After posting last time about my hardy constitution, this week has seen me knocked sideways by a very bad cold or possibly flu…yes I think’s it’s flu! I’m in Manchester at the moment and have been on the road since Wednesday when I left for Cheltenham. I’ve spent the last few days lying in hotel rooms, pouring sweat, coughing, sneezing – only leaving my deathbed to serve my public! Have they been grateful? Have they f***!
On Thursday, I played one of my most extraordinary gigs of the year. It was at Howlers special comedy night in Prestbury, near Cheltenham. Howlers is usually a great club but this evening was sadly not typical. There was the usual banter with a slightly loud Christmas crowd but nothing terrible. The gig was going quite well when, about 20 minutes in, I’m doing a joke about my wife being a catalogue bride (I know this is about 8 years old but it’s Christmas – that’s when you do your greatest hits!) A woman shouts out,
‘Why don’t you go back to the Philippines with her?’
A weird heckle but said with real anger. I said,
‘Sorry, are you not enjoying the show?’
‘No, I’m not. You’re rubbish.’
I was full of cold and flu and had overdosed on lemsip so got the mic stand and went to the centre of the stage.
‘If most people feel that way I’d better go.’
I’m not lying when I say that the crowd roared for me to continue. I said,
‘I think you’re in a minority.’
An old man at the bar shouted out, ‘I agree with her.’
I said, ‘Well why don’t you both leave?’
I was quite furious because I sincerely believe that, if most of the crowd is loving an act and you don’t like them, you don’t have the right to ruin everyone’s evening. It turns out that these two people, who were probably somewhere in their mid-sixties but seemed to have stopped thinking forty years ago, were offended by my bad language. Now I am a bit rude but nothing compared to many comics on the circuit. These two idiots seemed to think that the fact they’d misunderstood what happened on a modern comedy club night was my fault. I’m afraid I gave it to them both barrels and the gig was rather tense as a result.
I’m wondering whether the whole Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross thing (which I believe was a horrible example of the mega famous bullying the less famous) has emboldened Daily Mail readers to start attacking anything that doesn’t fit in with their world view. I have never been attacked by anyone for bad language (apart from my wife’s relatives complaining about language at a gig in Belfast – and I hadn’t asked them to come!) Anyway, if people are starting some crack down on bad language then our priorities are seriousy fucked.
The rest of the week has been spent in Manchester where the constant dampness has not lessened my suffering. I’m still ill but haven’t missed a gig – what a trooper! It’ll probably turn into pneumonia – in my mind it already has.
