Gig at the UNICEF Ceilidh

It's pronounced kay-lee. Before you ask.

This was the Comedy Society's first gig. We decided that we didn't have enough time to rehearse sketches, so we went for four stand up routines. We would be on in the interval. Let me explain.

A ceilidh is a sort of Scottish barn dance, if you want to call it that. It is great to do, so I recommend it if you ever have the chance. Sweaty work too. A society for UNICEF was hosting this and invited us to do some stand up for it, mainly due to the fact that the President and stuff has friends in other societies. I think it was a personal favour and a good one. Whatever.

We would go on in the interval, when the ceilidh band has a rest. This does not go to plan, but skip to a future paragraph for that.

We had four stand ups, one didn't go to the final rehearsal so he was dropped and we brought in a new person from the Committee. I believe that mine and someone else's routine was of any decent quality, he would host and I would be on penultimately. Is that a word? Nobody cares. The other two were horrific. One had some good idea, like jokes that only robots would get, but the delivery needed to be different for it to work. There were also generic jokes about adverts, which everybody seems to do. Get over it.

I lied about the other. It's worse than horrific. It doesn't even try to be funny and it's the same type of joke over and over. Here's the template:
(ENTER SITUATION)
(SONG THAT SOUNDS SIMILAR TO SITUATION)

Example:
Having a sex change.
SONG: Man, I feel like a woman.

Fuck off.

This went on for three minutes and forty-two seconds. I was supposed to be five minutes, but I wasn't complaining. It was repetitive shit. Horrible. I mentioned that it needed improving but they said it would be fine as the audience would be more receptive. Bullshit they would. It's generic, it doesn't need a specific audience, it's just awful. The only one that had any merit was a joke about religion and Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'", but that lost all merit once he tried to get the audience to sing along. You are not a Z-List celebrity at Butlins, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

Infuriating.

Whatever. We got there and realised we would be on a lot earlier than expected, before the Ceilidh began as the fiddle player was going to be late. It turned out to be a better time slot, but we were bricking it after that. Surprised us and the audience would not be as drunk as they could be. Interesting.

It went badly, laughs were few and far between, despite some decent jokes being told. Our delivery was not confident for some reason and we were not taking advantage of the microphone by standing too far back. I had to take the reigns. And the music jokes went as well as I thought they did, more or less forced people to commit suicide.

I went on. I was nervous until I was in front of the microphone and then I felt a strange calm. I started grinning and told some jokes. I was also weraing a leather jacket. Can't go wrong.
(MATERIAL CENSORED AS YOU'LL ALL STEAL IT)
It went...well, I think. I don't want to think it was good and get ahead of myself, but yno, people laughed. There was a joke about kiddie porn that stunned, so in the future, that's out of the set. Apart from that, I think that it went well. I honestly do, people came up to me and said that it was a good set. People I had never met before. That's a sign. Of a good set or of sympathy, I do not know right now.

Ceilidh dancing. Boom boom boom.

Reporter from the University newspaper wanted an interview (he interviewed all of us that went up). Fairly straightforward, but there was a cheeky question about if I thought that my set was the best. It obviously was (feeling arrogant now), but I held the party line and said that maybe others had jokes for different audiences, took well to me, but it might not happen again. Bla. Very liberal, but I think the right thing to do.

Good night. If only my mates didn't take me to a shittier club afterwards, it could have been a great night.

The Comedy Society

I want to be a stand-up comedian. I want to be many things, but I feel that a stand-up comedian is one of the most possible and achievable. I'm not settling, I'm sure I'll still write episodes for Doctor Who, but for now, comedian.

I did a gig in London before going to university in Aberdeen, I drank a lot and the reception was mixed. And drunk. Therefore, I feel that taking anything from that would be fruitless. Either way, I needed improving. Improve-ing, not improv-ing. I have only just realised that those two words are spelled the same. Hmm.

I digress. I thought that I would be going to Edinburgh University and going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival would be a natural step, but I went to Aberdeen. Not a complete disaster, as I found out that Aberdeen had a Comedy Society, just like the great universities. I mean, Oxford and Cambridge do have famous ones which have luminaries such as Stephen Fry (who I find tedious) and Josie Long (funny in her own way, but still tedious in many other ways). So this could have been a big step in the right direction. It still might be.

ONE PROBLEM: The Society is in its first year. Not a huge problem, but the society lacks credibility, money and members. Not the best situation to work with. There are also a fair number of lazy members who do not write anything and do not contribute. Dead weight. There is a core collective that turn up to every meeting, usually with stuff in hand, and make good contributions. However, we need more of that sort of person, hopefully ones that are not on the committee also.

I became a member of the committee as they needed a first year representative and I was the only first year that volunteered. The same way that Stalin got into power. The people on the committee are nice enough people and I can't really say anything bad about them, though their comedy is a bit pretentious and not funny. However, their ideas are good and I cannot knock that.

I say this as a comedy genius. Ha.

There is also another member that is out Script Official, who is supposed to check that we do not plagiarise and keep the scripts together when we get a few together. However, he feels that he has the right to edit them as well, which is a major problem. The Society gives advice on how to improve sketches and the like, but we cannot force them to change it. We can judge whether it's funny or not, but to force them to change it implies that we acutally know better. Which we cannot prove. And it's a major dick move. We just tend to say that we would prefer this not to be in our show until it is improved. Hard to say when most of our material is absolute crap, but has to be done. The Script Monkey is a perpetual thorn in our sides.

He also wishes to go to the Fringe this year. I have nothing wrong with ambition, I hope to go to Edinburgh with the Society next year, but only next year. We are not ready to be slaughtered by the audience and the press. We're not even known in Aberdeen, never mind known for an international festival. This debate comes up every meeting. It's frustrating. Now he wishes to take his own "splinter group" to Edinburgh. Good luck affording the costs without a grant from the University, dick. It also gives us a reason not to give him our scripts, as he may take them to Edinburgh with his own troupe. Not helping himself. He probably will run for President of the Society (or Conquistador of the Punchline as we officially wrote in our constitution). Luckily, for the Society, I am also running.

Fucking bring it.

I will write about our first gig in the next post, it was a real barn stormer.

Yeah, right.