This last weekend at the Comedy Store in London was one of the most enjoyable that I’ve had in a long time. Obviously all weekends at the Comedy Store are great (I wonder if Don reads this) but this one was particularly brilliant.
It wasn’t that I had fantastic shows particularly (although I did enjoy all of them), or that I was on with brilliant comics (which I was); but it was the fact that I actually put in some good new bits of material, and got them working over the whole weekend. I tend to get a bit obsessed by new material. I realise that some people think that comedy is just a matter of wandering onstage and being hilarious off the top of your head but that is very rarely the case (not even on ‘Mock the Week’!). There are maybe three acts who can be genuinely brilliant when improvising (Ross Noble, Jason Byrne and Daniel Kitson) but they all back it up with solidly well-prepared jokes. The rest of us rely on material that is worked on several times before it can be used at the biggest and most important gigs. Even though there are some jokes that I come up with and just know that they’re going to work, there are countless others that I don’t have a clue about. Finding out whether other people find funny what you find funny can be hugely exposing which is why new material nights or spots at the little clubs are so important as places to road test new comedy. I think this is what I love most about this job – writing and creating. Just retelling old jokes thousands of times can get very disheartening – I know, I’ve done it! There are some acts who literally never change their stuff. They find an act that works and just keep on doing it. As long as you haven’t performed it on mainstream TV you will usually be okay – although that still doesn’t stop some very distinguished comics from churning out material that’s been seen on a Saturday night BBC1 show. I can’t blame them actually. It’s been far more common for audience members to say to me ‘Oh why didn’t you do that bit you did last time, it was fab’ rather than ‘There wasn’t much new stuff.’
I’m thinking about new bits because I’m off to do Reading University tonight. I was there only 3 months ago and have no record of which bits I did! Get ready for some hilarious new bits Reading and… some… rather older stuff and quite a lot of padding (disguised as fascinating banter) in between!
