Comedy news: Welcome to the blog and my first such small portions post... We Love Comedy 29th March gig report

Hello!

Thought I'd say hi before dashing off to support Renata Muss in her Laughing Horse Quarter final in Green Park. Hope you're all well and good. No, really I do. Working and gigging is hard. Working and gigging and running your own night, even if it is once every two weeks isn't easy. Not at all. But, running and developing something good and for the right reasons is very rewarding, if a little stressful. Now, I'm not dong comedy to make money. Yet. I'm just starting out on this journey, having been 'doing' comedy for around ten months with a hundred-and-something gigs under my belt (I lost count a while ago). But at the same time we're trying not to lose much money when running the night either. If we break can even and give everyone a bloody good night (and have a few drinks too) then that is enough of a reward. Last night at 'We Love Comedy', we had almost full house in the end, which means around 35 people squeezed into our tiny room. For the first section, the room was only half full, with about eight people paying. Time the room was full, we only had around 13 people paying. This was due to a room full of promoters, many comedians and comedians friends we let in free. You see, I'd rather have a nice, full, fun room for everyone to perform in. But the problem is, by the time we'd paid the headliner bought drinks for some of the  acts etc, the show actually ended up costing money to put on! Still, a great night was had by all and it can only be a good thing during WLCs infancy to try and get people in there to make it a good room for performers. And that's not to say we lost a lot of money, it was only a few quid. And having that room to practice in and by booking great acts to enjoy and learn from, it's priceless!

So how did the gig go? Well, the lovely Ms. Muss kicked things off as MC, but kept things very short and I was on a lot quicker than expected. Also, last night, for the first time I think ever, I didn't stand up with a clear idea of my set list. I had however tried doings some warm up exercises in the toilet beforehand and no, that isn't a code for something... This was due to starting Rob Broderick's comedy improv course last weekend. Inspired by the course and wanted to put into practice some of what I learned in the first week, I spent a bit of time chatting to the audience. Usually for me trying this if often a few seconds of panic followed by trying to get back into material. Not tonight! Maybe it was the warm up beforehand, maybe the techniques picked up on the first week of the course, maybe it was just knowing this half full room was ours; I just felt very relaxed and able to cope with the audience banter. Asking what one audience member did for a living, he told me he worked in IT, now I had a stock compere joke to hand as a response, but wanted to add something else of my own to the end. This worked well. My set ended up being much more of a conversation with the audience peppered with a few bits of material in between and my current spate of opening at this and other recent nights if giving me a lot of confidence as a performer.

That was my bit. Oh, one of the things we do at 'We Love Comedy' is tag-team MC'ing – as this seems to help the night move a bit quicker. There aren't too many other clubs doing this and whilst I accept it may seem a bit risky if an act doesn't do too well, so far it's worked nicely. So as co-promoter of the night and the person guilty of the idea, I almost forgot to actually do it! But then I went back and introduced...

...Jonathan Grant, who did brilliantly but over-ran a bit (although we're not too strict on time!) although I missed some of his set running downstairs to get magical funny man Ali Cook, who was on third. After the break, the audience swelled a bit and we had an all female section which Ren was very excited about! In there we had the wonderful character act of Mercedes Benson, Stephanie Laing and the many voices of Eve Webster. All were on good form and you could see some new ideas being born! For our final section we had Giacinto Palmieri, Hackney Empire finalist this year and someone I consider a good friend on the circuit. Despite saying he was tired earlier on in the evening, the now packed room energised him somewhat (although it may have been the caffeinated beverages) and he gave us a fine performance, peppered with such beautiful use of the English language as to put me somewhat to shame! Finally, as our headliner, we had seasoned circuit comedian Paul T. Eyres. He kept the energy levels up to the end and had a lot of fun playing with the audience.

And that was another 'We Love Comedy', well, aside from packing up the room, which I won't go into here...

Right, better dash. Let's do it again soon...