In a way it’s worked out well that I fell behind on the ol’ post-mortems in the build-up to London, because the story of the five or so gigs in and around the London gigs, are almost the story of one set. A set that began with me trying to come up with a solid five minutes for London, that had some new material, incorporated some older material and changed as I performed it different venues, countries and in front of different audiences. Continue reading
Yes I should have this up sooner, I apologise. My lethargy of the long weekend carried on into the week and it’s taken until now for me to work up the gumption to write this post-mortem. It’ll be short but sweet, as last Friday in Rebels contained elements of all my experiences performing so far. Continue reading
Bowing out
Let’s get the negative out of the way first. I didn’t get through to the final. The fact that this didn’t sour my experience of performing during heat 2 of the Paddy Laughs competition in The Mill Theatre is testament to just how many positives there were. Continue reading
Red Rum
The worst five minutes of my life, are the five minutes before I go on stage. I get wound up and nervous. I start to sweat, suddenly feel like I have to burp about 15 times and my mouth drys up. I get so filled with nervous energy that I’m afraid I’m going to trip up onto the stage hit my head on the mic stand, burp while falling through the air and land in a bundle of farts on the stage until I slide into unconsciousness from the sheer embarrassment. The only reason I put myself through that torment is for the five minutes that follow once I get on stage. Continue reading
Facepalm
After finishing my set in Ha’Penny Bridge Inn, we made the quick dash across Temple Bar and Dame St. to The Bankers on Trinity Street. Upstairs there’s a great, intimate room, with a nice stage for comedy. Peter, who runs it, couldn’t have been nicer about letting me go on late. We arrived, tripod and camera in hand, looking incredibly inconspicuous. After everyone had gone on stage, Peter, jokingly introduced me as the headliner for the night. Continue reading
What's the point?
Two gigs in one night is what face me on Thursday. I didn’t like doing it on my first night in both the Ha’Penny Bridge Inn and Bankers, but it was exciting, and only being in Dublin for a couple of days I wanted to make the most of it and do as many shows as possible. I’d also set myself the task of doing different material in each gig, which I almost stuck to. I at least didn’t do the same set in each venue, my politeness routine being the only constant in each performance. So for the first half of the night, I was in the Ha’Penny Bridge Inn for Battle of the Axe. Continue reading
Clinging on to the mic stand for dear life.
So, I was back in Dublin, just over two weeks since the end of the comedy/storytelling course, for my first spot in a comedy club since December. I would be doing three spots over the two nights. First, I was back in Anseo, and was eager to get back up on stage at a comedy club. Continue reading
Studious as always
Yes, I know. It’s been too long since I’ve put up a post. Stop nagging me. I have literally had hundreds of emails not asking me when I was going to update my site again. Mostly they were trying to sell me porn. Of which I duly bought every single one. If the internet runs out of porn this weekend, I have it.
January was a quiet month for me, and as a result the documentary as we came to the end of our Sponsume run. Thanks a million to everyone who sponsored us by the way. It truly meant a lot and it was very encouraging to get your support. To anyone who’s reading this who didn’t sponsor us, I’ll be rooting through your wallets when you’re not looking the next time we meet.
It was a quiet month stand-up wise as I was mainly trying to line up gigs in Dublin for February and beyond. I was trying to do something in Cork for January, but alas, nothing shook loose. After nearly 6 weeks of not performing I was feeling a little bit rusty, so what better way to spend the first weekend of February than doing a comedy and storytelling course in Dublin? I’d booked my spot just before Christmas as I felt I could use a few pointers and advice as I got to the stage where I would be performing more regularly. We also decided it would interesting for the documentary to show something other than me just performing, but to see jokes and performances shaped in a course setting. Comedy courses and workshops can prove very useful to people who are aspiring stand-ups or just want to be better public speakers, so we felt it was an important aspect of the comedy world to show in the documentary. So it was with this in mind that I set off to Dublin last weekend. Continue reading
Going into this whole process, I’ve always been aware that there’s going to be a night where it just doesn’t click. Either I won’t click, I’ll completely blank, or the audience just won’t find me funny. It’s going to happen sooner or later, and the only comfort I’ll have is that at least it will make for good fodder for the documentary. Going into Anseo in Dublin last Wednesday, I really thought that this could be the night that I’d find myself out of my depth.
