I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey (24 page)

Not every gig goes well. For example, I did a show in Portsmouth Jongleurs a few years ago during which I inadvertently started a race riot. Jongleurs is a very well known and successful comedy club chain. They used to be everywhere and for a long time they were the bread and butter for a jobbing comic. I am grateful to the team there for the huge amount of effort, support and work that they gave to not only me but many other comics that passed through. Some of those comics are now household names.

However, Jongleurs was very well known for attracting a tough crowd due to the disco that followed the comedy. Hundreds of hen and stag parties frequented it and munched down on the legendary fried chicken platters as they drank jugs of beer. The comedy was a precursor to a night of over-drunk single men dancing to very loud ‘Billy Jean', hoping to pull in the magic hour between two thirty and three in the morning. That time of the night when your brain is computing the amount you've spent, the number of drinks you've quaffed and the attractiveness of the girls still at the venue according to the law of diminishing returns.

So I went on stage and did my best material. I used to do a bit where I'd pretend to be my dad and talk to the audience in a thick Nigerian accent. Everyone was having fun except for one table near the front. They were obviously a family as there was a mum, a nan, a man and his girlfriend. As a stand-up, if someone isn't laughing and everyone else is, you naturally fixate on them. I was determined to make them laugh and focused on the younger man who seemed particularly morose.

‘You, sir, wearing glasses. Have you found Jesus? The Lord gave you vision at a limited rate. You defy him by wanting to see more?'

Other people in the venue were definitely laughing, but I was getting nothing from him. After a few more prods, his mum piped up and said, ‘Save your breath. He doesn't talk to niggers.'

I was gobsmacked and I braced myself for the audience reaction. Thankfully, the chorus of boos and disapproval was deafening. But the mood in the room had definitely changed. I could feel all eyes on me and I could either walk off stage angry or deal with it. I decided to engage him in the only way I knew and so I said, still in my Nigerian accent, ‘Why say that? You could be my son. Well, obviously not. You're a white boy and this isn't prison.'

To which he replied: ‘Learn how to speak properly!'

In my most clipped voice, I said, ‘I think you'll find I can speak better English than you and your father's father.' I didn't want this to escalate any further and was about to call it a night when an Indian guy in the front row decided to take over my cause for me.

‘You ignorant bastard!' He threw a full jug of beer over the offending man's table. I raised my hands to diffuse the situation but suddenly there were tables and chairs flung everywhere and I watched in horror as two hundred people fled for the tiny emergency exit.

I had the best view of all because, although I'd unleashed the situation, I was strangely immune to the riot that was erupting. The factions remained in the audience, fighting it out amongst themselves. That was until the mother of the guy in question came running up to the stage and started shouting at me, ‘You don't know what you've done. He just got out of jail on licence this morning. Now he'll go back in. I hope you're proud of yourself!'

I didn't know what to say and thanked God when another comedian who'd been on the bill, named Ava Vidal, came out to save me. Ava is a stunningly beautiful and very tall black woman who takes no shit. What's more she used to be a prison guard and so knows how to do a chokehold when the occasion demands it. She ran on-stage and managed to keep the four feet around us free from mad racists before bundling me to a safe distance.

‘Shall I get her, Steve?' she asked nonchalantly.

‘Erm. No. Do you think I should go out and finish my set?'

‘I don't think so, Steve. Thank God I've already been on. Who would want to follow that?'

When you're on tour you've got to learn to take the bad with the good. One night you can be playing the Hammersmith Apollo and staying in a fancy hotel and the next you can be playing an obscure town in Norfolk and staying at a B&B. But it's sometimes the smaller towns that have the best crowds. In fact, the last time I played King's Lynn I was actually saved from having to spend the night in my car because of the kindness of an audience member.

King's Lynn's got a beautiful theatre called the Corn Exchange in the main square and it was full that night. My production team were booked into a hotel, but the show had gone so well that some of the locals invited us out for a drink afterwards. I was on a high after the gig and so I agreed, and one dodgy Wetherspoon pub, a kebab shop and an unmentionable club later, we were the last ones out on a Saturday night in King's Lynn. In London you never get to an hour when there's nothing left to do but in King's Lynn that hour is about two in the morning and so we decided to head to the hotel.

One of the new friends we'd made from the gig offered to help us find the hotel, but when we got there we found that it was already closed for the night. Our slightly inebriated minds took a moment to let this fact sink in. Having expected to head there straight after the gig, we'd not checked in and had no keys to the building. After half an hour of banging on the door, my production manager started looking worried.

‘I can't believe they've locked us out!' I shouted with one more bang on the door.

Just then our new friend said, ‘You don't come from around here. This door may look locked to you Londoners. But it's not King's Lynn locked.' And with that, he used his shoulder to barge the front door. The next thing you knew three men were standing looking slightly panicked (probably) and slightly unsteady on our feet in the foyer of the hotel.

I had foolishly hoped that we'd find a friendly (if deaf) night porter on the other side of the door with a set of keys in his hand who just hadn't heard our loud bangings. Unfortunately, our troubles weren't over and, although we'd made it into the hotel, we still couldn't find our room or a key to get into it. We sat forlornly in the empty bar and my production manager set to calling all the other hotels in the area, but they all claimed to be full. Once more we resigned ourselves to sleeping in the car and started to discuss who would take the front seat for an uncomfortable night. However, once more, out new friend came to the rescue.

He said, ‘What are you looking so miserable for?'

‘We're stranded.'

He went to the bar, pulled two pints, and said, ‘You're not King's Lynn stranded!' And he promptly left the building.

‘Hang on. He said we're not stranded and then he totally abandoned us here,' said my production manager before taking a sip of his beer. ‘Oh well.'

We were still sitting and miserably drinking our beers when we heard a racket and our new mate emerged looking very pleased with himself. ‘I'm back! Drink up! I've got a plan!'

We went back outside with him and he'd brought a car. ‘Get in!'

‘Here. Are you sure you've got a licence?' asked the production manager. ‘I don't want you doing anything illegal.'

‘It's not King's Lynn illegal!' he announced and we all hopped into the back of the car and he drove us back to his parents' place. Hurrah! Saved! We'd be able to bed down for the night and maybe get breakfast in the morning too. I readied myself for a good night's sleep as he parked up and led us into his back garden. ‘Here we go. We can sleep here.'

I looked around and the yard was covered in sheds, overflowing with rubbish, and a couple of dilapidated and rusty-looking caravans.

‘Sleep where?'

‘In the caravans. I've got the keys.'

‘Hang on. Sleeping in a caravan. Isn't that a bit trampy?' I asked

‘It's not King's Lynn trampy!'

That night we slept very comfortably until his dad came out at eight in the morning with the dogs to check who'd broken into his back yard. So there you go. You never know what you're going to encounter in this job. One day it can be luxury and the next day it can be a caravan. But who cares? As long as you meet nice people on the road I'm not precious.

We're lucky in the UK because we have the best city in the world for live comedy. London's good, but I'm talking about Edinburgh, which hosts the world's greatest arts festival. When I first went up to Edinburgh in the mid-nineties it was during a time when success at the Fringe could make a big difference to your career. My first experience was doing the Big Value Comedy Showcase at the Cafe Royal with great mates Will Smith, Carey Marx, John Gordillo and Lee Mack. A couple of years later I thought it might be worth a go doing a solo show up there so I secured a 7 p.m. slot in the Pleasance Courtyard and gamely took the coach up with all my stuff. When I stepped out of the bus station into the New Town at seven in the morning, I was amazed at how stunning the city is. The New Town is all Georgian terraced houses built around grand squares on a beautiful grid system. The Old Town is all gothic spires and winding cobbled streets more suited to a horse and cart than tired feet.

I had a room to perform in, but not a room to stay in because Edinburgh accommodation rates normally triple in the month of August. Thankfully, my friend Gavin had told me that I could stay at his place, but since he wasn't arriving for a day or two, I'd booked into a youth hostel. It wasn't an eight-bedroom dorm – I splashed out – OK, yes, it was a four-person. It was pretty grim, but I figured it was just for a little while and I could handle it. As a jobbing comic, I was in fact quite used to making hundred-mile journeys for £50 and sleeping in cars or on couches to make ends meet without complaint.

I don't want to sound precious, but I'll never stay in a youth hostel again. I once asked Arthur Smith, who's been going up to the Fringe since it began, why everyone came up year after year and he said, ‘Well. It's not for the food, deep friend haggis will never be a big draw. It's not for the drink, Tennent's, although that doesn't stop us from drinking it.' He pondered. ‘There's always been a lot of sex.' And he was right. At least there was in the hostel I was staying in.

I'd gone out for a couple of welcome-to-town drinks with some friends, but I had decided to be sensible and made it back at a reasonable hour. One other person in the dorm room was not so civic minded and at about midnight a really drunk bloke stumbled in, and he'd brought a date with him. Let me ask one thing of you. When you've met someone nice and they say to you ‘Your place or mine?' and ‘their place' is a dorm filled with three other people please just take their number and suggest meeting the next day for coffee. Don't go back with them to have awkward sex on a bunk bed and keep everyone else up listening to your performance.

In fact it was a lot like a really shit Fringe show because it lasted for an hour and everyone was praying for it to end after five minutes. We got to listen to him struggle to perform in a hostile room for what seemed like an eternity. When you're making love and it lasts for an hour and you're sober then that's great. When you're drunk 90 per cent of the time it's because Cupid's arrow can't find its target and the bow is just getting chafed. When he'd finally finished, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief; I got up, opened the door and said, ‘Fuck me! After that
I
need a fucking cigarette.' And didn't return.

If you've been to Edinburgh you may have noticed that all the different rooms at the main venues have quirky creative names (so you think) like ‘Cellar' ‘Closet' or ‘Dungeon'. When you get there you realize that these are just descriptions of the rooms themselves and very accurate they are too. There are so many comics trying to find places to perform that every broom closet, gym and basement gets converted into theatrical spaces.

My show that year was in the Pleasance ‘Attic' and it was literally a hot and sweaty attic up a set of winding back stairs that you needed a map to find. I was incredibly excited on the night of my first performance. My name was up on the wall, I'd had fliers printed and my announcer called out my name. ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Please go wild and crazy for Mr Stephen K. Amos.' I leaped on stage, arms outstretched, ready to accept the applause; I looked down and there were five people in the audience. Four lost-looking punters and a reviewer.

The show was a character piece, during which I played four people – it was so traumatic that DJ Bug-Eye is the only character that I can actually remember. I'd not thought it out very well and so during the three costume changes I had to make I hadn't come up with a convincing in or out for me to get off-stage. Nor indeed had I brought up any music to play during these frequent intervals. So the audience sat in awkward silence as I rummaged around behind a curtain putting on wigs and jackets.

Unless you're very lucky, your first solo Edinburgh run is bound to be an uphill struggle. I was desperate for people to come and see my honed show, but I resolved that if fewer people turned up than could fit easily around a pub table then we'd just go to the bar downstairs instead. Edinburgh isn't a big city, but they have the most comedy savvy audience in the world and millions of pubs. With so many hundreds of thousands of people seeing shows and talking about it over a drink afterwards, what really makes or breaks a show is the word-of-mouth effect.

Getting a good buzz going around your show is vital, but when you first go up to Edinburgh you think it's all about getting that elusive review. The local paper publishes dozens of them every day and they even had a Page of Shame, which was a page of one-star shows of total terribleness. But there are so many reviewers up there that one year a very successful comic friend of mine managed to get a five, a four, a three, a two and a one star review all in the same season. That's why I have a never got my head around reviewers. People who think they can publish a critique of an art form they generally have never attempted themselves. As Andy Warhol said, ‘Don't count the stars, count the column inches.'