Stand-up & Be Recounted: Paul Kerensa

Wicked Wispas

Nice meal last night to celebrate the end of a series of a sitcom that - huzzah - is coming back for series 3. I'm not sure if it's public knowledge yet, so I'm not saying what sitcom it is, but regular readers will probably guess. There were various titbits of info and the like, so I thought it best to report it in the style of those Wicked Whispers things you get in tabloids...

- Got one of my favourite big-name comedians keen on coming to the new gig I'm running at my local in Guildford. Yay. So hopefully that'll be for the first night, which will hopefully be in January. He's a fine, vine, fine comedian.
- A leading music journo and radio broadcaster thinks my Edinburgh idea for next year is a winner. Nice to know. Just need to write it now.
- Sat next to the MD of the production company and heard all about a new hidden camera show starring one of their acts. Sounds very funny indeed, pumping much-needed life and originality into a comedy genre that's been done quite shoddily since Beadle retired. Coming soon to Saturday nights. Highlights include estate agents, satnavs and dog poo.
- My agent, it turns out, is very nice to deal with according to the business affairs person. Firm but fair. Unlike my previous agent, who by all accounts was an unt with a capital c.
- In other news, some sketches I gagged-up and script-edited have been read and approved by a leading comedy guru - let's call him Ian Ucci. Anyway, Ian likes them, which is nice, cos our paths haven't crossed before in the world of work, and he's a man I'd like to impress.
- The only downer on events was that I found out I CAN get a space on the table for the British Comedy Awards BUT I copied down the date wrong a few weeks ago so I've booked myself a holiday starting that very day, thinking the awards were the previous night. Bollocks. I may try and change the flight. Or I won't, and will just have to work doubly hard next series to make sure we get nominated again next year...

Your freezer could be a potential deathtrap

10/10 if you got the reference in the title. When defrosting a freezer (my new fridge-freezer arrives tomorrow - the first one I've ever bought from a shop - I feel all growed-up), particularly a severely frozen-over freezer, it's lots of fun to stab at the ice, making it break off like mini-polar icecaps. Don't get carried away though, like I did, and stab so hard at the back that you burst the compacted gas contained therein. It's dangerous. It contains ammonia, which is very painful when you get it in your eyes* - oh it burns and burns and burns. It can cause blindness. It's really bad. A sharp burst of this pent-up gas, in the face and possibly lungs, all because the Zanussi's being replaced by a Prestige 325. Hardly seems worth the risk to human life just to have cold beers.

*Luckily I had my glasses on. It pays to be a nerd.

You Must Be Stoking

So Friday night was our inaugural You Must Be Stoking (name copyright Paul Kerensa 2007 - the 3rd comedy club I've named, with increasing punniness...) comedy night at my local - The Stoke pub in Guildford. And I think we did a grand job. Stephen Anderson organised excellently and has spent weeks nay months planning it and most importantly flogging tickets, so we had a good 140 people in. And on the night we had meself, Andy King and Tony Vino, plus a non-comedian guest, yoyoist and juggler Arron Sparks, who was fab - and if any comedy promoter is reading this, he's a great act to book if you want something a bit different and non-comedy at your gig...

Crucially, Tim the bar manager loved it (I think he loved the bums on seats more than the show itself, but that's fine. And when I say bums on seats, I don't mean we dragged in homeless people). So we're going to be regular - probably monthly - from after January. I shall purvery the British comedy circuit for the finest acts and persuade them to toddle down the A3 to Guildford. Already got a few great acts interested. And I'm open to ideas on this, so please do blog-comment with suggestions - but the way I thought we'd do it is thus:

I compere (this is not open to negotiation, so don't blog-comment saying someone else should do it. Be loyal.)
Opening act - a warm and friendly affable act from the world of stand-up
Middle act - someone a bit different, not a straight stand-up but potentially a magician, poet, music act or drag queen. Alright, I may draw the line at drag queen. Cos, again, I can do that.
Closing act - a world-class reliable Comedy Store type headliner

I think that should work.

Friday's gig differed slightly from the norm in that it was co-sponsored by 3 local churches, so the audience were resultantly half-full of lovely Christians. Which was fine - and I think it says something that although all the acts tailored material to be appropriate and clean and inoffensive, it was still a fab night and the non-Christian audients enjoyed it as much as the theists did. A triumph for the clean joke.

I hear we had one complaint. I won't name, but apparently someone thought it was unchristian to make jokes about 'masticating' while inferring its soundalike meaning. Fair enough - I don't agree, but I can see where this person was coming from, in that it was a slightly bawdy joke if you're expecting 100% blessed you'd-be-comfortable-telling-it-to-Jesus humour. This person also had a problem with a routine about ghosts, cos that's unchristian too - oh now come on, that's hardly off-colour. And thirdly they had a problem with a routine about gambling. But there was no joke about gambling, was there? Well one act talked about Deal Or No Deal, which apparently counts as sinful gambling. Yeah, I can see that evil glint in Edmonds' eye. So no, much as was going to give the complainant the benefit of doubt on the masticating issue, the ghosts/gambling part of the complaint nulls and voids it in my book...

Oh and incidentally, for masturbation mentioned in the Bible see Genesis 38:6-10; for ghosts see Matthew 17:1-8; for gambling see Proverbs 16:33. So ha. If the Bible mentions them, then I reckon we can too...

Satire - then and now

Been exercising my satirical muscle this week (oo er... oh no, that's the innuendo muscle (oo er)) with a coupla days writing for The News Quiz, and shall be again next week. If you're particularly keen to hear it, it's on the Radio 4 website's Listen Again till next Friday. My job was to write about 12 jokes each based around a racist Tory candidate, a Labour peer who's leaving the government to be a racing driver, research that sunbathing makes you live longer, and the decline of hot puddings. Mmm, taste the satire. I'm sticking it to the pudding industry.

They say satire is dead. Well look at what we're given. There's not much to rebel against. Labour are nicking ideas from the Tories, so everyone's in agreement. The modern hey-day of satire was back when Spitting Image was rife, Have I Got News For You was a baby, and the king of impressionists was Rory Bremner and not a voiceover artist most happy doing Tom Baker. Back then comedians would rant at Thatcherism or boring Major. Love or hate Thatcher, she changed the country a great deal, benefitting a lot of people but also pissing off a lot of people. Lots for satirists to get their teeth into.

Then there was a slight revival with the invention of New Labour. Spin. Yeah. Exposed. Telling it like it is. Comedy writers sticking it to the government. Eat my jokes, Tony. And then The War That No One Wanted. Ooh. They shouldn't have done that. No WMDs? Hanx Blix, etc etc. George Bush is invading countries on a whim, and you know what else, he's stupid. No, really stupid. So much so that for years comedians just had to repeat things he'd said or done ("the French have no word for entrepreneur", etc... For the best part of a year you'd get a laugh at a comedy night just by saying, "He choked on a pretzel"). So now Blair's gone and Bush is going, the war jokes are tired (although I think they were probably born tired). So what now?

Well none of us quite know what Brown is yet. I haven't seen anyone nail him yet with a killer joke or impression or angle. Too early days. And yes the War on Terror carries on (does it? the problem with a war on a tangible thing is that you can't tell if/when it has/might ever end - there'll be no "On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, terror has surrended."), but it's all got a bit embarrassing with no real sign of much progress in the Middle East. We can't really have a go at Brown for Blair's mistake (although I'm sure many have anyway). So only the true satirists - Mark Thomas, Rob Newman, John Oliver, etc - are managing to carry on their trade, and that's only because they are walking wikipediae of knowledge on politics and political history. I have to go on Wikipedia to remind myself who's Chancellor of the Exchequer.

So instead, for now, comedians stick to jokes about ex-girlfriends and drugs and insulting nicknames they were called in school (and that was just the teachers!! The teachers!!! Get it?!? Not the kids! The teachers!!!!). Some pretend to be satirists by occasionally doing a joke about a Muslim with a rucksack on a tube train, but normally it's somewhere between racist and lazy. That's not to say I haven't done it myself. Desperate times call for desperate jokes. Otherwise the casual satirist is left with changing the world by mocking the decline of hot puddings (which as I say, you can catch on Radio 4's Listen Again).

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.