My weekend of previews continued with shows booked for Saturday and Sunday.
On Saturday, I had an audience of three people. This is what happens when you have Paul Langton responsible for promoting, but he wasn’t entirely to blame and the weather should also take responsibility. If you ask people to choose between either sitting in a darkened room to watch some comedy or sitting out in the sun, the solar menace tends to win. But the joke is on them, because we had air-conditioning.
Nevertheless, an audience of three people is still an audience. I have performed to smaller audiences before and I expect I will in the future. I have said multiple times over the years, those three people are there to see a show. It’s not their fault that they are surrounded by empty chairs.
So I gave them a show. It went as well as you could expect a show to go in front of three people, I enjoyed it and felt there was a good rhythm to my set.
For Sunday’s preview, it was off to Winchester to the exact same pub where I had something of an ordeal at a music open mic night in November 2005. Back then, I believe it was my seventh gig and I was the only one doing stand-up in a packed room that was mostly full of apathy. The first eight minutes was people talking amongst themselves, with a few people shouting rude things at me. Everyone eventually quietened down and I managed to get at least one laugh. I considered this to be a good gig back then.
Back in 2014, I was originally going to be on about 8.30pm, which would have allowed me to get on the 10.23pm train back to London, get the last tube and probably get five hours sleep before work.
But then this was bumped back to 9.45pm. As the trains only run hourly, if I had done my full hour then I wouldn’t have arrived back in London until 12.30am. Being a Sunday, the tubes would have stopped, forcing me to get a night bus home and I likely wouldn’t get any more than three hours sleep before work.
So to avoid this horror, I asked if I could only do half my show and then run to get my train. I think I ended up doing closer to 20 minutes in the end, but it was well received. I then got my train and my reward of five hours sleep.
I have two previews left before I head up to Scotland. My show is not quite there yet, but is definitely coming together.