Welcome

Hi,

First and foremost, thanks for reading this blog. Hopefully you find it quite amusing, it may even interest you. You don't have to be a stand-up comedian to enjoy this blog. You don't even need to know a stand-up comedian. You just need to be amused by the tales of a guy who gets on stage to try and make people laugh, often fails, and then documents it.


Either way, I hope you enjoy the reading and I appreciate your time and support.







Tuesday, November 29, 2011

What Can I Say?.......

What can I say?

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I have spent the last 6 weeks or so on a bit of a journey that has had more to do with arguing with the Mrs about the best way to get to the airport than comedy. True to the name of this blog, I have been on a journey on my way back to the Mother Country that has taken me from the tiny island of Rarotonga smack bang in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, all the way to Rome, Venice, Austria, Munich, Switzerland and Paris. And, finally (pause for effect)......home.


I had a little mathematics session on one of my many train trips through Europe and discovered that I have spent 18 months and 14 days away from home. That part didn't take long to figure out. But that journey has taken 593 days, or more specifically 84 weeks and 5 days. Or more specifically 14, 232 hours. Or more specifically 853, 920 minutes. Or even more specifically 51, 235, 200 seconds. That part took a while to figure out. My journey has also taken me through ten countries during this time in which time I have held eight jobs. I have gone from having never done anything close to stand up comedy, to having done 14 gigs in two countries and being (very loosely) involved in an International Comedy Festival. This in turn has lead to me having performed to an accumulation of approximately 1000 audience members and I have been recognised on the street for my comedy on two separate occasions in two countries. Numbers make everything sound more impressive.


But in terms of comedy, I guess the journey has only just begun.


When I got back back to the UK a couple of days ago, one of the first things I noticed on the London tube was the amount of posters advertising stand up gigs, tours and DVDs. Either comedy has always been this big in Britain and I've been oblivious to it all or it has massively taken off over the last couple of years. I also took a brief trip to the small royal spa town of Tunbridge Wells to visit my girlfriend's brother and his lovely wife and new born baby girl. I'm not an expert but I don't think Tun-dub is known for it's vast array of stand-up but I spotted two separate advertisements for local stand-up nights. Even more gaspingly, jaw droppingly surprising was a leaflet I found in my house for a stand-up night at my local nightclub in my insignificant hometown. I think what I'm trying to say is that when I was away, I thought stand-up was going to be quite hard to carry on back home, but now that I'm here I think it's going to be even easier to continue. I'm not saying that I want to do stand-up in front of the pikeys at my local nightclub. But I am saying that gigs are out there.


I think I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks looking into my options while I get settled in and get in touch with the various contacts I made while in Oz to see if they have any gigs coming up. But all in all I think it's looking quite promising.


So I think returning home is a bit of a landmark in the Comedy Journey so I'll end the post with a little summary on what I think was my best gig so far. My best gig so far was (drum roll)...............my gig at The Comic's Lounge in Melbourne, the night before Australia Day. It's my favourite for a couple of reasons. One - it was one of the few gigs that I feel I've nailed and got good laugh time, and two- it was the only gig I've done that was in front of 300-ish people who all paid good money to watch comedy. Plus it's the only time I've shared the stage in one evening with a high standard of comedy A-listers ( In Ozzy terms, at least).

So here's to many more good gigs in front of the notoriously hard to please British public.

Can't wait.