Hal Cruttenden - Stand Up, Writer, Actor

Christmas and New Year are over. I always feel a little sad when the festivities have finished but then I realise that I never enjoyed them in the first place.

Christmas Day is filled with the family. It’s lovely to see them but a few hours is definitely the limit. It’s not them, it’s me. However nice the extended family are to me I can’t help but feel vaguely disappointed with how I’ve turned out - too fat and not rich enough - and so I often go on about myself in an attempt to justify my existence. That reminds me, I have to get a good therapist this year - My sister is a trained psychotherapist (amongst her many other qualifications - see what I’m up against!) but I don’t think it would really work if I went to see her:

ME: I don’t think Mum and Dad ever really understood me.

SISTER: You think you had it bad! As the eldest I was virtually ignored! (looking at watch) I’m afraid that’s our time. Before we meet again I’d like to to think about how you used to annoy your eldest sister and how you might go about apologising for that.

New Year’s Eve was exhausting as ever. I did my usual four gigs around London and saw the New Year in in my car travelling through Dalston. This is preferable to being on the tube for New Year - I’ve done that a couple of times. The announcer says, ‘Well Ladies and Gents, it’s just past midnight so Happy New Year everyone!’ Considering that the only people on the tube at that time are people who’ve had rows at parties and left early or people who have to work, nobody is in the mood to even smile at anyone else. We just carry one reading our Metros and thinking how cool we are for not celebrating a change in the calendar.

This New Year, I got home to find the house full of drunk neighbours and a drunk wife downstairs, and full of kids upstairs. I don’t like parties. Maybe it’s because, as a young man, I only went to them to pull women. I’m not allowed to do that now. I like people in very small groups but, strangely for a man who stands in front of them most nights of the week, I don’t like crowds. I find lots of people incredibly stressful unless they are all sitting watching me and laughing at my jokes. I think it’s a control thing. I tend to drink a lot to deal with the stress of a party and then worry that I’m going to say something stupid. Most of the people at the do were mums and dads from the school and saying the wrong thing at a New Year’s Party can result in social death in the playground when the kids go back on Thursday.

Oh well, Happy New Year everyone. I think 2009 might surprise us all. We’re all expecting it to be awful what with the economic situation and the Middle East falling apart, but my experience of life is that, when you expect everything to be dreadful, it’s usually only slightly shit.

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.

I’m very sorry for the massive length of time since my last blog. My only excuse has been that I came back from Canada at exactly the time when my whole family came down with various forms of flu, chest infections and general colds. Martha, my oldest, was off school for a whole week - something that I spent a lot of time worrying about while no-one else, ie. wife Dawn, seemed to care. I was off school once and missed doing Long Division -  a failing that remains with me ’till this very day. Anyway, all is back to normal now and I’ve yet to discover if Martha has missed anything really important at school. Maybe in a few years time when she can’t hold a job down, because she’s never there on time because she can’t tell the bloody time, somebody will realise that I was right to worry that she missed that week.

Anyway, as I said, I’ve been quite busy with the family being out of action and having to do the things that I usually rely on Dawn for - getting kids that are well to school, cleaning up, being nice to the neighbours, postman, milkman etc. It has been particularly shocking to be thrown back into action after the Just For Laughs tour where everything was done for us. We were pre-checked onto flights, we were pre-checked into hotel rooms, transport was sorted to airports, hotels and venues - it was great to be so spoilt and, with those worries gone, we had great performances. Having said that, I find that when worries are taken away from me I soon discover new things to get in a state about. When the immediate stuff is dealt with, I find myself free to really have a good panic about global warming, the economy, how old I’m looking, ‘Am I having a heart attack or is my arm numb because I slept on it all night’ etc etc….

It is strange that once again the whole family has come down with a bug and yet I’ve just had some very minor sniffles (and those were more the result of  emotional torment rather than illness). Although I’ve got bad knees - they are chronic and I’ll probably be walking with a stick by my mid-nineties - and a bad back, I’ve actually got a strong constitution. I can only think of about three gigs I’ve pulled in the last twelve years due to illness. It’s strange that I could be so strong when being ill would really suit my personality. I’m great at lying in bed, feeling sorry for myself, trying to smile through the pain when my carer brings up the chicken soup. I really should be more ill.

If you want a good laugh and an interesting insight into the torment of the stand up comic, please press here for a fantastic spoof by Dominic Frisby.

After nearly a month on the road, the 2008 Just For Laughs Comedy Tour is coming to an end. Tonight I’ve been on stage in Red Deer, then it’s Kelowna, Vancouver, and we finish in Victoria on Saturday. It’s been a fantastic experience. It’s been great working with comedians like David O’Doherty and Danny Bhoy, who I don’t usually see on the circuit because of their tours and festival commitments. I’ve become good friends with Pete Zedlacher, the Canadian, who I expect to be a pretty massive name when I next come back here - of course if he doesn’t become massive you can forget that comment about him being a friend! And the American comics, John Heffron and Finesse Mitchell have been absolutely top notch. We’ve all got on really well for a month - which is very unusual for people as self-obsessed as your average comedian - actually, of this lot, I’m pretty sure that I was the worst for self-obsession.

The audiences have been very welcoming and an education. They don’t like their comedy too graphic in this country and toning down of the ‘F’ words actually makes you work harder. When you  don’t have the extra bite that swearing gives, a poor joke is more easily exposed.

I’ve discovered that Canada is absolutely bloody massive - honestly - 2 and a half hour flights only get you half way across the country! I’ve discovered that Canadians hate America as much as we do and now feel bad because America’s gone and done something lovely by voting in a President who’s intelligent, articulate and well-travelled.

I’ve missed my family terribly and it’s just made me realise more than ever that tours like this will have to be very rare in the future. There are only so many times when you can hear your six year old say, ‘I miss you daddy’ before you’re dying to jump on a plane and head home.

All in all, it’s been everything Adam Bloom told me it would be when I asked him how he’d enjoyed his experience of the tour. I know we’ve really entertained the crowds and this idea of getting top acts all on one bill in very large venues, is a far better guarantee of a great night than a lot of the tours currently doing the rounds in the UK. Not to be bitchy, just being honest…okay I’m being bitchy!

The following was written, slightly drunkenly, at Toronto airport a few days ago but I have not been able to publish until today because of crap internet connections in Winnipeg and Saskatoon!

‘Over half way in our epic tour around Canada. I’m writing this from the executive lounge (get me!) of Toronto airport, waiting for my connection to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Am I the only person that finds the name Winnipeg funny. I remember coming across it in a map when I was about 8 and even then it seemed strange to have a city named after a sweet old Auntie - Auntie Winnie Peg - it is just me isn’t it.

The gig last night in London, Ontario, was fantastic. All the jokes I’d prepared (okay, only three) about being from a town with the same name went very well. Everyone agreed that it was the best night of the tour. Afterwards we went to a sports bar where we drank beer, played pool and watched American Football on the telly - I really can’t think of a better way to spend an evening. I’m so enjoying this trip and know that it will not be easy to go back to playing Milton Keynes two days after I return. The only thing that could spoil the last couple of weeks would be a McCain win in the US election. This could lead to a stampede of American liberals across the border, finally deciding that they can no longer live in a country so completely at odds with world opinion and downright common sense. Having said that, American liberals would be great crowds to play to so maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

Pete Zedlacher, the Canadian comic in our happy troupe, is staying in Toronto tonight to play a part in George A. Romero’s latest Zombie film. I’m going to be so jealous when we meet up again in Winnipeg. I would die to be in a zombie film which would make me a very realistic member of the living dead. Sorry -I’ve had a pint of guinness and it’s the middle of the day!’