Almost one hundred, including a woman in the back row whose horrified face made a silent o throughout, although I was happy with that; it was the mummified corpse in the second row staring at me with dissatisfied incomprehension that threw me off a bit. I felt fairly nervous for the first few minutes, and it went quicker than I expected, but I think I did a decent set, and I hope I didn't rabbit on too fast for them.
They just didn't seem the type to laugh long and hard, and Paul had to contend with a kind of jaded indifference; it wasn't exactly a sullen crowd, but they didn't really rise to the occasion. Or maybe it was Paul's burger, drawing all the joy of life into itself.
I stuck around to run the desk for the ten o'clock show, and wished that had been the set I'd had: the audience was the right side of drunk, happy and ready to laugh. Paul had them roaring for an hour, while a random punter fed me unnecessary red wine and I battled with the sound system.
Learnings from tonight: even a big crowd won't always chuckle. Don't eat a burger before you go on. Don't go on before a man eating a burger.
1 comments:
I've opened for Paul on one of those Saturday night's, too. Only, it was the late show I opened for, and instead of fish/legal system jokes, I went for the comparison of paul to mr. miyagi -> and then proceeded to illustrate, through selective vocabulary, how the whole mr miyagi concept now-a-days would arise suspicions of a predatory nature.
Needless to say, the phrase "implied thrill of rape" appeared in the set at least once... strike that - at least twice.
Way to break that barrier, James! You're like an egg!
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