It’s an exciting moment in the day of the average comic’s life when the phone rings and there is a booker or agent on the other end of the line. One minute you’re sitting on the sofa, dreaming of the career you’ll never have. Suddenly, you’ve been promised a sweet gig. Maybe some TV, a tour of the Far East sponsored by a big corporation or a five-year slot opening for Tommy Tiernan in Vicar Street.
First things first. There’s the quick quip exchange with the caller. You make the funnier quip, they laugh. You’re the funny one. It’s all going swimmingly. Then comes the availability check.
“What are you doing on October 21?” they ask. You never, ever, say what you’re doing right off. What sort of loser are you? Even Denis Leary, who’s shooting three movies and a pilot for Fox on that day, doesn’t come out and say, “Sorry, man. I’m not available”.
Because he doesn’t know what the voice is going to offer. It could be something better. Or it could be something just as good. In which case you want to know about it. Because, if you can’t do it, then the competition will be doing it and we don’t like the idea of the competition doing something we could be doing even if we couldn’t be doing it. Paranoia is the name of the game: this is stand-up comedy, mister.
Sometimes though, in the words of Doctor Millar: “You’re not paranoid. You’re right”.
Cos, sometimes, The Voice says: “I have this gig. It’s a college gig”.
Now you’re in a pickle. You could have been ‘resting’ for a month. In other words: you really need the money and you should take whatever The Voice is offering, even if it’s 50 quid for dressing up as a tomato and handing out leaflets on Grafton Street.
But you still have to think for a moment about this. It’s a student gig. This means, quite frankly, that anything could happen.
Not that you have anything against students. Hell, you were a student once. Actually, come to think of it, you were a bit of a cross between a pretentious git and a dumb feck.
Back then, time was a way of measuring daytime TV schedules and money was a way of measuring subsidised pints.
But you wouldn’t say you actually hated yourself. Indeed, a stand-up comedian of whatever age is typically developmentally arrested in what is very much a student state.
We have same over-inflated sense of possibility. The same tenuous connection to feelings of responsibility. Our monthly incomes are the same and we are just as good at meeting deadlines.
One to one, you would probably get on pretty well. Provided, of course, that you steer clear of non-ironic references to such archaeological topics as, say, the music of the ‘80s. However, as a group, students are potentially very dangerous indeed.
Some student gigs, it’s true, go terrifically well. It’s important to get them early if you want this to happen – early in the day and preferably early in their academic career.
The ideal student gig, from a comic’s point of view, is in a lecture theatre at 2pm in front of a bunch of freshers just out of secondary school.
They aren’t (too) drunk, they still have vestigial deference and discipline when arranged in rows in a room and looking at someone who appears to be an adult of some sort.
If you curse a bit and even lightly skirt the topic of sex, whilst focussing on drink for the most part, you are likely to emerge a midday hero.
All too often however, you will fall foul of Student Organisation. The descent into this oxymoronic dystopia starts subtly and is hidden behind the cheerful enthusiasm of the society committee member who greets you at the entrance to the Halls Of Learning in question.
It’s great to see you. Unfortunately things are running a bit late. Also there was a bit of a screw-up because there was a double booking of the room and Ógra Fianna Fail are just finishing up their tequila and boxty evening.
But the Metaphysical Society, your employers, have managed to get a keg of Smirnoff Ice and there’s no charge in to the gig. So hopefully loads of people will come to get pissed for free.
Me: Won’t that mean a lot of people standing at the back drinking and talking and nobody watching the stage?
Roger the Secretary of the Metaphysical Society: Stage?
Me: No stage?
Roger: Well, Lorcan could get a table from the ping pong society. Have you worked with a net before?
Me: It’s okay. Forget the stage. I guess we’ll work with the microphone stuck in a corner then.
Roger: Microphone?
Me: I’ve been working for a few years, but I have yet to perfect a direct patching of my larynx into the PA system. So yeah, a microphone would be peachy.
Roger: Oh right. Em, PA? Like speakers and shit?
Me: Like that, yes.
Roger: Erm. I think India has a beat box in rooms…
I’m a pro, so we proceed. There are 12 people in fancy dress dismantling an ordered-in pizza like hyenas reducing half a wildebeest to it’s skeletal fundamentals.
I swear I notice baked beans among the rich cornucopia atop the Italian delicacy. They are a mixture of whatever goth is called this year with a smattering of ex-head girls in pinker habits.
At the back of the room, a visiting contingent from the GAA Club seems to attempting to open the keg of Ice with its teeth and a hurley.
Floating above my body, I watch myself pityingly bash my way through my time to indifference, obscure heckles and the strange, intense stare of the inevitable thin and maladjusted Comedy Geek.
Already, I am wondering how to get past his analysis of proceedings, his eager questions about my knowledge of Bill Hicks and his own admirable stand-up ambitions.
I wish him well, but I really hope he leaves me alone as I need to leave here with a sliver of confidence and self-respect intact.
We reach the end and the rabble watch dispassionately as I gather my bits and pieces to go. Roger ignores me as he chats to some hopelessly out of his league ex-head girl. Finally, he feels me hovering at his shoulder.
Roger: Oh. Right. That went grand didn’t it? I supposed you’re used to dying on your arse?
Me: Whatever. Money please.
Roger: No problem. Just ask Fiachra the treasurer.
Me: Where’s he?
Roger: Why, here he comes now.
Grinning lopsidedly, staring with dread intent through jam-jar spectacles and fishing a grubby society cheque like a gaoler’s key out of his overcoat, the Comedy Geek approaches.
Time to pucker up and give Hicks.