My gig tonight doesn’t start till 10.30pm which means I’ve got a long day before I have to go to work. I was hoping I would be doing the early show at the Komedia as well tonight, as that tends to give you enough energy so that by the late show you are on form to deal with the general type of rowdy idiots that go to a late show. Sadly I’m not, and so instead will be knackered by the time I get there and just find people intolerable which is never good. I need to find things to do today that will keep me active and awake. I’ve started by sitting in my dressing gown and staring at the TV. I have a feeling this is not the way to ensure tonight goes well. I should either get active or just give in, take Valium and cause a self induced coma waking up ten minutes before I have to be on stage. The latter could make driving there a problem so I’d better start doing things.
Even if I have energy I’m not sure I can tolerate idiots tonight anyway as there seemed to be the fair share of them at last night’s gig. I should’ve known it was going to be a bad one as my day was tainted with The Curse of McFly. I have fallen to the prey of the ancient voodoo ways of the trash pop shite of the Busted rip-offs before, back when I wrote this:
http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/tiernan/2007/10/08/i_hate_students
I didn’t mention it in the blog but before our show started on that horrible night, we were told that McFly were performing on the main stage. The hype that created within teenage girls was to be a large part in our eventual downfall and I will never forgive them for inflicting such terrible music on those people before expecting us to give them jokes. So yesterday when I agreed to meet Kevin Shepherd and Nick Wilty outside the Hammersmith Apollo and was greeted with about 100 over eager McFly fans I knew the night did not bode well. I’m not sure how long the fans had been there before I arrived, but I was there from 4.15pm and the doors didn’t open till 7pm. They were willing to queue for three hours to then stand and watch a support band who I assume were hella terrible as they have to be worse than McFly. If you put McFly on a sliding scale of awful they are in the cess pit the bottom of the slide causing babies ears to bleed. I guess that would mean the support band would be on a level where every note they play kills a puppy. Or perhaps they have discovered, what my musical friend Mike calls the ‘Brown’ note. This is a frequency of note that when played causing everyone’s bowels to empty. I would love to think that McFly enter to the Apollo stinking of crap. Although that’s what will happen when they start singing anyhow. All the fans were dressed in ‘punk’ and ‘skater’ attire, thereby proving that both punk and skater fashions have been ruined forever. I can’t imagine the punk movement collaborating together to watch a load of poptastic teens sing songs about how middle class they are. Seems to take anarchy and buy it a pony.
So despite a fun journey with tales from the Wilty and excellent driving from Shepherd, I knew something would go wrong. I remembered the venue in Hereford from the last time I did it over two years ago. It was the night of the terrible storms in the UK and it took me over 5 hours to get there with no break. As I arrived I had to walk straight on stage with muggy drivers head and the crowd just heckled me for 20 minutes. It was one of the least enjoyable gigs I’d had in ages and it was only made worse by some arse called Colin putting a comment up on Chortle saying ‘He was first on and seemed a bit nervous and never got into his stride.’ Thanks Colin. Thanks very fucking much. But last night we arrived there on time and the tiny 5 foot front of house manager couldn’t have been more enthusiastic. My thoughts about the night changed, and then she led us to the dressing room where our third omen lay, a giant prop pair of scissors.
http://www.twitpic.com/4eavw
None of us had asked for that on our rider and its large snippy presence felt a little bit ominous. Perhaps it was a sign for us to cut our sets down? We couldn’t tell. The gig finally started and from the word go this utter prick in the front started heckling. Kevin had barely even said a word and this obnoxious arse decided to loudly talk back to everything he said. He was wearing a lumberjack shirt, sold double glazing for a living and said his name was Dave even though we found out later it was Martin. Kevin superbly dealt with him time and time again but he refused to shut up despite having been shamed infront of everyone. In big comedy clubs there are usually bouncers who will deal with someone who speaks up more than 3-4 times after having been dealt with by the act. At the Courtyard Theatre though the staff just decided he was harmless even though he was ruining the entire show. I wondered what he would have had to have done to be ‘harmful’ in their eyes. They were so placed I think he could have stripped off and gutted another member of the crowd with a razor and the old man on the door would just chuckled and said ‘kids eh?’. Most of the rest of the crowd wanted to enjoy it and Davemartin just before I walked onstage and I suggested locking the doors to ensure he couldn’t get back in. This suggestion seemed to go down well. Sadly health and safety meant we couldn’t and the fuckface wondered back in as I was about to deliver a punchline. He then started heckling me and I got more vicious than I normally would. Eventually after deciding that there was little I could do to humiliate someone that had no dignity to begin with I just ignored him. He didn’t like that and so continuously stood up and walk in and out everytime I was about to deliver a punchline. We later decided he was running to the loo to snort his little face off with crackaine or herospeed or something. Which would also explain how he could have such confidence. So with Davemartin not talking and just moving I ploughed on, only for a group of women at the back to pipe up everytime I said something they could relate to. It wasn’t malicious it was just noise. Lots of noise. And then their phones went off. I gave up and just did my set and left to drink beer.
Kevin had to deal with Davemartin again in the second section and then the master Wilty just ignored him from the word go, taking all the attention away from him and just delivered an excellent set. He only paused slightly when one of Davemartin’s friends answered his phone and chatted to his mate while on the front row. It still baffles me to this day why people go to comedy nights if they are going to act like they just don’t want to watch comedy. There should be some sort of personality and common courtesy test as people walk in.
Question 1 – ‘Have you turned your phone off?’
A – yes, proceed to question two
B – no. Leave now or we’ll release the dogs.
Question 2 – ‘Are you going to mindlessly heckle like a div?’
A – no. Proceed to question there
B – yes. Stand still while we handcuff you and throw you down some stairs. You are not allowed to come to comedy again.
Question 3 – ‘Will you get pointless offended at jokes you haven’t really understood?’
A – No. We like you. You’re a comedy friend. Have a badge.
B – Yes. Never leave your house again. Ever.
There would be about 15 more questions focusing on talking through acts, and being part of a hen/stag do. For anyone that failed the lot they would be made to only watch unfunny things for the rest of their lives. Like ‘My Family’.
As we left for our long journey home, we saw Davemartin get into his friends car which had blue lights all along the undercarriage and by the wheels. Hilariously they only lit up when they were on the side road by the theatre and then they turned them off when they drove down the main road. I lost what little respect I had for them due to the lights, but then lost even more getting into negative respect when they didn’t even have the conviction to keep those lights on. I hate people. Its a shame as its a really nice theatre. Although I did worry a bit as they had adverts for an up and coming stage version of The Tiger That Came To Tea. Did they learn nothing from Siegfried and Roy? I can only hope Davemartin is in the crowd when the tiger goes apeshit. Sorry, tigershit.
I got on a night bus from Trafalgar Square after Kevin dropped me off. It was the the first time I’d been on one in ages. Its quite refreshing once in a while to see what kind of loons are on a night bus past midnight on a Friday. I sat near the front and decided the safest thing to do would be to listen to my Adam and Joe podcast. Sadly there was a chavtastic lady at the back of the bus whose voice was so loud, whiney and high pitched that I could hear it through my headphones. Like a message from the gods a lot of ticket inspectors got on a Tottenham Court Road and stormed the bus like transport Nazis. Still, on the plus side they kicked the girl of the bus and her voice went to a frequency where I was sure the bus would be surrounded by bats and dogs. I was scared that the inspectors would suddenly die with blood pouring from their ears. She was like a banshee. If banshees were not only monsters but stupid moany ones. Unfortunately she was replaced by a large group of people who sang happy birthday to their friend all the way home. If I ever celebrate my birthday on an N29, kill me. I will clearly have failed. At everything.
So fingers crossed tonight is not full of the same type of inbreds as yesterday. So far nothing McFlyish has happened so we can only hope it will be fine. I’m sure everything is their fault. I reckon their rider includes shrunken goats heads and ancient runes and one day we will have to get the Pope to kill them. Make you sure you Mark my words. Don’t Davemartin them though because he’s a dick.
