Well, my last gig of the year didn’t result in me ending 2011 on a high, as I died on my arse. But never mind, it has been a year of many gigs with a chunk being very good indeed.
I didn’t end up doing as many gigs as I set myself a target of at the start of the year, but the gigs did do included a full Edinburgh run, with more than 25 sets of more than 20 minutes.
Here I will give a brief overview of the last 12 months.
Comedy high
Mine and Langton’s first Edinburgh preview, which was in an unlikely venue of a bookshop in Wood Green. Neither of us knew how it was going to go and neither of us knew if we actually had a consistently good 25 minutes. It ended up going very well indeed and gave us a massive confidence boost.
Another comedy high was the Hen Do day in Edinburgh. It was our second Saturday, I’d found the first one tough going in front of a full house. I was better prepared for the second, but minutes before we were due to start, a Hen Do found their way into our audience and took up the first couple of rows. This terrified me and Paul, but it actually turned out to be our best gig of the run.
Comedy low
Dying on my arse is always a low, but when it’s at high-profile venues where I want to do well is when it particularly hurts. One positive that has come from dying this year is that I have found my post-death remedy of eating a packet of biscuits and listening to Queen.
Edinburgh also brought its inevitable lows, with some really tough days that left me and Paul not only questioning our comedic abilities but also our very existence. Thankfully these days were in the minority and the bulk of Edinburgh was a positive experience.
Our only review for our show giving us one-star would also ordinarily be in the lows, if it was from a respectable source with some editorial consistency that is, and not from the free-for-all publication that accepts anyone as a contributor.
Non-comedy high
I’m going to have to say The Darkness reuniting and seeing them live three times. I also attended two weddings of my best friends and being on Best Man duties at one, but falling 12ft off a fire engine afterwards (long story, don’t ask) right on my arse was not my finest moment.
Non-comedy low
Any time I spent on the phone asking people for money on behalf of charities, particularly after the management put me on a performance review. The flip-side to this, is that working at this place did provide me with the biggest chunk of my Edinburgh set.
Also in lows, I would also add the three weeks I spent house-sitting a flea-infested property and getting bitten relentlessly. During this time, I was also sleeping in bin bags with garlic in, in the hope that this would stop them biting me. Sleeping in bin bags was never going to be one of my highs.
Film of the year
Thor
Album of the year
I haven’t bought any albums this year, thus rendering this category I’ve added utterly useless.
On the whole, 2011 has been a good year. I’ve done a lot of gigs, met a lot of people and had a lot of fun. 2012 looks set to be busier still and I’ll be doing a preview piece once I’ve recovered from my New Year celebrations, which will be over four days and with 12 people in a remote cottage in Wales. This recovery could take some time. See you on the other side.