Making a comedian, building a scene
Making a comedian, building a scene
How to make, break and rebuild a comedian. Consider this the foreword to this Substack.
This is a bit self indulgent as it’s al about ME, and perhaps some of you have read it already here / on Medium. I just didn’t shove it in peoples in boxes yet. Enjoy!
Please note none of the names were changed, they are all responsible for my trauma x
The year is 1989, I’m in a school bus en route to Kentwell Hall, a stately home and grounds that hosts Tudor reenactments. The kind of place that if the “blacksmith” caught sight of your digital watch would say “I see your sundial tells the time, and yet the sun is not visible in the sky!”. The entire class and staff are dressed in makeshift Tudor clothing. Parent made tabards, flat caps, gingham but thankfully no cod-pieces, at least not on the children. Mr. Perrin, the sports teacher looks very pleased with himself sporting a loose fitting cock sock and waggling it at the head of year 5 Mrs Ridgeley. He’s headmaster now.
I’m sat next to a teacher as usual, I’m deeply unpopular and to top it off I apparently have the lurgi, which we now know to be highly treatable. With the right medication, it’s no more problematic than cooties. I’m listening to a very worn Queen mixtape I made myself from Queen albums I got from the library, I would later receive a lifetime ban due to unpaid fines. My heart still skips a beat passing Bushey Library, even though it’s now a Nando’s.
I air drum vigorously to Killer Queen hoping people notice, as I reason my happiness must cause them pain, as my misery gives them pleasure. Mrs Hyde in the neighbouring seat side eyes me with a hatred that rivals all my classmates put together, she impatiently adjusts her bonnet.
My nostrils are filled with the faint smell of cow dung, we must be passing through another pasture — it would be the 4th so far. In the previous 3 one of my classmates, usually John Robinson (also the first person I french kissed), would yell “Ew Caroline farted!!” And all the other classmates would hold their noses and go “Ewww” and make retching sounds while laughing until their corsets burst. Not this time, this time I leapt up from my seat, pressed my palms hard against my mouth and blew a giant raspberry. I had written and performed my first joke and it killed. Not only was it a brilliant bit of topical satire, but it flew in the face of authority and took all the power from my oppressors, without ever taking itself too seriously due to my excellent physical act-out.
It’s the summer of 1990, Wimbledon season. During this time everyone’s allowed to bring in tennis rackets and balls, we don’t have any tennis courts so during break-time everyone just launches balls around in every direction. We are the last year that’s allowed to do this due to an unacceptable amount of impact induced nose-bleeds. I’m actually quite good at tennis as my mum’s a coach, I can do all the tricks, the best of which being to smack the ball really high up in the air and have it land dead on the racket. I’m entertaining a small group of classmates, I’m enjoying this attention as for once it doesn’t seem to be the emotionally scarring kind. My classmate and vile bully Adam Zane rally’s around some more kids as if he’s my handler and I’m some circus freak “Come and look what 2p head’s doing!” 2p head because I used to have thick copper coloured hair, clever. Suddenly there’s a throbbing mass of entertainment thirsty kids around me, braying for tricks, waving their tennis rackets menacingly. I launch my ball high in to the air but at the last moment I let the racket and ball deliberately clatter to the ground and cry “Oopsie!”. Unlike the ball, the joke lands perfectly, the crowd is going wild. And although I’m well aware they are laughing at me, again I’m the one in control even though their stupid brains can’t comprehend it. They laugh when I say they can laugh and at what I choose they can laugh at, the power was electrifying. From this day forth I sealed my identity as the class clown, and a distinctly below average student.
It’s 1996, I am not allowed to stay on at my posh school Watford Grammar Girls School due to mediocre grades and aforementioned class-clownery, After placing 12th in the county for discus that year, a sports scholarship wasn’t on my horizon either. In fact any sports interest I had had long since given way to getting pissed on Moscow Mules and smoking Marlboro Lites.
Throughout my younger years, people always said I should be a comedian — kids, teachers and eventually co-workers alike. But it always seemed like a crazy thing, that just other, special people did. I mistakenly thought you had to have some special star inside of you to achieve these things. I was always a huge fan of comedy. From the movies of Steve Martin, Monty Python — British comedians like Victoria Wood, French & Saunders, Newman & Baddiel, Lee and Herring, Harry Hill but they just seemed like special people. Now to me, being able to perform stand-up is about as impressive as being able to play Wonderwall on guitar. And yes of course it helps to be naturally gifted, but often the most naturally gifted will put in the least effort, and/or have the least self-confidence (points to face) and the least gifted will put in all the effort and for some reason have a huge ego to boot. Hence why a lot of professional comics seem… not funny?
Cut to the early 2000s. I’ve secured myself a web programming job. Due to the web boom, you literally only had to know HTML, and I was, after all, a full member of the HTML Writers Guild.
I also started playing music in a band, I wasn’t a bad songwriter and was convinced I’d be the next Frank Black. I wrote quite quirky songs such as Thinking Dogs For The Stupid, Armageddon (Outta Here), Dogs Pushing Prams. I was in my band Deletia for 6 years until we kind of gave up. It’s hard work schlepping amps and drums around london to perform for 3 people on a Monday night.
In 2006 I took part in Logan Murray’s world famous beginners comedy class, a friend of mine from Unix club thought I might enjoy it as he had. I didn’t go in with any expectations. I was always “the funny one” in my friend and work group, but still, probably due to low-self esteem, I never saw myself as anything special. I still saw people who were funny for a living having some shining light inside them that I did not and never would.
The class was electrifying, I was completely changed. Not only was it amazing fun and a place where I made friends and met people I would collaborate with for many years to come, it taught me a very important lesson. The only difference between myself and “successful artists”, is that they are doing it. I now had no doubt that I had the talent, the question was — was I willing to put in the work? I was so full of repressed comedic energy I had no doubt in my mind I could put in any amount of work, what I wasn’t aware of was what a mental strain it would be. An initial success with competitions stoked my ego for a while but it wasn’t long until my low-self-esteem bubbled to the surface and I started to convince myself that, not only did I not have what it took to be successful, but that everyone else hated me. I also made the fatal mistake of comparing myself to others, even people that had been doing it many more years than me. I was essentially amassing evidence that this whole comedy experiment was destined for failure. This girl needed therapy! I did go, but I was also big into alcohol and party drugs and everything just became a depressing mess. After only 2 and a bit years on the London scene I quit stand-up comedy, which is crazy looking back on it, I was just a baby! Most of the people I did comedy with are doing very well for themselves now, with TV gigs and all sorts. But I don’t feel bitter (ish), it’s a shame I let poor mental health get the better of me, but I am really grateful for the weird twist and turns my life was to take.
This isn’t meant to be a self-help book outside of the subject of comedy, but I do have some advice. If you live in a big city and you’re struggling with your mental well-being, or you’re just generally unhappy and feel trapped, move. Big cities are fun and glamorous at first, especially if you’re from the suburbs like me. But they are stressful as hell. I don’t believe we’re meant to live around so many people, with so little natural air and light, bombarded every moment by advertising that belittles us. I don’t think we’re supposed to have 5 flatmates in our 30s and still work a full-time job (that we hate). There’s no prize at the end for having lived life on the hardest difficulty setting. If you need copious amounts of booze and drugs to cope, then you need to change something fundamental in your life. I’m by no means a T-totaler now, but I don’t need it to cope — it’s just for fun.
I moved to Berlin in 2011 and if you haven’t guessed, it was a great idea, it was just what I needed — a big change. I moved in with my good friend from my music days, he’d been banging on about how great Berlin was for years and he finally convinced me. He lived in a very trendy and now unfathomably trendy area known as Kreuzkölln and I just loved it there. I decided to brand myself solely as a singer-songwriter and set about playing at open mics all over town. My songs were quirky and amusing, but a year or so down the line I wrote a couple of new songs about my experiences in Berlin; The Holocaust Museum, about my mothers failed attempts to get me to be more Jewish and Berlin Jerks about my terrible online dating experiences. They were both pure comedy and someone at a music open mic suggested I play them at a mixed comedy / music open mic called Buzz Club. This is how I accidentally became a “musical comedian”, Dun dun duhhhh!
People loved my funny songs, and I loved the attention. I wrote a few more and by 2012 I was a regular fixture on the fledgling Berlin English comedy scene. There were 2 weekly mixed open-mics, Sunday’s Buzz Club and Tuesday’s Joe’s Bar hosted by Paul Salamone my long-term collaborator. Joe’s Bar was insane, terrible really. The layout of the room was such that only a handful of people could actually sit in the room closest to the stage, and most people would stand and the bar, talk loudly and often heckle loudly. This kind of environment is probably what made Paul the great host that he is today. Buzz Club (now Sunday Slips) was a more laid back affair, a really cool place to hang out. There was a pool table out back and it was open until very late so all the weird Berlin artists would hang out there until the small hours, I met some of my closest friends there. There were 2 monthly showcases, the Neukoelln Confessional and Sin Bar. If you were brave you might try your luck at a German open mic or storytelling night. It was slim pickings! Little did we know how much the scene would grow in the next 5 years.
It turned out I only had 5 really funny songs in me and I was starting to bore myself (and everyone else probably). I had some half ideas for songs, and I decided to turn them in to material. It had been 5 years since I’d done regular stand-up, and I don’t know what it was but I hit the ground running. One of the reasons I’d quit all those years ago was I hated all my material, it seemed fake and pandering. Berlin had given me the space I needed to really find my voice and just like all the ideas had got backed up in 2006, I had a backlog of ideas and became very prolific again, it was so exciting to feel creative again. Not just that, but the highs and lows of the London scene gave me some really good ideas to bring to the Berlin scene. I created the first event listings site, plus some other Facebook groups (everyone hates me for making everyone rely on Facebook! Sorry, it was 2012 !!).
That same year Paul & I started We Are Not Gemüsed which is now Berlin’s longest running English comedy show. It’s unbelievable to think now that it was Berlin’s first comedy-only open mic. Now there’s around 5 a night, we’re easily the biggest non-native language scene in Europe. I won’t be humble, I’ve done a lot to grow the scene here. What gives me a clear perspective is that I don’t have any interest in being a famous stand-up, my brain doesn’t act well under stress. But I’ve always loved analysing comedy and seeking out purity in the artform.
It was a natural step for me to start teaching in 2016. Because I’m able to step away from self-gain in the arts, I can also be very objective about other people’s comedy. Even if I don’t personally find something funny, I can work with that person’s material and make it better in their own voice. I’ve been teaching my classes since 2016, but running Gemüsed with Paul has given me the most insight into my classes and subsequently this book. Watching beginners take the stage and slowly get better, or not! Seeing what steps they have to take in order to get big sustained laughs from an audience (not chuckles). I’ve been fascinated with that over the years and now I present to you my findings on how to become an authentic comedian.