Recent events include me doing a particularly bad job at recognising people at the Edinburgh Festival; ending up on a drip in Cardiff and inadvertently putting my foot in it when it came to raising money for a good cause.
Latest most ‘Maureen’ moment has to be during my recent stay up in Edinburgh, where for some reason I pretended to recognise a comic by reassuring him that he was called Barry Custard. (Editor’s note: there is no such comic called Barry Custard currently working on the UK Comedy Circuit). I knew the Barry bit was right as fellow comic Jen Brister had confidently said on seeing him: ‘Hi, Barry’.
What can I say, I took a punt on the surname and I lost. Neither Jen nor Barry (actual name the more realistic-sounding Barry Ferns) seemed that nonplussed by my error and carried on with their conversation as if nothing untoward had been said.
To be fair, it is quite common in Edinburgh for comics to pretend to recognise people despite not having the faintest idea who they are but, as a general rule, people don’t tend to go on to endow them with a new surname, based on a common childhood food item.
Luckily, this occurred towards the end of the Festival, when most comics performing up there are slowly losing the will to live. I often visit the Fringe around then; I suspect because it’s a handy way of making me feel so much better about my own life choices.
I’d primarily gone up to visit fellow comic, Jen Brister. Jen, however, was having an unusually good run at the Edinburgh festival. To be honest, it’s about time. She’s a bloody fine comic (she’s on tour if you fancy checking her out – http://www.jenbrister.co.uk/tour/) but as our friendship is based on her moaning about how terrible everything is going and me laughing about it, I was worried that all her success would leave us with nothing to talk about. I needn’t have worried. It turns out Jen still can find stuff to moan about, even if it was mainly about me! (Don’t believe me, listen in to our latest podcast or vlog. No, seriously do, we could do with more listeners/viewers).
Other recent little slips of the tongue by yours truly included trying to build up one charity fundraising effort at a gig by claiming it did worthwhile work ‘helping dissatisfied children’ as opposed to ‘helping disadvantaged children’. The former version may be more universal in scope but the latter version probably would have been more effective in getting people to part with their money.
Besides inadvertently scuppering fundraising operations by worthwhile charities, one of the disadvantages of being a performer is that you don’t get sick pay which means you tend to have second thoughts about calling in sick. As a promoter myself I also know what a pain in the arse it can be when someone pulls out of a gig last minute, particularly if it’s not a gig in a big city where there are plenty of comics at hand to fill in or due to the nature of the gig, certain comics just wouldn’t be the right fit.
This dilemma was brought home to me the other day when I woke up in the early hours of the morning clearly unwell. This amateur medical diagnosis of mine was confirmed soon afterwards when I had to rush to the loo to throw up. Just a couple of hours previously I’d been having a great time hosting Downstairs at the Kings Head and now I felt like death warmed up.
However, following the motto ‘the show must go on’, I decided to drag myself to Cardiff for the gig. I wasn’t convinced, given how I felt, that a 3 ½ journey on a Megabus was ideal but that’s the glamour of show business for you (and ludicrously expensive train fares on Bank Holiday weekends). As it turned out, we were delayed by an hour and had to change coaches in torrential rain in Newport where I realised I’d been most unwise in sporting flip flops as my footwear of choice but hey, you can’t win them all.
By the time I arrived in Cardiff, I’d thrown up so much on the way there I was put on a drip for an hour at the medical centre. It does sound all very rock and roll, well it would, if the cause had been something less mundane than a virus or possibly a dodgy chicken and bacon sandwich I’d had the night before.
I did learn a couple of useful things though. Firstly, it’s almost impossible to aim into a sick bag whilst on a moving coach. More importantly, when you’re that ill, and have thrown up over your dress, your feet and into your hair, your care factor is zero. I know that for a fact because when I finally arrived in Birmingham I collapsed into bed still wearing the dress. Don’t judge me. I didn’t eat for over 36 hours. As someone who has problems watching a 30-minute episode of Neighbours without snacking that’s serious folks.
In other news, I had to give a talk about my life to a women’s networking group. As you can imagine for a stand up comic that’s pretty much a bus man’s holiday. The only difficult bit is not trying to turn it into an Edinburgh show.
On a more practical note, I had an audience member buy me a drink BEFORE a gig as a not so subtle bribe not to pick on her. (She’d seen me host before). I decided it would be churlish to refuse and managed to wangle a double Baileys. Don’t feel bad for her. She’d come to the gig because she enjoys watching me host but only as a spectator sport rather than actively being involved.
In fact, recently I’ve had a spate of lovely gigs. Even when I had to fill in for another comic, who was running late, by doing another 20 minutes on top of the 20 I’d already done, it was lush. The audience was such fun I had a ball performing to them again and managed to slip in some new jokes (always a plus). Of course, as a comic, you suspect this run of lovely gigs means there is bound to be a horror of a one just waiting around the corner for you.
But that’s the nature of stand up. You never know when you’re going to have a bad gig and you never know what is waiting around the corner for you. Out of the blue, a few weeks ago, I was asked to support Gina Yashere at The Birmingham Rep. Gina is one of the best comics around so it wasn’t that difficult a decision.
Just as it was a no brainer to say yes in 2016 when I was asked to support The Naked Magicians for 4 days and ended up supporting the guys at their well-written and exquisitely performed show for the entire month’s run in the West End.
The Naked Magicians
Just as with Jen Brister, whose previous shows in Edinburgh were criminally overlooked and who is now finally getting the recognition she has so long deserved. That’s because in stand up you really never know what’s going to happen when. That’s why comics still doggedly go up to Edinburgh year after year and some of us get on a bloody Megabus to perform for 15 minutes when all we really want to do is curl up in bed with a hot water bottle. It’s because if you chip away at all that cynicism and self-doubt there’s always that smidgen of hope that just around the corner your turn will come.
