well done dingdell!

[DaveShoelace]

Currently reading Frank Skinner's second/third book, which is about him returning to stand-up in Edinburgh in 2007:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Frank-Skinner-Road-Stand-up-Comedy/dp/0099458039/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

If you have not read it, I would highly recommend it. He is a brilliant writer anyway (His first book is awesome) but this is superb reading for any aspiring stand-up. First of all, he goes into a lot of detail how he develops a joke between the first time he tells it, and by the time it becomes part of his 90 minute set. Lots of emphasis on the importance of repetition.

Secondly, it is astounding how someone who has pretty much been considered one of the top UK stand-ups for about 20 years, is so insecure and anxious about whether he is funny or not. Bad reviews crush him, he looks for the worst in the great reviews, and he even gets down if he messes up a joke he tells privately in the company of two people.

Top read and I wager, would be very reassuring to anyone about to embark on a bit of the old stand-up themselves.

[mondatoo]

Just heard about the next heat of the Laughing Horse New Act of the year. It will be on Friday the 2nd of March at 8.30 pm, doors open at 7.30. £6 to get in. It's at The Goat Tavern, Stafford Street new Green Park. This heat is judged on audience voting, only 4 people that know you are allowed judging forms to keep it as fair as they can. Hopefully it will be a fun night out, there will be 10 - 12 five min acts. If you do come please laugh Thank you  
Here are more details on the venue; http://www.laughinghorsecomedy.co.uk/comedy/greenpark.asp
 

How can they possibly police this ?

At this stage it is a small room - for the first 2 rounds no more than 30 - 40 seats - it's not the albert hall - so if there are 10 acts on the night it's pretty unlikely you will have a large majority for just 1 act. They assume that people will be honest, I wouldn't want to get through on dodgy voting & the others I spoke to feel the same. In a room that size it's pretty obvious if you know people so they would suss it out unless you ignore them the whole night. This is the last stage where the audience get a vote - after that it's judged by comedy professionals/bookers etc.

I'm pretty sure the 4 that had forms Gatso, Holdy, Claw and Andrew T would have voted fairly. In fact the comment was made that as they had seen some of my set on youtube before they didn't find it as funny because they knew what was coming. So having people there can be a double edged sword. We all knew the rules before we entered, if someone manages to go through with dodgy voting (unlikely imo) there are still 2 runner up places to be had.

The audience seemed to take the voting quite seriously - 1 girl was insensed that she didn't get through and berated her mates for not giving her higher marks but they told her outright that she wasn't good enough when compared to the others. It's great to get through, this next round is obv more difficult as the standard is now higher so it's more pressure. The round after is what I would love to get to - in front of the professionals and bookers - and get some feedback from them would be brilliant.  Bit like a Paul Jackson masterclass (joke there for Gatso).

GLGL getting through, no way I wouldn't be biased for someone I knew.

[Ant040689]

Stumbled across this thread and very happy i have done so, have liked the fb page and will be following your journey as you put it up here, best of luck to you.

[Dingdell]

Just heard about the next heat of the Laughing Horse New Act of the year. It will be on Friday the 2nd of March at 8.30 pm, doors open at 7.30. £6 to get in. It's at The Goat Tavern, Stafford Street new Green Park. This heat is judged on audience voting, only 4 people that know you are allowed judging forms to keep it as fair as they can. Hopefully it will be a fun night out, there will be 10 - 12 five min acts. If you do come please laugh Thank you  
Here are more details on the venue; http://www.laughinghorsecomedy.co.uk/comedy/greenpark.asp
 

How can they possibly police this ?

At this stage it is a small room - for the first 2 rounds no more than 30 - 40 seats - it's not the albert hall - so if there are 10 acts on the night it's pretty unlikely you will have a large majority for just 1 act. They assume that people will be honest, I wouldn't want to get through on dodgy voting & the others I spoke to feel the same. In a room that size it's pretty obvious if you know people so they would suss it out unless you ignore them the whole night. This is the last stage where the audience get a vote - after that it's judged by comedy professionals/bookers etc.

I'm pretty sure the 4 that had forms Gatso, Holdy, Claw and Andrew T would have voted fairly. In fact the comment was made that as they had seen some of my set on youtube before they didn't find it as funny because they knew what was coming. So having people there can be a double edged sword. We all knew the rules before we entered, if someone manages to go through with dodgy voting (unlikely imo) there are still 2 runner up places to be had.

The audience seemed to take the voting quite seriously - 1 girl was insensed that she didn't get through and berated her mates for not giving her higher marks but they told her outright that she wasn't good enough when compared to the others. It's great to get through, this next round is obv more difficult as the standard is now higher so it's more pressure. The round after is what I would love to get to - in front of the professionals and bookers - and get some feedback from them would be brilliant.  Bit like a Paul Jackson masterclass (joke there for Gatso).

GLGL getting through, no way I wouldn't be biased for someone I knew.

Lol -  my mad friends that I drove down with spent the journey home telling me why i wasn't as good as some of the others......really pleased to read that Gatso et al only had 1 form between them - if I got through on just one 'friends' form I'm pretty chuffed actually as that means that the unknown audience definitely voted for me - brilliant!!

[Dingdell]

Stumbled across this thread and very happy i have done so, have liked the fb page and will be following your journey as you put it up here, best of luck to you.

Ty - I haven't been updating the FB page as I should or trying for more gigs. Currently moving my clinic from 1 building to another and with liasing with the builders/decorators, designing new web sites and running the existing clinic it's been a bit mad. I have an audition on Sunday for a biggie comp so fingers crossed for that one, I think after Sunday my mind will be all about comedy again - it's all a bit out of sight out of mind at the minute.

[Claw75]

well i wish we'd had more than one form - andrew was a bloody nightmare keep changing our scores!  The forms were marked with an asterix so that they knew who we were there with, so it was probably pretty irrelevant how we marked Trace.  We did briefly consider putting an asterix next to all of the names though.....

[AndrewT]

well i wish we'd had more than one form - thankfully Andrew was on hand to correct the clearly incorrect scores that Gatso, Foldy and I had written in!  The forms were marked with an asterix so that they knew who we were there with, so it was probably pretty irrelevant how we marked Trace.  We did briefly consider putting an asterix next to all of the names though.....

FYP

[Claw75]

well i wish we'd had more than one form - thankfully Andrew was on hand to correct the clearly incorrect scores that Gatso, Foldy and I had written in!  The forms were marked with an asterix so that they knew who we were there with, so it was probably pretty irrelevant how we marked Trace.  We did briefly consider putting an asterix next to all of the names though.....

FYP

lol.  pretty sure after scrubbing them out several times they all went back to the original scores we gave anyway

[Dingdell]

So this Sunday was interesting as I was competing in a London competition that was based on only 90 seconds of your best material, and that was just to get through to the first 5 minute heat.

I had to compete with the snow so I left hours earlier than I needed to, just in case the roads were blocked. I made it down the M1 with plenty of time so decided to pop in and see my Dad for a cup of tea, I got stuck on his drive and it took 2 neighbours to help dig the car back out. Needless to say I was then late and nearly missed the start.

Yet another sticky floored pub in Camden, smelling of stale beer but not cigarettes. Although I hated smoky pubs there is something about a pub in the mornings smelling of fags that I really like. Must be their aftershave.

So sitting in the bar waiting for the start there was a clique of performers who obviously knew each other and were comparing horror stories of gigs, promoters and other performers. The rest of us were surreptitiously listening trying to learn as much as we could. Networking is a big part of the circuit, building up a list of people you can stay with when you are gigging away from home is essential as the pay is non-existent or very low to start.

I thought I should try and make some conversation with the guy sitting next to me. He was about my age (unusual) and had sat down and dived into a notebook he had been  fervently reading and learning. It’s 90 seconds – if you don’t know your set by now what chance have you got?  So I struck up a convo with him  which consisted of the safe ‘how long have you been doing this’ and ‘where have you played?’  Turns out he did stand up for a few years in the 80’s but turned up to gigs off his head on various drugs so eventually he was banned from most venues. He’s straightened himself out a bit and thought he would give it another go, but because of the drugs he finds it difficult to remember stuff, hence the frantic revision. I strike him off my ‘people to stay with’ list.

The organiser of the comp, Hils Jago, infamous for her Soho comedy club and being an early founder/supporter of comedy in the UK breezes in and the room changes. She is, according to my druggie friend, as mean as Ann Robinson on Weakest Link. She looks like her (and not in a Gazza way, she does actually look like Ann Robinson)  I know I am going to like her. She knows everyone in comedy, she knew them on the way up and on the way down. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly (which is a weird phrase bearing in mind this is a comedy competition) but I like her no nonsense approach.

We are herded up to a room with a stage and asked to sign a contract giving the promoters control over any DVD deals until 3 months after the final of the comp, irrespective of where we come. The sponsors are a DVD company who want first shout if you turn out to be any good between now and November. It’s not a long tie in (some comps tie you in for 2 years) and in return you get seen by promoters right from the first heat and the support is the best offered on the circuit. I sign, not too troubled by the thought of being bothered by a competitors dvd deal at the moment, no ones even tried to film me on their phone yet so I think it’s unlikely that I will be part of a bidding war.

One finalist from last year was recently signed by the DVD company and their retainer was £70,000 so there is money in comedy and according to Ann Robinson they no longer have to work part time washing dishes to keep their mother in a nursing home. I think she was gilding the lily a bit on that one.

I still fall in love with this woman, she stands on the stage, in the spotlight and tells us this is Showbusiness, we are the show and we are in business. Anyone who doesn’t take showbusiness seriously will not succeed. She also tells us not to worry if we don’t come over as being very funny within out 90 seconds, she is looking for star quality, someone who can multi task, host events, be funny and run a show. She congratulates us for making the effort to get here in the bad weather. One guy came on a coach from South Wales and another came down from Manchester. All of a sudden my epic journey from Northampton seems a bit wimpish. Oh well.

So the competition starts, 90 seconds of your best material, judged by her alone, with a chance to get through to the first round. We perform in alphabetical order and I am second from last, followed only by Zac. I have to sit through 48 other hopefuls with a break in the middle and by the time it’s my turn I am very nervous.

I’ve already tried to make friends with Ann at the break by showing her my Pret a manger wrapping from my roll. It was a new recipe and had a big sticker on it that said “I made it through the audition” so I had bought it that morning purely because of the sticker. In retrospect I should not have pulled out a half eaten roll from my fleece pocket and showed her the wrapper. I think I came over as a product of two close cousins who made a child and when it got older it travelled down to London to enter a comedy competition.

It was my attempt at telling her I wanted a place….Still at least it wasn’t as bad as one lad who read from a script he had written on the train on the way down, told everyone he needed to win to pay off his grandmother who was threatening to kill him (obv a joke) and then handed out penguins to members of the audience in an attempt to get votes – even though there was no audience vote.

Then there was the girl who picked on me as I was in the front row and told me she knew where to get cream for thrush as half price, and that I was in need of it as I was wriggling around on my seat. I didn’t like her.

During the other acts I have been watching Ann Robinsons reaction to try and guess the body language, but it’s never helped me in the poker world so no reason why it would help now. She sometimes just listens to the acts and at other times watches intently, and  I can’t gauge which is good or bad as I can’t tell if the acts are good or not either.

 So I am announced, I run on stage, smiling at Ann as I run past her and do my first line which basically insults the men in the audience (90%) so I’m not off to a good start. It would work well on a hen night but for some reason I’ve decided to be a bit edgy to keep up with the kidz. The rest goes ok – it’s my favourite part of my set – but my killer line doesn’t get the roar I was expecting. Damm. I look at Ann – she is watching intently. Wtf does that mean?? 90 seconds is tough, you can’t really make much of a connection with the audience and get the gags in too.


Zac comes on and 90 seconds later we are done. Ann gets back on the stage, thanks us all and tells us we’ll hear one way or another in 2 weeks once all the auditions have been held.

Things I have learnt: I need to do more gigs, 1 guy I spoke to only lives in London to get the gigs. He tries to do 3 a week minimum and he was very comfortable on stage.

If I don’t get through (and tbh I don’t think I did my best) then it’s not the end of the world.

Don’t tell a mainly male audience that all men are shit. There are not many scenarios where they will find this funny.

Don’t show the organiser a half-eaten Pret roll whatever the packaging says. It is not a sign and it may harm your audition.

I started the Peter Kay book (Saturday night Peter)  I can’t put it down, I love it. He describes having a personality he leaves at the side of the stage and he can watch himself on stage wondering how he manages to stand up and do his thing. I know exactly what he means. Once the Sunday stint was all over I put on my woolly hat, fleece and gloves and walked down the road to the tube, finishing off the Pret roll, and it was almost as if the last few hours had never happened.

Next proper gig 10 days away. It’s all good fun.

[tikay]

Fantastic!

Loved this.....

I think I came over as a product of two close cousins who made a child

[Claw75]

great report Trace!

 

[Graham C]

great report Trace!

 

[DaveShoelace]

Yay best diary on blonde

Do more gigs, I truly believe the difference between the ones who make it and the ones who don't is hard work and experience

[Laxie]

Loved the report and glad you're keeping this diary going...as well as the comedy gigs.  You'll get there.  If anybody can, it's you.  x

[tikay]

Yay best diary on blonde
Do more gigs, I truly believe the difference between the ones who make it and the ones who don't is hard work and experience

Tosser.