My stumbling post-Edinburgh comeback trail continued on Thursday with one of the more prestigious gigs on the London new act circuit that I had hoped to do well at.
All the ingredients for a good gig were there. It’s a great venue and almost full, the audience were receptive and the MC was good. Unfortunately, I didn’t deliver my part of the deal and I produced a very disappointing set.
I was performing almost exactly the same material as I had done when I was last at the same venue three months ago and after my opening two jokes went down very well, the middle of my set sagged spectacularly and the audience just didn’t go for it. Admittedly, I cocked up some of it, but I don’t think it made a lot of difference. There were isolated titters, but nothing that really registered particularly highly on the laughter scale. I finished on a fairly big laugh, but I can’t rate my set any higher than 4/10; and that’s probably being generous.
When my supposedly tried-and-tested material fails, I start questioning anything and everything about my comedy. Is it actually funny? What can I change so that it gets a better response? Should I shave off my beard and get at least two guaranteed laughs from a joke about my appearance?
So, the disappointments, while not pleasant, are necessary and do give me a slap as motivation to improve. And for the record, my beard is not coming off any time soon. I would update that picture on the right, but I don’t actually know how to. So do feel free to draw your own beard on it.
I have another couple of gigs next week, so will be able to continue my Fringe rehabilitation.
In irrelevant news, on Thursday morning before work, I was trying to clear some memory on my phone by deleting the old messages. When this process is stopped, it causes my phone to freeze and sometimes I need to take the battery out to get it working again. So I took the battery out, then put it back in and tried turning my phone on, but nothing happened.
So I opened the back of it and saw that the battery was missing, despite it being put back in a matter of seconds ago. I retraced my steps and could see no sign of the battery. As I was in danger of missing my train, I decided to cut my losses and go to work phoneless. Due to the delay, my train to Liverpool Street had already gone. I decided to go back to my house and see if my lost battery was there, on the walk I looked to see if it was anywhere on the pavement. Again, it was in nowhere to be found.
Leaving the house for the second time, I resigned myself to the fact that I would need a new phone after nearly four years. But then, in one final attempt to find the battery, I saw the hologram-label thing glowing in the sunlight under a fence. My phone survives again.
Now, I can only offer two explanations to this mystery. The first one is that the battery fell out when I was putting the cover on the back on. The second explanation is that when I was putting the battery back in, time froze for a split second and a time-traveller took the battery out of the back to stop me going on the train and prevent a series of events that would lead to serious ramifications in some way. When the danger had passed, the time traveller placed the battery in a place I would see it. Or the battery could have just fallen out when I was putting the cover back on.