Gig Report - Wednesday Nov 25th

This week's 5 Minutes of Fame was guest compered by the fantastic Sean Brightman, so I got another chance to give Ian from Human Resources an outing.

This was a particularly good week, with a crowded room and a really warm audience. After a couple of sets as Ian, I was getting used to the structure of the material (and my timing seems to be getting better, but still room for improvement), so I started playing around with it a little, replacing the odd gag with something tailored to the audience, which I think worked quite well, and I can probably do more of as time goes on. The real challenge will be real ad-libbing and audience interaction in character: something to aim for.

Again, it was interesting to see how different audiences react to different things. Tonight's audience were a little cold to the long list of deviant sexual practices in the middle of the routine - although a few people sheepishly admitted to me later that this was their favourite part - and the biggest laughs were probably from the most cerebral gags. Which was a surprise, but its nice to know the routine has enough variety to get such different reactions at different times. I'd think of a good metaphor for this, but the best I could come up with was Marmite: whose love-hate reactions are far more reliable and have little to do with what it is spread on (although I'm sure a few Marmite haters enjoy Twiglets).

And now I'm off on holiday, hurrah!