This week, I have been trying out some totally new material at open mic gigs in London that were attended by handful of people.
The beauty of doing gigs such as this is that if it goes badly, no-one really cares. But then if something new receives a decent reaction, then it has been worthwhile.
Of the new stuff I tested, most things received good enough laughs to suggest that they are worth keeping. The stuff about an immortal lobster didn’t do so well, but then it is barely written. I like the concept, so might try actually writing it properly.
I had a third gig in my diary and arrived at the venue especially early, to the perplexed reaction of the locals. It turns out that I was a whole week early.
In other news, my #Joke365 challenge is proving increasingly tedious. This week, I had to resort to the much-maligned duck billed platypus joke that I had been saving for an emergency (see my tweets on the right, if you dare). The whole point of this challenge is to force myself to think up new jokes daily and I make no apology for the quality. I expect at least 85% of them will never venture further than Twitter. Even so, if 15% of them are decent then I will have around 50 new jokes by the end of the year that I would otherwise not have had.
To ruin the illusion, I am now planning on stock piling-these jokes in writing sessions to preserve what is left of my sanity. It is not worth losing out on valuable sleep as I strain my grey matter to think of something before I can go to bed, only to Google it and find someone else has already thought of it. This way, if I can’t think of anything, I’ll then at least have something to meet my objective and then sleep.