Stand-up & Be Recounted: Paul Kerensa

Not Going Out for Best New Comedy... please

So, the possibly-won't-be-screened British Comedy Awards nominees list is out...

http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2007/11/07/6009/british_comedy_awards_nominations

...and Not Going Out gets two mentions - Best New Comedy and Best Male Actor for Lee Mack. We won't win, but it's lovely to be thought of. Why won't we win? Cos Gavin & Stacey is great. Did you see it? Of course you didn't - it was on BBC3. But you should. It's on DVD now. So's Not Going Out, and you should buy that too.

Normally I slag off nominees lists to high heaven cos they're normally rubbish, but there is some good stuff on the list this year. Some bad of course (The Graham Norton Show for Best New Entertainment Show? It's not new - he did it on Channel 4 as long ago as last millenium). But Matt Berry is a deserved brilliant comic actor. And Joanna Page was very sweet in Gavin & Stacey. And of course it's good to see Not Going Out get a mention. And... alright, that's about it. In fact, yeah, the rest of the list I'm not so sure about. I didn't really get Fonejacker. And it's lots of same olds filling out the rest of the list - Stephen Fry for QI, Catherine Tate for Catherine Tate, Al Murray, Harry Hill, The Friday Night Project, Buzzcocks, The Simpsons... Not much new stuff to ignite the comedy soul, is there?

Having said that, all the main channels have of late been making and showing a great number of pilot comedies - Channel 4 recently ran a series of Comedy Lab and a new run of one-off Comedy Showcases in parallel, and BBC3 have had a pilot season this year, with another one early next year. ITV are busy beavering away trying to prove that they can make people laugh without Ant or Dec, and Five are showing and even making the occasional sitcom now too. So lots of new stuff being fired out there... perhaps next years British Comedy Award shortlist will have more freshness then? If there is one - ITV still haven't committed to broadcasting this year's one yet, so for all we know, comedy's foray into awards ceremonies may be confined to some Trevor McDonald-hosted National British Tellybox Awards nonsense where we just get a moment between soapstars with a brief presentation of Best Funny Fing As Voted For By Readers Of TV Quick Or FHM Or Somefink.

Passover

Had a Passover meal tonight - our church put it on as a little taster of Jewish tradition. Twas the first time I'd ever had a Passover meal. Twas interesting. Twas long. I don't know how they do it. Also there's a lot of wine to drink. Four times, you have to fill your glass and down it. AND there's a rule that if you fall asleep during the preparations and rituals, you're not allowed to stay for the food. Well after necking most of a bottle of wine, and waiting an hour and a half for dinner at the end of a long day, I'm amazed more don't have a quick kip.

We were there for about 3 hours, and we were told that we'd left out another couple of hours of songs, psalms, prayers, readings and preparations. It made me appreciate Jewish culture afresh, and also appreciate how little tradition my own religion has. It's quite handy that the modern Christian church has dropped most of these rituals. I'm sure it's not the right reason to drop 'em, but it's quite convenient, time-management wise...

The Reluctant Closer

Lately I've been closing at several gigs for the first time. I don't expect to be headlining, yet somehow I now am. Fair enough. Pays better and has more kudos to it, although you don't get home so early and you normally end up facing a drunker crowd. But won't grumble or nothing.

A few other comics mentioned they've noticed similar things. So why is this? Have I graduated to headliner at the rowdier clubs cos I've improved over the last year or so? I don't think so. I reckon I've pottered along really. Maybe improved stagecraft a little, but not a lot. Instead it seems to be that lots of former headline acts have left the circuit now. A year or two ago, you'd regularly see closing comedians such as Andy Parsons, Tim Vine, Mark Watson, Frankie Boyle, Lucy Porter, Alan Carr, Marcus Brigstocke, Sarah Kendall, Michael McIntyre, Mitch Benn, Russell Howard... and yes, most of these still play clubs occasionally, but they've gone from doing 4 gigs a week to doing mostly their own tours. So suddenly comedy clubs find they can't book the established acts any more. Instead, me and my peers get a phone call.

It's all good. It's natural selection. It might mean that it takes time for the circuit to adjust - some comedians are headlining at the mo that probably aren't as bankable as a headline act might have been a year or two ago. But anyway, I think I've stepped up to the plate and am hopefully proving myself. It's an ongoing improvement process, but I'm doing what I can, and I'm getting good feedback from audiences. The danger is that I'll start catering too much to the stags and hens at these later, drunker gigs, but I'm trying where possible to not dumb down too much. The other day I was thinking, while naked, that I don't want to end getting too hack. And then I got off the bus...

Basil!

Last recording of Not Going Out last night. Ahh. Hopefully we'll get a 3rd series, but still no word yet. We should.

Last night was the Xmas Special, which featured Timothy West who was wonderful as Tim and Lucy's dad. It's great to see a properly trained Shakespearean stage actor perform on camera in a studio - every word was given meaning, every look mattered, and he oozed charisma and presence. And his wife Prunella Scales was there. I tried my best not to say 'Basil!' and slap my hand. I only did it once.

The British Comedy Awards & 'Old' Underwear

Probably the only ITV show I set the video ('video'? ha! DVR, please...) for is the British Comedy Awards. Always a treat - whether it's Julian Clary suggesting he'd just fisted a cabinet minister, or Caroline Aherne heckling Nigel Hawthorne, or Michael Barrymore ripping out the autocue, or Spike Milligan calling Prince Charles a grovelling bastard, it's always ripe for scandal. The 2005 show seemed to be scandal-free, though it's now been unearthed as being the most scandalous of the lot, by doing one of these phone-rigging naughtinesses like naming the Blue Peter cat Mufty or whatever it was. Either way, it's been pulled this year. Seems an odd choice, since Blue Peter's still going on, and so's Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, and so's GMTV, all of which were accused of greater scandals. But ITV see The British Comedy Awards as a one-night thing you can do without, so not only are they not showing it, but they've not allowed any other channel to show it either by clinging to their contract. This is a shame.

If you agree it's a shame, go here: http://www.petitiononline.com/chortle1. Go on. Support a beery backslap fest for comedians. You know you want to.

My other query today is a discussion with my other half, where it transpired that the oldest pair of briefs I still own are now celebrating their first decade since purchase. She didn't see it that way. She's of the mind you should bin all undergarments after a year of use. Well it's not a year solid of use, and I do wash them, so I see no problem with keeping a pair of boxer shorts for a few years. So if any blog-reader wishes to help my argument, and can claim to own underwear more than a couple of years old, please let me know. And if you can beat me record of ten years of pant-ownership, even better. Any takers?

Some film reviews

I feel qualified to give some film reviews, having seen 8 cinematic releases in 3 days. Anyone top that? Anyone want to? You probably have better things to do. I didn't, thanks to far-flung gigs. And I had my Cineworld Unlimited card (a must for any travelling film fan), and had worked blimin hard the last few weeks, so I've had myself a few weekend days, midweek.

So, in order of liking, they are: Stardust, Sicko, Eastern Promises, Ratatouille, The Kingdom, Razzle Dazzle, The Heartbreak Kid, Saw IV.

So, selected comments. Razzle Dazzle I was curious to see, as it's co-written by Robin Ince, who I know. And twas good fun, though probably the driest comedy I've seen in a cinema. I think it'll struggle to find an audience it's aimed at, cos it's about an Australian dance contest, but the tone is quite adult. I saw it in one of only two showings at that cinema that week, and it was me and two families with young daughters, who clearly came to see it because of the dancyness. But both families walked out about 15min in, when a line about gonorrhoea confirmed their suspicions that it wasn't a cutesy half-term movie after all. To those that know it, it's a slight Drop Dead Gorgeous rip-off, but still worth a punt.

My favourite film I've seen in ages was Stardust. It's just lovely. Maybe it caught me in the right mood. It's very feelgood. Maybe I just deliberately liked it to spite the barracking half-termites in the rows behind me who clearly were bored by it. But I suspect that my instincts are correct, and it is actually very good. It's a fairytale, for grown-ups as well as for kids (maybe moreso for grown-ups). It's very Princess Bridey, and also quite Terry Gilliam/Monty Python-y too. Great cast, great script, and it's directed by the guy behind Layer Cake and Lock Stock and X3, which is bizarre. I think one of the main things I liked was that I was caught out at least 3 times, plot-wise. And I liked that we saw a couple fall in love throughout the movie, from first meet to realisation between both of them, to save-the-day romantic ending. Aw. I'm an old softie it turns out.

...but a softie who's now hardened to the Saw franchise. Saw IV bored me. So what, you've got gore, whoop-de-doo, there's a bloke stuck in a room with a chain attached to a bit of him, and the other end to a machine on a timer for some reason. Do I want him to escape? Well you've painted him as a bit of a baddie who needs to be taught a lesson, but then if that lesson is that he has to gouge his own eyes out before his limbs get pulled off or his ribs split open before the timer goes off and the room seals with no visible means of... oh I can't be bothered any more.

Bread, Timothy West & Girlie Music

Every day's different. This was Monday:

BREAD: 1:30-6:30pm - An advertising company has run out of ideas for how to sell Hovis so paid for 4 comedians to sit in a pub for 5 hours and talk about bread in whatever funny or not-funny way we could think of. I know, I'm a sell-out. But if you're a sell-out, that involves the word 'sell', which means money, so you can see why people do it. And it wasn't a huge amount, but enough to buy my thoughts on bread, which aren't many. It largely consisted of things they got wrong with the Hovis ad with the boy walking up the hill. Thing is, I don't personally feel any artistic integrity is compromised when it's supporting something I like anyway. I like bread. If I was helping advertise a nuclear hairdryer or a new genocidal milkshake.

TIMOTHY WEST: 7:30-9pm - And other actors. But mainly Timothy West. It was the readthrough of the Xmas Special of Not Going Out, only finished at 4am that day. Timothy West, Shakespearean actOR and Henry VIII lookalike, is guesting as Tim Vine's dad. It all came together well, so we're about two more writing days away from the end of Not Going Out series 2. Been on it since January. The end is in sight. Recording the Xmas special next Wednesday, and still waiting for news on series 3... (And NGO series 1 is available now on DVD in all good stores and most bad ones.)

GIRLIE MUSIC: 9:30pm-11pm - Pen-To-Paper New Material Night in Ealing. It's an unusual night, in that rather than have 10-20min, you have up to 40min to bed in a new full-length show. Now it's a little early (October) for next Edinburgh (August). But I did have a half-thought-up idea from last year that I dropped in favour of doing a show on Genesis. So I went over some of that, and hey hey, some of it worked. It's all about music, and genres, and itunes, and playlists, and involves me surveying the audience for their favourite musical genres, and confessing my own guilty pleasures. And it turns out, my tastes in music are surprisingly girlie. I admitted to liking Love Machine by Girls Aloud and All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey, and musicals, and hoped for a little more support than one woman at the back agreeing with me. Ah well. I'm sure there are more like me out there. I hope to find out over the next few months of working this show up.

(So in other words, no I'm not doing a show about Exodus next year at the Fringe. Though that decision is subject to change. Actually Tim Vine suggested a nice idea for an Exodus show - a column of reserved seats down the middle of the audience, and 'unreserve' them halfway through for the parting of the Red Sea...)

They can't sell The Doughnut!?!

I picked a great day to do the BBC's in-house gig. The day that it's announced they're looking at 2000 job cuts (but no one knows who) and also that they're going to sell off The Doughnut (aka Television Centre, aka one of the most famous workplace buildings in the country). London Lite says they're going to sell it either to a business (so Shepherd's Bush finally gets a Primark), or knock it down for housing. Urgh. I feel sick even writing that. It's a great building - a magical one - I still get the shivers walking in there, thinking of all the history of shows and talent that have made television there over the last century. Monty Python was filmed there, countless Comic Reliefs and Children In Needs, the Blue Peter garden is there, Roy Castle tapdanced around there... And by 2013 it's going to be a big Wetherspoons.

The BBC gig itself was fun tonight - I was compering, and baited them a little on the jobs front. Some of them even believed me when I said that, thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded, us comedians were paid by sacrificing their jobs. No one really knows who's safe. It looks like being news and factual (ie. Planet Earth and the like) who'll lose out the most. My suggestion was that, as BBC employees, they make a show like Job Swap or something just before the redundancies kick in, then just make sure the other job has more security. Swap with a Sky employee or something. Then what do you know - Sky worker comes to the beeb and gets sacked. Beeb worker carries on at Sky. Who loses? I should be Director General.

Stowe and the Amused Moose

The title sounds like a public school prank, like when Wellington pupils smuggled in 2 sheep to their dorms, labelling them 1 and 3 (both were caught by teachers straight away, but they spent all night looking for the elusive sheep marked 2, which of course didn't exist...)

But no, the title describes my last two gigs, both slightly different from the norm. The first was just me on my own performing to several hundred teenagers; the second was me performing on a bill with what seemed like several hundred teenagers.

Stowe School is a public school near Buckingham. It's very fancy. Richard Branson went there, and so did Prince Harry's girlfriend. They've got an arts festival on all week, so their chaplain booked me to do the Edinburgh show about the book of Genesis, instead of Sunday morning chapel. So it was my first 10am gig, and my first gig to several hundred public school teenagers. Playing to an audience who aren't there through choice is always more of a challenge, but they enjoyed it, laughed in most of the right places, and I had a great time with it. The bits that didn't hit the mark were things I couldn't plan for - I had a joke about the phrase "She didn't know him from Adam" (you can imagine the joke) which has never not worked before, but got nothing - I had no idea that kids didn't know that phrase. Now I think of it, I've only ever heard people like my parents say that. Never have I heard, "Bitch not know him from Adam, dya naa what I mean, innit, nuff said." The only bits I cut out the show were bits on onanism and a touch of sodomy. Didn't quite feel right for it...

The second gig, last night, was a showcase of comedians at the Arts Theatre in London - about 40 of us on the bill, doing between 60 seconds and 6 minutes. Lots of industry there, and a great chance to meet the future of comedy. I felt old. I'm only 28, but there's all these teenagers up-and-coming. Lots of fine gagsmiths among them. The future of comedy is in safe hands. I feel a little bit threatened. Must put off a few of them.

In fact myself and comic Stuart Goldsmith have decided after last night to set up our own new act competition, because we enjoy judging people, and we'll reward the 2nd place, but 1st place will get nothing. This is to encourage new comedians to be good, but not be that good.

Crete

Back from my hols. Crete. Lovely. An apartment ten metres from the sea and ten metres from the pool. And that was as tricky as the decisions got - working out which to do each day.

It's missing home comforts, granted. You can't put toilet paper in the toilet, for example - you have to bin it. I wasn't sure if we were meant to poo in the bin as well, so just to be safe...

Meals out were nice - though Greek cuisine isn't exactly my thing. But the Greek salads were nice, and in the main the tavernas were lovely. Although some of the places in the nearby town of Chania were a little dodgy. We went to one taverna, with a lovely atmosphere, out on a street in an old-fashioned, high-walled, pedestrian square, with a couple of guitarists playing acoustic Greek music. Only whenever we walked past it (we did the rounds, trying to see who had the best menu), a different waiter would be out front collaring us to lure us in, and all of them followed this pattern...

WAITER: Hey! You want to come look at our menu?
US: Er...
WAITER: Where you from?
US: London.
WAITER: No way! I worked in London for 7 years, at Bella Pasta on Leicester Square.

Every waiter in Crete seems to have worked in Bella Pasta in Leicester Square. I don't even know if there is a Bella Pasta on Leicester Square. It's clearly a ruse they have. And it's not the only one. Next up, when seated, we're asked if we prefer fish or meat. We answer individually, and are told what the special is of each. We'll even be brought the very fish we'll have cooked for us to approve it. We eventually have to prise a menu off the waiter, but by this stage he's made his mind up that we're having the fish special and chicken special he's just pitched to us, so pays no attention to us trying to order anything else from the menu. Something fishy and something chickeny just appear on our tables ten minutes later. Oh, and the uncooked fish we're promised we get to approve never arrives, not that that fish would be the one you get cooked anyway.

And to cap it all, the 'good price I give you' for the fish, of 11 euros, is somehow forgotten about when the bill comes, and it has suddenly changed to 32 euros. Luckily Zoe checked the bill and queried it. We didn't tip. They be swizzlers.

That aside, I wholly recommend Crete. A fine place. Just don't look in that bin next to the toilet.