Hot weather is the enemy of comedy. It decreases your motivation to write and makes potential audience members choose to stay away in favour of a beer garden or just sitting somewhere in the sun.
Both of effects of the hot weather were proven by my gig yesterday. It was an early evening kick-off, so we were wrapped up before 7pm.
And there were four beings in the audience; by that, I mean that there were two people and two flies buzzing around the stage. You know you’re clutching at straws when you’re counting insects as audience members. To be fair, I probably got a better reaction from the bluebottles.
The other effect of hot weather, in it decreasing the motivation to write, was proven by me. The theme of the gig was that the material had to be written about the news stories that had occurred in the previous week.
Now, I am normally something of a news junkie. It’s all part of being a recovering journalist. TV news is pretty much the only thing I watch, I should add that I don’t watch much TV; and I have been known to be asked to leave a supermarket after fuelling my news addiction by reading the papers without buying them. So any normal week, I know exactly what is going on in the world.
But this hasn’t been any normal week as I’ve spent it down in Brighton, having very little to do with the news. Luckily, I had torn-up bits of newspapers stuck to parts of my body, working in a similar way to nicotine patches.
Then, with the hot weather continuing when I returned from Brighton on Friday, and then on Saturday, I didn’t actually get around to writing anything. So instead, I rehashed some of my older material that is vaguely topical and unleashed it on the four-being audience. I was then reminded why I didn’t do the material any more when it received little or no reaction.
The closest I did get to a topical gag, was suggesting that the 63 stone girl, who had to have a wall removed to get her out of her home, swap lifestyles for three months with Keira Knightly. The 63 stone girl would then have to star in Keira’s films, which I would then actually want to go and see. This got a laugh at least.
But on the whole, my ‘topical’ satire wasn’t quite up to scratch. But I have now at least been reacquainted with my beloved news.