There are more gigs in Soho than there are in most countries. Which is why the London comedian is so often doubling up - doing more than one gig a night. Many top London clubs will have suspiciously similar line-ups. You might assume that one of them is lying. But more likely, it's just that the acts listed will be scooting past each other as they swap locations mid-evening.
I double up sometimes. I tripled up once. I opened in Hammersmith, did a quick spot in Soho, then hopped back in the tube to close in Shoreditch. Is it a record, Norris?
It can be tricky to do more than one full-length spot in an evening. After 16 minutes of your second spot of the evening, you can get confused. You might refer back to something you said to a different audience, and wonder why they're not making the link.
And it reinforces in your mind the very great difference in the experiences of the performer and the audience. One of the tasks of the comedian is to convince the audience that what they are seeing is unique and spontaneous, even when you stick to the script. They need to believe they are watching something happen for the first and only time.
This is normally an illusion, though the illusion seems more cynical when you do it twice in an evening. But a few years of doing this inures you to any worries about the difference between your experience and the audience's. It should be different - they're on a night out, you're at work.
This evening I am opening in Leicester Square and closing at Piccadilly Circus. The sets are a good hour or two apart, and the walk takes five minutes tops. So it's not one of London's more hair-raising double-ups. From my point of view, it's a pretty easy task, mainly because the gigs are such very different jobs.
At the first club, the compere's introduction was pretty short, because of pressure of time. This means that when I go on, the audience still needs to be whipped into shape a little. There is a drunken hen party who need to have it explained to them that their contributions are not welcome, and that the other 200 people in the venue agree with me, not them. Another contributor is dealt with more gently. But she is left with the lesson that heckling in one's second language is not often wise.
The second gig is the antidote to the crowd control of the first. A smaller room, with about 30 very happy people packed in: this is boutique comedy. I am the last act on, so they have probably seen at least seven comics already this evening. I am wary about talking to the audience - at least along conventional "where are you from?" lines - as I cannot guarantee they haven't all been asked those questions seven times already this evening.
My conversation with the audience leads us down less predictable lines, and the reaction tells me they are not tired of being directly addressed. Much of the set is unique and spontaneous. And I manage to convince them the rest of it is. Stand-up can seem to be all about improvisation. In fact it is about creating the illusion of improvisation, and covering the joins.
