Opening up

Tonight I opened for Ruben Paul in Hong Kong: this is the first time I've performed before a professional comedian in over a year - the last time was in front of a crowd of angry looking old women, before Paul Ogata came on.

This time I was much luckier - the audience were much more responsive, even if the first few jokes were a bit hit and miss. I managed to refer to "Jessie's Girl" which is the only time I've ever got a 1980s song reference into a set, while simultaneously implying a man had a 12-year-old girlfriend. And I said something vaguely rude about America to a very large man, without being beaten to a pulp. I was a bit sad I only had seven and a half minutes, but I got off the stage with everyone laughing, so no matter that I left my entire Wan Chai epistemological investigation behind. Save it for another day.

Ruben Paul was great - I preferred his set tonight to last night, partly because there was a better mood in the room, and partly because it seemed to flow better. Always interesting to watch how things change in a set from night to night. The audience were much more keen to laugh than last night, even if at times it felt in danger of being derailed by a deranged Colombian who kept yelling out "men!" at random, or a precocious 13-year-old brat in the second row, who had brought his laptop with him.

It was interesting to see the way he finished up by summarising his set, in a similar way to how I've seen Dara O'Brian do it - which suggests if you have an hour to work with, you've got a fairly reliable way to close it and guarantee some crowd-pleasing call-backs at the end. That's something that would be much harder to incorporate into a 5-minute set, which makes you wonder how you get to evolve up to the longer stuff.

After the show, on a high, we went over the road to Fat Angelo's, then finished up at Brat. Happy days.