The Difficult Second Blog
Christmas gigs, O’Christmas gigs, how much I love and loathe you.
When I started comedy, I couldn’t wait to do Christmas gigs. Not out of any affinity with the Yuletide, I’m very mixed about the whole occasion. The over-commercialisation of a religious festival, that I don’t follow, that in turn brings social anxiety, family drama, unnecessary financial strain and heart burn isn’t real my jam. However, my jam is Cranberry. And so I’m torn about Christmas.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, I was so eager to do Christmas gigs because they were notoriously difficult. Work parties letting out steam in the only way British people know how: getting drunk, drugged or into arguments. Everything was high from the tension to the actual people. Veteran comedians spoke of these gigs like they were returning from war. Devizes ‘92, we lost a lot of good jokes that day. It was carnage. The onslaught of heckles, we had nowhere to hide. Just when you thought they were out, they would just fire more. So many needless deaths*
Despite my unrivalled ability to turn a “just 5 minutes” plop on the Playstation into a uninterrupted 6 hours headache inducing stint, I am bizarrely goal orientated. And some of my goals also work as benchmark on how my craft is progressing. Being able to do a Christmas gig was one of those dual-purposed goals.
Before you get the idea that I’m this painstakingly proactive KPI-loving workhorse, please note, I’m also the least competitive person I know and suspect, will ever meet. I actually never achieve most of these goals, and give myself such little grief about it. I’m a comfortable loser. I have had a competitive bone in my body only once and that was because my rugby captain was kicking me up the arse.
So can I do Christmas gigs now? Yes, and if I’m honest, I’m pretty darn good at them. Will I keep doing them? Until the earliest possibility arises when I don’t have to. Turns out the veterans were right. There was less bedlam at the World Darts Championship last week.
* A ‘death' in comedy is when you have a bad gig. Just some industry jargon for you
List of things that happened at Christmas Gigs This Week
A group of lads got caught doing gear because in a bid for privacy, they took shelter in a Photobooth, not realising the camera inside was live streamed to all the monitors outside. How would you like your evidence, by email or keyring?
I was MCing a show in Buckinghamshire that was being held in an active restaurant with no dividing wall between the dining area and performance space. So while one half were laughing and having fun, the other half were trying to watch a comedy gig.
Adding to an already challenging situation, a waiter kept on interrupting the show by calling out to, for the sake of clarity, ‘comedy punters’ asking if he had their meal. I’ve been heckled with many things e.g. “When does the comedy start?” “Sheep shagger”. Never have I had “Who’s the Linguini?”. 8 years into this business, I’ve become accustomed to punters half-watching half-scouting for their chicken in basket. It does wonders for the ego. However, the saving grace of chicken in a basket is that it’s not usually part of multiple course meal. So this poor waiter just kept coming out.
In Exeter, a woman threw up into the table’s wine bucket and her colleague smack both her hands on table and cried “Every year!”
Now I’ve written this out, I’ve actually come out unscathed.
To everyone indulging in the festivities with family this next week, I’d just like to say GOOD LUCK.
Do you know some people go back and stay with their family for a week? A week! I can manage 48 hours. That’s not a damning indictment on my family. I am overwhelmingly blessed to have parents like mine. I truly believe that it would take all three genie wishes to make them. They are part of that subgroup of parents that know their child before they do. What parents would try to convince their child to drop of a mathematics degree to join Music and Drama School? Mine. It was like a Reverse Billy Elliot.
The Christmas problem arises because I’m just such a creature comforts person. Having house-shared with single men for the last 12 years, my house keeping has become rather haphazard. Whereas my parents live by Everything Has It’s Place, I live by Everything Will Eventually Find It’s Place.
I have to be back by Boxing Day. Similar to how Cinderella had to return by midnight, I think we might be under the same spell. Whereas at midnight, her horses turned into mice, her golden carriage into pumpkin and her footman into rats. By Boxing Day, the mothering turns into nagging, my clumsiness turns into sabotage and, the tipsy ribbing turns into blunt honesty. “I might head off now to beat the traffic. Honestly, mum, we have enough cheese”.
But I get to spend it with them, and it makes it all worth it.