After You've Gone to Jongleurs

Today I attended my first proper big readthrough of a script - for After You've Gone, series 2, three episodes therein. And given that I always get a little starstruck, it was indeed a feast of comedy celebrity. Nicholas Lyndhurst (who I managed not to call 'Rodney' - I thought 'Dave' would be a little subtler), Celia Imrie, the girl who plays Tracy Beaker, and guesting for one episode, Nicky Henson, aka the medallion man from that episode of Fawlty Towers. Oh yes, there were all there.

The episodes read well, and I was happy to hear a couple of my own additions getting some hefty laughs. One or two didn't, but that's the way of things. It's odd how you can be convinced that something's the funniest thing in the world until you actually hear someone try it, then realise it really isn't. There was a sitcom on a couple of years ago which was exactly that - everyone involved thought, no, knew, that it was going to be hilarious, and the best thing on telly, until it aired, and then as one they watched it from their own homes and all came to the sudden realisation that it was solid crap. Sure enough, no series 2. But all the way along you can be so blinkered.

In other, similar funny-is-subjective news, I was at Jongleurs Camden on Saturday. Twas a rough ol' night. I did okay, but with 7 stag dos and 3 hen dos in it was always going to be a rocky one, and for a couple of the acts, it certainly was. One act was on who's a big name on the circuit, an established TV warm-up and even now a comic actor and host of his own chat show. And he's brilliant. But all he got were stares. I thought if he's getting nothing out of them, we're in trouble. Thankfully I trimmed down all me gags to the barest bones, and the drunken mass understood and/or got most of them, and laughter was had, but it weren't easy. I felt victorious on the night, but I think in stress alone I've knocked 5 years off my life just from that Saturday night.