Preston.

On Saturday I was in Preston, gigging in a tent, in a car park outside the Adelphi pub.

It was part of ‘Bangfest’, a three day music festival with lots of (I’m assuming) local bands and DJs; and a comedy tent was part of the proceedings. One of the organisers was involved in last year’s Preston Tringe (their version of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe), and I had spoken to them about the possibility of doing a show there, in the end, this didn’t happen – I was doing my degree and there wasn’t time to put a show together – but they got in touch to ask if I’d like to do an ‘Edinburgh’ preview as part of the comedy tent at Bangfest.

I’ve been putting together a show for a while, and though it’s not going up to Edinburgh this year (see here for what is), I’m hoping to take it to Leicester Comedy Festival next year, as this year’s show with Adam Hess was really fun, and we managed to sell out 60 seats both days (more down to the promotion of the show by Mike, Shaun and LCF; and the popularity of the festival as a whole, than people coming for our handsome faces), showing that it’s a very good place to try stuff out to really nice audiences.

So on Saturday, I gave the show – my pretentious blurb/poster can be seen here – its first ever run through, and it turned out just fine. There’s a lot that can be lost, and there’s a lot that needs to be added to make the show hang together more, but the general thread worked and listening back to the recording, there were laughs all along the way, and a nice finale that capped it off. Some kind words about the show’s profundity from a philosophy and ethics tutor were also very helpful in allaying fears of any glaring inaccuracy and pseudo-intellectual/philosophical bullshit in there. Hopefully it’ll stay that way, and I can continue to improve it until its next outing.I’ll keep the page updated with details of any further previews, although I don’t expect any for a while, what with Edinburgh fast approaching. 

Thanks to the organisers for having me, and to the audience, the sound tech and to the comics who performed and watched.

The day before Valentine’s Day.

Still alive, I’ve spent the last 6 weeks at University, attempting to learn.

It’s strange, having been in education from the age of four until twenty-one, that’s 18 years of my life learning (if you count the first year we all spent playing in the sandpit as education…I learnt that sand was actually tiny bits of glass, so in an attempt to make some at home, dropped wine bottles into the bath and turned on the hot tap to melt them – after that didn’t work, I just filled the tub with Mum’s bath salts and played in that, until I turned a tap on and ended up choking in thick, gloopy, aromatherapeutic Radoxian gas). 18 years out of 22 years seems like a long time – that’s a scary percentage of almost 82% of my life spent learning; and as a fraction, 18/22 that, even more scarily, cancels to 9/11. Hopefully my education fraction doesn’t ironically correlate to a tremendous waste of life.

I take my exams at the start of June, and as soon as I finish, I’m hot-footing it straight out of Oxford back to Manchester for gigs and a nutrients and vitamins based diet that always seems to be sorely lacking from my college life. It seems strange to have spent almost 3 years studying a degree that doesn’t lead to any particular job that appeals to me – I may be an archaeologist but I really hate digging – but I suppose it teaches you more important things like how to work independently, to think critically, and how to bullshit 1500 word essays twice a week. Term has died down – no more essays, 4 more classes, just a dissertation to write over 4 weeks. That makes it sound almost easy.

I have my 3rd full-length sketch show with Little Dark coming up from the 22nd February – it’s not really getting in the way of anything as it’s my main focus at the moment, I enjoy writing and performing with the guys and each show seems to be better received by the audience. For this one, we’re trying to once again, walk the narrow, frayed tightrope of funny above the pit of dire and offence, and hopefully we won’t fall off along the way.

In other news, I bought myself a lovely little netbook which I’m typing on now – I’m tired of lugging my big, heavy, 30-min battery laptop around, so this tiny, light, 10-hour battery thing seems sensible. It makes me want to write more in any case, so that can only be a good thing. I like writing longer bits, and I don’t do enough of it, having only to focus on short jokes for my stand-up, so I’ll see what happens.

In stand-up news, I’ve got a show lined up for the Edinburgh Fringe with the lovely boys Matt Richardson and Alex Clissold Jones – we’re on the Laughing Horse Free Festival at The Newsroom, every day at 7.45pm – a lovely time in a nice venue, so I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll be doing 20 mins for that show, and have a spate of 20 spots coming up in Oxford which I’m using to figure out what I’m doing for Edinburgh – there’s some lovely new jokes in a routine about poetry which I’m very happy with, and i’ve got a fair few jokes that I’m testing to see if any can make it in – it’s all very exciting for me. March and April (my holidays) are shaping up to be reasonably busy months gig-wise (well, as busy as I’ve ever experienced) so that’s something to look forward to, and I’m very excited to be able to get more experience and hopefully become funnier.

That’s all the self-indulgent rubbish I can write for now, other than to mention www.stereomood.com as a brilliant site if you want music to suit your emotion/mood – right now I’ve got ‘Relaxing’ music on, and it’s very pleasant.

 

Feudal Wythenshawe

While walking down a dusky street

I found it rather pleasant;

Until I had my HTC

Stolen by a peasant.

How dare this rascal ambush me

When I am knight and sire;

And now he’s gone, O I can see

He’s stolen my Desire.

…and the refinement of their decline

I have a gig tonight, and i’m hoping to refine a few things in my set.

I usually perform 10 minutes, and that’s the slot I’ve got tonight, and one that I’m very comfortable with – I’ve only ever done one 15 minute slot, at a Labour Club in Didcot, which went very well, and was just my 10 minute set with a few extra jokes, but mostly 3 or 4 extra minutes of audience chat, which they enjoyed.

As I have my So You Think You’re Funny heat in July, and will be doing some 8 spots at the Frog and Bucket soon (you get these when you win their gong show), I’m trying to tighten up my 7/8 minute set, and have some ideas I need to work into it.

Having started out with rather a deadpan style, I quickly moved away from it as I realised I couldn’t quite pull it off, and moved to being more chatty and conversational, a style that, while good and allowing me to connect more with audiences, wasn’t distinguishable from the hundreds of other comedians doing the same, and most of them doing it better than me. So, on the advice of others as well as my own, I moved back to the deadpan style, and have been refining it at each gig since then. It’s getting much better, and I find that positive audience reaction is noticeably up from the first time I tried it. I enjoy it more too – it provides a level of authority that discourages hecklers and makes me seem less ‘studenty’.

One downside is that with this style, jokes have to be very strong, as you really are placing a lot of pressure on them, making them do the work – it’s the jokes making the audience laugh as opposed to the comedian’s skill at physically delivering them, or acting the fool (á la Lee Evans). Recognising that the best thing to do, in order to maximise audience laughter and enjoyment, would be to combine the deadpan delivery with more of a ‘relatable’ persona, I’ve been working on this, and am trying out new ways to achieve this each gig. I’ve introduced a few lines acknowledging the lower energy levels of my set,  and the somewhat distant delivery – lines that get laughs and relax an audience. I’ve introduced ‘Pun Corner’, or the ‘Pun Stick’ (concepts which always get laughs through callbacks) which allow me to get away with some of my more pun-based jokes that have suffered from the deadpan style in the past.

One big thing tonight (aside from the couple of new jokes that I’m testing) is that this will be my first performance wearing a brace. It’s not amazingly noticeable but that doesn’t mean it can be ignored – I have to address it within the first few lines of my set, and preferably with a comment that draws a laugh, in order to relax the audience and make sure they know that I know it’s rather strange for a 20-year old to be wearing one. I briefly toyed with the idea of having MCs introduce me with the line ‘Brace yourself for Chris Turner…’ but frankly, that’s rubbish and wouldn’t work. Incidentally, I always thought that Bracelets were just miniature orthodontic appliances…(That is also rubbish). Hopefully, as I gig more while wearing it, and draw the inevitable heckles (Braceface, Metalmouth, Jaws etc.) I’ll pick up lines, and comebacks that will allow me to address it in the funniest way possible. Perhaps eventually I’ll have 20 minutes of material about braces, and won’t ever get the thing taken off, purely for the sake of comedy. I hope not.

And finally, tonight, I get to watch Tony Cowards, one of the best one-liner comedians in the UK, and a guy that I really admire for his commitment to writing. So far today, all I’ve written is this.

“How do psychoanalysts like their Mars Bars? Deep Freud.”

That’s one for pun corner.

(Incidentally the title of this post is a self-indulgent reference to Stars of the Lid. Check them out).