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I was doing a benefit for the
Sophie Hayes Foundation at the Comedy Store in London tonight. I do an awful lot of work for charity, but I don't like to talk about it, which generally infuriates the charities involved who need as much publicity as possible.
I am a humble man and will not draw attention to the hundreds of thousand of pounds that I have donated (not my own money, obviously - I get other people to pay that) or the time I have given up for free. Actually at my own cost: train journeys and babysitters don't pay for themselves. Maybe someone should set up a benefit gig for me!
I am half joking, of course and it's great to give something back. Or would be, if anyone had ever given me anything. It's still great to give something, even if I haven't received anything.
I think you can all tell what a great man I am.
Of course in reality comedians love doing benefit gigs. Most of us can't sell out big venues on our own and it's the only way I'll have get to play the Hammersmith Apollo (name may have changed) or the Comedy Store (certainly with as smart and generous an audience - not sure my Archimedes joke would have gone down as well on the late night Saturday gig here - also I couldn't stay up that late any more). Catie and I were both on the bill and it was fun to share the dressing room with some lovely nerdy comedians. Looking at this ragbag of misfits (and myself in the mirror), it didn't seem probable that we were all about to walk through a door (one at a time- it would have been chaos otherwise) and make a room full of strangers laugh. But everyone smashed it. And that's why I love comedians. These nerds are my nerds and I am in turn, their nerd. Mostly we worried about what the Hell we could do in our 5 minute slots. It's not very long.
It was a very different atmosphere and experience to my first gigs at the Comedy Store, back in 1990 or 1991. I would have been doing 5 or 10 minutes too then, which would have felt like a lot, but was in awe of the place and afraid of the audience and the dressing room did not have the diversity or people without cocks in it back then. Back then the club was on Leicester Square, rather than very near Leicester Square and you had to ring up for an open spot and unlike many clubs back then, actually wait weeks or months to go on stage. I remember seeing my name on the board outside for the first time - one one of those black boards with holes in it and white letters stuck into it- and feeling thrilled. If I had had a mobile phone I would have taken a picture. I had a camera, but you didn't want to waste one of your 16 shots on film... the world has changed so much.
Pictures of comedy stars covered the hallway down into the basement. They still do. And many of them are still the same pictures (or at least I noticed a couple of very old shots of young looking comedians who are now old, or have got their resting heart rate down to zero). Not sure my picture ever went up.
Weirdly I don't remember too much about my gigs there. I remember being in the dressing room with the other white men, but them not really talking to me because they were established and I was new and they didn't want to risk befriending me if I turned out to be shit. I remember trying to do a wee in the sink when the dressing room was empty (because I was too scared to brave being amongst the audience and using the communal loo) and Bob Mills coming in and catching me (without any judgement - the urine of some very famous men must have passes down that sink). I remember seeing Lee Evans doing a fantastic set and absolutely dying on his arse. I couldn't believe that the audience didn't like this amazing act. I told him that I thought he was amazing afterwards, but I am not sure that really helped.
I don't remember anything about being on stage there. I know one gig, maybe the first, went OK, as Kim Kinney who ran the place called me over to chat. He asked me if I was an actor and I said I wasn't but wanted to be. I didn't realise at the time, but this was actually a veiled insult. Back then it was tough to get an Equity card but if you could get a few comedy contracts under your belt you were allowed to apply, so some drama school people would do comedy. Kim clearly thought I was just a confident posh kid who'd learned some routines and performed them well. It's true that I didn't really want to be a stand up comedian at that point, so maybe there was something in his analysis. My act would sometimes go well and slightly more often go badly - my luck was bad and usually on a two night run the booker would see the bad one and not give me another gig. I wanted to do sketch comedy really and didn't have a stand up persona. It was utterly terrifying and often humiliating and I wasn't good enough yet, and still I stuck at it for more than a couple of years. In hindsight I admire my bravery and stupidity and resilience.
Why don't I remember a single thing about my stage time?
I am pretty sure that I did OK in the club - I certainly graduated to some paid spots. I feel like I did at least one weekend there (you'd get to do do four gigs on a Friday and Saturday and get something like £200 for each one- more than most gigs pay now, bizarrely). I have a feeling that late night Saturday may not have gone very well, but seriously, I remember nothing. It was such a big deal to be on there, yet it's been wiped from my brain. Maybe because of the trauma, maybe because of the boozing.
It wasn't a culture that I fitted into back then. No dressing rooms full of nerds (or if they were they were nerds pretending to be alpha males). If a woman did turn up men in the audience would invariably shout "Show us your tits," before they'd even had a chance to do a joke. You know, the good old days before being woke ruined everything. I have so much respect for absolute warriors like Jo Brand and Jenny Eclair who managed to stand up and defeat those pricks. If only they had lived to see the dressing room tonight with mostly female acts and some people who weren't white and a man with one ball who has never been alpha in his life.
I've just googled Jo and Jenny and apparently they're both still alive. So that's good news. They know what they did. I can't name all the women who took to these stages in the 1990s (I mean I absolutely can, there were about four more of them - I just don't want to do a list and miss someone out), but thank God they overthrew the awful system, which also didn't favour smart and stupid, over-confident and over-sensitive, short men who didn't want to get into dick swinging contests.
Also there's now a toilet in the dressing room, so that's an improvement.
Anyway, I've only played the Comedy Store a very few times since the early 90s and it is a terrific room for comedy (unsurprisingly). I have not had much success as an actor, but I think I can confidently call myself a comedian now. Even if others call me a "comedian" or a so-called "comedian" (that last one actually boils down to comedian - either use so-called or inverted commas, not both if you want to question whether someone who makes their living as a comedian is a comedian or somehow a "comedian". And if they're a "comedian" and yet still getting working then you should be applauding them even more. They're not even a comedian and they manage to be a comedian.)
I had a lovely six minutes (my phone buzzed when I was halfway through a joke) and felt at home with the other stand-ups. I also remember being on stage, but might not be able to recall much about it in 35 years time.
