After a pretty awesome first show on the Jim Jeffries tour last night, various members of the audience very kindly came up to me to say they enjoyed my set. We had a chat and then they asked what my name was so they could look out for me. I said my name and it was answered with a ‘Sorry? What is it?’ So I said it again. And then again. Eventually I started spelling it out, and realised that this looked a bit too desperate in terms of wanting internet hits, so I just told them to spell it as it sounds and google might correct them. I’m fairly sure that as they wandered off, they completely lost all concept of how my name sounded and will probably now not bother. This happened with another few groups of people and eventually I just told them to look up ‘Tiernan’ and I’m the one that’s not ‘Tommy’. It was another moment where I wondered if when I started stand-up I should’ve just changed my name to Tim Doob or something as crap. Yes the plus point of having my name is that no one else will have it and its unlikely I’ll ever get mistaken for anyone else. But that one plus point is sometimes overshadowed hugely by people not having a clue how to say or spell it, very rarely getting post addressed to me and the Egg banking automated service treat me like I have speech issues whenever it asks me for my name. I have asked the people at Egg if I can just have a direct number through to the staff but they have said no. Instead each time I call I must go through 4 minutes of rigmarole at answering ‘Now say your name’ with my name, only to be told that they do not have that, or do not understand so please say my name again. Honestly I’m sure there aren’t too many people looking up my name anyway, but I suppose this minute hurdle does allow me to use the excuse as to why there aren’t more fans on my internet fan page or more nice comments (or even nasty ones) on my Chortle page. In fact there can’t be many people that really want to spell it because if you think about it, Englebert Humperdinck’s fans managed to find him. As did Slobadan Milosevic’s groupies. When I say groupies, I mean the International War Crimes Tribunal, but its sort of the same.
Last night’s gig was a bag of aceness. It was at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, with a lovely full audience of 600 peoples. In fact there was only one difference that marked it out from your average great gig, and that’s that it was in the round. Audience sat on three tiers all around the stage. I had partly prepared for this by also being ‘in the round’, and I think not being only 2D was a massive bonus. Flat Stanley would’ve had a shit time. As it was, it turned out to be a nice challenge with emphasis on the ‘turned’ as that’s what I mostly did, round and round. After 20 minutes I left the stage slightly dizzy but feeling rather pleased about it all. I then went to watch Jim’s show as I hadn’t seen it yet and I have to say he was seriously on form and kicked arse. Next venture is tonight in Wolverhampton so I’m hoping its as fun. Supporting is an odd thing as I’m not mentioned on any posters or publicity so either the audience see me as a bonus act or as an unnecessary wait until the main act. What this also means is that there isn’t really too much pressure on me at all. If I bomb it doesn’t matter too much and if I storm it, its a nice extra for the crowd. Hence why tonight I’m going to experiment with a whole set done as performance dance until they boo me off.
Sorry for lack of blog yesterday. Went on a mission to Leamington Spa with Layla’s eldest brother who I’ve been staying with in Huddersfield. Layla was in Leam with more of her family having a big lunch so we did a surprise visit. I say surprise, but actually I’d told Layla the night before because I’d had too much beer. She then had to pretend it was a surprise when I saw her as everyone else was keeping it a secret. I think we failed miserably but it all seemed to be ok. I worry about my lack of ability to keep secrets when on beer. I don’t understand how Bond drinks all those martinis. Surely he’s only ever one or two units away from putting a sleazy arm round a lady and saying ‘I’m a secret agent you know and I hiding here in disguise in order to kill your boss’ before falling asleep on her shoulder and puking down her top. Now that is a Bond movie I’d like to see.
Before I blog off, have a read of this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25/police-domestic-extremists-database
Its quite possibly the most terrifying article of recent times. I suggest we all start protesting all the time. Then they will be spending so much time updating their database that they’ll never be able to go outside and stop us being peaceful. If we don’t, its only a matter of time before they monitor people depending on how many times they think certain thoughts. Turns out George Orwell was only 25 years off target.
