Comedy Bin at the Retro Pub

One of the reasons I wanted to bring this blog back was so I could start documenting my gigs. I have not got the foggiest idea how many gigs I've done. I was asked the question tonight by the compere and in my uncertainty I blurted out "200". This is a gross miscalculation. I started stand up properly in 2008 after a limited number of gigs under various Royal Holloway, University of London banners in 2007. 200 seems like the number I should have done by now. Having thought about it, somewhere between 100-125 is more realistic.

I neglected to discuss the Ministry of Whimsy last week, the monthly comedy night I run at the Camden Head with James McPhun. Hopefully I'll get around to it. Anyway, tonight I was at the Retro Pub near Ladbroke Grove, one of a number of gigs I have booked in with Comedy Bin this month. The stage area was by the entrance to the pub with a handful of seats in close proximity, with most of the punters watching from the other side of the bar. A crowd of roughly 10-15 people and not an ideal situation, I was a bit sceptical as to how it would pan out.

As it turned out, I enjoyed myself and had a solid gig, pleased to get a decent reaction from the crowd. I've been doing a broadly similar set for a while to try and hone my best seven minutes. Some sections need to be a bit punchier and I suspect one of my routines needs to either be heavily edited or removed completely. So there's things to work on, but a lot of material is also going over quite well.

I briefly spoke to Jon Murfin afterwards who described my material as clever, whilst noting the difficulty in appealing to a lot of audiences who want to hear filthy material, knob gags etc. It was also nice to talk to a group of punters outside, one of whom expressed their delight that I had used the word "ostensibly" twice in a stand up routine. I don't consider my stuff to be particularly clever, but I enjoy playing around with words.

I once had a discussion with my friend Chris where we talked about my act and we concluded that all I generally do is try to enhance punchlines by throwing an unconventional word in. It feels like I'm gradually developing my own style though and I'm looking forward to pursuing this further with some of the work-in-progress stuff I'm writing.

I'm at the SouthWestFest Comedy Night at the Barley Mow on Horseferry Road in SW1 tonight, which is part of a community festival and sounds like it might be quite nice. No doubt I'll report back.

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