I thought of trying to come up with a pun involving the word ‘gig’ to use for the title of this post, to show that I’d done a gig IN A HILARIOUS WAY! LOLZORD! Anyway, ‘oil gig’ was literally the best I could come up with. I know, it doesn’t work on any level. It just sounds like I’ve done some kind of charity benefit for some Texan oil magnates. This wasn’t what happened. Last night I had a gig. It was at one of my favourite venues I’ve done so far, a small pub called the Prince Arthur in Brighton, which at first seems really intimidating as it’s a small venue and the audience are pretty much right on top of you, but in actual fact it’s probably the friendliest place I’ve gigged at.

Last night’s gig was a lot of fun anyway. I was entrusted with opening the night, which is always quite worrying because in a way it then places a lot of responsibility on your shoulders for determining how the night will go down. I wasn’t sure I was the right person to do this, especially given that my actual ability seems to fluctuate wildly from one gig to the next, occasionally appearing to be quite good, and then sometimes just coming across as some homeless man who’s found a microphone in a bin and insists on using it to tell everybody about the different objects he’s found in his beard. I’m very much a comedy roulette, or at least, I have been. I’ve become a lot less shambolic, as I’ve realised that there are certain rules I’ve got to play by. At this level of comedy, when you’re just starting out, you basically just have to drag yourself about the country doing spots of 5 minutes. Where I’ve been going wrong is that I’ve been writing a new 5 minutes for almost every gig so far, a task which really heaps pressure on myself to try and come up with good new material every few weeks or so. Surprisingly, given that this is what I’ve been doing, it’s not been as disastrous as it really should have been. Well, that’s not true, there have been gigs where it’s been exactly as it should have been and I’ve died a death. They’re quite funny in retrospect though. My second gig especially, where nobody cared but I was determined to have a good time. Acting the part of a panda slowly playing a synthesiser whilst an audience looks on in baffled silence is still funny in my eyes.

Changing my 5 minutes every other gig or so means that I’ve never really had a great 5 though, which is a problem, as if you do want to do it properly you need to have a 5 that’s completely solid and works virtually every time. My 5s have been alright, but they’ve not been at a level where they’ve been tweaked to be as tight as possible, so there’s still a lot of filler material in there. I’m fixing this now though and working on coming up with a solid 5 minutes that I enjoy, and perform at every gig whilst I continue to experiment with and add small bits of new material, eventually building up to a solid 10 minute set, then a 20, then maybe one day a 45, or even an hour-long Edinburgh show which I still think I’d quite like to do one day. I’m not yet sure whether I want to pursue this as a career or not. It’s fun, but it would probably be ridiculously stressful doing it as a job. Writing may be where my interest truly lies.

Anyway, yes, my gig. It was great fun. It went quite well. That’s about all I can say. I learned a lot from it thanks to recording it all on my dictaphone, meaning I now know exactly what worked and what didn’t, so can drop the rubbish, leaving me with what I hope is gold. It’s like operating a big comedy sieve. One day I hope to have non-stop gold from start to finish. Like Abba do on their hit album, ‘Abba: Sieved’.

I’m going to leave it here as The Daily Show is going to start soon. That and I’m starting to bore myself and I’m not even sure I’m making any sense. I’ve not had much sleep. Maybe I shall treat myself to a Horlicks later. Party time at Andy’s. Bring a quilt.

Ok, that definitely made no sense. Bye.