I love the sound of bombs.
When I lived out west, I would listen to the army on Salisbury Plain and imagine I was in a war zone. I always wanted to be a war correspondent you see. The sound of distant bombs thudding onto the landscape was strangely comforting. Like a heartbeat or music. I can hear a pleasing harmony in the most unlikely of places – exploding bombs, wet tyres on tarmac, that new Radiohead album.
Only someone who drinks Lapsang Souchong would find the prospect of living in a war zone romantic. How easily I would hate me if I were a villager walking 12 miles a day to fill my kettle with contaminated water while dodging sniper-fire.
I’m not a war correspondent. I’m a comedian. Sometimes though, if I’m lucky I get to listen to my jokes fall like zeppelins in the pubs and clubs of our great land. It’s good to be fulfilling at least part of my ambition.
It’s not a warzone, but there is a certain amount of courage needed for this job, so people tell me. The fear is not of ‘dying’, but of being alone while you do so. In the end, you are going to have to fly the plane alone though, like it or not!
There are those people who will watch you crash and burn. They will watch you spiralling down, down, down until you’ve no bombs left and the enemy are waiting to beat you into submission until you get a proper job with pencils and charts and are forced to learn IT skills. Those skills that left you for dust while you were welding in a steel mill by day and dancing in a strip club by night. (‘Flashdance’ – 1983).
Then you will end up working in an office like one of those buxom women with a name like Rita or Joan. The kind of woman who takes an earring off for every phonecall. The kind of woman who has the same job for 25 years …answering phones. The kind of woman who spends half a day choosing the font for a little limerick she’s written about not pissing on the toilet seat, ‘if you sprinkle while you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat,’ the kind of woman who gets Alistair, the office junior, to pick up her prescription from the chemist while she bitches about him to the cleaners and then goes home to perm her cat.
And there are those people who offer you their silent help because they just can’t do more. They can’t fly your crazy motha f***ing plane with the teeth painted up the side. They have their own plane to fly.
Then there are those who astound you with their gestures. They are little beacons of humanity offering you a landing strip so that you may replenish your artillery. They can’t fly your plane either but they can wave a little flag for you. It is hard for me to sustain the misanthropy required for my stand-up routine when such people are on the sidelines. Stop it now. You know who you are. It is also hard for me to sustain this war metaphor. I don’t trust it. Shall we ditch it now or squeeze some more purple prose out of it?
One day sentimental pathos will come back into fashion and I will be ‘vey, vey much in demand’.
Moving to London was the right thing to do. I have been gigging constantly and writing, writing, writing. You could say that I have been writing too much, because you can’t try out that volume of new material at each gig. You simply can’t do that. You can try out a little bit of new stuff and it is usually advisable to place it in the middle of your set cushioned by ‘banker’ gags that you know will work. That’s not jokes about bankers by the way, although they are fair game …….. c****s.
But I am always trying out big blocks of new material. I can’t help it. This is not the orthodox route, bookers won’t like it necessarily, and it is generally not considered the best way to improve as a comic. But I hate the script. I hate it! I hate the falsehood of it. ‘Here are my jokes and I’m going to make them sound like I’ve just thought of them’. I do that very badly. I am much better when I am free-range. Not better as a comic necessarily, but a better human being. I enjoy performing the new stuff. It’s fresh. The older the material the more it disconnects me from the room. It feels like a bunch of lies. Essentially, that’s what stand-up is, a bunch of lies told in the hope that people won’t kick you in the shins at breaktime. It’s a bit like always being the new girl at school. But I do hate the script and am much happier when I can stray from the flight-path. To continue with the warplane metaphor- I would rather crash and burn with my heart in my mouth than fly around the world on autopilot.
It is one of the reasons I love compering so much. Especially ‘The Birthday Club’ – my own club at the Komedia studio bar in Brighton – because there are no bookers to feel a sense of obligation toward. It is my club. I can interact with the audience and think on my feet. If I can steer it in the direction of a joke, then great, it’s a far greater thrill than just doing the ‘script’.
So I will probably continue to try out large chunks of new material all the time. It is quite brave I suppose but not when you consider that my audience numbers are on average about 50. Frankie Boyle tries out new jokes to audiences at the Apollo. Let’s get some perspective here. I’d rather die in front of 50 than 2000 plus. For the most part – it’s fine, I can free-wheel on charm if all else fails. I will continue to do this, even at my own peril because I imagine myself to be a revolutionary and that in the long-long-run it will have a greater pay-off, but it’s just stubbornness and there’s nothing revolutionary about me at all. Except when my head spins 360 degrees and I do ‘projectile’.
But I get by. The only truly awful gig I had recently was the one where my childhood sweetheart turned up, looking edible, and I lost the ability to speak, let alone deliver a joke. Never mind. I’m getting over it. Besides, I love the sound of falling bombs. And I look good in combats too.
