Look who it is! (21 page)

I performed my
Citylife
heat at the Buzz in Chorlton, which itself was a Manchester institution. Anyone who was anyone in comedy had appeared on that stage – Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans, Jack Dee, Steve Coogan, the list was endless. So
the pressure of appearing on the very same stage as those greats was immense. I remember that night clearly. It was around the time that the petrol prices had gone through the roof. The lorry drivers had all created a blockade around the petrol pumps, and we couldn’t get a taxi.

I arrived late, apologised to the compere, ‘Agraman’, the human anagram (don’t ask), and sat down waiting to go onstage. The worry of finding a taxi had focused my nerves elsewhere, and I was relatively calm as I went on stage and did my routine. Well, you wouldn’t believe the reaction. People were in hysterics, a woman at the front of the stage was rocking and crying with laughter. It was the same reaction I had had when I was performing at Middlesex University, but this time I was actually enjoying it, pausing for the laughter, soaking up the atmosphere, letting the timing do its thing.

I won the round. Not only that, but Agraman decided to book me for the plethora of gigs that he had in the North West. I’ve still got those diaries, and it makes me smile to see ‘
£
15, Preston’ or ‘
£
10, Bury Arts Centre’. With the train fares, these gigs meant that I was out of pocket before I’d even left the house, but I was just proud to be getting money for something that I enjoyed for the first time in my life. Agraman was instrumental in getting my career up and running. Without his faith in me, I would never have improved as quickly as I did. In London, comedians have to wait up to a year to get an Open Spot, which must be terribly frustrating. To hone a comedy routine, you really need to take a run-up and have at least two or three consecutive nights to see an improvement.

I was lucky that Manchester was on the cusp of something big when I was there. There were no Printworks, Selfridges or Harvey Nicks yet – they would be coming in the following years – but brand-new shops, bars and restaurants were popping up all over town. Along with them were brand new comedy clubs including the Comedy Store, which were crying out for new talent to fill their comedy nights. For the first time, I felt like I was part of something new and exciting. A few years back it had been cool to say you were a DJ; now you were cool if you were a comedian. I’d never made a right decision before. I was well pleased.

The final of the
Citylife
competition for the best new Mancunian stand-up comedian came round more quickly than I would have liked. I was so nervous, as you can imagine, the butterflies in my stomach had wings the size of a pterodactyl. To prolong the agony, the final was being held at the brand new Comedy Store on Deangate Locks in Manchester. This was too much. At Barclaycard, all day my heart wasn’t in it, the customers just seemed more irritating than usual, and my concentration level was wedged at zero. The competition hung like a fog at the forefront of my mind.

I turned up at the Comedy Store for a soundcheck and walked onto the stage. It was so daunting, it was brand new, and unlike the one in London it was set out like an amphitheatre. At least with this Comedy Store I didn’t have the added pressure of a star-studded heritage to make me shake even more. I tried to relax and for the 5,000th time I went through my routine. It only had to be seven to eight minutes long, so I picked my best seven minutes and started mouthing
the jokes up and down the corridor, gesticulating and pulling faces in all the right places. I could hear the audience coming in, finding their seats. One by one, like lambs to the slaughter, we went on stage. Finally, it was my turn.

Terrified, I went on stage, and the first few minutes were great. They were laughing, and I felt for once that I might actually have a chance of winning it. I completed all my jokes and embellished stories of working in the call centre and then … I forgot, I totally forgot what came next. I froze, I went dry, as we stand-ups call it. Of course, now when I ‘go dry’ I step over to my table, have a few sips of water and rethink, and the audience just thinks I’m thirsty. But then when I hadn’t even done more than ten gigs, I panicked, my head cleared and my lips dried up. I couldn’t remember any of my jokes, I couldn’t even remember a why did the chicken cross the road joke. Even my dad’s jokes which would inevitably involve two nuns in a bath remained elusive. It was awful. I mumbled something and then had to leave the stage.

What a disaster! Justin Moorhouse quite rightfully won that night. I was distraught. Damn my bloody nerves, my body yet again sticking its oar in when I least wanted it to. It took me a while to get over it, but it did me the world of good. It was a sign that Rome wasn’t built in a day and that there was still a long way to go for me as a comedian.

I am often asked what my parents said when I told them that I wanted to be a stand-up comedian, and the truth is I never told them. If I’d told them, they would only have just rolled their eyes and muttered, ‘What’s he up to now?’ Don’t get me wrong, they were wonderfully supportive of me. It’s just
I was always the kid who ran through the door, fired up by my imagination – ‘Mum, I want to be a detective!’ ‘Dad, I want to be an archaeologist!’ I would watch one documentary and that would be it. It would have a direct effect on me, and I would channel all my energy into getting into that profession, writing letters, asking for information packs. It must have been wearing for my parents. If I had told them, ‘I’m going to be a stand-up,’ they would have politely said ‘Yes, Alan’ and added it to the ever-growing mental list of ‘Alan’s potential jobs’, filed behind store detective for good measure.

Anyway, the
Citylife
final had been so dispiriting for me that I didn’t even class myself as funny, let alone as a stand-up comedian. Nevertheless, I persevered, and in the ensuing months I raised my game. I had to, call centres couldn’t be my
raison d’être
. In fact I was living a double life. I would finish my shift at Barclaycard and then run to Piccadilly train station and head off to some destination to do my thing. Sheffield, Burnley, Bury, Preston, New Mills, Buxton, you name it, I’ve graced the stage for a tenner. If I was lucky, I could get a lift back with another act and would not have to wait on my own at a train station till the early hours.

I find it a bit naive of people when they come up to me today and say, ‘Don’t ever forget, we made you.’ I don’t actually remember seeing them standing with me at Sheffield station in the rain at quarter past midnight waiting for the train, or sitting with me on the National Express coach to London because I couldn’t afford the train. Believe me, on those rainy bus journeys home to Manchester, clutching a fiver in my hand, I paid my dues. It’s like Linford Christie
training for years for the Olympics and just as he crosses the winning line a spectator joins him and shouts, ‘We did it!’ I really am flattered that people think I make success look easy, but it really wasn’t.

Travelling to gigs in a car full of comedians sounds like it should be hours of fun, but that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes I didn’t know what was worse – getting the sleeper train that stopped at every little village or accepting a lift from the other comedians on the bill. The younger ones were great company, the brilliant Jason John Whitehead, Jim Jeffries, Steve Hughes. However, the older ones, already made bitter by years and years of comedy, would find it hard to suppress their resentment. You would always get the feeling they weren’t 100 per cent behind you when you left the dressing room and went onto the stage. Sadly, that resentment would spill over into the car journey, especially if you had had a better gig than them. Sometimes you’d get the older ones who’d be going through a divorce and you would have to sit there listening to a sob story from Manchester to Carlisle and back again: ‘Why would she leave me, Alan?’ I don’t know, Jeff, but we’ve just missed the turning for the A43. Flashbacks to my days as a driver’s mate came back to haunt me, but at least I was getting paid to listen to that drivel.

* * *

My set was developing well. I had crept past the five-minute and ten-minute mark and nearly had fifteen minutes of comedy material. With the help of such comedy promoters as
Agraman, Silky, Toby Hadoke and Toby Foster, I was getting lots of practice. The Open Spot circuit, though, is depressing. Not only are you not getting paid, you often have to sit through a lot of rubbish, terminally unfunny people with hack jokes, stolen jokes or at worst hack, stolen jokes. Then again, some nights would sparkle with talent, and you would be on the same bill as people who are now formidable headliners or fronting their own TV shows. You have to remember that everyone has to start somewhere, and like every other job it’s at the bottom.

One Open Spot night in London is particularly memorable, not because of the abundance of talent, but because a comic dressed as Hitler came on stage with a carrier bag, some crappy Nazi jokes, said that he had Princess Diana’s head in a bag, and then jumped out of the window. Just another night on the Open Spot circuit. Sometimes it’s the audience that’s weird. I had a blow-up doll thrown on stage in Maidstone. I told my agent who said: ‘Was it with a hen party?’ Well, I don’t think it came by itself.

Seeing how despondent I’d got over my Alzheimer’s during the
Citylife
final, Sarah had – without my knowledge – entered me for the BBC Comedian of the Year. At first, I was put out by it. After the last experience I didn’t want to do any more competitions, but then I talked myself around. Winning a stand-up competition is one way of leap-frogging over your fellow comedians and standing out from the crowd. It was the equivalent of being in a bus lane, whizzing down the inside, giving the V’s to the lorry drivers stuck in the traffic jam. My stand-up was progressing nicely, the times when I was dying
on my arse were gradually decreasing, and I was getting more and more confident. I could actually eat stuff now on the day of a gig. Plus, I’d got myself an agent.

I had been doing my usual twenty minutes back at the Buzz Comedy Club, probably for about a pound. Regrettably, I still wasn’t earning enough to leave Barclaycard, but I was getting there. I’d finished onstage and went and sat down to watch the other comedians. I was approached by this tall, slim, attractive, blonde woman.

‘Oh no!’ I thought. ‘My first groupie.’

As it happened, I couldn’t have been more wrong. She was an agent.

‘Hello, I’m Mary Richmond, and I’m interested in representing you.’ I couldn’t believe it. I tried to play it cool.

‘Who else do you represent?’

‘Johnny Vegas, among others.’

‘
The
Johnny Vegas?’

‘Yes!’

I was incredulous. I took her card and said nonchalantly, ‘I’ll think about it,’ and then skipped all the way back to Ruth’s.

Of course I accepted the offer of representation. Mary Richmond, I found out, ran Big Eye Management with her husband Steve Lock, who was just as lovely as her. Their office was in the Northern Quarter, and I would go there to write. The difference in getting comedy gigs yourself and having someone to do it for you is immense; it automatically gives you a more professional air. It means business, even if you are in an office above a kebab shop. They rang around all the
clubs, bigged you up, raved about you, filled your diary, all for 10 per cent of your fee. It was money well spent, plus I got to support Johnny Vegas at the legendary/notorious (delete accordingly) Frog and Bucket Comedy Club.

Naively, I thought his ranting, drunk persona was a sophisticated character that he slipped into once he got on stage, but no, he really was pissed. He turned up with a pack of four Guinnesses in a Spar bag, and after he downed those he moved onto a bottle of red. Then he went on stage and ripped the roof off. I was in awe, at both his stage presence and his liver. It seems I still had a lot to learn.

As the drudgery of Barclaycard filled my days, comedy filled my nights, and before long I found myself in the semifinal of the BBC Comedian of the Year. It was being held in Nottingham at the Just the Tonic Comedy Club. Unlike the
Citylife
competition, the talent wasn’t just Manchester-centric. I was up against the best new comedians in the country, and guess what? Yes, I was really nervous. I wasn’t the only one. As always, the time just evaporated before our eyes and before we knew it we comedians could hear from behind the velvet curtain the audience taking their seats, and the first act was cued to go on.

Where you are placed in the running order can have a huge effect on how you are received by the audience. If you go on first, the audience may still be cold and you end up becoming a sacrificial lamb, an appetiser before the main course. I was seventh out of the eight, which meant that although the audience would be warmed up they might also be tired and all funnied out. Everyone had had a good one; the audience
seemed nice and friendly. There was no reason why I should worry, but of course I did.

Then in what seemed like a flash it was my time to step out from behind the velvet curtain. Sometimes something happens that you can’t explain. I was filled with a confidence that I’d never had before. I was enjoying telling my jokes, I was actually enjoying it. People were roaring, in fact one of the BBC judges fell off his seat with laughter, which I took to be a positive sign. I left the stage with a huge roar of applause. All I needed was for the eighth comedian to be a bit shit, and I was in the final for sure.

He was. Hooray!

The judges put me through to the BBC final, and I was ecstatic. One of my best mates, Karen Bayley, who was also in that semi-final, never fails to remind me that it would have been her in the final if I hadn’t had such a good one. Competitions can be infuriating, as I’d learnt at the
Citylife
final. You can have complete stormers every night of the year, but in a competition it’s all about how you perform on the night and whether the gods are smiling down. In Nottingham, they definitely were. To add to the excitement, the BBC Comedian of the Year final would be held up in Edinburgh during the famous festival. I’d never been to Edinburgh before and to think that I would be part of that prestigious festival, albeit in a little way, was mind-blowing and spurred me on in my quest to be a full-time professional comedian.