well done dingdell!

[Dingdell]

I did think it was a bit obvious not to have been thought of before.

Just worked out the coal thing - Andrew!

[pokerfan]

oh - I had thought Frank Skinner was your crush, now I'm intrigued again (unless it's a double bluff)

It will never be Frank Skinner. I go for more shy, retiring nearer to retirement men.  Actually he is younger than me but looks older which works for me.

Just waiting for the satnav then I am officially a stalker.

Is it Cos ?

[Dingdell]

oh - I had thought Frank Skinner was your crush, now I'm intrigued again (unless it's a double bluff)

It will never be Frank Skinner. I go for more shy, retiring nearer to retirement men.  Actually he is younger than me but looks older which works for me.

Just waiting for the satnav then I am officially a stalker.

Is it Cos ?

My satnav only works in the UK.....luckily for him obv.

Satnav is briliant, yesterday I went Ntn to Maidenhead to Surrey to Camden. I tried to catch it out a couple of times but it still got me where i needed to be. It gives you a lot of info and takes a bit of getting used to. It keeps flashing up with current speed limits which is great as well as the number of metres to the next set of traffic lights. Unfortunately i didn't realise that when it flasehd up '70' that was the distance to the next lights and i did drive a little quickly last week through Islington high street. I had that satnav mentality of 'if the satnav says so it must be true' but I'm learning to use my own judgement too now.

[Dingdell]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I’M BACK!!!!

After a rollercoaster of gigs that didn’t seem to be going anywhere the comedy mojo has returned. I had 2 mediocre gigs and what enthusiasm I had was being batted back by an audience who had set up anti comedy shields and the phasers were set to kill. It was really tough.

I was wondering if it was beginners luck and now that was fading, I was trying new material in an attempt to resurrect it all but nothing was working.

Lets start again…….I went to a gig week before last and died on my arse AGAIN. The promoter spent our hello and goodbye conversations staring at my boobs after I politely declined his invitation to visit the local massage parlour with him for a mixed Jacuzzi. Normally a late night Jacuzzi experience in the local thai massage parlour is something I would accept. I haven’t had a holiday in a long time and the water in these establishments has increased buoyancy, the emissions from over excited men increasing the density to such a level that lying in the jacuzzi emulates the Red Sea floating experience.

Normally I would be there, daily newspaper in hand ready for the obligatory photo of me lying on my back reading the paper and staying dry but it brings back too many memories of recent shags that I declined.

Despondent at another failure I was determined not to give up but generally not sure in what direction I should go. I am a member of the Comedy Collective, a blonde type facebook forum for comedians. I asked for help and it was great. Go back to what worked do it again and slowly add in new stuff to test it, not add in loads and make it unrecognisable. It may be matter of fact to us to do the same set time and time again but to the audience (apart from the comedy posse that is Claw, Holdy, Gatso and Andrew T) it’s new and the confidence of a well worn set is actually very comforting to them, they relax down and enjoy the ride.

Last night was ‘epic’. The front row knows they will get picked on and one guy was a hairdresser from Camden, young lad who knows it all and had downed a good portion of a bottle of Absinthe. His mate was a guy who spends his days surfing buses, jumping on and off  roofs etc for kicks. They were good value and I had my ‘ad libs’ ready for my set, I was on second in the second half, nice safe spot and I was ready to riff with the boys at the front. We started the second half and FML they hadn’t come back from the bar. Apparently there was a single woman in the bar with chips and the combination of a woman with food was too much for them to resist.

The compere introduces me, he forgets my name, has to consult his paper, refers to me as one of his closest friends which gets a laugh and I run on stage. I berate the compere for not remembering my name, particularly as we’ve have shagged twice and been married for a year, the audience laughs at my adlib and we’re off. They laugh, the boys eventually come back in once the chips have run out, I ad lib again and I’m off. It wasn’t raucous laughter, it was good humoured agreement laughter, but they laughed.

One very strange thing happened though. In the first half there was a performer who is involved in the running of the comedy nights, she collects the money from the audience and she also does stand up which I didn’t realise until last night. She was on in the first half and as she did her set I panicked as she was doing very similar stuff to me, in fact I was having to mentally take things out of my set as she had already talked about them. I thought nothing more of this until the drive home and as my mind was wandering I realised that it wasn’t similar stuff – it was MY stuff she had done on stage. How was that possible? I did that stuff at a gig in Richmond, which Gatso filmed for me. I watched the tape, yep there it was, and there she was taking the money for the tickets that night. Wow.

It wasn’t just a few observations that could have been about the same subject and just a coincidence, it was specific phrases like ‘my boyfriends got more chance of a blowjob if he had a wash once in while’. It was all too close. So now I need to have a word with her and deal with it. She is a close friend of a really nice guy that runs some of these evenings so I have to tread carefully, he’s given me 4 gigs and I don’t want to jeopardise our relationship. But I also don’t want to give my material away.

I am worried about raising it though, and it could be an honest mistake. I have a line about doing a fanny fart after sex and the sound of my vag lips flapping together sounds like a slow hand clap but I’m pretty sure this isn’t my line. I must have heard it somewhere. I love it and in context it should work well but I’m worried I’ve heard it somewhere and now I am ‘making it my own’.

So on the way back from Camden I popped into Luton and I had forgotten how much I liked that place. New feature table, loads of players and George looking resplendent in his suit. The wit of the Luton players is legendary and George was struggling against it last night.

The final table of the Omaha a deal is discussed before they all sit down. After the discussion George wants to make sure that no one is being bullied into accepting so he has the ‘black card’ system. Every player is given a red card and a black card. If they agree to the deal they hand in their red card and if they disagree they hand in their black card, all done face down. It should work well but the Luton regulars can’t help but take the piss and hand in both cards to the pile. The vote had to be done 3 times before everyone toed the line and did it properly. There is black card in the pile so they play, but before they do all but one of them turns over their remaining card to show they still have their black card……it’s a nice idea but it needs a bit of work….

Anyway all in all a good night and lovely to see the regulars again. I binked a seat in the £150 at DTD this weekend so I’m playing Saturday. Happy days. Have a great Easter weekend whatever you are doing.

[Claw75]

Hmm that's a tricky one Trace.  Find it kinda hard to believe that if someone was going to nick material they'd have the bare faced cheek to perform it right in front of the person they've pinched it off - how very rude!  Have you asked on the funny people's forum if it's happened to anyone else and how they've dealt with it?  Guess it's hard to prove that two people just haven't independently come up with the same ideas.  A couple of years ago a friend and I were kicking around the idea of writing a sketch show.  I had some amazing (imho) ideas.  Then when I ran them past my friend turned out they'd been done before.  Don't know if I'd heard them before, or if there are only so many observations that can be made that it's tricky to find one that's not already been picked up on.

[vegaslover]

Happens all the time. Lots of the comedians that make it onto the telly use gags they have heard other comedians use when they were gigging round clubs.

[Dingdell]

Happens all the time. Lots of the comedians that make it onto the telly use gags they have heard other comedians use when they were gigging round clubs.

Well as far as I am concerned it's a real NO NO. It's a bit like looking at someones hand in poker, we know that sometimes it happens but we all know it shouldn't.

It's quite common for people to have similar openers  'who here is single'  'are you having a good time' etc. There are occasions where comedians gift lines, they see someones act and give them a line that they think will work better for them.

The good thing is that at least someone wanted to use some of my material.

The comedy collective is a very useful forum, gives you a lot of resources it would take years to work out yourselves and it's nice to be able to swap experiences of venues etc.

There is also growing concern about 'pay to play' gigs where promotors offer you a space but you pay to perform at their venue. This is standard practice in USA but not yet here. It's very dodgy as the promoter doesn't have any risk then in running a gig as he has his expenses covered but you may, as a performer, end up only playing to other comedians which does nothing to promote you to the public. There is a rising anti pay to play movement appearing and a few public spats occuring at venues so it's getting interesting.

Who knew that comedy was so serious? 

Won a local facebook competition this week and we are having cupcakes delivered to work today! Playing DTD tomorrow. Loving life.