in my days. We had My Space for promotion and then you just focused on advertising your shows in Time Out and The Guide. And it was a different time, a different audience that accepted there was no such thing as free. For today’s promoters, it's a lot more difficult, but come on, they have social media to help them. Putting on your own night is a young person’s game at this level and I’d rather just focus on getting stage time and avoid all the admin.
The gig ended with a misjudgement on my part as on leaving, I instigated SMALL talk with another comic at the urinals. I felt the moment needed something as we’d been chatting through the night. I don’t think he was comfortable with the latrine-exchange. Also, he had arrived at the urinals before me, so maybe he was thinking how I’d recognised him from behind. What distinguishing features, given we don’t know one another that well, had I noted, to even be sure it was him? Or worse still, had I glanced across once I had taken my place on the raised urinal platform?
He was far from comfortable about the exchange. At any future gigs we do together, he might be wary about using the urinals now in case I go for the SMALL talk urinal sequel. Understandable.
Twitter: @1607WestEgg
FB: @DRTcomedy
Instagram: @1607westegg
TikTok: @1607WestEgg