I've been booking in stand up gigs like crazy over the last couple of days, so keep your eye on the gig guide if you want a chance to come and see me. If you're in Ruislip, Eastbourne, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Chiswick, Ealing, Northampton or Tunbridge Wells I am coming somewhere near you this month, but there should be plenty of other locations in the coming weeks. Can I also make special mention for the gig I am doing on the 23rd January at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, which is in aid of the Sri Lankan victims of the Tsunami. It's a fantastic bill and so do book early for a fabulous night. I'm doing another benefit in Ruislip next Thursday for those of you who can't wait to give your money to this important cause.
So, I've been spending this week trying to think of new material. At the moment I am doing mainly gags at these gigs, but I am keen to branch out into stories and more involved pieces (I am trying to build up the courage to tell the yoghurt story, which you all love so much). Part of the point of this is to try and work up stuff for an Edinburgh show. I think I am going to do an unthemed show of stand-up for the first time ever, which at least should mean that I don't have last year's problem of trying to squeeze too much material into the hour slot. With stand-up you can always drop a bit if you find something else is really taking off. Plus it has the advantage that I can be working on the show for six whole months (in bits and pieces) and hopefully have it in god shape right at the start of the festival. It will be my twentieth Edinburgh show and I have two titles in mind. The first is "So Far..." which I like because it can mean two things, but also cos it can be followed up by so many responses by reviewers. Such as "...So good" or "So bad" or "..and no further." It also gives me an opportunity to look back over some of the stuff I've talked about previously in other shows (though I would hope to do mainly new material, but on the other hand it would be great to put together my funniest possible hour of material) and I might even begin the evening by reprising the best joke from my first Edinburgh show in which I played Harold Pucksa, the man who can only live in a vaccuum. Though I suspect my old man's body might not be able to cope with the rigourous pounding that my body takes in this fifteen second visual gag. At the end I can ask "What do you think of it so far?" and the audience may have some response to that. Well, we'll see.
I also really like the idea of calling a show "Mediocrity is My Meat", mainly because I think I've got a few stories that would point to that being the case. As I was thinking about that today I remembered an incident from my school days which kind of points that idea up a bit and possibly gives me my epitaph to be put on the lezzing up statue in St Paul's Cathedral when the time comes.
I was in Sixth Form and at the start of the school year our tutor asked if anyone would like to volunteer to be a classroom assistant/prefect who would be assigned to a tutor group in one of the years below to assist the teacher in whatever way he saw fit. Though I wouldn't dance in the rain, I was quite happy to do something as boring and swotty as this and duly volunteered, as did my friend Geoff Quigley and we were both assigned to the same class. I suppose they gave each class two prefects, partly so that if one of us was ill there would be someone to cover and partly so we could keep each other company. I saw it as a great responsibility and was keen to show I was worthy of this incredible honour.
We were assigned to the tutor group of a teacher called Mr Kemp, who taught science or geography or something. It became clear that this prestigious position essentially amounted to us taking the register and trying to keep order if the teacher was working or out of the room for some reason. In hindsight I see it was a clever way for the teachers to essentially spend another twenty minutes in the staff room whilst some gullible overkeen sixth former did his job for him.
Geoff came along for the first three days, but then got bored with it and without really saying anything to me about it, just stopped coming. I felt I had to see my responsibility through and was convinced that the school would be impressed by my perspicacity and my maturity would be noted and eventually rewarded.
To begin with Mr Kemp made some salutory effort to pop his head round the door every now and then, but by the end of the first term I was pretty much steering this class alone. It wasn't too difficult, the kids behaved themselves, but looking back I see that I was giving up my tutorial time so that Mr Kemp could enjoy his, probably trying to look down Mrs Du Camp's blouse when he was pretending to read the Guardian.
I did this job every single day for the whole school year, even though Geoff Quigley had given up so soon, like some kind of inverted Touching-the-Void-o, even though Mr Kemp was shirking off. I saw my responsibility through.
After all that work I don't think it was churlish of me to think that I would get some kind of acknowledgement from the teacher. Perhaps he would buy me a Terry's chocolate orange in gratitude for me having done his job for a year. But the day came and the end of the final term was upon us. I took the register for the last of many times and then Mr Kemp sloped in, smelling of cigarettes, beer and cheap perfume (it was 9.15am).
"OK, that's it," I said, slightly expectantly, "The year is over. My work here is done."
Mr Kemp stood in front of me awkwardly and smiled and nodded.
"Well, thanks a lot," he said (and I remember this bit perfectly, so these were his exact words), struggling to think of the appropriate thing to say, in light of my mighty achievement and his equally large debt. Then it came to him, "It's...er.. been ..er.. quite good."
He shook my hand, without leaving a craftily hidden fiver in my palm and walked away. I was in disbelief. "It's been quite good"? Was that all I got? A year of graft and my reward is to be told that it was quite good. Only quite good as well, not good or really good or incredibly helpful. I had been "quite good" at sticking at the job that all my other contemporaries had given up within half a term. Surely it deserved more than a "quite good".
He'd played me for the sucker I was and then not even had the gallantry to pretend he was impressed with what I'd done. To be honest, I'd rather he'd punched me in the face than told me that it had been quite good. I don't think I am employing hyperbole that it was the same as going up to Kelly Holmes after she'd won her second gold medal and saying, "Thanks Kelly, you did quite well." I think it is extremely similar to finding old Touching-The-Void-o lying in the snow outside your tent on the point of starvation, realising he's crawled down the mountain with a brokwn leg and saying to him, "Well done Touching-the-Void-o. What you've done is quite good."
Try using it yourself when someone has done you an enormous favour and see from the look on their face how inappropriate a comment it is.
And yet, as it turns out, Mr Kemp perfectly summed up my life in that one sentence. Mediocrity is my meat. I am quite good. Rarely any better, rarely much worse, always averaging out at the "quite good" level, middle box ticked.
So, in the end I think that's what I should have written on my gravestone (not the benevolent teeth thing that I suggested last year. That was just stupid.)
"Well, thanks a lot. It's been quite good."
