Drayton: Grafters
I recently overheard this at a comedy club:
‘I don’t know how they can do it, getting up on stage like that, it’s very brave…’
‘Yes, but all that money for half an hours work, it’s not as though they’re down the pit or anything is it?’
Therein lays the beauty and the horror at the heart of the comedian’s world. Having pitched up at a gig, tangled and bothered after an unseen one-way system scuppered the hour wander round the town to get a feel of the place, the perusal of the audience to gauge their mood, the actual stage time is the oasis in the midst of the endless driving, driving, driving.
To begin with, there’s something almost rebellious about jumping in a motor and bombing off to a gig with your mates. There was a fine time when the Newcastle Comedy Collective ‘Near The Knuckle’ toured the North East in a converted ambulance, stopping at every service station for fags and tiddles. It was One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest on wheels. A great adventure.
Eventually the trips come to dominate your waking hours. How fine can you cut it? What time can you get back? Can you really drive from London to Newcastle after a show? Propped up on energy drinks and coffee, probably, but your eyes are gravel, your body a husk and your brain scrambled by the garbage that is night time radio. It’s not glamorous or sexy, it’s boring and tiring and dangerous.
It’s even worse after a bad gig, you have so much time alone to beat yourself up.
Having said that, gigging during the summer of 1997 when comet Hallebop was my wingman, OK Computer was my soundtrack, heading along the A69 as dawn broke was worth every dead rabbit, every dry blink, every coffee fart.
Recently Martin Mor blogged about his scrape with death on the M40, Gavin Webster can drive from Aberdeen to London and back in a weekend, John Scott, bless him can do it all by train, but those miles roll on endlessly. No, it’s not hewing coal, but if this locomotive effort was properly rewarded then these plucky souls and several like them would be millionaires, and deservedly so. (Well not the scruffy ones who look at things and do rape jokes, they can stay in the slow lane of the M25 in perpetuity).
I’m glad I don’t have to travel that much these days, spinning vinyl hasn’t taken me that far yet. It will, and when it does, I’m getting a chauffeur. With a hat. A hat that I’m doffing to the comedy knights of the road. Let’s be careful out there.
