Rob Gilroy: Scheduling Comedy
This week I would like to do a bit of blatant promotion. Not for myself, you understand, but for someone else, such is my desire to undermine my own attempts at success.
A couple of weeks ago, Michael Palin – Python, traveller (not as in ‘gypsy’) and all round gentleman – released his third volume of diaries and I implore you to grab a copy now. And preferably, pay for it.
I have my own copy already and, in the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t read it yet. Sorry. I have, however, read his two previous publications and wholeheartedly recommend them. If you are interested in Monty Python, or even comedy in general, there are few books I would recommend over Palin’s diaries. Maybe One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish.
Unlike a lot of comedians’ literary output, it is neither a warts-and-all recollection of events that have passed, now steeped in bitterness or frustratingly tweaked for any semblance of childhood trauma, nor are they insights into the nuts and bolts of comedy craft – like other such brilliant titles as Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up, Frank Skinner by Frank Skinner and Now That’s Funny by David Bradbury and Joe McGrath. It is, in fact, an honest account from an incredibly talented man as he navigates a series of successful ventures (I could do the blurbs for Amazon, me.)
When I read the first volume, while at university, I was hoping for deep insights into cracking through to the heady world of film premiers and Saturday Night Live appearances, via words of wisdom along the lines of ‘always eat cheese before bed’ or ‘Never work hard, just sit and wait and it will all come to you’. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. The closest it gets to offering insights into success is the suggestion that, to be brilliant, you have to be Michael Palin.
What is does offer though is something much, much better. The books detail how it’s possible to be successful and innovative, and yet still focus on the things that are important in life – family and friends.
Comedy is not an easy lifestyle. For all its charms and seduction, unless you’re one of the few on the top rung of the ladder, it’s mainly late nights, service stations and chasing up payments. The same goes for writing; nothing but isolation, rejection and overdosing on cheese and ham toasties. It can be very easy to neglect other areas of your life.
To make it in comedy you need to be motivated and determined and yet, several times I have found those traits to be completely at odds with the rest of my life. You can spend an eternity trying to book gigs and get spotted by promoters, yet the second you have a family engagement or a romantic weekend booked, that’s when people can’t do without you. You suddenly find yourself blowing out tea lights and sticking the homemade lasagne in the fridge, while you hurriedly find your Morrison’s Miles cards. Those that are important to you watch as you leave them alone at 7 o’clock on a Saturday night, to travel to Thirsk for 10 minutes of stage time.
As much as I love comedy, and I really love comedy, these moments never fail to stick in my chest like a steak (T-Bone). As much as I wanted that gig, or was desperate to perform on the same bill as Legend McFamousy, I very rarely brought myself to do it.
For a long time, I thought my problem was that I was too soft, happy to pass up on opportunities out of guilt. But then I realised there was more to it than that, I didn’t take the gig, or jump at the offer because I didn’t want to. That’s not to say that I didn’t want to do comedy just that I didn’t want to do it at the risk of hurting those closest to me. It isn’t worth it.
It’s taken me a long time to realise that comedy isn’t worth it. If my 16 year old self could read this, he’d defecate with fury and never speak to me again. For a long time, comedy was my all. It’s what I thought of for at least 90% of the day. It still is. But I’ve learnt that while friends and family can disappoint you, they’ll still be there. Comedy isn’t quite so generous.
That must-do gig won’t necessarily lead to more work, that £100 fee seems a lot less impressive once you’ve forked out half of it on petrol and that Sunday afternoon gig will always be as shit as it sounds.
This seems like I’m turning my back on comedy, but I’m not. If anything my resolve to stick with it is as strong as it ever was, in fact much stronger than in recent years. Only now I’ve decided to do it on my own terms. I’m not saying there won’t be compromises, there most definitely will, but at least the compromises I make will not come from added pressure that something is make-or-break.
That’s why I urge you to buy Michael Palin’s diaries. Not because it charts a brilliant comic at the height of his powers, not because it’s strewn with essential success tips, but because it shows that no matter how successful and how brilliant you might be, the things that really matter don’t come from standing on stage or writing jokes about genitalia, but from everything else around you.
Michael Palin taught me that.
Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988-98 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25) is out now.
