Rob Gilroy: Making A Stand #41

Listen up you digital radio katz!

Got any plans for your Friday nights at 11pm? Sleep, you say? Move over granddad and/or grandma, down that Horlicks and get out of my slight. (Don’t down it too quickly though, it is hot liquid, after all) I have no time for you responsible people, getting your recommended eight hours of sleep.

Wouldn’t you much prefer to be up all hours listening to a brand new comedy show on digital radio, or streamed online through the station’s website?

If the answer to that is ‘yes’ then why not snuggle down and feast on me! For Friday nights are the home of The Ramblers, a new comedy panel show broadcast live (pre-recorded) into your own homes/car/shower!

For the last couple of weeks, alongside fellow comedians Daniel J Kennedy and Gareth James and with the expert help of presenter and producer Hollie Cooper of Drystone Radio, we have been piloting a new bi-monthly panel show – The Ramblers.

A panel show, you say? Isn’t that one of those relatively cheap to make TV programmes featuring people sat behind a desk, that so often have scorn poured on them for numerous reasons such as their popularity and inability to demonstrate a proper cross section of the comedy circuit? Yep, that’s the one!

So what makes our panel show so special? Well for one – it’s on the radio, which is a lot like TV except you just hear it. The second reason is that there is no desk! We literally couldn’t fit one in the studio. We may not be Captial FM, but we do have a swivel chair and once we even had some biscuits.

The Ramblers consists of myself, Daniel and Gareth competing in a collection of games that involve us talking at length about a variety of subjects, all pretty much unplanned. Hollie presides over the games; doling out points and retracting them when she feels the urge. It’s very much a give and take kind-of thing.

The next episode to air will be the third, following a pilot we made before Christmas and the first of the proper series, which went out last week.

The reason I’m telling you this, aside from blatant, barefaced publicity, is also to discuss how it, as a process, is not something I’m too familiar with. We genuinely try, where possible, to create things on the spot, using our own imaginations and faint grasps on reality to generate stupid flights of fancy.

Something easy to do on a Saturday night with half a can of Tuborg in you, but less so on a Thursday evening at 7pm with nothing but a cup of tea and half a stale digestive.

As I say, we’ve done three episodes now and I’m quite enjoying the process, despite it being incredibly terrifying. Y’see, it’s a constant source of doubt and fear on my part that, in reality, I’m just not that funny. Something countless people have agreed with in the past. So the idea of not preparing anything beforehand is truly unnerving.

The bulk of the show is improvise, aside from one game that is a bit of an excuse to do some prewritten stand up material. That’s a lot of improvising. And improvising is a real skill to have. And one day; I might have it.

The comedy I do tends to be very heavily scripted. Sometimes more so than I would like, but other times enough so that I feel comfortable with it. As a comic, I’m much happier when something is written and rehearsed. I know my strengths and I believe it’s in working the material out first.

I can improvise onstage but I prefer to leave that for the interactions with the audience. They are the bits you can’t prepare for, so it seems wise not to try. The rest I tend to work out before and build up over time.

I know this is how most comics work but I also know some just wing it on stage. I do not do that and I think we can all be thankful that that is the case.

The Ramblers then, has been an interesting exercise is going with the flow. It has been flowing and I have indeed been going. The recording generally takes place in real time, minus tea breaks and arguments over point deduction, it happens so fast that you’ve not really got any time to dwell on what you’ve said, you just hope it was funny.

One of the hardest things is a lack of an audience. It’s a lot harder to make three people laugh when you’re jammed into a recording studio and being forced to be funny, than it is to get a roomful of people chuckling because that’s what they’re there for.

I try not to focus on who may be listening, otherwise you’ve got no idea of whether they’ll find it funny or not. My rule tends to be to try make the others laugh, if I can achieve that then it may make other people laugh. Or it just comes across as self-indulgent. Who knows in this game?

It’s been good fun coming out of my comfort zone and also trying a different type of comedy. Whether it continues to work or we run out of steam come the next recording session remains to be seen.

Likewise whether or not people deem it to be a new development in performance art or four idiots talking is very much up for debate, but I hope you tune in and find out for yourselves.

Don’t forget – it’s at that primetime slot of 11pm, Fridays on Drystone Radio.

By the way, if your answer to the initial question is ‘no’ then you probably don’t need to read the rest of the article.

• Rob Gilroy can be heard on The Ramblers next Friday 7 February at 11pm on Drystone Radio. The first episode is repeated tonight at 11pm.
• Rob can be seen next (visually and everything) in Yarm for Hilarity Bites on 3 February, and at Bradford University Sports Bar on 8 February.