Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [86]
‘This was a mistake,’ I announced dramatically. ‘Don Ward is going to see me and think I’m shit. Because I am shit.’
‘Michael, you can do this. I think deep down you know that, which is why you took the gig. Don’t think about Don Ward,’ Lucy encouraged.
‘Yes, but I should have been more prepared for when he sees me for the first time. You don’t get a chance to do impressions.’
What I was trying to say was ‘You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression’, but due to the stress my brain was malfunctioning. Lucy tried to make sense of my remark, leading to a bizarre conversation that almost ended up with me trying impressions at the gig.
I was a mess.
When we arrived at the Comedy Store, the queue was enormous. The club holds 400 people. A line of 400 people seems to go on for ever. I took my place at the back of the queue, with the audience. I checked in at the box office and was pointed towards the dressing room behind the stage. My sister found a seat at the back of the club and crossed her fingers.
I don’t remember the other comedians on that night apart from Terry Alderton. I wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed his performance the other night, but rather than get the words in the wrong order, no words originated from my mouth whatsoever. In fact I couldn’t even get my mouth open. I wasn’t just nervous, I was in danger of passing out. The dressing room of the Comedy Store is tiny. There is a white board with the bill listed on it, and there was my name.
‘Michael MacIntire (5 mins).’
The ‘McIntyre’ had two spelling mistakes, but there it was, my name in marker pen, on the bill at the Comedy Store. Just a few months after I had realized that maybe all the laughs I get in my everyday life could actually lead to a career as a stand-up comedian, here I was at the home of stand-up to find out.
What I didn’t know then, as I paced around the dressing room with my heart beating out of my chest, is that the Comedy Store is actually the easiest gig on the circuit. The five gigs I had done were for small audiences of people who hadn’t paid for entertainment. They knew you were a new act and had low expectations. Often most of the audience at these ‘open mike’ nights are made up of the other ‘open spots’ and their friends. The gigs are poorly lit, the sound is bad, it’s just some bloke standing in the corner of a pub function room. But at the Comedy Store, conditions were perfect. When the ‘open spots’ are introduced, the compere doesn’t tell the audience they are a new act until afterwards. All the comedians are introduced in the same way. So when the compere says, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for your next act of the evening?’ they are expecting a seasoned professional when they cheer their encouragement. ‘Please welcome Michael McIntyre …’
I walked onstage with the audience whooping and cheering encouragement. This time, when the first thing I said got a laugh, it was the most magnificent sound I had ever heard. The Comedy Store laugh is like no other, it reverberates in the bunker-like room and smacks you in the face. The deafening sound of the audience laughter washed away all my nerves, and I didn’t just tell my jokes, I expressed them, I shared them with the audience and remembered why I thought they were funny. I left the stage to appreciative applause. The compere then told the audience it was one of my first gigs, and as I re-entered the dressing room, I received another round of applause. Terry Alderton was eating a plateful of food; he applauded by banging his fork on his plate and with his mouth full said, ‘You were really funny, mate.’
I barely had enough time to take a breath and digest the feeling of my first successful gig when the door swung open to reveal The Don. Like Clint Eastwood swaggering into a saloon, the room went quiet as the other comedians’ heads bowed with respect. He shook a few hands before making his way over to me. ‘Michael, well done,’ said The Don,