Stand-up & Be Recounted: Paul Kerensa

The Yo-Yo Circuit

Bonobo Presents gig tonight - a variety night at Cafe Royal. Which is a very fancy place. So fancy that as I walked in from Regents Street, watching 8 similar (so I thought) people walk in in front of me, with no problem but a tip of the hat from the doormen... I meanwhile get doorstepped by the doormen, asking me if they can help me. I say I'm doing a comedy gig here, they let me in. How could they tell I didn't belong there? They let the others walk in with no problem, and I was dressed no different. Nice jacket, pressed white shirt, smart trousers, slick shoes... Was it some look about me that I had, saying to the world "I'm happier in Primark than in Selfridges"? Was in anti-gingerism? Was it the Ryman's bag I carried that set me apart as from a lower class? (They weren't to know the Ryman's bag contains high-intellect mathematical comedic props) Either way, they saw me as staff, as someone who would be more comfortable using the tradesman's entrance. That's not a gay jibe, incidentally. On this rare occasion I actually mean the tradesman's entrance.

Anyway, the show. I was on first, followed by a singer of Bulgarian folk songs, with the occasional squeak which set the audience off, and then set her off laughing. Following her was an excellent yo-yoer - basically a kid who had too much time on his hands, but what a skill he'd learned. It was certainly more than just 'walking the dog'. He walked it, let it off its lead, fed it Pedigree Chum and watched win a rosette for leaping through a hoop and weaving between standy-uppy things*. And following him was a 'fan dancer', a burlesque lady, proudly wearing nipple tassles and little else, waving, post-modernly, a couple of giant electric fans for about five minutes.

It was a rare insight onto the world of cabaret - a melding of entertainment worlds that you don't normally see when you're used to night after night of comedian after comedian. I like to think that each of these acts came from their own circuits. A yo-yo circuit of teenage kids who can't skateboard. A Bulgarian folk circuit, where dozens of acts argue over who goes on first to do the Bulgarian national anthem, and the rest grudgingly realise that the evening has peaked. And a burlesque circuit, where clubs feature up to five or six burlesque acts a night, and where the constant rows are heard in the green room... "Oh for crying out loud - are you going to do the red nipple tassle thing? I was going to do red nipple tassle thing. Well I'll have to do purple then..."

*He didn't actually do this.

Singin' and Dancin' for Charidee

Did a very different gig on Sunday - a compering job which included me interviewing someone, and me singing and dancing in the finale. If you sing and dance at a normal comedy night, it'd better have a bloody good joke at the end of it. But this was all for a great cause - www.isaiahhouse.com, part of the Hope for Latvia charity. They are a small charity building accommodation and supporting the poor in Latvia, of which there are many.

For my part it was a fun and interesting evening - when it came to the fundraising/bullying that I had to do to get people to put their hands in their pockets, it felt like I was training to be a Comic Relief presenter, and the interview with the head of the charity (first time I'd ever actually interviewed someone) I think should put me in good stead for Friday Night With Paul Kerensa, coming to your screens in 2018ish.

The performers were great (mostly a collection of songs from musical theatre), and it was organised and partly performed by Laura Jackson, my friend from uni theatre days. She did great. She's heading out to Latvia in December to see firsthand what a struggle it is for them. The only shame was that the room wasn't more full - 50 or so, but 150 would have been nice.

So, a brief plea. If your giving duties are in need of a spring-clean, do consider a donation to Isaiah House (details at www.isaiahhouse.com). It's good to change around occasionally who (if anyone) you donate to. I used to have a standing order to The Children's Charity, then one of their street clipboard muggers pissed me off so I'm switching. And Isaiah House is a good one to switch to. Go on, a one-off, a regular few quid a month... Have a gander anyway.

Worthy blog posting over. Normal egotism will be resumed.

Singin' and Dancin' for Charidee

Did a very different gig on Sunday - a compering job which included me interviewing someone, and me singing and dancing in the finale. If you sing and dance at a normal comedy night, it'd better have a bloody good joke at the end of it. But this was all for a great cause - www.isaiahhouse.com, part of the Hope for Latvia charity. They are a small charity building accommodation and supporting the poor in Latvia, of which there are many.

For my part it was a fun and interesting evening - when it came to the fundraising/bullying that I had to do to get people to put their hands in their pockets, it felt like I was training to be a Comic Relief presenter, and the interview with the head of the charity (first time I'd ever actually interviewed someone) I think should put me in good stead for Friday Night With Paul Kerensa, coming to your screens in 2018ish.

The performers were great (mostly a collection of songs from musical theatre), and it was organised and partly performed by Laura Jackson, my friend from uni theatre days. She did great. She's heading out to Latvia in December to see firsthand what a struggle it is for them. The only shame was that the room wasn't more full - 50 or so, but 150 would have been nice.

So, a brief plea. If your giving duties are in need of a spring-clean, do consider a donation to Isaiah House (details at www.isaiahhouse.com). It's good to change around occasionally who (if anyone) you donate to. I used to have a standing order to The Children's Charity, then one of their street clipboard muggers pissed me off so I'm switching. And Isaiah House is a good one to switch to. Go on, a one-off, a regular few quid a month... Have a gander anyway.

Worthy blog posting over. Normal egotism will be resumed.

Forthcoming Variety Nights, Charity Nights, School Assemblies

I finally remembered to update my giglist on my website today - you can see where I'm working/playing by going to www.paulkerensa.com/gigguide. There are a few unusual ones - please come support these if you fancy it, cos they're trying to do something a bit different, it should be fun, and they probably need your help to get bums on seats. They are:

Sun 23rd - Bring On Tomorrow - a fundraiser for www.isaiahhouse.com, Windmill Theatre, Blatchington Mill School, Brighton

A charity fundraiser for a great cause - helping the Latvian poor have safe, warm, dry, clean accommodation. I'm compering an evening of music, comedy and dance, and apparently I'm even singing and dancing in the closing number. Should be fun. So if you're a Brighton-or-nearby resident, come by.

Thu 27th - Bonobo Variety Night, Cafe Royal, Regent St, London

Variety Night! The e-flyer is here: www.bonobopresents.com/eflyer.htm - it's billed as "an evening of escapism, with fine dining, eclectic entertainment and slinky dancing'. I am not doing the dancing on this occasion. Someone hotter and more female is. There'll be a juggler, a late bar, and Andrew Lawrence. Should be a fun one.

Sun 14th - Genesis, Stowe School, instead of their morning chapel service.

The only current booking in the diary of doing the Edinburgh show from this year (though I'm sure I will do it somewhere). And what a weird one this will be. Stowe School is a public school, like Eton and Wellington. All very posh and full of boarding schoolboys, who probably have 'fags' and 'tuck boxes'. Instead of their chapel service, as it's their arts festival, they've booked me to do an hour on the book of Genesis. So it'll be not only my first ever morning gig (10am Sunday morning - youch) but also my first gig in front 1000 teenage boys. Plus a workshop on stand-up in the afternoon. Either way, I'm sure a blog will follow that day...

Oh, don't come to that one (unless you're already a pupil at Stowe School), cos people will think you're weird.

Fri 16th - Comedy @ My Local, ie. The Stoke, Guildford

Huzzah! A gig I can walk to. This one's co-run by my local church, St Saviour's, but if it goes well, me and the bar manager might consider running it as a regular (monthly? fortnightly?) gig. So if you're a Guildfordian, please please come and support this night, as your bum on a seat might make the difference between it carrying on as a regular thang or being banged on the head. More details on this one will follow.

For now I can recommend the Brighton charity gig on Sunday, and the Variety Night at Cafe Royal on Thursday. And that is the end of the plug. It wasn't too painful, was it? And I thought it was meant to be. Oh no, that's standing on the end of the plug. (Do not be disheartened - this joke will not appear at any of the above events.)

Public putdowns

I was heckled last night, and I wasn't gigging. It was in a pub car park, at 8pm. By a girl. She was pretty drunk, and I was dressed like a tool, but still. Thing was, in my olden days, I'd have put my head down and marched on, but I'm used to putting people down now, so I did, and nearly got in a fight. It turns out you can get away with more when you've a 200-strong audience on your side, plus a collection of bouncers working with you, plus a stage and lights. Pub car park during daylight - not so much.

Basically I was walking past my local dressed like this (http://www.moviemistakes.com/photos/2007/07-09-15%20-%20Zoe's%20birthday/IMG_2315.JPG), and this lass yells, "You look like a f*cking c*nt!" (to be fair, look at the pictute - she was right)

So I retort, "Well at least I'm not one." (Oh yeah, Comedy Store's finest...)

She returns volley: "Yeah, you look like a fu*king *unt and you are a *ucking cun*!"

I reply: "Ever wondered why you're single, you crazed bint?"

She waves her full pint at me and yells: "Do you want this down your head? Do you want me to glass you with this?"

I haven't had enough yet, so I fire back: "You're about 4 seconds away from getting yourself barred from this and every pub in Guildford." An empty threat, though I could probably have got her barred from that pub. I think I only said it cos I was dressed as Shakespeare and was going for a 'bard/barred' pun. Which needless to say went over her head. Like the pint glass nearly did to me.

By this point my brain kicked in and reminded me that I wasn't onstage, didn't have the support of several large bouncers, and should probably shut up before her big mates decided they needed to take a side in what was heading towards a bit of a scuffle. Thankfully at this point her friends intervened and bundled her back to her seat. I marched on and into a wonderful rest-of-evening, where me and 40 like-minded folks celebrated my girlfriend's 30th. It was great.

Several times that conversation in the car park came back to me - should I have responded differently? Or at all? Or decimated her with words? It's the same feeling you get after a rowdy gig where you've tried putdowns that haven't really worked. You end up questioning if you handled it best. I found it odd - and a shame - that it's the negative comments and conversations that you end up coming back to and trying to rewrite in your head. It's never the good things you say or the nice conversations you've had that replay in your mind so much - maybe because they're good, and they've gone right, and you don't need to rewrite those. Either way, I'm partly hoping to meet that young car park hussy again at some point so that I can ask her if her mum remembers me, or if her carer's got the night off, or if her neck's just vomited.

Speed 3: No Cruise Control

My car broke - the thermometer light started flashing, and sure enough the dial told me that the water temperature in the radiator was now 100 degrees celsius. Ooh. It then went up to 120 degrees celsius. Now I know that technically that's no longer water, but I'd have thought this would be a good thing for a radiator, as a radiator that's doing its job gets very hot. But apparently this water is to cool down the engine, so my dad told me that I needed to stop driving the car pronto or the engine would overheat causing £3000's worth of damage. This happened a few days beforehand too, again when stuck in traffic - on the open road it's fine and stays cool, because the air cools it.

So I needed to get from a readthrough in North Acton to a replacement car waiting for me in Balham, at 6pm in the evening, making sure I kept the car moving wherever possible. Easier said than done. I genuinely felt like Keanu Reeves in his pre-Matrix, post-Bill & Ted days, racing through London, not necessarily worrying too much about going the right direction (though that did ultimately help), but worrying instead about finding traffic-free roads. It was very exciting, although with the slightly fretful element that my car could actually die if the traffic got too bad.

Made it anyway, and now drive a white van till Monday as a replacement. People seem to give me much more room. Pop quiz, hotshot...

Not going out before the watershed

I went to the recording tonight of ep3 of series 2 of Not Going Out, which I wrote plenty of. Twas good fun, though I took my parents and their friends, thinking it was a very cute episode about a baby... but oh no, they swapped the episode order around and instead 'Baby' is next week - this one actually was largely set in a strip club instead. So it was bawdier than planned. We even saw a nipple. Twice. It was for one of those shots where a lass turns and we go from naked back to her facing camera, but a couple of actors' shoulders are meant to block the view of the main event. This, naturally, took several takes to get right. I had my mum to the left of me and my girlf to the right, and I had to explain to them that I wrote this. I explained how it was all Lee Mack's idea to set it in a lapdancing club, but I'm sure Lee's at home now explaining to his wife that "It was all Kerensa's idea..."

The main guest this week is an actress called Thalia who you may know as The Guest Australian Fake Actress Who Appeared Halfway Through Big Brother. I had seen a bit of this, but failed to realise that I knew her already - we did a pilot last year for MTV in which I played an interpreter for a deaf rapper. Small world and all that gubbins - I had no idea that all along I knew someone who was in Big Brother. I may have actually watched it. But I doubt it.

Things I Learned At Edinburgh This August

A bit late, but I did promise it. Some are about my show, some are about other people's - I'll leave you to work out which is which...

- Don't presume box office staff know that your show is on. They may be morons.
- Noise travels through tents
- Don't take a chance on a new venue.
- People don't laugh when they've just got up as much as they do in the evening
- Just because a show sells itself on 'sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll', and is at a big venue at 9pm on a Friday night, it doesn't mean it'll sell
- The Fringe has got too big
- £10.50 is too much for an hour of an average comedian
- Not everything should be in batter
- The hill is not your friend. When you're looking down, it's very helpful, but when things look up, it'll make you hurt.
- Involving the audience is a good thing
- Surprising the audience is a good thing
- Silly can make a very good show but you need a point to make it spill over into brilliance
- Even if you've broken up with a girl years before, and never quite got to 'that' stage with her, you may still get to see her naked, if she randomly appears starkers on stage with 40 others as a big show surprise finale

Do you accept a pint if a bloke says, "You weren't funny but I'll buy you a pint anyway?"

Yes, you do.