Rob Gilroy: Making A Stand #24

The other week I did something different.

Different to what, you might be wondering. And you’d be absolutely right to wonder that.

Without context that sentence has no real bearing on anything. It was rather foolish of me to start with it, to be honest.

I think I was going for dramatic, something that would create an air of intrigue in the reader (that’s you), something that would draw them (you) into this tangled web of mystery that I (me) am writing.

On second thoughts, all I’ve actually achieved is confusion and an opening gambit that now goes on for a full paragraph.

When I say ‘different’ (see above) I’m referring to my act; I tried out something new on stage the other night.

I’m not talking about a new joke or a slightly tweaked bit of material; I’m talking about a whole new character.

Oh, I do character comedy, if you didn’t know. Which you should if you’re reading this column, it’s kind of what it’s all about.

I tried a new character, which meant I had to write a whole ten minute set of new material.

Not just new material, but material with a different world view, a different way of speaking and a different approach to just about everything.

If you’re a comedian who, for one reason or another, decides not to dress weirdly, put on a different accent and attempt to fool the audience into thinking you’re actually someone else, then when you want to try some new material you have a pretty solid base with which to start.

You’ll already know the sort of things you want to say, you’ll know how your voice sounds when you say them and, if you’re really lucky, you’ll be confident enough to know that your personality should carry you through, even if the material is absolutely dreadful.

With character comedy; it’s not that simple.

Not only do you have to come up with a new set of material that could, very well, die on it’s arse, but you have to come up with an entirely new person to deliver those dubious jokes.

I bet God didn’t worry about making people funny when he started moulding them out of the religious-equivalent to Playdough.

OK, maybe he made them funny looking – a crooked nose here, a hair-lip there, a dodgy knee, a weak bladder – but I bet he didn’t agonise over their ability to do a pull back and reveal.

The big question is – not the big question, that has to do with the meaning of life and I’m not qualified to discuss that but I bet it has something to do with being vegetarian – my big question is – did this new character and his new material work?

For the most part – yes, it did. For the other parts – no, it did not.

The reason? I could have done with more jokes. Quite useful when you’re trying to make people laugh, really.

I felt the character and what he was taking about were good and interesting, however there weren’t enough jokes in there to keep people laughing.

A three dimensional comedy character is a great thing, but without the jokes then it’s technically just a person and there’s nothing funny about people.

Not a thing.

It’s always good to revisit your gigs and attempt to decipher why things worked or, more often than I care to admit, why things didn’t work.

It helps you get better at being funny and it’s also a good way of giving your self-confidence the once over.

The problem with this character, I think, is that too many of the laughs relied on awkward moments or faux pas.

There’s nothing wrong with pas – faux or otherwise – but the reason this stopped the character being as funny as it could have been is because, in my opinion, those types of jokes work best once the character is established.

If the audience have a firm hold of who they’re watching, then you can play around with saying and doing things which are odd or outlandish.

If you start the character off with those jokes – as I did with this one – it tends to alienate the audience very quickly, in which case they’ll struggle to warm to them.

It’s certainly something I’ve learnt and which I hope to rectify before his next outing.

However, another thing struck me when I looked back at the gig – one of the things I noticed was; the character seemed very finite.

Before I expand upon this point, I would like to say that this is the first time I’ve ever used the word ‘finite’ in a sentence and I’m very proud of myself.

I didn’t even have to look it up in ‘synonyms’. And I just spelt ‘synonyms’ right first time – I’m on fire!

By ‘finite’ I mean that I couldn’t really see where to take the character.

While I tried very hard to make him rounded and believable, and he does have a variety of topics he can discuss, something made me feel that I couldn’t take him very far before getting bored with him.

As a character comedian this is the worst thing that can happen to you – with the possible exception of the fancy dress shop running out of Richard Gere wigs.

Now, that would be a disaster.

I think one of the reasons for this is that I find myself in the position of wanting to say more on stage.

Talk about things I haven’t been able to, talk about them in ways I haven’t been able to – a general sense of wanting to be more on stage.

And it’s with this realisation – and the gentle nagging of some close friends whom I trust completely (unless it was in a life or death situation) – that I have decided to try doing stand up comedy as myself.

And now I’ve put it in words, I have to go through with it.

For updates on how this experiment goes – watch this space. Not constantly, that would be excessive.

Rob can be seen as part of Jolly Mixtures at the Hull Comedian of the Year Final on Friday 27 September at the New Clarence in Hull.