Stand-up & Be Recounted: Paul Kerensa

2007 in review

I shall be seeing in 2008 sober, thanks to one drink too many on December 29th. Whoops. So just enough time for a brief look back to the year that was '007...

My own personal highlights would include going to the British Comedy Awards - didn't win but it was still great to go. Plus on the same note, hearing about the RTS award and the Rose d'Or for the same show, although I didn't get to go to those dos alas. Though to be fair to them, they had lots of ad execs and sponsors to fit in, some of whom may have at some point seen at least one of the shows nominated. Rant over. For this is about the positive...

Filming with the Delorean was an ace day - racing around all over St Alban's, filming stand-up bits with me dressed as Marty McFly, driving the Delorean, with flames coming out the back, smoke effects, dry ice, etc etc. Sounds great? Well the producer of Comedy Cuts didn't think so - so the show it was filmed for has cut it. You will never see it. But I had a great time doing it, so there.

A highlight I have to mention is the mere purchase of a DVR - basically Sky Plus for people without Sky. It's totally changed how I watch telly, and it's great.

And back on a professional note, my fave gig of the year was going the Genesis show at Greenbelt festival in Cheltenham - 500 people, I think, and they all got the jokes. Twas lovely. And in the realm of writing, it's been a great year for the fact that I've become a 5-day-a-week writer (much kudos to Not Going Out, After You've Gone, and a forthcoming as yet unnamed bbc1 comedy drama set in Africa).

And a sloppy mention to my other half Zoe, who has really been the highlight of my year! Bleurgh. Okay, enough of my personal highlights.

MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS:
Rediscovering the art of a good cover version (ie. it doesn't have to be loud punk)
Michael Buble
Amy Macdonald
The Fratellis
begrudgingly acknowledging that both Amy Winehouse AND Girls Aloud have something to offer to both contemporary music AND my music collection
Apache by The Sugarhill Gang. Old but brilliant.

FILM HIGHLIGHTS (not necessarily all 2007, but most are):
Black Book
Tideland
Ocean's Thirteen
The Bourne Ultimatum
Atonement
The Lives of Others
Stardust
Beowulf 3D
Reign Over Me
Enchanted
Breaking The Waves
Mr Smith Goes To Washington
The Red Violin

FILM LOWLIGHTS:
American Pie Presents Another Bad Film To Sink Humanity Into The Ground
The Fountain
Captivity, Vacancy, and various other films that think torture is an acceptable film genre.
too many remakes/spin-offs/sequels - didn't rate Die Hard, The Simpsons, Shrek 3, Hostel 2, Harry Potter, Saw 4, Sleuth, The Golden Compass, Pirates 3...

TV HIGHLIGHTS:
Dr Who (the Blink episode - which was just the way a Dr Who episode should be. If you haven't seen it, see it.)
Heroes
Lost (yes, I'm sticking with it)
Prison Break
House
Jericho (while it lasted - one series, with maybe a reprieve for a few episodes of series 2 to follow)
Drive (while it lasted - 4 episodes - goes to show it's worth waiting for US shows to hit our UK schedules, rather than hastily download them as they air...)
Californication (filthy, but fantastic)
The Secret Millionaire (I think I cried one episode)
Cast Away (a guilty pleasure)
Live At The Apollo (a rare time that TV actually gets stand-up about right)

and finally a parting treat, cos there's bound to be one you haven't seen...

TOP 6 VIRALS:
In reverse order...
6. hallelujah chorus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D09DCZryG2U)
5. evolution of dance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg)
4. will ferrell and baby landlord pearl (http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/74)
3. sam veale's brylcreem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOYTQKoJ1N8)
2. dramatic chipmunk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw)
and at no.1...
1. kung fu baby (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxAirY-5QCQ)

Happy New Year!

What I wanted to say to a punter

Tough ol' gig tonight. A private gig for about 40 teachers, who'd been drinking for about 5 hours, and were supporting 3 of their own who'd done a stand-up comedy course. Then they have a meal and some more wine, and then I come on for half an hour. As the compere got up to introduce me, saying they've got one more act to come, someone heckled, "But we've peaked." Never was a truer heckle spoken. So I ploughed through. After, the man holding the cheque, before he handed it over, engaged me in conversation. I had to humour him until he'd pay me, so alas our conversation went like this:

Punter: "You're very fast. I missed some of your punchlines because I was chatting to my friend. You should have paused more to let us do that. Some of your jokes were too clever, really. So I missed lots of those. That's why people were chatting."

Me: "Oh, well, you do what you can... A lot of people were enjoying it... You win some, lose some... Well, a lot of wine was drunk..." and other cliches.

What was racing through my head - what I wanted to say - was:

Me in my head: "Oh I'm sorry, I was too clever for you. You couldn't keep up. You want me to dumb down, I see. Aim more at your level. Well unfortunately they didn't give me a survey of IQs on the way in. If I'd known I'd have dropped the multi-syllabic words and just alluded to genitalia - sorry - "got my cock out" - understand that? Yeah, next time I must stoop to your intellectual level. Next time, if you see me at a gig, let me know you're in the audience, and I'll lower the comedy a little just for you, and praps lose the jokes that need your attention for more than 2 seconds, and instead just show you a big picture of a horsey, doing a poo. Now give me the cheque."

Free Beer Day

So much for a day of rest...

Sunday 16th December:

6:55am - Alarm goes off. On a Sunday. Because...
7:20am - arrive at the studios of BBC Southern Counties, where I'm 'Guest of the Day' on their religious show. This means I chat for 10min at 7:30am about comedy things, plug my new Guildford gig with Tim Vine, then talk about selected articles after 8am chosen from local parish magazines. Am tempted to read out the flower rota, but instead make up some other another story about stamps. Feels amazingly early. Didn't bode well that when the newsreader let me in, she had coat and scarf on. Freezing cold morning. I reckon snow tomorrow, though like a Jongleurs Xmas audience, it probably won't settle and will just get annoying.
9am - bacon sarnies with Zoe. Yum! And yum.
11am - bit of work on the train to London, gagging up a forthcoming comedy drama for the Beeb set among news crews in Africa. I've seen the pilot and read the whole series now, and it's going to be great. Look out for it.
12noon - do a seminar at the Arts Theatre off Leicester Square about taking a show to the Edinburgh Festival. Populated by newish comedians. Toy with putting them off, to limit the competition next August (Edinburgh's busy enough as it is...), but decide to be nice and try and be helpful. I think it paid off, as one lass works for Radio 3, and since my 2008 show will in part involve classical music, she's a good contact to have. And I'm bought my first FREE BEER!!! of the day. But thanks to only 4 hours sleep due to the radio show.
3pm - Bit of Christmas shopping. Foyles bookshop, a gadget shop, and Virgin Megastore which for some reason is now called Zavvi. My kind of Christmas shopping, that is.
4pm - The Golden Compass at Cineworld, West India Quay. Hated it. It was like a bad spoof of Harry Potter meets Narnia meets Lord of the Rings, only spoofs normally have jokes in them, and this was just boring. If you're going to set up a fantasy world, make it make sense. Frodo has to get rid of a ring? Oh yeah, cos it's bad. I get that. In The Golden Compass there's this thing called Dust, which is like dust, only it's bad, or good, or something, and the people in it are interested in it, for some reason, and it flows into or out of human lives, and everyone has a pet that follows them round for some reason, cos it's their soul or something. I. Don't. Care. And don't give me that, "But it makes sense in the books" nonsense. I haven't read the books, and don't plan to. The film is made for filmgoers, not people who've already experienced the story in a different format. It should makes sense and be fun for me, over 2 hours. The bear fight was good, but apart from that, no. I won't be watching the sequels.
6pm - Christmas drinks with the cast and crew of a musical I'm working on, called Rubbish! Good folks, good food, could only stay for 20min. But still long enough to get my second FREE BEER!!! of the day. Sleepy again.
8pm - Arrive in Brixton for a gig. But the audience don't arrive, so we pull the gig. Am paid anyway, which is nice. (I still know some people who wouldn't go to Brixton for eight quid just to collect the cash, but there you go.) Anyway, it paid for shopping for the day and more besides, and was bought my third FREE BEER!!! of the day, as a sympathy pint. So by now I'm really ready to snooze.
9:30pm - On the train on the way home from the non-gig, though I forget that I haven't done a gig, and chastise myself for not trying out the new jokes I wanted to. Then I remember that I didn't do a gig in the first place, so the opportunity for trying new jokes didn't really arise, unless I just confront random passers-by in Brixton with the material, which, I'm guessing, isn't advisable. Goes to show, am very very sleepy.
12:15am - Now. Very very very very sleepy. Should go to bed really and stop writing this...

Dank u well, Nederlands

Just returned from my first ever December holiday. It wasn't a traditional winter holiday - at the bank, and at the airport, and at airport security, everyone asks where you're going, hoping to say, "Ooh, nice!" But I say Holland, and they just go, "Oh." No one knows how to react to going to Holland in December.

It was a lovely few days, though bloody freezing. My other half Zoe grew up over there, so it was a chance to see her old house and school (two separate places), her best friend from them years, and most importantly I now realise, to pick up Dutch sweets. Liquorice, pancakes, mini-pancakes, doughnut balls, syrup sauce, chocolate sprinkles... the Dutch diet seems hell-bent on avoiding fruit and veg at all costs.

The one thing I wanted to get my teeth around was a Turkish pizza - for some reason absent from UK takeaway shops, but all over European ones, and they're lovely. Never found one at the right time alas, though I did find a kebab shop and ordered a takeaway kebab to munch on a bike that we'd hired, only to be given a massive takeaway platter with two kebabs, chips, salad, sauces and cutlery. How I was supposed to eat that while cycling through the streets of Haarlem, I've no idea. A translation problem I guess.

The highlight for me I guess was Saturday night, when we were welcomed into a proper Dutch family home. We did know them - it was Zoe's friend Noortje's family, and very generously the father of the family even gave us both Sinta Klaus presents.

(Sinta Klaus is the Dutch version of Santa, which they cleverly do at the start of December, leaving Dec 25th for the baby Jesus. Sinta Klaus is meant to be a benevolent bearded bishop who arrives from Spain on a white horse via steamboat, assisted by a black fellow called Zwarte Piet (a picture of him and Sinta is attached). People actually black up this time of year to represent him. It wouldn't last long over here...)

The meal was full of convivial laughter and they all subconsciously checked which strand of a conversation I was listening to, and kindly switched to English. The only time the laughter stopped was when I tried to explain the Two Ronnies' Four Candles sketch. It really doesn't translate well.

Back from the Comedy Awards do

Back from the British Comedy Awards, and wondering if a tree falls in a forest (the British Comedy Awards happens) and no one's around (it's not broadcast), can anyone hear it (erm, well will anyone see it?)? Well they said on the night that actually they might screen it at some point, but I reckon it's probably going to gather dust somewhere before eventually being taped over with an episode of Deal or No Deal (is it right to call that an episode? there's a sort of plot, so I suppose it is...)

Anyway, the winners list is available at www.chortle.co.uk, so I won't go into that lot here. Suffice to say Not Going Out didn't win either award we were up for, but that was to be expected. We were pipped to the post by Gavin & Stacey for Best New Sitcom, and Lee lost out on Best Male Actor to David Mitchell from Peep Show. I don't think any of the wins on the night were that contestable - it was all in all a fair awards do, with little upset or incident. Which is a slight shame, as this the ceremony where Caroline Aherne heckled Nigel Hawthorne, and where Julian Clary did a fisting gag about Norman Lamont, and where Michael Barrymore unplugged an autocue, and where Spike Milligan called the heir to the throne "a grovelling little bastard". You expect a *few* tears and tantrums, surely. Well not tonight. Perhaps the fact that it wasn't being broadcast live took a bit of the edge off it. Who knows.

So, what can I report that the Chortle news story can't? Well, I can report that the goody-bag contained an Al Murray dvd that I was thinking of buying, so that saved me a tenner. I had a nice little chat with a woman called JK Rowling, who has apparently written some books. Jonathan Ross got her to sign a book, which turned out to be The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. Ha. I met the producer whose book it now is, and took a photo on my phone of what she wrote - if I can work out how to upload a photo from my phone, I'll post it here... anyway, you won't hear on telly what she actually wrote, so I can exclusively reveal that instead of an autograph, she wrote, "I wish I'd written this." Yeah, and I bet he'd written Harry Potter too.

Stephen Fry gave a great non-funny acceptance speech, and Liz Smith got a standing ovulation. One leading comedy personality who lost out an award was heard to tell his writers that it was their fcking fault, but I think that was a joke. And I saw Stephen Mangan and Graham Norton kiss on the lips, but only briefly. I'm really struggling for gossip, you can tell.

Alright I'll tell you one thing I heard - which is that this phone-rigging malarkey is nothing new. I was told that years ago, when phone voting just began, a certain entertainment show was up for People's Choice award, so viewers had a good month or so to phone in to support their favourite show. So whenever this show had a on-air competition, as they did often, they would put up their voting phone number instead of the compeition line, for about five minutes, then say "Sorry - that's the wrong number - whoopsy." They did this for a good 3 weeks, and quelle surprise, on the night they had three times more votes than anyone else and took away the award. Never questioned, never caught, never found out. Simpler times, I'm sure.

I am now off to Holland for the best part of a week. Blogging, Scrabble and facebook status updates shall cease till then...

Awards in Store

A fine week, job-wise. On Monday I headlined the Comedy Store - a first. Alright it was a charity benefit gig who had hired the night from the Store, but still, it was the Store, it was full, it was laughter-filled, and it was great fun. It was for bowel cancer (an odd way to get paid - be-dum-ching). I found that by adapting my medical jokes to mention the word 'bowel' occasionally, I got impromptu rounds of applause which was nice. Must bear that in mind for future benefit gigs...

And tonight - Wednesday - I go to the British Comedy Awards to cheer on Not Going Out for Best New Sitcom. As you'll know, it's not being screened this year due to idiocy, but it was being filmed, so it might be shown at a later date (though most likely the tape will be stored in a cupboard or used as a doorstop). I've just fetched my tux from my parents' house, and bless my mum and her patience, resewing buttons at midnight because I've fatted up a bit since I last wore it.

So it promises to be quite a day of schmoozing. It kicks off at 1pm with the BBC Radio Entertainment Christmas Party, then drinks at the Oxo Tower at 6:30pm with the nominated Avalon shows (Not Going Out, Harry Hill's TV Burp, Al Murray), then off to the comedy awards at 9ish, then mingling till the early hours. Not too late for me, as I'm off on my hols at 7am Thursday morning, so my patient girlfriend is hoping/praying that I'm not going to come in too pissed. I hate to disappoint.

Anyways, wish us luck. In theory I'll post any gossip and happenings here when I'm back from the awards, but in practice I'm looking at about 4 hours sleep that night maximum, so that may have to wait till I return from my travels to Holland. By which time you'll have heard who won anyway. My prediction is Gavin & Stacey winning lots of things.

Jongleurs at Christmas

"It's Christmastime - there's no need to be afraid..." Bob Geldof and Midge Ure had clearly never played Jongleurs at Christmas.

I jest. For a start I would never slag off my employer (see news article about the voice of London Underground who got sacked...). Jongleurs do fine Christmas gigs (for the punter) in that they offer a full night of entertainment, a decent dinner, disco afterwards, etc etc. And they get punters into a comedy club who would never ever come to comedy, so in that sense it's bringing stand-up to the masses. They're tough on the comedian though. Bristol this weekend - normally one of the nicer Jongleurs - was full of work dos (80 electricians was the biggest party), and the danger of work dos is that one person wants to be there. The other 79 wanted to go bowling or to paintball. So they sit there, arms folded, staring. You work hard for every laugh.

But the club rewards you, with nice pay, the most professional and attentive staff of any club, and a lovely hotel with sauna, pool and jacuzzi. So for those reasons it's been a lovely weekend. But dodging a guy vomiting as I walk on stage (at 9pm - so not late) certainly doesn't make for the easiest of gigs.

Kudos to the other acts for their part in a fine weekend. MC Andy White was genial and always a nice fella offstage (even though he beat me on The Weakest Link 4 years ago - AND I was the strongest link in the first round...), Gina Yashere wowed us with tales of the comedy circuit in LA (she's cracking America as we speak), and Jason John Whitehead was most kind in his helpful reminders to me that at this time of year, we ain't comedians - we're cheerleaders. So forget the clever jokes - get 'em cheering and keep on smiling...