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depending on how
relaxed you are and how responsive the audience is.
    I had a
particularly difficult gig at the Hammersmith Apollo one night which was being
filmed for TV. For some reason, I have always felt that the audience at the
Apollo were not my natural constituency and so I always found it a bit of a
struggle. But on this particular day it was even more difficult because my
dear, lovely grandma Maisie had died the night before and I was feeling very
sad and slightly out of touch with reality Maybe I shouldn’t have gone ahead
with it, but I thought once I got on stage I could just work my way through on
automatic pilot. I had prepared forty minutes of material, which is what they
wanted but, given that the audience seemed a bit cold and I felt like I was on
another planet, for some reason my set shrank down to twenty minutes because I
rushed it and pruned all the excess, which one normally includes when one is
relaxed and on a roll. Well, there was a slight hiatus and I marched off stage
feeling defeated. The poor compere, Russell Howard, who’d expected me to be on
for another twenty minutes, was in the lay so the audience was treated to an
empty stage while someone rushed round in a panic trying to find him.
    The
upshot of this was that the production company asked me to come back two days
later and do some more material, as the pathetic amount I’d produced was not
enough for my allotted slot on telly.
    Knowing
that all my material had been used up, this meant that the material I’d have to
do two days later would all have to be new stuff. This was terrifying, because
normally new material takes at least five live shows to work in and to give you
the chance to dump stuff which is crap. I didn’t have the luxury of this time
available so I had to write some stuff and do it for the very first time in
front of an audience of 3,000 people whilst being filmed for telly What a
fucking nightmare. So off I went two days later to the theatre and just trotted
it out to the best of my ability Lenny Henry was compering, the audience was up
for a good night and thank God, on the whole the material worked. It didn’t storm
it, but I would never have expected it first time out and I was just relieved
that they didn’t stare at me for fifteen minutes without laughing.
    One
concept comics are very familiar with is that of ‘getting on a roll’. This is
when the audience seems to laugh continuously throughout the whole performance,
and as the laugh dies down from one joke or remark it starts to build up for
the next bit. Not only do they laugh at punch lines, they laugh at the build-up
to jokes as well. It’s a glorious thing to be a performer in a show like that.
It doesn’t happen all the time and on many occasions you get a sort of
stop/start response to your jokes. Laugh-silence-laugh-silence is the pattern,
and once it’s been set up it’s hard to break. ‘I never really got on a roll,’
is the lament of many a comic at a difficult gig.
    Encores
are always lovely too, but it’s important not to expect them. There’s nothing
better as you walk off stage than to hear huge applause, and then the shouts
start to build gradually for ‘More!’ until they become a roar and feet are
stamped too, and it’s so great to go back on and bask in it. It doesn’t always
happen, but I suppose it is always the aim of the comic to get as many encores
as possible. I think Billy Connolly is the King of the Multiple Encore. The
most I’ve had is three.

 
     
     
     
     

     
     
    I discovered information
about each town I performed in by reading the Rough Guide to Great Britain, and
during the gig I would tell the audience, ‘Well, the Fucking Rough Guide in
your case.’ Worked every time!
     
    Basingstoke
    Very hung over after a
night in Hastings the night before. Had to stare straight in front of me on
stage to avoid being sick.
     
    Bedford
    Bedford has a delightful
entry in the Rough Guide to England which states, The