cNutgroist

Telling stories about your standup is like telling people about the erotic dream you had last night: it’s boastful, it’s personal, it’s unsolicited and always always always far more interesting to the teller than the listener. So listen up, bitches

Monday night I’m playing Top Toronto Comedy Club Number 1. There’s a brilliant couple of MC’s, a Rising Star, a couple of excellent young standups, a lot of average-to-shit ones (I see no difference, personally) and me. It’s a good night. The first time I’ve let friends and family come to see me. The pressure’s on and im cacking myself, but it goes well enough. I even drop two purposefully awful jokes to show my confidence and test myself – a foolish tactic since they bomb like the motherfuckers they are because, as im later quite emphatically told, ‘Canadians don’t like puns’. Perhaps if I hadn’t prefaced the second one with ‘if you didn’t like the last joke…’?

The Rising Star headlines and is clearly a cut above the rest. It’s all run of the mill, predictable stuff, but with a real strong delivery. His tales of fragility and anguish are quite loveable and his personality and ease on stage shines through.

Tuesday night I’m playing Top Toronto Comedy Club Number 2. I don’t have a gig but I’m prepared to lie to get one. Getting what you want in this country is, for me, simply a matter of being extremely English and absolutely expecting to succeed. Happily, the MC/Promoter is a nice guy and takes to me, so I get a spot without too much effort. My Jewdi mind tricks are strong tonight. And oh look, Mr Rising Star is on the bill again. He does a completely different set and is just as great. I’m envious.

But I have also never seen anything like this before. The MC turns into a total bastard on stage and genuinely slags off the acts he doesn’t like. The first guy up we’re told was ‘so good last week, we asked him back to do it again’

Except he’s rubbish. And if there was any doubt about it, the MC sets us straight afterwards…

“ Not sure why I asked him back now. You’re getting a real $3 show tonight. Fuckin’-A”

Then a truly unfunny young man gets up and performs to howls of derisive laughter at his every non-joke, before walking off stage to polite applause for at least having had a go. It doesn’t help that he''s dressed in a vast comfort-blanket of a winter coat, stands 4 feet away from the mic and mumbles every word. And then he sits down to hear this from the stage

“There you go ladies and gentleman. The worst act I’ve ever seen. Don’t applaud.”

A lively, very sexy woman gets up next, having been hyped up all night as The Future of Comedy by this guy, only to do 5 minutes of material about being Colombian to complete, bewildering silence. It’s her first ever gig and she’s not put off, because she rightly feels like she’s achieved something in just doing it and is admirably ecstatic as she returns to her seat. And the first words out of the MC’s mouth upon retaking the stage?

“Well, THAT was shit”

I get up and have a blast, finally getting back that feeling of having fun on stage. I'm very happy, especially when he asks me back next week. And I shall prepare for his public disdain

After the gig, as im standing on the subway platform for my train home, the truly terrible youngster appears with two embarrassed friends and I tell him, quite untruthfully, that I’ve had worse gigs than his performance tonight.

But he doesn’t want to hear it.

“Im not saying my material is all funny, but I think most people just don’t get it”

Try talking into the mic. People couldn’t hear you.

“WHAT?”

Try. Talking. Into. The. Microphone.

And he is CRUSHED.

Wednesday night, I walk into Top Toronto Comedy Club Number 3 (of 3). A guy and a girl are sitting on tables idly bitching about something in their lives. I ask for the promoter, explaining I’m a travelling comedian after an open spot and the guy asks me to tell him more.

But before I get a chance, the girl pipes up:

“oh, hey! I saw you two nights ago!”

-Great…

I’m lying. She must’ve hated me. Too late now. What the hell, I know it’s a risk, but…

-Was I any good?

And instead of answering me, never a good sign when you’re asking someone a direct question, she turns to the promoter guy and says something that I heard the previous night – and the night before (and every night before that)

“He does intellectual comedy”

I doubt she meant to convey the absolute contempt with which it came across and for sure her accent didn’t help but I quickly realised that I wasn’t going to get a gig tonight. For some reason, in this city of socially, politically and environmentally aware, highly educated people, dick jokes are the order of the day. A la carte and prix fixe, chef’s special and all you can eat. Dicks dicks dicks. Jokes that ask you to actually think are not welcome. No, Professor, you can save your fancy cordon bleu gaggery for special occasions, like the non-existent Intellectuals of Comedy tour.

But when I return later, he's put me on the bill anyway.

And the thing is that I don’t really do such intellectual stuff. I’m not even close. I do clever dick jokes, at best. Maybe in Ireland I approached properly intellectual stuff because I came to know my audience, but then I left at the very moment I had truly found my feet on stage, becoming just another struggling newbie who didn’t know how to connect with their audience. I also stopped writing jokes because nothing much struck me as that funny anymore. Partly that is down to being in a new society again where I wasn’t yet able to see the chinks in the wall of self-image that this country so successfully projects. And partly it was because I’d had the emotional shit kicked out of me and then bagged up to take with me on the plane. I’ve been dipping my fingers in for a sentimental lick ever since.

So my gigs last year were tough and any success I had I failed to capitalise on at the time. I just didn’t get the same buzz from it anymore. It’s got to matter. I’m wasn’t sure why I was getting up there – it certainly wasn’t because I needed to entertain people - so I stopped

A true example: Do you know how Catherine The Great of Russia died? She was crushed to death by a two-ton urban myth.* Perhaps not the best example cos it’s not really funny is it? More clever or, oh I dunno, intellectual? Well my message to the audience is this: fuck you. I have read far less books than any of you people, failed more school exams and slept through more university lectures than any of you. I’ve got the memory of a ZX81 and the processing power of a ZX80. And I make metaphors like a mushroom makes war. But seriously, you have to stop treating live comedy like it’s on tv – we** are not there to spoon feed you your entertainment. Live comedy takes some collaboration, so turn your brains back on and accept it. It’s more fun if you join in, anyway, because you get little cerebral rewards of pleasure every time you get the joke.

So I go up and do my thing and it’s really tough. Im not nervous enough and the room half empty and effectively dead. I’ve forgotten how to grab a dying audience and shake them up. None of us do well, except for the MC’s, who are the same amazing dudes in the first club.

As a headliner, out comes Mr Rising Star. And he throws away any pretence of doing material in favour of chatting with the audience. Of course, the thing is that the front row is entirely filled by 4 ancient ladies that remind us of the Golden Girls. One has a Chinese toyboy, by which I mean he looks to be in his mid-50's. And while these overly bouffanted and heavily rouged dames are not above being charmed by some funny young men, they are tired and surely a bit disappointed with how shit the night’s been. So when he latches onto them and they prove unresponsive, he only pushes harder to get some kind of reaction out of them. It’s all good natured and the questions he asks aren’t that intrusive, but still they won’t give him anything. So he talks directly to the oldest one, sitting next to her boytoy, who is particularly poker faced throughout the whole thing. There might just be the upward curl of a lip on her face, perhaps he’s getting through?

So he carries on. “Perhaps you’re just tired? Perhaps it’s past your bedtime and you’re just waiting to go home?”.

He pushes a little further. “You clearly don’t find me funny. And that’s ok. Im not feeling it either.”

Still nothing. “Why else would you give me that stony expression? I think it wouldn’t take much to respond if you really tried. No? ”.

And then he pushes too far.

“Perhaps if you tried not being such A GIGANTIC BITCH"

And as the first synchronised gasps fade into the dead acoustics of the room, she gets up, gathers her coat, handbag and young man. Then she dodders, shell-shocked, slowly out.
And as she’s leaving, I swear you can almost hear the ssssSSSSSSSSUCK as all the oxygen in the room goes with her.

It is, in some sense, the ultimate heckle. For how do you respond to someone you’ve A: genuinely hurt for no good reason? And B: isn’t there anymore?

We are then treated to 15 minutes of him trying to deal with what he’s done. It takes him a good 14 before anyone starts laughing again, at least from something funny. He tries to make friends with the rest of the audience but they’re all a bit too shocked to do it either. He tries to do his material, the winning stuff I heard the previous two nights and it’s so bad he doesn’t finish any of it. I think my feelings towards him at this moment are much the same as everyone else’s in the room: I hate him, he’s a rude cunt who’s shown the world his ugly side and not really noticed. And of course, I massively admire him for sticking to the stage instead of running into the busy Toronto traffic looking for a messy, instant death. It’s what I would’ve done and im sure what she would’ve wanted.

As I walk out of the club with the last of the audience gone, I pass the old ladies, their mantoy and a very stressed looking promoter. It’s weird, it’s like a standoff. They’re all standing in a circle and nobody seems to be saying a word. Either they’re battling psychically or they’re just too fucking shocked to actually speak.

5 minutes later, having taken the wrong direction, I walk back past the club and, looking through the window into the lobby, I see the same people in the same positions. Still not moving. Except this time the promoter, hands held out in the international signal of contrition, shoots me an exasperated look that screams: Please. Kill. Me

*I presume this is a myth. I can only assume it stemmed from a game of Chinese Whispers that got out of hand. It started out as a sore throat, turned into her feeling a little hoarse, and ended up with her having had an Arabian Stallion strapped into a fuck-harness and lowered down onto/into her

**or ‘I’, anyway

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