When I started doing comedy, back in 2010, I would desperate..
Published: October 8th 2022, 11:58:36 am
When I started doing comedy, back in 2010, I would desperately follow around famous and successful comedians, in order to learn absolutely everything I could about stand-up comedy. At this point, the comedians I was chasing, had been going for about eight years. Eight years. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have doing it for that long. I looked up to them. Like they were experts, flawless - people with all the answers.
They would often say, ‘Eight years is nothing.’ and they would quote Steve Martin:
“I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success.”
I would think: Ten years. Imagine going for TEN years.
Anyways, I have now been going for 12 years (technically 11, since one of the years, I decided to stay inside my flat and never leave, due to a tiny global pandemic) and I still feel like I have so much to learn. I realise that so much of becoming a good comedian is experience. Practice makes perfect, all that stuff. And, it’s accumulating advice from other comedians. It’s realising that you will never be good enough. You’ll never be able to lean back and say ‘Ah, finally, I am the perfect comedian’. Because regardless of how famous you are, how many decades you have been going, you still have a shit gig just waiting for you around the corner. You can always add more punchlines, more taglines. And I hope this excites you as much as it excites me. I love the idea of never finishing (that’s why I sometimes date men, hey-ooo… Please end my life.) and always having something more to chase. I love that I know that I will be doing so many shit gigs; that part hasn’t ended. It’s a high, always looking to improve. And it is also tough as shit. I don’t want you to think that I just waltz off stage after a horrible death and smile and say ‘Amazing! I love learning!’. No, I want to die just as much as the next guy. It’s only days (sometimes years) later, I can truly appreciate what just happened.
The first time I died on stage was a couple of months into doing stand-up. My 30th or so gig. I had been quite lucky up till then. Then – I died. The room was completely silent throughout my seven minutes of comedy. One of my bits involved me moaning loudly into the microphone, emulating a scene in porn. I cannot begin to tell you how horrific it is to hear your own supposed-to-be-funny moaning echoed in a room, followed by a single cough by a person in the back.
Afterwards, I fled the building. I knew there was a comedy night somewhere else in Copenhagen and I rushed there to have a drink with other comedians. I felt like a fraud. I told these professional and successful comedians that I had died on my ass. That I had failed. And oddly, they were all smiling. They then congratulated me. They informed me that now I was finally doing comedy. They had been concerned because I had had good gigs – and they said that they couldn’t be certain if I was ‘comedian material’ before I had experienced a good stage death. You’re not a comedian before you’ve died on stage a thousand times.
(Comedy consists of a lot of ‘you’re not a comedian until…’ rules and it’s mostly subjective and bullshit.)
I want to give you a few pointers that helped me out to begin with - and honestly, advice that I still return to, when I need to remind myself of what I am actually doing. I have 13 minutes left before I have to check out of the hotel so I shall just start off with a few. (Advice number one: Always ask for a late checkout, but don’t shower during that last hour you get - because housekeeping will barge in because no one told them you’d still be in there.)
1. Gig - gig - gig. As much as possible. The shitty gigs, the fun gigs, the big gigs, the small gigs. The gigs that are 400 miles away, the gigs that sound horrific. If you’ve had a great gig, do another one immediately after, so you ground yourself. If you’ve died, do another gig immediately after, so you can redeem yourself. Stage-time is a fucking bliss and we’re lucky when we get it. If you have stage fright, do a bunch of gigs. If you don’t feel funny, do a gig. If you have writer’s block, do a gig. I used to be an absolute nightmare in terms of gigs – I would figure out how many gigs I could do in one night. On a monday night, I’d open one open mic, rush to another where I would middle and then rush to a third, where I would close the gig. Three gigs in a night. I loved to see my calendar fill up. Gig, gig, gig. I have done gigs to literally one person, sitting on a chair in front of them and just telling them my entire show. It was the most painful thing in the entire world and it made me better, as well as homicidal.
2. Move the microphone stand. It’s the most obvious indicator that you don’t know what you’re doing. If you take the microphone out of the stand, move it to the side or behind you. You’d be surprised how big of a difference it makes.
3. Never run over. Ever. Do your time. If you’ve been booked for a 5 minute spot, you do 5 minutes. Maybe 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Maybe 5 minutes and 10 seconds. But never, ever more. Buy a vibrating watch. They’re all ugly. It has to vibrate because you do not want to be looking at your watch throughout your show – you look bored. It doesn’t matter how well you’re doing – you do not run over. You will be booked less, you will annoy and inconvenience your colleagues and friends. You’re annoying the venue, the bookers, the MC. And the whole ‘Oh fuck, I forget to set my watch’ thing only works a couple of times. Then people will start talking and you’ll be known as the person who runs over and lies about it. Be kind and respectful. You’ll get to do 10, 20, 30 minute spots sooner, if you’re not a cunt.
4. Oh yeah, don’t be a cunt.
I have to go check out now and go to a tour show in Selby. If you’ve read this, thank you. I love talking about comedy more than anything. And if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. I’m not the best comedian in the world, but I’m quite good and most importantly: I’ve sucked up as much advice as I possibly could and can tell you all about it.
Four minutes left. Gotta post this too.
Very excited to have you join me here on OnlyFans! It’s an awesome platform, I truly think so!
Three minutes. Okay, I really gotta go.
BYE x