Stand-up & Be Recounted: Paul Kerensa

What a way for Hermione to die...

Let me get one thing straight. I don't know if Hermione dies. I don't know who she is even. I've never read a Harry Potter book. I mean she might die. If she does, don't sue me. But I do have a cruel streak, and the idea of posting the fact the she does die as my facebook status tickled me somewhat.

I tried it earlier last night too, as my opening line at Jongleurs Battersea, merely 21 hours after the book was released (the real fans would have read it by then). "Who'd have thought that Hermione dies?" Ooh dear. Lynch mob formed. Five stag dos, five hen dos, rough old crowd - but all the guys were wetting themselves and all the girls were screaming abuse at me. I even caught at least girls turn to their other halves and whisper accusingly, "I told you we shouldn't have come to a comedy show tonight - I knew I should have stayed at home and read it..."

500 Battersea residents aside, I hope no one is too narked. I do like a good twist ending. I set up a site dedicated to them - www.ruinedendings.com. And I even bought the T-shirt to go with it the other day, at http://www.threadless.com/product/844/Spoilt

I know. I am a nerd. Happy reading, Potter fans. And don't blame me if Hermione ends up skewered like a kebab on a Quidditch post.

The show has everything but a roof

My Edinburgh venue has fallen through. Oh for... How difficult can it be to turn caves into a workable performance venue? Alright, probably very, but they've had 11 months. But the venue promoter is doing all he can, which seems to have resulted in a couple of tents being erected down the road in the rubble of the old Gilded Balloon on Cowgate (if you've never been to Edinburgh, I'm aware this sounds like the old blah blah on blah blah). Anyway, hopefully it will all come together, though I'm severely afraid of noise pollution in these makeshift wigwams. It'd be all very well if my show was mostly visual or involved just shouting or tickling, but given that it involves listening to subtleties, if I say so myself.

I've had two days on the road trying out the show, for the first time with a projector and pictures and sounds and my assistant and friend Mr Jon Sandys. Though not with an audience, in Bedford. Bless the sweet staff - they had a flyering team of 10 - they all came in and watched it, but due to bad planning, the audience didn't show. I suspect something is amiss, cos apparently 30 paid in advance but didn't show. Unless people have now taken to paying NOT to see me.

Then Norwich tonight - a full house. And it goes to show the difference. The night before, it was useful to go through the show, but you can't really tell which bits are working and which aren't when you're just talking for an hour to some box office staff who are just glad to be sitting down for once. In the Norwich gig, they laughed, and more significantly, they didn't occasionally too. And I've now got a bit that I'm very happy with involving Sooty and Churchill glove-puppets.

Just no venue.

Poking - the new rock 'n' roll

If you've been poking me, thank you for poking. Your poke is important to us. If this means nothing to you, you're not on Facebook. Get on Facebook.

I wondered if anyone actually reads those status update things, so requested people poke me if they'd read it. I herewith publish the results.

13 poked me in the first hour.
30 had poked me in the first 3 hours.
65 had poked me within 20 hours.
84 had poked me within about a day.

This isn't just to show popularity (though partly), so let's look at that against the whole. I have 354 facebook friends (again, not boasting - 80 of those claim to be schoolfriends, and I only ha 15 in my class, so 65 are frauds or internet groomers). This figure of 354 is indirectly proportional to the number of real friends I have, which therefore numbers about 3. Only one of these has poked me, and he has far too much time on his hands, so I'm only surprised he hasn't poked you too.

So that's 84/354 - 23.73% of my friends viewed my status update. Just under a quarter. Why? Probably the same reason I posted it. Nothing better to do. Correction: Lots better to do - nothing I wanted to do there and then.

I hereby stand down this poking request. If you wish to poke me, please do, and I shall poke back, as is fitting. But I no longer solicit poking in such a whorish way. You have done me proud, pokers.

For the non-facebookies (cos I blog this on lastminuteliving.com, and on the anti-facebook, myspace), the status update is merely an update of what you're doing. It can be accurate, funny, emotional or obtuse. Ofte all four. So to reward you for reading this much of semi-bedrunken mathematical poking-based ramblings, here are some of my favourite facebook stati (cos 'statuses' is hardly Latin plural)...

Steve is thankful that Genesis, Snow Patrol and Madonna have saved the world for us all.
Dan is wondering what happened to his green Merc parked outside Tiger Tiger.
Paul is the one and only. Nobody he'd rather be.
Wayne is Johnny Five.
Jennifer is more than a brief status description.
James is able to buy a goat for £27. But he's not going to.
Andy is 6ft1 and tons of fun.
Jon is about to make yet another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin.
Kevin is 75% water 25% Gnocchi.
Dan is going out - can he bring back anything? Groceries? Sexy? Hanging?
Gav is like that, and that's the way it is. Hurr.
Maff is perfecting an impression of Terry Nutkins.
George is placing his nose to the wall and his back to the grindstone.
Russ is PETER YOU'VE LOST THE NEWS.
Jon is a creep, he's a weirdo. What the hell is he doin' here? He doesn't belong here.
Owen is wondering why his wife, with whom he lives, has seen fit to 'poke' him via facebook...
John is looking forward to seeing the acts for next week's inevitable Concert For Dodi.
Paul is wondering if one day there'll be a Concert For Him.
Vince is happy because no-one hit him with a chicken this month.
Sarah is just very happy today.

I like that last one. That's what facebook's for.

Unashamed Schadenfreude

I was on the train back from London last night (Backyard Club in Bethnal Green, currently standing as possibly my favourite gig in London - a fine club, an attentive audience, a closed bar during the show, and karaoke when the comeians finish - perfect), and it was the late-but-not-too-late Saturday night train. ie. Not the one with drunken groups (where they put no toilets on the train because they know they'll be covered in sick by the end of the night), but the one with quietly drunken individuals who've left parties early, plus the occasional theatre-goer or London daytripper. There was a lovely meeting of these people last night, and I could tell it was going to be an interesting conversation, so I paused my Ipod for half an hour just to listen.

I'll relay just the first bit of conversation, before the awkwardness kicked in...

Drunk Individual Man (about 30) had spent the 5min of the journey so far trying to engage neighbouring passengers in conversation. Hadn't worked. He wasn't too drunk, just merry and sociable. He was making eyes at some girl further down the carriage. A bit flirty. Stuff about "Nice shoes." Eventually he beckons down for her to come join him. She does.

She looks about 15-16. Could be 18-19 (which is what he was thinking), could be under 15.

MAN: Hi.
GIRL: Hi.
MAN: Nice shoes.
GIRL: They're ballet shoes.
MAN: Oh. I'm Gary.
GIRL: I'm Chloe.
[THEY SHAKE HANDS. AN OLDER GENTLEMAN, ABOUT LATE 50S, LOOKING A BIT SHABBY AND A LITTLE DRUNK TOO, COMES AND SITS NEAR THE MAN AND THE GIRL. SILENCE IS KEPT. IT IS A LITTLE AWKWARD.]
MAN: [TO OLDER MAN] Excuse me, do you mind?
OLDER MAN: No, I don't.
[MORE SILENCE IS KEPT. MORE AWKWARDNESS.]
MAN: I'm having a chat with this girl.
OLDER MAN: So I see.
MAN: [A BIT ANTAGONISTICALLY] I'm sorry, who are you?
OLDER MAN: I'm the father.
MAN: Oh. [TO GIRL] How old are you?
GIRL: 13.
MAN: Oh. [YET MORE SILENCE IS KEPT. YET MORE AWKWARDNESS] [THEN, TO BOTH OF THEM] So, where are you from...?

And then half an hour of uncomfortable small talk followed, as the drunken social man tried to cover up the fact that he wanted to chat up this older man's 13 year-old ballet-dancing daughter. The icing on the cake was that, everyone longing for their stop, they all got off at Woking. So the awkwardness continued, but sadly I left it there, so pressed play on my Ipod, and Too Much Too Young by The Specials kicked in again.

Never encourage a heckler to interrupt your set whenever he feels like it

That is a loaded blog post title, isn't it? Clearly I did this last night. I was at Lee Hurst's Backyard Club in Bethnal Green, where I shall be again tonight and tomorrow - a fine club, only slightly marred yesterday by a tube derailment a few hundred metres away, meaning I had to brave the bus. Urgh. And a little bit marred by this heckling fellow. Twas good-natured heckling, I should point it. And I did encourage him.

I'd done the classic/overdone comic's trick of getting a laugh from mentioning folks that I looked like. I'd done Richie from Happy Days. I'd done Matthew Corbett from Sooty. Then someone else suggested another. And another, and another. But it generated laughs, so I weren't to grumble. I suggested that if anyone thinks of more 'doppelgingers' as the show progressed, to lob 'em out. Cos it kept them involved, and I could always nick 'em at the end of the night and use them again myself. So here, in print, is a list of everyone that the audience (or, mostly, audient) in Bethnal Green thought I looked like:

- Richie Cunningham

- Ralph Malph

- Matthew Corbett from Sooty

- Ashley from Eastenders

- Paul Scholes

- Ferguson from Clarissa Explains It All

- Matthew from Game On

- Rick Astley

- Boris Becker

- Chris Evans

- Daphne from Scooby Doo

- An orangutang

...as you can see, it started to drift at the end. I hope.