Like watching your child graduate from a reputable university after spending 21 years of your time, money and affection turning them into a kind-hearted, intelligent, upstanding member of society; totally obliterating any memories you have of that same child screaming and shouting and shitting all over your hand and breaking your most prized possessions and providing you with many nights of worry and pain and concern, this website is starting to prove its worth after just 221 days.
In 221 days a baby might have started gurgling. They’ll smile every now and again and chances are a tooth or two might be coming through, but if that’s the case the little bugger will be crying up a storm every night and keeping you awake all the time. Can a 221-day-old baby provide a decent stream of jokes that currently take pride of place in the regular routines of an up-and-coming comedian, plus a whole raft of ideas that have yet to be explored? Okay, chances are that having a baby probably would give me a chance to come up with some new material, but answer me this: can a 221-day-old baby be stumbled upon on the internet by an Australian chap who likes the look of it enough to ask me to perform at his wonderfully run night in South London?
No. And if that did happen I probably wouldn’t trust the Australian chap in question if he stumbled upon my baby on the internet. And I’d start to worry about how the baby got on there in the first place, although with my impeccable genes (ignoring my sometimes-latent fatness and an ever-receding hairline) it wouldn’t be such a surprise to find out that my 221-day-old is able to regularly access the internet and start tweeting under my username.
Oh, you were thinking something different? You have disgusting minds, internet. You disappoint me.
The Australian chap in question is one half of the Junior Ministers and they run a monthly night called An Event Of Some Kind in a lovely pub in Stockwell called the Cavendish Arms. That I was deemed worthy to share a stage on the night with some great bands and comedian Henry Paker is incredibly flattering, and to know that previous acts have included Tom Basden, Ed Aczel and Tim Minchin is equally ego-swelling, so if for no other reason than to repay Anthony for popping me on the bill, I highly recommend you go to a night in the future. It’s a great night in a nice pub run by a guy who clearly cares about the sort of show he puts together, and you’d be surprised how often these things aren’t a given.
I think I did pretty well. It was a 20 minute set and I haven’t done too many of those recently, so I was happy just to be able to go the distance and keep people interested for the entire thing. There is definitely plenty for me to work on in terms of putting together longer sets like this – when you’re working with more time, it’s best to go back to the comedy well and throw in a few callbacks, which I didn’t really do this evening – but people seemed to enjoy it and that’s the most important thing.
To tell you the truth it was just nice to be performing on a Friday night instead of contemplating the sexual vagaries of a strange mayor in Lancashire. I really must try to do more with myself of an evening.
