2013-06-19T09:50:04-04:00 Andrew West http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=andrew-west Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Andrew West Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1274890 2012-02-15T19:00:00-05:00 2012-04-16T05:12:01-04:00

Andrew West http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-west/
It felt like a bit of a backhanded compliment, to be honest - less "Wow that's great, you're very funny" and more "Well - you might be awful, but you can handle it champ!"

I've never heard anyone come back from a comedy show and say "Oooh, I went to see Bill Bailey last night, I tell you what he was sooooo brave. I mean, he's brave on the telly and everything, but he's so much braver live. He was so brave, I nearly wet myself."

The main reason everyone thought I was so brave was the prospect of hecklers. It's easy to imagine that the lower rungs of the comedy ladder are comprised of nightmarish gigs where nervous new acts fight to control their bowels and bladders while stuttering through their material under a barrage of abuse and ridicule from a baying crowd.

The truth is rather different. A lot of open mic nights are entirely populated by comedians and people they've dragged along for moral support. At many gigs, there are 12-17 comedians on the bill, each performing for five minutes and they make up half the audience. The other half is made up of the "guests" that the comedians have been required to bring along in order to get on the bill. Neither of those groups are very likely to heckle.

The closest I ever came was a gig in Westminster. It was my 10th. Like most open mic nights, the audience had always been usually quite small, but friendly and supportive. On this occasion, though, one of the acts turned up with about 15 of his work colleagues in tow, who were out for a leaving do.

They were drunk, getting drunker and already pretty rowdy, albeit not in a mean-spirited, aggressive way. They just wanted to join in and have a bit of banter with the comedians - they didn't boo, insult the acts or do anything genuinely aggressive. That's significantly better than actual real scary heckling, but for inexperienced comics like me who are still playing open mic nights it can still be disruptive. Personally, I just want to get up, do my material and get off - I've never seen myself as a comedian who would flourish engaging with a lively crowd. Some acts thrive on it, but I can't see that I ever would.

When my turn came, I took it in good spirits when they tried to join in and I let them. They pointed out my mistakes and by engaging with them in the first few minutes, I got through my prepared material for the last four minutes or so relatively uninterrupted.

Afterwards they were chatty and complimentary - they had been told off by the act who'd brought them along for being disruptive and seemed genuinely horrified to think they'd been a bad audience.

Many MCs at open mic nights are pretty good at setting out "the rules" at the start of the night and will keep control if any audience members do get rowdy. They are usually much more experienced comedians and well-equipped to maintain order if necessary.

So, if you've ever considered trying standup - don't be put off by the prospect of hecklers. The truth is that it simply doesn't happen very often, certainly not at open mic level.

Go along to an open mic night (Time Out has a very handy list of the best in London, if that's any help to you) and see for yourself what the standard and the atmosphere are like. You'll probably be surprised.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1161589 2011-12-20T18:06:23-05:00 2012-02-19T05:12:01-05:00

Andrew West http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-west/
It wasn't a big party - when Mrs West and I arrived there were 6 or 7 people standing around in the kitchen. So far, so normal. We were reasonably early so everyone was sober and there was a familiar, almost reassuring, hint of British awkwardness in the air.

As we were introduced around, our host (a colleague of Mrs West) announced with almost tangible excitement "This is Andrew, he's the one who's a comedian". My heart sank.

I felt expectation levels in the room start rise - the evening was heading in THAT direction already. I was told that the host's boyfriend considered himself to be utterly hilarious and had been looking forward to challenging me to a joke-off. Someone piped up, "Oh good, the entertainment's arrived."
I wanted to smash the bottle I was holding and have a go at opening up a major artery. One of mine or one of theirs, I wasn't going to be fussy.

I'm not someone who "comes alive" in front of a crowd. To me, getting onstage is sort of a necessary evil. I enjoy it when it goes well, but if there was another way to satisfy my comic urges and my desperate need for approval, I'd probably take it.

Of course I love making people laugh. I love making people laugh at parties. Equally, as an open mic comedian I've performed to smaller audiences than the inhabitants of that party. Nonetheless, it was all a bit uncomfortable. I really need to write some actual jokes that I can use in those situations.

No doubt moments like that are an occupational hazard for comedians. It happens to people with proper jobs too, I'm sure. When nurses go to parties they probably spend a good portion of their evening hearing about everyone's aches and pains.

I explained that I'm not a professional comedian and that I'm still taking my first steps on the circuit and thankfully the topic of conversation drifted elsewhere.

Nonetheless, several times over the course of the night one or two people kept on at me to "do a turn". I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to extricate myself from the situation without coming across as a bit of a tool - or worse, by conceding defeat and reluctantly ploughing through a few minutes of material - but I really couldn't see that being a success.

There's a mysterious alchemy to comedy - this party wasn't the time or the place to be doing an impromptu gig. Open mic nights are haphazard enough, thanks very much.

Comedy is subjective. People who buy tickets to see, say, Mark Watson do so because they like Mark Watson - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. At an open mic gig, however, it's certain that not every act will do well, because that kind of audience self-selection hasn't happened.

In that situation, more adept comedians than me can quickly get a feel for the audience and do whatever they need to in order to make that particular group of individuals laugh. They might alter their set, change their language or adopt a slightly different persona. I'm nowhere near that skilled yet.

Generally speaking, I get onstage with my 5-10 minute set in my head and off I go. If it's not going well, there's not much I feel able to do about it - other than cut it short and get off, so that the next act isn't left with a stone dead room to grapple with.

Back at the party, Mrs West (who is much better in a crisis than I am) heroically fended off the calls for me to "do a turn" with skilful changes of subject and apparently-light-hearted-but-actually-deadly-serious quips that she'd quite like to have a night out that didn't involve standup comedy. She always gets me out of trouble.

I'm just going to stop telling people I'm any sort of comedian. It's a bit much I suppose, like someone who plays Sunday League calling themselves a footballer. Mrs West won't always be there to rescue me.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1117370 2011-11-28T17:09:50-05:00 2012-01-28T05:12:01-05:00

Andrew West http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-west/
"Think I saw ex in Sainsbury's. Unidentified item in the emotional baggage area."

It was retweeted over 100 times. I think that's a very good gag - but then I would think that, I've been performing it onstage since May. My version isn't worded exactly the same as Milton's, but it has the same idea at the core of the joke and the same "emotional baggage area" wording.

Of course Milton Jones hasn't really stolen my joke - that was just an attention-grabbing title (if you've read this far, it probably worked). There's no way he's seen me perform, I'm very new to standup and only did my first open mic gig in March this year.

The number of people who've seen me probably numbers in the low three figures. Milton Jones is, well, Milton Jones. He has over 82, 000 followers on Twitter to my 194. That's over 82, 000 people who now know that joke as a Milton Jones joke. I can only conclude that it now has to come out of my set, otherwise there's a real danger that people will think I've nicked it from him and as a new act on the circuit, I can't afford to get that kind of reputation.

It would clearly be outrageous hubris on my part to believe any explanation other than that Milton and I both thought of the same joke. For all I know it had been in his notebook for months or even years before he tweeted it. Even if I was deluded enough to think he had seen me perform the joke, he's a hundred times the comedy writer I (or most of us) will ever be and probably throws away jokes that are better than anything I will ever write. I'm still learning my craft and right now I'm nothing more than average at my level. I put the "median" in "comedian". Arf.

That wasn't even the first time such a thing had happened to me. On 24 February this year, I tweeted this :

"I've founded a band called The Prevention. We're going to be better than The Cure"

Around six months later, Alan Sharp's use of much the same joke at Edinburgh this year landed him in TV channel Dave's top ten best jokes of the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe. Again, it's clearly nothing more than coincidence and I've no doubt whatsoever that he wrote the joke long before me.

I don't recount these events for any kind of self-promotion, or to imply that I'm some unheralded comedy genius. I'm writing this because similar things happen all the time, particularly with one-liners and puns. It can sometimes be pure coincidence, but outright joke theft happens too.

At an open mic night not so long ago, I saw two different acts perform the same Tim Vine joke. That would have to be one hell of a coincidence - I'm sure at least one of them knew they were telling another comedian's joke. The second of those two acts might have at least dropped it from his set for that night, having seen someone else tell it not 30 minutes before.

I took part in a comedy competition earlier this year and although I didn't qualify from my heat, one of my friends (who predominantly performs one-liners) made it through the same heat and into the final. Afterwards, the MC confronted him and accused him of having stolen almost all his jokes from other comedians and of recycling "old pub jokes". He was distraught. I know he hadn't consciously stolen any material, in fact I'd been present when he'd come up with a few of them at writing workshops. Of course, it's not inconceivable that he picked up one or two by osmosis and "rewrote" them believing the original idea was his own - that's pretty easily done when you watch a lot of comedy over a number of years. To be confronted and accused of outright, malicious, theft was a terrible blow for him and ruined any satisfaction from making the final.

The point is, joke theft can seem to be a black and white issue and consciously stealing jokes is plainly wrong, just about the worst thing a comedian can do. The reality, however, is that it's often more complicated than it seems. Those couple of experiences I've had this year have taught me as much. Sometimes two comedians have the same idea and one of them will inevitably get it published or performed first, thus effectively awarding them "ownership" of the joke. When you're the other comedian in that equation, all you can do is hope that over the course of a career those instances will even themselves out.

That said, if you're reading this Milton....I'm keeping my beady eye on you. Hands off my Henry VIII joke.]]>