Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [83]
The booker for the club, Hannah Chambers, went to Westminster School, and we had friends in common. So despite there being a long wait for a slot, she booked me in the following week for my first gig.
That week I was so terrified, I could barely eat or sleep. I wrote joke after joke of mixed quality, some bad, some worse. I was trying to write jokes in the style of Woody Allen or one-liners like Steven Wright. I didn’t have a style, I had never done this before. I compiled my five minutes and rehearsed it endlessly in front of the mirror, holding my pen as a microphone (I’ve never owned a hairbrush, perhaps you’ve noticed). The jokes were forgettable, which is why I can’t remember most of them. Here are the ones I can remember:
‘I remember when I was born because it was the last time that I was inside a woman who looked genuinely pleased when I got out.’
‘I have a car, it’s a good runner. It gets me from A to B, except I live in Kew.’
‘There are a lot of gay politicians. It gets confusing when they’re in the closet, then they’re in the cabinet, then they’re in the closet and in the cabinet, then they’re out of the closet but still in the cabinet, then they’re out of the closet and the cabinet … and on to the back bench.’
I was mid-rehearsal when the phone rang. I flicked my eyes at my state-of-the-art caller ID. These were the digits I had been longing to see displayed for weeks.
‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Hi, it’s Kitty,’ came the reply I thought I might never hear again, ‘I heard from Joe that you were trying stand-up and I just wanted to wish you luck.’
We chatted for over an hour, like old friends even though we’d met only three times. I was elated after she had phoned. I suddenly felt that my life was now full of ambition. I had goals to be a stand-up and to make Kitty fall in love with me. I knew they might be long roads, but I was on them. I was at the beginning of the roads, the two long roads (I’m struggling with this analogy); it was a dual carriageway.
Wednesday night was my big night. My five minutes of jokes were spinning round and round in my head. I went with my sister and her boyfriend. Lucy had helped me so much that week that she knew my act word for word. On the Tube, I asked her if she could perform it for me. When we arrived at the club, I thought I might vomit. The Wednesday new-act night has free entry, so the audience was packed with people who don’t like to pay for entertainment. I made this remark to my sister and she laughed. I should have mentioned that onstage, that’s the kind of comedy I should do, that I do best, just say things that made me laugh.
Instead, I kept rehearsing my act, the keywords of which I had scribbled on my hand. There were ten of us on the bill, each doing five minutes. It was easy to spot the other acts loitering about, pacing nervously, biro all over their hands. I was on third. Daniel Kitson was again hosting and was just as hilarious as the previous week. He was enjoying himself and doing far too long between the acts. The audience were in the palm of his biro-free hand. He would introduce each act almost as if he was apologizing for the interruption to the Daniel Kitson Show, and it wasn’t an interruption the audience appreciated because he was significantly funnier than everybody else.
The first two acts were decidedly amateurish. They got a few small laughs but nothing like the sound of the laughs Daniel was getting. I was next. My sister squeezed my hand,