So … the older guy at the New York Comedy Club suggested we talk afterwards. We did, but very briefly. He said my routine had been good, but that I needed to understand the difference between ‘storytelling’ and ‘one-liners’. ‘Did I?’ I wondered. We hadn’t really covered that in the Logan Murray course, and I didn’t want to confuse things. I’d simply wanted to practise my bee-sting stuff in order to not make a complete arse of myself in the Barcelona comedy final scheduled for Friday 19^th October. It was true that the ‘comedians’ who had been on before me – Jerry, Josh, Joey, Jared and Jay, or whoever they were – had all hit home with snappy one-liners about cocks, tits, shit, lesbians, incest, paedophiles and Christopher Reeve – but maybe if they’d all created a little bit of ‘storytelling’ before their ‘one-liners’ – you know, just a tiny bit, just to build it all up – then maybe I would have laughed more, too. But I didn’t say that. Instead I took his flyer which offered a course entitled ‘Storytelling for Stand-Up Comics’ at some Midtown studio location, which would have cost me $375 for 6 weeks (or $350 if I was a ‘returning student’), and I headed back to my hotel near Central Park. There, thanks to jet-lag, I tossed and turned all night, churning over in my mind whether storytellers needed to learn stand-up gags, or whether stand-up comedians needed to learn storytelling. It is something that still intrigues me – and even more so after these last 10 days of open-mic gigs in London with Frank Blunt’s documentary team (but we’ll get back to all that, in due course) …

Monday 15^th October in Manhattan and I had many intense meetings for my day-job (well, my only job), trying to negotiate new magazine licensing deals for Spain – but at 5.30pm, once all the New Yorkers had given up on meetings and were heading to their cocktail-happy-hours (in other words, about the same time most Madrileños return from lunch), I rushed to another open-mic I’d signed up for … ‘Monday Mic-Madness’ at The Broadway Comedy Club, 318 West 53^rd Street. This time it was free, but we were encouraged to buy a drink, and our stage time would be 5-7 minutes. I’m nuts, I know, but I thought, ‘why not’? I still needed to practise my bee-sting spiel, and last night at the New York Comedy Club, despite the storytelling/one-liner debate, had encouraged me enough to give it another go. This would just be my 4^th time, though, remember? – I mean, there’d been Logan’s ‘show’, then the Barcelona comedy competition ‘heat’, then last night … so I’d ‘performed’ twice in Barcelona, once in New York, and now I was about to ‘perform’ again in New York – I was probably already the most internationally-travelled wannabe-stand-up ever … but what happened next? I bombed. It was a disaster. No-one laughed at all. I repeat: No-one. Laughed. At. All. There was utter silence for 6 minutes. I felt the back of my neck going red. My mouth went dry. I wanted to die. I felt I had died. I never, ever, ever wanted to experience it again … but I would … (to be continued)

A quick blog update.

If there’s one lesson I learned from last night’s ‘King Gong’ at the Comedy Store it is that there is comedy and comedy and comedy and comedy and not everyone laughs at the same thing (not that anyone at all laughed at anything I said).

It is true that any ‘gong’ competition would suit, in the words of my buddy, James Redmond, ‘one-line comics’ (and therefore a bit ‘outdated’) – rather than ‘anecdotalists’ (apparently like myself and ‘very modern’!) … but I learned much more from last night’s experience, too.

When I started this blog-journey of the stand-up circuit to coincide with Frank Blunt’s documentary film crew following me around (and because a friend suggested there might be material for a future non-fiction/observational book), I had no idea how it would develop, but the more comedy I witness, watch, follow and try to physically participate in, the more it fascinates me – and the more I am learning about myself. And if that sounds profound then … well, it’s because it is profound. I am also doing as much background reading about the comedy circuit as possible (at the moment I’m reading 3 or 4 books simultaneously) – and one book in particular that is fascinating me is by Stewart Lee – comparing the old ‘working-men’s-club comics laughing at Pakistanis, poofs and their wives’ mothers’ … how Alternative Comedy became mainstream-commercial comedy … the ‘after-fart of the fifties and sixties Oxbridge satire boom’ … ‘posh kids touring a Cambridge Footlights show … still dressed in matching outfits and singing funny songs about the news at the piano’ … it’s a wonderful read.

But there’s something I am convinced about: I do not believe that any comedian stands up and tries to say anything that they do not believe is funny themselves. That is my theory. Please remember that as I try to explain …

I don’t find paedophilia funny so I would not be able to stand up and make jokes about it. I’m not sure if I could make jokes about AIDS, 9/11, Freddie Mercury, Marvin Gaye’s dad, Stevie Wonder, the Holocaust, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists … blacks, whites, or people with ginger hair … but I’m hearing and seeing a lot of it, night in, night out.

After being gonged off last night after 1 minute, 47 seconds (that still put me 9th out of 30 of us), Frank took me to one side – although I’m not sure if his film crew got it or not. ‘I don’t think you should give a fuck about it, Tim, lad,’ he said. ‘In fact as I suggested at one point, I don’t think you should have even done it. It’s not what you’re about … in my opinion most of the “comedians” were shit … and any self respecting comedian wouldn’t put themselves through such an unfair ordeal where at the end people were gonged off just for cheap laughs which for me was rather predictably dull. What you need to concentrate on doing is defining your persona and creating a 40 minute act for the future … ’

I’m beginning to really warm to Frank.
I now have to rush.
Am off to The Cavendish Arms for an open-mic spot …

They let me on in the end, upstairs at The Camden Head in Islington last night. I apologised as soon as I arrived that I was without a guest, but Katerina Vrana (a brilliant Greek comedian and the ‘Free & Funny’ MC for the night) put me on 5th in the first half … and I think it went OK, even though I say so myself. They were all great comedians (Francis Foster, Amy Wright, Candy Gigi Markham, Lindsay Sharman, Tim Renkow, Kevin Witt, Alexandra Stone, Rhys Haslam, Alison Shippey and Linus Lee) – some were clearly professional – but I felt that I held my own. I was very nervous but it was a good crowd, about 100 there, a ‘generous’ audience with some loud laughing … and then there’s nothing better than 6 or 7 complete strangers coming up to you afterwards to congratulate you. What a difference to bombing at the Torriano on Thursday night. Someone asked me how long I’d been ‘gigging’. I said it was my 14th time. He told me he’d done 200 gigs – had been paid for the last 40 or so of them – but if he’d performed the 200th gig in the same way as I’d done my 14th, he’d be a very happy comedian. Frank Blunt should have been there with his film crew, of course. He’ll never believe me when I tell him how well it went.

At my very first open-mic experience at the New York Comedy Club last October, there’d been about 20 of us, some with several guests, some not. I went alone. We each had to pay $5, which gave us soft drinks – and then they closed the doors, dimmed the lights, shone a spotlight at a small stage where a microphone stood … and my guts screamed, ‘Get me outta here right now!’ But it was too late. The ‘etiquette’ was to stand-up and each do 5 minutes of comedy, accept any feedback or advice that the others wanted to offer, and then stay until the end to watch each act and to also offer feedback. The girl MC warmed up the proceedings and introduced each person to the stage in turn, getting us all to cheer and clap in order to create a ‘real’ comedy night atmosphere. I was set to go on 6th, and as I watched the first 3 or 4 acts, my guts were now begging me to get us out of there, and fast. I mean, the guys on before me were … young! Not just young, they were half my age! They were funny! They had fast, quirky, squeaky, sit-com-Friends or American-Pie-style accents! They all looked like young Jerry Seinfelds, or young Jerry Springers, or young Jerry Somethings – in fact they were all called Jerry or Josh or Joey or Jared or Jay and I thought, what the f*ck am I doing here with a name like Timothy sodding Parfitt? – even as I heard it being called out and I had to finally stagger onto the stage …

Jerry, Josh, Joey, Jared and Jay before me had all performed ‘comedy’ which had centred more or less around the size of their own big cocks, or the size of some ex-girlfriend’s gay brother’s tiny cock, or the size of some current girlfriend’s mother’s tits, ass, mouth, tongue, lips or big black vibrator. I, however, talked about getting stung on my top lip by a bumble-bee in a forest in Suffolk, England, whilst out walking my black retriever dog called Barnaby. And they laughed. I don’t know if it was through sheer pity … but they laughed. Afterwards, the ‘feedback’ I received from one of the Jerrys (and I promise you) was that when I did my swollen-lip/bee-stung voice, I sounded like ‘Jay Leno’ … and so maybe I could build that into my routine, and make it funnier by saying something like, ‘and then the bee stung me and I started to talk like Jay Leno … ’ ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Then an older guy at the back of the club put his hand up and asked if I was aware I was doing more ‘storytelling’ than ‘one-liners’ – and ‘not that it wasn’t working’ but that it was ‘newer for them in New York’? I shook my head and he told me that we ‘should speak afterwards’ … (to be continued)

But it is now 4.15pm and I am signing off from this blog to psyche myself up for the King Gong at the Comedy Store in London. Here are the rules from the email I received:

‘The idea of the show is for you to have prepared five minutes’ worth of comedy material and to see if you can last the full five minutes without being gonged off! The Compere hands out three red cards to three sections of the audience – the red card holders are changed from time to time (at the whim of the Compere!) – and when three cards are held up, the contestant is gonged off. Those who last the five minutes, usually about five or six contestants only, are brought back on stage at the end of the show for a ‘clapometer’ style final – the two contestants most obviously appreciated by the audience do another one minute ‘joke-off’, and again audience response decides the winner.’

In other words: hell.
Wish me luck.

Last night at The Torriano pub in Kentish Town was hell – although Frank didn’t seem too fazed about it. After the performance, I told him I’d felt like giving up again, but he gave me that Derbyshire chuckle and told me to ‘cheer up, lad’. I think I might even be winning his respect. He’s now seen how hard it can be, and how brave or mad (or both) I am. It’s tough, believe me. Try turning up at a packed North London pub where you know no-one at all, and stand with a microphone for 7 minutes trying to make people laugh. Then when they don’t really laugh … well, you just want to die. But Frank says it’s all ‘good practise’. He says we have to do the Edinburgh Fringe and then aim for the very top … so this journey is far from over, especially as his film crew will be following us all the way.

I tried to tell him that last night’s experience was how it felt when I’d also bombed in New York and Barcelona, but I’m not sure if he was listening. He was busy talking to some of the other acts who’d been on after me, the guys who’d called him ‘Compo’ from ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. They’d even referred to him as Compo during their acts – which made him even more convinced that we need to work on my own ‘persona’. He says I don’t have a problem with my stage presence, nor some of the material, and nor its delivery – but we do need to refine or even invent the persona …

So, Frank’s been with me for 3 of these ‘gigs’ now – Barcelona last Saturday, the Library club in London on Tuesday, and yesterday’s Torriano. Last night was only my 13th time – which includes my very first attempt at stand-up for the show we put on after Logan Murray’s weekend workshop. I have blogged about that below – and in order to catch up to date with the present, I still wanted to scroll back through my diaries to recount how we got to where we are today. So bear with me.

As I have written below, ‘the date for my heat [for the Barcelona International Comedy Festival competition] was set for the night of Thursday 11th October, at Carders Pub in Barcelona – but I was working in Madrid during that day – and then due to fly off to New York on the Saturday morning for a week of meetings with my day-job’ …

I remember feeling pretty stupid in Madrid, sitting at a business lunch, knowing that my Vueling flight would get me back only just in time to then rush across to Carders Pub in the Gothic barrio of Barcelona that night, and what the hell was I really letting myself in for? I arrived late, stood at the back of the pub and at the far end of the long bar, as far away from the little stage as possible, deciding to watch the other acts on before me from a distance. I’d been put on second from last, after the interval, which only served to give me more time to get nervous and unhinged – and drink too many glasses of red. But as I’d stood at the bar, I noticed other customers alongside me still disrespectfully chatting to one another whilst some of the other acts were trying to perform – and I thought if I could project my voice from the stage to make them shut up when it was my turn, then at least it would make me feel better. And it did. When I finally had to do my spiel, I kept looking out towards the back of the bar – to exactly where I’d been standing earlier – and I could see that I had their attention. In fact I had them in the palm of my hand for a few minutes. They were all watching, listening, and they were laughing – and it felt great. Afterwards, I headed back to the bar as quickly as I could. A few people, total strangers, congratulated and patted me. It was odd. I needed more wine. There was a lot of noise in the end and I didn’t hear the judges announcing the result. But someone at the bar told me I was through to the final. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I would be in New York all week and had no idea when the final even was … (to be continued)

Thanks to Frank Blunt, I’m back to telling the bee-sting story. I’d tried it in my very first attempt at stand-up – the night we all had to perform after Logan Murray’s weekend course, on Sunday 7th October last year. Looking back at my diary, I’d been pacing up and down the Passeig Colom in Barcelona just before that first virgin ‘show’, shaking with nerves, especially after Logan had told me I was going on first. I was trying to remember what he’d told us about looking at the audience – to try and make eye contact with them if it wasn’t too dark, rather than staring over their heads which could ‘distance yourself from them’. ‘Look at the crowd, look at the crowd, make eye contact – and scan them all.’ But the nerves were severe … even though Logan had also told us to tell ourselves that ‘fear is simply adrenaline’, and that ‘adrenaline is your friend’. I’ll never forget standing up there for the first time – in the cellar bar of Las Cuevas del Sorte. I couldn’t see the faces in the audience at all in the end as the spotlight was too strong – but I could hear them. They were laughing. On and off … but they were definitely laughing. It was a wonderful feeling. At least at first.

So when Frank Blunt turned up to interview me last Saturday, I told him all this – and after he’d stopped interrupting me with his own funghi and hedgehog stories, he asked me to tell him that original bee-sting story – and he started to chuckle. It was a Derbyshire-accent chuckle – I mean, it was somewhere between a grunt and a cough, as if he was reluctant to admit he was chuckling – but it was a chuckle, nevertheless. He may have chuckled without opening his lips, but he couldn’t hide the smile twinkling in his eyes behind those NHS-specs.

I then explained to him that I’d repeated the story in a stand-up comedy competition I’d entered – a crazy thing to do, but I guess I’d wanted to set myself a goal. The competition was part of the Barcelona International Comedy Festival (organised by Stephen Garland’s ‘Giggling Guiri’ group), and which is why Logan Murray’s workshop had been held in Barcelona during the same month. There’d been three heats to find 9 performers for a final, and I’d been drawn in the last heat – something that I knew I could bail out of if the workshop performance had bombed, but it hadn’t … well, not totally. The date for my heat was set for the night of Thursday 11th October, at Carders Pub in Barcelona – but I was working in Madrid during that day – and then due to fly to New York early on the Saturday morning for a week of meetings with my day-job. ‘Sounds flash, Frank, but it wasn’t,’ I said. Again, he stared at me in silence for a long time. ‘So, did you lose your job because you were doing comedy?’ he asked finally. ‘No, Frank,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t the reason.’ But he was chuckling to himself silently again, I could tell by that glint in his eyes. (to be continued).

He turned up yesterday at 10.30am. Frank Blunt, a reporter from Glossop, Derbyshire, on an assignment with May-B Productions for the making of ‘The Blunt Interviews’ – ‘STANDING UP’. I didn’t like the look of him at first. Actually, it’s not that I didn’t like the look of him – but he looked like he’d come to tarmac my drive … and I don’t have a drive. He wore NHS-style specs, a tight, stained, tweed-checked jacket, twisted tie and cloth cap. His fly was undone most of the day but I didn’t tell him. One of the first things he needed was my loo, and he was in there for ages. Then he immediately insisted on telling me a few of his own jokes – something about a mushroom going into a bar, and the barman saying we don’t serve mushrooms, and the mushroom saying, ‘But I’m a funghi!’ Or ‘little Johnny’ in the bath with his dad, pointing to his dad’s crotch and asking what it was – and his dad replying, ‘It’s a hedgehog’ – and little Johnny then saying, ‘Well, it’s got a f***ing big c*ck!’ But I eventually started to warm to Frank. I had no choice. He shadowed me all day with his film crew and then all through the stand-up show in Barcelona last night. He’s coming back on Tuesday, too, and following me to London. His last comment to me was whether I’d booked a spare easyJet seat for my ‘wavy hair’.

I tried to tell him how it all started – which was the Logan Murray weekend ‘Stand Up & Deliver’ course last October – (and which now helps me to pick up the thread of the last blog). I’m not sure if Frank could accept there were courses for doing stand-up – he stared at me in silence for long periods. I got the impression that he’d heard about courses for making tarmac or catching rabbits with ferrets (as he seemed to mention ferrets a lot) but not for comedy. I explained that people also went on the course to help to prepare for a wedding speech, job interview or work presentation. I told him there’d been 9 of us doing it – 6 guys (Chris, Sam, Stephen, Jeremy, John and myself) and 3 girls (Jessica, Nicola and Ale) – all different ages, different backgrounds, and with different reasons for wanting to do it. The course was intensive, with writing, performance and improvisation exercises to encourage ‘spontaneity, creativity and developing your own personal style’ and especially to ‘uncover your inner idiot’. At the end of the weekend, we all had to put on a performance and were asked to each invite a few friends along. I didn’t invite anyone, I told Frank. He stared at me in silence again and then finally said: ‘Haven’t you got any friends?’ (to be continued).