I am on my way to a funeral, so I do the gig in a black suit. Big comedians doing big gigs give a lot of thought to their on stage get-up, and rightly so. You can put an audience off entirely by what you look like, as I found when I had to do a couple of gigs with a moustache a couple of years ago. I used to see how long I could go without mentioning it - the longer I left it, the greater the sigh of relief from the crowd. Audiences, perhaps surprisingly, can be polite too.
Tonight's gig is one of the smallest rooms in comedy. An audience of 20 packs the room completely. It's just round the corner from Leicester Square tube in London. It used to be called Leicester Square Comedy Club, but I don't think it is any more. It's one of those pubs whose upstairs room has comedy several nights a week, run by several different people, and each night has a different name.
This one has also been called 'Follies' and 'Caricatures', though those nights have died out too. These days it's sometimes called the 99 Club, but only midweek, and today is Monday. So I don't know what the gig's called. Luckily, it really couldn't matter less.
I'm trying out some new stuff, and re-working some old stuff. When doing new material, it always helps to have no other variables, so you know how good the material is. You try out some old jokes that you know work, and gauge the audience's response. That way you have a calibration against which to measure the response to the newer stuff. Of course it's a needlessly scientific approach when they stare at you in silence - that's a result that doesn't need a control experiment.
They like it, for the most part. But I'm left with the worry that all they were applauding was the suit. It is a very nice suit.
