Comedy Special
Our man at Maxim has a go at stand-up comedy. See the full 'hilarious' video here!
Every bloke thinks they're funny, but could you cut it as a stand-up comic? Maxim tried, and found it's harder than it looks!
The compere introduces me with a flourish, and it's suddenly far too late to run away. With knees like jelly, what has the potential to be the most humiliating five minutes of my life begins...
Like most blokes, I'd always thought about giving stand-up comedy a go, but never had the balls to actually try it out. So it was with mixed feelings that I agreed to perform at the new-acts night at the legendary Comedy Café in East London. After setting dates with the club, it dawns on me that I've got just two weeks to come up with five minutes of comedy gold. Oh. S--t.
Two weeks to go: writing
I start off by trying to write some gags down, and seven tortuous hours later, I test it out on my flatmate. It's a disaster. By the end he's curled up foetally on the sofa, shaking his head in embarrassment. I'm not funny! After thinking about my first experience of stand-up - 11 years old, watching Dennis Leary's No Cure For Cancer and laughing so hard I was scared I'd stop breathing properly - I try a different tack. The next night I open a couple of beers and pace round my room for five hours, shouting at the walls.
I opt for the anecdotal style - a long rant with some stories I know have got a laugh down the pub. I also want to get the audience on my side quickly, so I decide to start with some stuff about the 2012 Olympic logo, figuring that all I have to do is slag it off to get a favourable reaction. Chuck in some stuff about bouncers and a disgusting story about an encounter with a junkie at a gig and all of a sudden I have conjured a routine out of thin air! First lesson learned: you can't write a stand-up routine sitting at a computer - you literally just have to talk to yourself until you're saying something funny.
This time when I try it out, my housemate actually laughs. I even perform it for my girlfriend - when I see she's giggling, I know I'm on to something. The thought of doing it in front of a big audience still fills me with dread, though, and I realise that if I'm going to get through this ordeal without crushing my ego permanently, I'll need to call in professional help...
Ask the expert
Enter comedy legend Tim Vine, king of the one-liner. After a quick phonecall explaining my situation, Tim agrees to mentor me in the days leading up to the gig. We meet at Maxim's local so he can see my act. I take the mic and stand in front of him - I want to be confident, but performing a half-baked routine to an audience of one established comedian does nothing for my confidence. After a lot of stalling, I launch into my act - as I finish he does his best to look enthusiastic: 'Well, at least you remembered it all!'
Amazingly, Tim reckons my material is actually OK - and he especially likes my final gag about confusing hell with Fraggle Rock (I'm going to be checking he doesn't steal that one). Unfortunately, it seems my stage presence nows needs Tim's comedy magic.
'You're not leaving any spaces between the words for people to laugh - you're just steaming through it,' he warns. Thankfully, he agrees to meet me the following week so he can give me a crash course in comedy showmanship - though I just wish he'd give me some of his jokes...
Figuring that I need to familiarise myself with the crucible of my comedy ambitions, I head to the Comedy Café to see new-acts night - this is where I'll be performing in just a few days' time. It's a mixture of new-ish acts and genuine first-timers - but they're all having to deal with hecklers! A table of pissed blokes in the audience are pointlessly shouting catchphrases from The Fast Show. I pray no one does that when I'm on, but when I see a couple of the acts totally bomb I'm slightly comforted. Even if I'm utterly shit, I probably won't be alone!
Four days to go: training
The next week I go to meet Tim, intrigued to see what he's got in store for me. He leads me into a dance-rehearsal studio, sets up a mic in front of the mirrored wall and tells me to go through my act again. Seeing the embarrassment in my own eyes, I freeze, but then Tim starts clowning around, telling gags and pulling silly faces. 'You've got to accept that you're going to make a complete fool of yourself,' he says - and he's right. As soon as I begin to muck about and stop worrying, my performance improves 100 per cent - but how can I relax on stage when I know the enemy of all stand-ups may be waiting to pounce? How do you handle the hecklers?
'If you get heckled, the best thing to do is repeat the heckle so everyone hears it,' Tim tells me. 'It buys you a few seconds to think of a comeback, and ensures everyone is in on the joke. It's really important you make sure the audience is on your side - don't be nasty to a heckler unless the rest of the audience are pissed off with them too.' Now I'm over my fear of performing, the next thing is get what I'm doing right. 'You're going for the sort of "angry rant" style delivery,' observes Tim. 'It's a good approach, but if you look at people who've made this style their own - like Dennis Leary - when they're ranting, they still manage to give the audience a grin. You just look pissed off.You have to laugh along with them so they know it's a joke.'
I do my act again, trying to bear this - and Tim's other helpful advice, about making eye-contact, keeping animated and more - in mind. Eventually Tim seems satisfied. 'Right, final test,' he smirks with a sadistic glint in his eye.
To my horror, he takes me to Speakers' Corner in London's Hyde Park - the infamous spot where any nutter can speak about anything they like to whoever wants to listen. I protest, but Tim is quite insistent. 'You've got to get used to talking in public!'
I climb on my soapbox (well, it's actually more of a beer crate), feeling like an utter fool. Tim wants me to grab passers-by and interact with them - I manage to stop four Romanian tourists, asking them questions and trying to make them laugh. They don't have a clue what's going on, but they seem to enjoy it. Sort of. We then take a leisurely stroll round the park, and I approach strangers and ramble away at them until they tell me to piss off. By now, my embarrassment about speaking in public has gone - but telling gags in front of confused tourists and sunbathing office workers still seems a very long way from doing it in front of a crowded comedy club. It may be comedy, but it's definitely not funny to me...
The big night
When amateur night finally arrives I get to the club several hours early. Bad idea. It just means that I have longer to sit and think about what could go wrong - something I've already done plenty of, having slept very little the night before. When the other comics start to arrive it gets worse - it seems that tonight, I'm the only one here who's performing for the first time. I take Tim's advice and go easy on the booze, drinking just enough to want to show off a bit. As the venue fills up with over 120 punters, my fellow comedians sit at a table near the door. Even the regular stand-ups are jittery.
'S--t!' mutters the guy next to me, as another comedian walks into the venue. 'I didn't know he was on tonight - he's great. I'm fucked if I have to follow him.' Oh dear. Time for another drink...
As soon as the acts start, the butterflies that have been in my stomach all day are replaced with the maddening buzz of nervous adrenalin. Tim arrives to provide moral support, but I'm too worried to talk. Instead I go through the opening lines of my routine - if I fuck them up , it's all downhill from there. The first couple of comedians go down really well, but just as I'm starting to think this crowd might be friendly, one guy's act bombs horribly. His jokes aren't bad, it's just that the crowd aren't on his side. They sit in stony silence, until the ultimate heckle comes from a girl at the back: 'Say something funny!' The other comedians wince. When the guy gets offstage, he walks straight out the door and doesn't return.
Showtime!
Finally, it's my turn. I'm pacing about when the compere introduces me, and as soon as I hear my name I jolt with adrenalin. I manage to keep it together and stroll, apparently calmly, to the stage. Trembling, I pull the mic out of the stand, take a breath and jump in...
'Good evening everyone, thank you all for coming...' To my surprise, the audience respond to politeness and go easy on me. The first couple of lines - which I'd thought of as my weakest material, what with it being gibberish about why the 2012 Olympics logo should have been a picture of Mr T on a Space-Hopper - get laughs. Relief floods through me and I go on to comedy autopilot - if I stop to think too much about what I'm doing, I'm pretty sure I'll lose it completely. The longer I'm up there, though, the better it feels - I get comfortable enough to gesticulate more, and the more I move about, the more the audience seem to go with it. When I tell my story about the junkie - which hinges on the fact that a smack addict in a pub once told me I could shit on her face if I bought her a pint - I'm confident enough to lean forward and whisper her words right into the face of a guy sitting at the front. He looks scared, but as soon as I say it, it gets a really big laugh from the audience. As my routine winds up, I leave the stage to a round of applause bigger than I'd ever hoped for.
Tim is grinning madly at the back, waiting to shake my still-trembling hand. 'You still didn't leave enough pauses, but for your first ever gig, that was great!' he says with genuine surprise. I proceed to get blind drunk in celebration, especially when I discover that the audience has voted me third best out of the eight acts performing. It's true what comedians say: standing onstage and making everyone laugh really is the biggest buzz you can get. Who knows, I might even try it again one day. And I'm not joking!
Visit www.timvine.com for future Tim Vine tour dates
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