Andrew West

You're So Brave...

2012-02-22T09:16:00.000-08:00

When I first told people I'd started doing standup, my friends and family were unfailingly supportive and encouraging, but overwhelmingly their first thought was how brave I must be. Not how funny (or otherwise) they thought I would be, but that I was very very brave.

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.

Ha! In Your Face, Triskaidekaphobia...

2012-01-31T05:02:00.000-08:00

Friday 13^th Janaury was my first gig since December 1^st and also the first Why the Long Face? show of 2012. I’m not the superstitious type, but I was a little uneasy about it.

Why the Long Face? was frankly a bit of a struggle during November and December, the regular shows were quite poorly attended and I for one was starting to wonder whether we were ever going to be able to build an audience in the location & venue we’d chosen. I’m a glass half empty kind of person – if my glass is half full, it’s probably half full of something I don’t even want. Like fizzy water or brine.

Acts who gamely turned up to perform at the November & December shows would tell us that lots of gigs they’d been booked for that week had been cancelled due to low attendance. We hadn’t had that kind of foresight.

During 2011 we’d been shifted around a bit between Tuesdays and Thursdays and having irregular dates is doubtless a bit of a barrier to building awareness that the night is on. We’ve now got a regular Friday slot at our venue and on the (admittedly limited) evidence of Friday night, it’s had a big impact.

I don’t mind admitting I was worried about the first show if the year. Everyone’s skint in January and the middle of the month is probably not an ideal time to be hoping people will come for a night out.

We made the show free entry in the hope that it would help encourage people along. It’s hard to tell whether it was the Friday Factor or the Free Entry Factor that made people come, but they turned up in good numbers and we were pretty much full.

We’ve been full before, but mostly thanks to friends & family coming along to support us – this time the majority of our audience were “civilians” and they were brilliant.

Not being the types to mess with a winning formula, we’ve decided to make our regular shows free entry.

That said, we may well rattle a bucket pleadingly at the end of the show in the hope that people will bung us a quid or two to help cover our costs. The Why the Long Face? branded tat (er, I mean merchandise) that we give away every night doesn’t just buy itself.

As well as the regular free shows, we’re running three charity fundraisers before the end of March. Two for Marie Curie Cancer Care and one for Kilimanjaro Young Girls in Need (KYGN). It was performing at a past KYGN fundraiser that put us in contact with the venue where we now run Why the Long Face? so it’s got a little place in our hearts. More importantly, both charities do great work.

All the dates & details are on our website.

Go On, Say Something Funny...

2011-12-20T15:08:00.000-08:00

I went to a party on Saturday night. I knew it was a bad idea.

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.

Sorry and Thank You

2011-12-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

2011 has been a year quite unlike any other in my life so far.

Mainly, of course, because 2011 was when I first started doing standup and as any comedian will tell you, this is a hobby which is all-consuming. Any friend, family member or loved one of a comedian will confirm this to be true.

There have been weeks when I think my fiancée has probably struggled to remember what I look like. This may or may not be a bonus for her, I can only speculate.

The purpose of this blog entry is to say two things to my friends and loved ones. The first is sorry (of course it is, I’m English). The second is thank you.

Everyone – I’m sorry I’ve neglected you for the sake of comedy. Some of you have probably forgotten what it’s like to spend time with me when I’m not being nervy, sullen and generally non-responsive before a gig. I’ll try to do better next year, although you may find you preferred me when I was non-responsive. My responses will probably only disappoint you.

I’m sorry for all the times I’ve been seemingly unable to let a conversation run for more than a few minutes without it inevitably turning to comedy. I think I’ve become a terrible bore. I’m sorry for the forgotten birthdays and for when I’ve been unbearable to be around after a bad gig.

I’m sorry for the times I’ve coerced you into coming to a “bring a long-suffering friend” gig where you’ve had to sit through terrible jokes about rape, paedophiles, wanking, Josef Fritzl, disability and fingering dead dolphins.

You’ve come along and put up with all that without complaint - just to watch me plough through my own 5 minutes with varying degrees of success at gigs on school nights at inconvenient distances from your homes.

I know you’ve seen the odd flash of genuinely marvellous comedy at those gigs, but I’m under no illusions that a great deal has been at best mediocre and that sometimes I’ve been no exception. So, sorry...and thank you.

Thank you for the unflinching support – I’m not sure what I’ve done to be worthy of it but I’m glad. Thank you for giving up your time for me, especially in support of Why the Long Face?

For all my apologies and thanks, I can’t promise things will get significantly better anytime soon I’m afraid.

Milton Jones Stole my Joke

2011-12-04T14:00:00.000-08:00

The very lovely people at The Huffington Post have published a blog I wrote. Bless 'em.

I won't reproduce the whole thing here...just click this little beauty to read it.

...and we're back!

2011-11-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

I did my first gig in nearly 3 weeks on Monday, at Hungry Miller’s Laughbag. The more gigs I do, the less nervy I get, so the long break since my last gig meant that the nerves were back with a vengeance. I could hear it in my voice when I was onstage, it didn’t sound like me at all and I think I was a little flat.

There was a good crowd in - I thought I did reasonably well and the feedback was good. There was only one joke I can remember that totally failed to land, everything else went down pretty well. I wouldn’t put it in my top 5 performances or in my bottom 5 – just somewhere in the middle. I was hugely relieved overall to find that my first gig in a long while went well.

Hungry Miller’s Laughbag is an excellent gig - well run, effectively promoted and friendly. They also attract great headline acts – on Monday Nick Helm was headlining, but I had to leave before he went on. I was disappointed to miss him as I’ve only ever seen him on television and I’m sure he’s a fantastic live act.

One of the organisers gave me some really helpful feedback about stagecraft, something that most people don’t do. I have got an unconscious tendency to retreat towards the back of the stage which means I sometimes retreat all the way out of the spotlight(s) that shine on the stage. I also have a tendency to look at the floor too often. When I watch my first gig back now, I can see myself doing it after almost every punchline. Not on purpose, of course - it’s a bit of a defence mechanism, I think – if the joke doesn’t work, I don’t have to look at the blank faces of the audience. I’ve got much better at keeping my head up and talking to the audience, but it’s something I have to work quite hard at. Until I started doing standup I’d never taken to the stage before and never really wanted to. I’m still not that comfortable up there and probably won’t be for a very long time, if I do carry on performing.

It was my first 5 minute set for a long time, I’ve got too used to doing 10 minutes at Why the Long Face? and it took a while to work out how to chop my most tried & tested material down to 5 minutes.

I’m leaving that material behind for a while now and as long as I can get my props (props!) finished in time, I am trying some new material at the next gig on Thursday at my favourite open mic night in London – Free & Funny in Angel (you can catch a glimpse me in their promotional video). I’ve tried this material at a gig once before, but that was 3 weeks ago - on the day I wrote it in fact. It’s polished up a bit now and ready to go again.

What Happens Next?

2011-10-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Decisions, decisions.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads, blogosphere. I've been doing standup for 7 months now and have done 33 gigs. That's reasonable progress but a lot of people work a lot harder than me. I'd say I've had 1 outright onstage death and another 2 or 3 near death experiences. There's been a few lukewarm and a lot of really good times. But I'm shattered and struggling to balance a full-time job, gigging once or twice a week and maintaining the rest of my life.

If I really want to do this for a living, I can't afford to ease up and if anything, I'd need to work harder. it's inevitably the most driven people who succeed in any arena and I can't honestly say that "driven" is a word I'd use to describe myself. The more I think about what it would be like to do this for a living, the more I suspect it's not for me. Standup is high-risk/high-reward but I'm not a risk-taker by nature and the lows I've experienced after the odd bad gig have been pretty horrendous. I'm not sure I'm thick-skinned enough.

I thought when I started out that I'd be more interested in writing than performing - and it seems that's the case. Writing is lower risk but of course doesn't offer the same instant reward that you get from making a room full of strangers laugh. Even so, I suspect that any future I have in comedy will be as a writer and not a performer. I'm not much of a performer, I'm not a natural and I don't think I'll ever learn to be much better a performer than I am now.

So, where do I go from here?

I don't think I want to stop performing at all - but I'm going to be more choosy about the gigs I do - of course I'll keep performing at Why the Long Face? with the rest of the Gagsters Paradise team and there are plenty of other gigs that I always enjoy so I'd like to keep doing those too. But, if I'm not trying to "break through" then there's really no sense in slogging round the circuit - it's having too much of an impact on my job (which pays the bills) and on the rest of my life. Ultimately, I guess I'm too soft, too comfortable and too lazy to want to struggle for my art.

So I think it's time to put my energies into writing. I've had some writing work for other comedians already and I'd love to do more of that if I can.

I've also got some ideas of my own to develop. I'm scaling back the gigs - but I know I can always go back if I miss it more than I think I will.

Next up is the 25 October Why the Long Face? show and after that I'm performing at an Oxfam fundraiser in Wimbledon - Oxjam Laughs & Lyrics. See you there?

Laziest Blog Update Ever

2011-09-17T01:44:00.000-07:00

The very nice people over at http://comedyblogedy.com were kind enough to interview me this week.

I won't reproduce the whole interview here, seems a bit cheeky to paste their content onto my blog - protocol dictates I should direct you to their site, so do pop over to http://comedyblogedy.com/newacts/ where you'll find it.

You'll also find interviews with other new comedians, news, reviews and all sort of other stuff.

Thanks ever so.

Competition Time

2011-09-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

So - I'm in two standup competitions during October. On Sunday 2 October, I'm in the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian competition and then on Tuesday 11 October I'm in the heats of the Laughing Horse New Act of the Year.

When I first started doing standup I deliberately didn't go in for competitions straight away - I knew I had a lot to learn and I didn't want to launch straight into competitions before I thought I had a fighting chance. Even now, part of me thinks it's a little early but I'm doing it anyway. I still have an awful lot to learn, but I'm trying to see the competitions as just another part of the learning curve.

I've purposely avoided gong shows thus far, as I suspect they're simply too brutal for my still-relatively-fragile comedy confidence but a straightforward competition is something I feel better about taking part in.

There are plenty of arguments for and against comedy competitions, of course and no doubt others can argue both cases more expertly than me. You just have to accept them for what they are and not get too hung up on the inherent flaws in the concept.

Me, well, I'm secretly a bit competitive so I'll need to be careful not to let it get to me when I go out of the competitions, at whatever stage that might be. I have no particular expectations but feel much better equipped to take part now than I did a few months ago. We'll see.

What Time Do You Call This?

2011-09-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

It's been quite some time since I updated this. Sorry. We've now had 2 nights of our Why the Long Face? comedy night and it's been a great experience.

Both nights were sold out, mostly thanks to our friends & family who've come out in droves to support us. We've had "proper" punters in too though and it feels as if we're building an audience. The format we chose, approaching the best acts we'd seen and offering them longer spots than they usually get on the open mic circuit, seems to work well.

The acts have enjoyed it, the audiences seem to have gone away happy and we've had a blast. It's been great to do longer sets ourselves, of course and I'm really pleased with the way it's gone.

Running your own night is hard work but very rewarding. It's fantastic to run things the way you want, book who you want to watch and generally be in control. I'm a bit of a control freak and life at the very bottom rung of the comedy food chain doesn't generally offer you much in the way of influence over how gigs are run. This is a great way to put on shows the way we think they should be run and the feedback from everyone seems to have been good. The next show, on 22 September, is well on the way to selling out.

We should have dates for October, November and December confirmed very soon - so watch this space. Well, maybe not this space exactly. Just watch some space.

Our website www.gagsterscomedy.co.uk has been revamped. You can book tickets online and the site now works on mobile and Apple devices. We're on a roll!

Why the Long Face?

2011-08-22T05:56:00.000-07:00

This is a big week. On Thursday I am performing an (as yet unfinished) new set and on Friday night I am doing my first ten minute set.

Friday is the first night of Why the Long Face? - a new comedy night that I am running with the rest of the Gagsters Paradise group - Damien St John, Chris Fraser, Steph Peart and Simon Caine.

Most open mic comedy nights pack the bill with 15-20 comedians who have emailed the promoters and asked for open spots. As a result, the standard is very hit & miss and some nights can finish well after 11pm. Sometimes it can be a real long dark night of the soul. When literally anyone can rock up and perform there's always a risk factor and I doubt there's an open mic comedian out there who hasn't witnessed some pretty dreadful acts.

But, there are some excellent comedians out there on the circuit and we want to give them a really high-quality night at which to perform. So we're aiming to deliver something a bit different. Instead of taking bookings from people we've never seen, we have been approaching the best acts we've seen on the London circuit to perform.

The acts we've booked have won standup competitions, written for and broadcast on the radio, played at top venues all over the UK and made people laugh wherever they've gone. Our only worry is that they're going to make us look bad...

As if all that wasn't enough, there will also be the chance to win some fantastic Why the Long Face? merchandise and we're donating the proceeds from our opening night to the We Love London Appeal, which is raising money for people and communities affected by the UK riots.

We open on Friday 26 August at The Horse pub in Lambeth and the lineup features:

Harriet Kemsley
Joz Norris
Cara Cummings
Andrew West
Chris Fraser
Steph Peart
Ali Shahrukhi
Broady
Henry von Stifle

The night will be held together by our resident MC Damien St John

All the details can be found on our website, our Facebook page and on the Facebook event for the night. Our opening night is at the start of a bank holiday weekend - what better way to kick it off?

Why the Long Face? will also run on Thursday 8 September and Thursday 22 September. Come on down - you might even see a star of tomorrow.

You can even follow us on Twitter - there's no corner of the internet we don't reach!

Back in the Game!

2011-07-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

After three pretty mediocre gigs in a row, I was starting to wonder if my confidence was in a terminal state of decline. I can be dramatic like that.

Standup comedy is not the pastime of the well-adjusted character.

Still, I returned to the scene of a recent comedy death at the East Meets Jest comedy night a couple of weeks ago and had a great time. I'd done some frantic rewrites during the day (a really bad habit I can't seem to break) but they seemed to work and I think the set I'm currently using is much better as a result.

East Meets Jest is one of my favourite open mic nights, so dying there had been a particularly painful experience and I was glad for a chance to get back on the metaphorical horse and metaphorically exorcise my metaphorical demons.

The following week I was back at one of my other favourite nights at the Camden Head in Angel and thankfully my streak of good gigs was extended to two. That streak went to three at Electric Mouse on Monday. Phew.

In fairmess, I've still only done around 25 gigs, so to have had just 3 or 4 that have gone badly is not bad for someone of my (in)experience. You learn more form the bad gigs than the good ones and I think the last month or so has taught me a lot.

Electric Mouse was an interesting night, there was a small goup of French students there, sat at the front, who could only understand about 25% of what was going on and didn't get most of the pop culture references other comedians made. Not even the ones about Take That.

I was a little torn, as I speak a bit of French and have an old set that I wrote all about the year I spent living in Paris. I toyed with the idea of using it and even using the one joke I know in French. Most other acts made a lot of references to the group - stopping to ask if they were understanding the jokes etc - usually without much success. In the end, I chickened out of altering my set at the last minute and I chose not to worry too much about whether they'd understand me. There were 20-odd other people in the room, so I decided to focus on them instead. Thankfully it seemed to go well.

So, I've had 3 good gigs to cancel out the 3 bad ones - balance has been restored to my comedic universe.

I'm cutting back my gigging schedule over the next few weeks, it's been a testing month or so at work, home and in comedy and I need a bit of a rest. Next week is gig-free but I'll be working hard on preparations for the launch of Why the Long Face? a new comedy night I am running with the other 80% of the Gagster's Paradise group.

We launch on Thursday 26th August at the Horse bar in Lambeth North. All the details are on the Facebook page or the Gagster's Paradise website. Come on down. Please.

A Few Thoughts on Dying

2011-06-25T11:24:00.000-07:00

This week was comfortably the low point of my less-than-extensive comedy career to date. I had gigs on Monday and Tuesday, the first time I've booked gigs on consecutive nights. Monday's gig was tough - the venue was less than perfect for comedy, the room was roasting hot and the atmosphere was flat all night.

It was also a really loooong night, there were a LOT of acts and everyone seemed to struggle. I was on relatively early so although the audience's energy hadn't slumped too badly by the time I went on, my set wasn't particularly successful. I wasn't on top form, by any means, but it's been a long time since I felt a gig had gone so badly. The end of my set is the strongest part and there were laughs in the last minute or two, but I wasn't happy with my performance at all.

I don't think my confidence had time to recover before I went to the gig the next night. I was still feeling dejected after Monday's relative failure and wasn't in the best frame of mind to go for it again. The gig was at East Meets Jest, in Covent Garden, which is a brilliant night - one of my very favourites. There was a decent crowd and it was heartbreaking to fail at a place I really love going to.

I was on second, which is maybe a little early for a low-energy comic like me, but nonetheless it was probably the fewest laughs I've ever got. There were only 2 or 3 genuine laughs in my 5 minutes and the majority of the set fell totally flat. It's too nice a gig for anyone to be actively hostile, but the indifference was palpable. The rest of the night was great, I saw some really good comics do very well, but that only made me feel worse.

In hindsight, I just performed badly - I can't blame anything but my own performance after all. I was still down after Monday night and need to learn to pick myself back up quicker and not let a bad gig affect the next one.

All of this was not great preparation for the competition I'm taking part in next week....comedians generally have a fragile sense of self-esteem and since I came off stage on Tuesday mine has been on the floor. Still, you learn more from bad gigs than good ones.

There's an odd alchemy to standup. You can perform the same set in much the same way in 2 different places and get a totally different reactions. There are so many variables - the age/gender profile of the audience, what style of comedy people like, how well the MC has fired up the crowd - the list is endless and if a few of these things don't suit your material/style then it can be a long 5 minutes up there on stage.

I often wrestle with the dilemma of how much to adapt to the room. Part of me wants to be able to perform in front of any type of crowd, of course - but the stubborn part of me just thinks I should stick to my guns, accept that I won't be everyone's cup of tea and trust that over time I'll find my audience. I think I'll be wrestling with that dilemma for some time yet.

I've learned, I think, that my material generally is better suited to people around my own age or older. I'm 33 and my least successful gigs have always been when the room is full of students, or people in their early 20s. At the moment I'm too inexperienced to be confident about ditching the set I've painstakingly learned and adapt to the room - I have my 5 minutes in my head and I get on stage, say it and get off stage again. Clearly, the more adept comic can more or less be a different comedian to any crowd - adapting their material and their delivery to get the best reaction. Maybe I'll be able to do that one day.

I'm trying not to lose faith in the set I'm currently using. It's gone down well at around 10 gigs and pretty averagely at 2. That's not enough of a failure rate to justify rewriting it and people whose opinions I trust tell me good things about it. I'll keep going for now, tweak a few jokes that I'm not convinced are working and move on to next week.

Comedy Virgins and Electric Mouse

2011-06-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

So after a lovely relaxing week off, it was back to gigging this week. Another week, another 2 pretty enjoyable gigs. I sense some kind of turning point has passed. I am enjoying the gigs more and more now that the nerves are abating.

Until gig number 10 a couple of weeks ago, I’d be feeling sick with nerves from around 3pm on the day until I stepped off stage. Now, the familiar sicky feeling kicks in from time to time on the afternoon of a gig, but is nowhere near as powerful or as constant.

Tuesday night was spent at the excellent Comedy Virgins gig in Stockwell. I’ve been to the venue before for the Comedy Slappers night that runs at the same place. The room is great, there’s a proper stage, a big crowd and a generally nice supportive atmosphere. A few friends came out to support me, which always makes me feel better – some comics find it a bit off-putting to have people they know in the crowd, but I like it – I find it reassuring and I know that they will laugh, cheer and clap no matter how well or badly I do.

It was a good gig for me, people laughed at the right bits. I went back to the set I used at my very first gig, with a few tweaks. I was reasonably happy with its’ new form, but it does need a bit more work before I’ll use it again. It went down well though & l made it through to the “clap-off” at the end of the night, but didn’t win the tiny-but-coveted Cavendish Trophy awarded to the crowd’s favourite act. I have no complaints though, Josiah Norris was a well-deserved winner.

Last night I was at the Electric Mouse night in Angel, which is a much smaller gig than Comedy Virgins, mostly comedians with the odd faithful companion dragged along. They were short on numbers, so I had the chance to do a longer set than the usual 5 minutes that open mic merchants like me usually get. I did 8 minutes or so in the end and tried out some new material that worked quite well but still needs some work if it is going to stand along in its’ own right.

Mrs Westy kindly recorded my set, so when I can bring myself to watch it back we’ll see what lessons there are to learn. I’d wager they will be : slow down, slow down, lift your head up and slow down. We’ll see.

I think it’ll be a few days before I work up to that. I’m not a big fan of the sound of my own voice and even less of watching myself on video. Someone remind me again why I’m doing standup?...

That was the week....

2011-05-20T03:41:00.000-07:00

Gigging this week has been particularly enjoyable, although it wasn’t looking as if things were going to pan out that way 10 minutes before I went onstage Monday evening....

I was at a gig in Westminster, which I have been to before and always enjoyed. Like most open mic nights, the audience is usually quite small, mainly made up of comedians and supportive people they have dragged along to accompany them. On Monday though, one of the acts turned up with about 12 of his work colleagues in tow, who were out for a leaving do.

The promoter put him on right at the end of the night, so that the crowd he’d brought wouldn’t clear off after he'd been on and leave the gig half empty. They were pretty rowdy, albeit not necessarily in a mean-spirited, aggressive way. They just wanted to join in and have a bit of banter with the comedians. That can be pretty disruptive, though, especially for inexperienced comics still playing open mic nights– 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.

The compere and the first 3 acts on really struggled, they got interrupted, embroiled themselves in arguing with the crowd and generally died a bit of a comedy death. I was sat at the back watching, knew I was on after the interval (when they could sink a few more drinks) and was seriously considering bailing. I decided to stick it out (my self-destructive streak is getting wider and wider...)and tried to think of ways to engage them in as safe a way as I could.

I noticed that the comedians who tried to shut them up or ignore them got a harder time than those who took the banter on the chin and went with it. I’d hesitate to call it heckling exactly - when confronted with a poor comedian, they didn’t boo or do anything genuinely aggressive.

I also knew that the guy they’d come to see was on right after me – so I was the only thing standing between them and what they’d come for.

Chris Fraser was on just before me and handled them really well. He engaged them just enough so as not to totally lose his flow but enough to keep them happy. That gave me a much better idea what I had to do and when my turn came I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.

I always thought that if confronted with a lively audience I’d freeze, forget my material and generally be unable to cope with what they had to say. On this occasion at least that didn’t happen. I got them involved early on where I could (luckily the set I was doing had a few easy opportunities for that), I took it in good spirits when they pointed out my mistakes and doing that in the first few minutes meant I got through my prepared material for the last 4 minutes or so relatively uninterrupted.

I saw them afterwards in the pub upstairs and they were chatty and complimentary – they had been told off by the act who’d brought them along for being disruptive and genuinely seemed a bit horrified to think they’d been a bad audience.

Me, I was glad the gig panned out as it did - I learned loads from it, certainly much more than I would have done by just running through my regular set in front of 8 comedians and their plus ones.

Then on Wednesday I did the fundraising gig for Kilimanjaro Young Girls in Need...it was great fun. I really enjoyed having the chance to perform in front of a “proper” paying audience for a change. Dom Gittins opened up the comedy section wonderfully, Steph Peart and Sam Hannah were both fantastic as well. Funny, charming and generally inspiring. It's lovely to gig with friends & I'm lucky to know people who I enjoy watching and who make me want to get better.

Special mention has to go to Damien St John who was compering a gig for the first time and did brilliantly. Compering is a tough job and I have seen plenty of seemingly experienced comperes be shockingly bad at it – Damien seemed to be a natural. He was funny, likeable, built us up nicely when bringing us on, left us with a lovely warm room to perform to and generally made our job as acts much much easier.

More importantly than any of our egos though (if such a thing were possible), the event raised almost £1, 000 for the charity - and if you go to their website you'll see just how much they can achieve for that kind of money.

So it’s been quite a week – by far the most enjoyable of my short comedy career thus far. It’s a week off for me now and then back into the breach on Tuesday 31^st at the Comedy Virgins show in Stockwell.

Kilimanjaro Young Girls in Need (KYGN)

2011-05-04T04:51:00.000-07:00

On 18 May, I am performing at a fundraiser for Kilimanjaro Young Girls in Need (KYGN).

KYGN is a locally run NGO in Tanzania which enables local girls to access education. Many of the girls are orphans and a few have HIV. Without this organisation rural girls living in desperate poverty near Kilimanjaro would not receive an education. Its a small project but its making a vital difference to the local area.

The money from the evening (a heady mix of music and comedy) will go towards guaranteeing the immediate future for educating the girls and ensuring they receive regular food and clean water. KYGN plan to expand into a community centre which will educate the villagers on important topics like health.

Entrance is £10 (tickets on the door) and it's at the Horse Pub, 124 Westminster Bridge Road, London, SE1 7XG - it's 3 mins walk from Lambeth North and 7 mins from Waterloo.

Doors open at 6.30pm, the show starts at 7.30pm. Please come along if you can.

Full details can be found on the Facebook Event Page

All Quiet on the Westy Front

2011-04-10T15:27:00.000-07:00

So, there have been very few blog posts recently. This is because I have been doing my very first gigs as a standup and the demands of a full-time job (as shoddily as I do it), writing, booking gigs and the actual gigging have left very little time.

What time I’ve had has been spent trying to make sure my long-suffering, patient and supportive fiancée hasn’t forgotten what I look like, worrying about how little new material I have been writing and panicking about whether the few gigs I’ve done to date have been any good.

I got into this comedy lark by signing up for the Amused Moose “Stand up & Deliver” course. It was a fantastic experience, culminating in my very first gig, the course Showcase which you can see here, should you wish to do so.

Among my fellow students on the course were some fantastically funny people who I hope to be bragging about knowing for many years to come. Long after they have stopped taking my calls. I hope among the group there’s at least one star of tomorrow – so (in alphabetical order to avoid offence) look out for : Pattie Brewster, Broady, Simon Caine, Dave Crane, Chris Fraser, Dom Gittins, Tony Hamilton-Shannon, Samantha Hannah, Alex Hawkins, Ben Howard, Siobhan Hyams, Judith Kemi, Mabbs, Maddie Marx, Gavin Saunders, Natalie Scott & Damien St John.

Simon has been writing about being a new comedian on his Diary of a Comic blog – and many of his experiences are similar to mine. The Showcase was a pretty extraordinary first gig, but the first steps into the open mic circuit since have been quite the crash back down to earth.

As valuable as the stage time is and as supportive as the organisers and other acts can be, the rush just isn't the same. They are small gigs (15-20 people max) where most of the audience are comedians who are also on the bill – they are fairly muted in terms of laughter and audience feedback (really they are - it’s not just me. I'm sure of it).

I wasn't sure when I started the course whether I wanted to be a comedian or just concentrate on writing in some form or another. I'm still not 100% sure, but I promised myself I'd do a decent number of gigs before I made that decision. That number tends to vary depending on my perception of how well the last gig has gone.

I think around the end of June I'll have a better idea where, if anywhere, my comedy future lies.

For now, I'll be writing more blog posts here when I can and you can follow my activities on Facebook and Twitter.

So, please come along to any of my gigs (listed over there on the right) if you can - and watch out for my fellow comedy graduates. If you spy their names on the bill somewhere, do go along - you won't be disappointed.

Driving Mr West

2011-03-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

People always look at me like I’m weird when they find out I don’t drive. But when you get to know me, you find out that's one of the least weird things about me.

Learning to drive was never that important to me – all my friends were out there on their 17^th birthday having their first lessons and I appreciate that to them driving meant independence and freedom. It was never like that for me. I started learning, but I took to it like a duck to tightrope walking. It was plainly apparent straight away that me and driving went together about as well as online forums and reasoned, constructive debate.

I always found it really hard to concentrate for the full 2 hours of a lesson. I was fine for about 45 minutes but then for 15 minutes it was like a Worthing edition of Grand Theft Auto – I’d be going the wrong way round mini-roundabouts, running red lights, stopping to beat up drug dealers. I know they’re all only minor faults on the test, but they knocked my confidence.

I always seem to feel the need to say “I don’t drive” though, of course what I really mean is - I can’t. I seem to need to dress it up as a lifestyle choice - I might as well go about saying “I don’t breathe underwater”, “I don’t turn base objects into gold” or “I don’t interact well with other humans” Truth is, all these things are a matter of having no ability, not having no inclination.

Well, apart from the one about other humans. Ugh. Have you SEEN other people?

Fortunately my girlfriend can drive. She’s a good driver, I think. I've no real benchmark of course, but we usually get where we going and 9 times out of 10 we get there alive.

She does get very angry behind the wheel though. She get really angry at other drivers – or as they’re called in our car “that fucking useless bunch of twat faced fuckwits”.

I don’t mind, except she sometimes expects me to participate in her road rage. If someone cuts us up, she’ll scream something like “Did you see that? Give that bitch in the blue Audi the finger”.

I just can’t do that. I might just about be able to throw the offending motorist a withering look as if to say – “well, that’s very disappointing” or if especially riled I could compose a strongly worded letter to the local paper. There’s simply no way, however, I could muster the kind of anger needed to shout and yell and swear as she does so freely. Not even to someone in a metal box from within the relative safety of a different metal box.

As well as the British do impotent rage, I prefer to keep all mine bottled up. That’s just how I roll.

Burlesque

2011-03-05T01:59:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went to a Burlesque show with the future Mrs West....entirely her idea and she loved every minute of it. It was the Hurly Burly Show.

Now, I should be clear that by default I essentially have not a shred of joy in my heart, so being left cold, worried and confused by things that other people enjoy is not a new experience for me - but the show left me slightly troubled by the gender politics of it all.

During and after the show I was left with a whole bunch of uncomfortable feelings – and none of them were in my trousers.

A swift Googling of the subject reveals a whole heap of articles and posts discussing the issue far more eloquently and better-informed than I can manage here.

Burlesque, or Neo-Burlesque as this show is, apparently, seems to have travelled a very long way from its origins, which infallible information resource Wikipedia, defines thusly:

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.^[1] The word derives from the Italian burlesco, which itself derives from the Italian burla – a joke, ridicule or mockery.^[2]

Burlesque overlaps in meaning with caricature, parody and travesty, and, in its theatrical sense, with extravaganza, as presented during the Victorian era.^[3]"Burlesque" has been used in English in this literary and theatrical sense since the late 17th century. It has been applied retrospectively to works of Chaucer and Shakespeare and to the Graeco-Roman classics.^[4]

No doubt I’m over-sensitive to the gender politics out of middle-class-white-male guilt and the terror of being accused of some (any) kind of –ism, but it seems that any legitimate purpose that the art form had has long since been drowned out by the other elements and no matter how much anyone might argue to the contrary, any notion that neo-burlesque has managed to cling on to any of those serious undertones just isn’t true.

It’s just stripping, albeit with higher production values. No matter how sparkly the costumes, how expensive the shoes and how “fun” and “cheeky” all involved say it is, it’s still just stripping. Right?

Well, maybe.

The spectrum of opinion I’ve some across in the various articles I’ve read about it just leave me even more confused, to be honest.

Have a read for yourself, here are a few I’ve picked out. As usual, the Comments sections are as enlightening and entertaining as the articles...

http://thethingis.co.uk/2010/11/29/the-burlesque-show-is-almost-over/

http://nymag.com/nymetro/nightlife/sex/columns/nakedcity/9210/

http://badfeministuk.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/is-burlesque-dead-or-just-boring-kitty-stryker-investigates/

I may not understand how on earth over the past few decades men have sold the idea to women that this is all fine, but the vast majority of last night’s audience was female and they were clearly having a whale of a time.

All that said, if you’ve never seen someone set their nipple tassles on fire and swing them around like fury, you haven’t lived.

What Has the Universe Ever Done for You?

2011-02-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

It's easy to feel as if the whole world is against you. It's not. It's against me.

That said, there are always things to be thankful for. Here are mine.

1) Google Maps and GPS on my phone. Now I need never get lost again, despite having the worst sense of direction in the world. Once up on a time, a chicken with its head cut off could get from Marylebone High Street to Covent Garden faster than me. Not anymore. In your face, headless chickens.

2) My blue cords, for being incredibly comfy despite making me look a bit like a geography teacher who might have unhealthy sexual ambitions.

3) Last night’s chicken chow mein – for being the breakfast of kings.

4) Rodney Hyde. For rendering me only the second most bullyable kid in Year 9. His ability to run fast, his extraordinary pain threshold and slowness to learn meant that he drew at least 75% of all available bullying at school.

5) Cricket. For giving me one sport at which I wasn’t totally inept at school. Even if it was cricket.

6) My parents’ divorce during the first few years of my life and being an only child – for giving my sense of self-worth just enough fragility for me to endlessly seek the approval of strangers. Without that, I'd never have embarked on this comedy adventure.

7) The lack of male pattern baldness in my family. For someone already quite generously furnished in the forehead department, it’s one less thing to worry about.

8) My male friends’ wives and girlfriends. For keeping such a tight rein on them that they are never allowed out binge drinking anymore. So they never get to lead me astray and I never have to spend two days in bed wanting to die. After 4 drinks.