Stand up and be laughed at

30/01/12 21:43 Filed in: Personal
Every comedian starts by doing free "open mic" sessions. It's the only option and it's terrifying. If my first few routines had gone down badly I am not sure I would have tried again. You see people who aren't cracking it and they keep coming back, but I don't think I'd have had the resilience. That takes guts.
My first proper stand-up routine was at the Amused Moose in Soho, the first round of an open mic contest that a mate told me about. It was a kind of comedy X Factor: you went through rounds trying to get to the final at Edinburgh. Competitions are grim: you're there thinking you have to outdo everyone else. But at least you can get some regular gigs that way. And the contestants are quite nice to each other, surprisingly. It's not as tense backstage as you might think. Most of the time.
I'm sure if I saw a video of that routine now I'd be horrified, but at the time I remember feeling pretty pleased. So I went on and did one at Anglia Poly in Cambridge, sandwiched between established acts, which made it a bit easier: one of the problems of open mic sessions can be the lack of any audience apart from the other stand-ups.
But it still took me amost two years before I was actually paid anything to perform - and I had won a national open mic contest! I would get five-minute slots in the big clubs but they were usually unpaid, £20 at most. It's really hard; the only way to keep sane is just to feel you want to get as good as you can and see that as an end in itself.
And then there's the financial pressure. I was temping, doing little bits of TV and radio writing, and of course living with the girlfriend rent-free, which always helps.
Somehow it worked. I am not naturally a confident or an in-your-face performer, but I'm sure the key to open mic success is seeming confident. When you've got a short slot, people don't remember any of the jokes, just how you come across. You have to project assurance and look like you know what you're doing, even when you clearly don't.
But that doesn't mean copying your act from an old Richard Pryor DVD. If you're accomplished you might go down well, but the comedy-club bookers will say there's no point taking you, as they've got plenty like that already. Better to go for what you think is funny. You never know, the audience might agree.