Monthly Archives: August 2015

Nipple Alert

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Last night was the VMAs and various news stories are circulating, including Nicki Minaj opening the show with Taylor Swift to reconcile their feud, Kanye West’s 12 minute long speech and Justin Bieber crying. But Miley Cyrus’s left nipple has also attracted an areola of attention, as during an outfit change, there was a short flash of it on camera.

I’m reminded of the Amanda Palmer incident in 2013 where the Daily Mail wouldn’t report on her music, but made sure they wrote about her wardrobe malfunction with the classy headline Making a Boob of Herself! She had the last laugh though, delivering the best ever response to the article and highlighting the hypocrisy that no one makes a fuss whenever men expose their chests.

Miley’s nipple escapade has been reported a bit differently, with several sites such as Bustle mentioning that she is a supporter of #FreeTheNipple and it could have been intentional, with encouraging words at the end of the article.

However, The Mirror did use the word embarassing to describe her ‘nip slip’, which does bring her down unnecessarily.

As a past lover of controversy, it seems plausible that Miley was giving everyone a cheeky show.

So was it a free the nipple? Hard to tell, and does it really matter?

If Miley was freeing the nipple, surely the whole point is that it should be insignificant, that female nipples aren’t such a big deal and we should be allowed to get them out without making the news? Although conversely, publicity for the campaign can be positive. If it was on purpose, then it’s a shame it had to be censored out on some of the news reports. Nipples are even censored out of the trailer for the film about #FreeTheNipple.

So why are men’s nipples not looked at in the same way? Women’s breasts, and therefore nipples are widely considered way more sexual than men’s nipples. Women’s breasts are first and foremost for breastfeeding, but society is obsessed with them. Despite the fact that I do find men’s nipples incredibly sexy, they just don’t generally seem to provoke the same reaction.

I also find it strange how you’re not actually considered topless unless the nipples are out. You could wear the lowest cut top possible, but if the nips are hid then you’re not topless. I’ve seen Burlesque dancers who are happy to show their tits, but freak out when a tassel falls off. Some women don’t have nipples though due to medical reasons, so what makes them topless; is it simply when the furthest-out point of the breast is on show? The pinnacle of naughtiness?

The worst thing about the Miley coverage (or lack of) is some of the negative comments I’ve seen on Facebook such as ‘gross’, ‘hoe’, ‘flat chested’, ‘built like a 14 year old boy’. You may not like her, you may disagree with some of the things she has said e.g. about Nicki Minaj (which Nicki addressed live at the VMAs and Miley replied about how words get twisted in interviews), but if that’s the case, then write critically about it, insulting her body is way more embarrassing and disgusting than flashing a nipple.

Along with Miley’s nipple, it was also great to see Amber Rose’s anti slut shaming outfit, reclaiming the negative words used against her and other women. Yet Hollywood life completely missed the point – including it in their worst dressed list. I guess we still have some way to go.

In the meantime I’m going to dance round my room listening to Nicki, Miley, Taylor and Amber – possibly with my nipples out…

Lost my Mojo

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I feel like Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me. It just disappeared. Perhaps a fellow evil comedian stole it. Or perhaps I just got bored.

The problem with comedy is repetition. You have to tell a joke a certain amount of times to get good at telling it, and by the time you’ve nailed it, sometimes you don’t even want to tell the joke anymore.

I’ve been told a few times that I sound too rehearsed on stage, like an actor who knows their lines too well. This means gigging has become a bit monotonous and mundane. I thought about giving up comedy, or at least maybe taking a break and not booking anymore new gigs while I figure about what I’m doing, which I may still do, but here are some other things I intend to try to get my mojo back.

1 Watch more comedy (not just stand up)

It’s easy to feel like you are going nowhere and forget what’s enjoyable about doing comedy and making people laugh, and how it is possible to become successful at it, it just takes time, hard work and not giving up. I didn’t watch enough shows when I was Edinburgh Festival so am going to try and watch more online and go and see shows every now and then when I am not performing. Not just stand up though; sketches, comedy movies, interviews. Someone posted this earlier on Facebook and it really made me want to get back into it.

2 Watch different art forms too

A comedian at Edinburgh Festival said he deliberately wasn’t watching any comedy shows, he was going to see art like dance and circus skills for inspiration. Sometimes you are surrounded by so much comedy that you need to look at creativity from other places to open up your mind.

3 Try new jokes more often

Trying new jokes is hard. Especially when you know you have jokes that work most of the time. But what is the point of doing it if it’s not hard and there isn’t the risk of failure? I need to try more new jokes more often, maybe at least one at every gig that isn’t an important one.

4 Write more new jokes

How am I going to try new jokes all the time if I don’t write any new jokes? In terms of joke writing, my technique is generally more ‘wait until something comes to me’ rather than sit down and write, but I think even just writing for 10 – 15 minutes a day will help me come up with new ideas. Some of them might be genius. You never know!

4 Leave jokes I’m really bored of for a while

Bored of my jokes? Well I’ll stop telling them then. Particularly the ones that don’t get as many laughs as they used to, because when I tell them, I sound like I’m watching paint dry in a hospice. Well they can just die, for a while. Then maybe I’ll resuscitate them when I get bored of all the new ones.

5 Bring back jokes I haven’t done for a while

Because I’m not bored of them anymore, they will be new and awesome like the first time I told them. At least for the next 5 gigs anyway.

6 MC more

I wrote a post about MCing recently and how much I enjoy it, because of how conversational it is, so I am trying to do more of this. I’ve got one MC gig booked for March next year but am definitely going to make more of an effort to apply for them.

7 Improv more

Similar to MCing, I am going to improv more during my stand up – which can either be brilliant or disastrous, but I find when it really works, it is worth it. My aim is to be able to shift seamlessly between chatting and material, and eventually I will sound more natural on stage.

I will let you know how it all goes…

Oops I Did it Again….Forgot to Press Record

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Welcome to 2015, where everyone is obsessed with selfies, ‘food porn’, videos, pics from a night out; too busy trying to capture the perfect moment to upload to the internet, that they forget to enjoy their lives.

But as a comedian, recording yourself or having someone take photos of you while on stage isn’t just annoying and self-involved; it’s also very useful.

I first regretted not having someone film me performing when I did a drama course at Pleasance Theatre resulting in a play we devised and performed called ‘Pleasance Lane’. I assumed someone would have had it filmed, but no one did, we never performed the play again, and it was lost forever to the ether of the universe.

The next time was the first time I did stand-up. I was so excited and nervous (in a good way) about performing that I didn’t think to record it, but then afterwards I was sad I didn’t have my first ever gig on record. Although this may be a blessing in disguise, as I remember it going really well and being able to watch it back could destroy the memory.

Once you get past the nostalgia reasons, practically it is good to record yourself for two reasons:

1) So that you can improve – you can watch back to see which jokes are getting the best laughs, if there’s anything you can do better with your body language, if you are saying ‘um’ too much.

2) If it’s a good video, you can use it to send to promoters to get better gigs. This is really the only way of proving how funny you are without someone seeing you live, so it’s important to have this.

There have been various times over the last few years Sod’s law seems to have dictated that the times I don’t record seem to have been particularly awesome or useful gigs. I’m still sending promoters a video from around a year ago because I’m waiting for an amazing recent video I can use instead.

I did a gig in May at Instant Laughs in Wimbledon but because of where the audience were it was hard to set up a camera, so I used voice record on my phone instead. My set went really well and got laughs in all the right places. A few months later my phone broke and the recording was stuck on a voice record app that I couldn’t work out how to transfer to my computer, before the phone stopped working completely and when they sent me a new one the app data was gone.

I later found out the next time I did this gig (when I got Jake to hold my camera for me) that the lighting was quite bad, so the video would have been unusable, but I could have used the sound recording to enter the BBC Radio New Comedy Award Competition. (I didn’t get through with the recording I sent, but I will save comedy competitions for another blog post).

When I was at the Edinburgh festival recently, I did a gig where there were only 4 audience members, but they were good laughers and I ended up doing all improv and chatting. We found out before I went on stage that the couple in the audience were police officers and this made the gig a lot more interesting. Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery after 4 minutes so I can’t watch back the whole thing. I’ve had camera batteries run out on me before as well, so I now have a spare, and usually carry the charger, but was unprepared this time.

On our last show in Edinburgh, Jake and I were worried it wasn’t going to be that good. It was a Saturday and the Saturday before had been full of drunken people ranging from the extreme of heckling to being disinterested and unresponsive.  We also hadn’t done much flyering so we assumed it would be a bit of a write off. However, it turned out to be our best night. I realised a few minutes into the show that I hadn’t started recording on the camera, but I thought ‘oh well just carry on’, but I wish I had sorted it out as I could have left Jake talking on stage while I did it. Although part of me wonders if it would have been so good if I had stopped to do that.

I also didn’t set up the camera to film any of my MCing I did on Thursday because I was busy setting up the night, but realistically I could have taken a minute to do it, as I could have sent it to people in order to get more MCing spots.

Another problem is when someone else has your recording. I would generally say don’t let anyone else film it on their phones or camera, unless you’re very close friends or in a relationship. Even then, relying on other people can be…unreliable. I know that because I myself have videos of other comedians I haven’t even sent them yet.

So what have I learnt (several times)? No matter how difficult it is to set up the camera or how much planning is involved, from now on, I will always charge my camera and always press record. Who knows? My next gig might be the one.

To MC or not to MC

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Last night I guest MCed an open mic night in Dalston, at first it was just other comedians in the room, even the one audience member was a comedian, just not performing that night, but luckily as the night went on, more audience members came in to watch. Some stayed for a bit, some came later on and stayed until the end, but one couple came in during the first act, stayed the whole night and looked like they enjoyed it. They live across the road too, so I told them to make sure they come back every week.

MCing is different from doing a set somewhere, you’re basically in charge of holding the night together and while you don’t need to be funny every second, you do need to get the audience comfortable with laughing. You also need to be upbeat and enthusiastic to keep the energy up in the room.

It’s easier to start getting more paid comedy work and better gigs as an MC; my boyfriend, Jake Pickford got into MCing quite quickly after starting comedy, and has two paid resident MC spots per month. This means he’s very experienced, and an obvious choice when people are looking for an MC. I have guest MCed some gigs in the past, but I would like to do more. I want to get to the point where if people know both of us, they genuinely find it difficult to choose which one of us to ask. Either that or they would just pick me straight away.

It’s not for everyone; some people don’t like the responsibility or the idea of talking that much to the crowd. I enjoy MCing because I don’t worry about what jokes I’m going to do in what order. I mostly do audience interaction with the occasional joke. I try to make it friendly and welcoming, rather than the standard taking the piss out of someone’s day job. For example, last night I managed to get laughs from discussing the favourite foods of the couple in the audience (potato waffles, turkey dinosaurs, avocado and sweet potato mash, if you were wondering).

MCing definitely helps with improvisation skills and generally feeling at ease on stage, which is an important part of being a stand-up comedian. It’s about self-control too; not talking too much in between each act, or after the last act has been on. Now give yourselves a round of applause and see you again next time.

If anyone would like to offer me anymore MCing gigs, please contact me

A Real Audience

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Open mic gigs are gigs where pretty much anyone can get a spot. You don’t need to send a video or comedy cv. You don’t even need to be funny. It’s for anyone who wants to try 5 minutes of jokes in front of an audience. When I say audience, I mean room full of other comedians. Comedians are the worst kind of people to try jokes in front of because sometimes they either won’t laugh (so you can’t tell if joke actually works or not) or they will laugh at things that real civilian normal people won’t just to screw with you (giving you false hope in your new jokes).

Last night was different though, I turned up at an open mic gig I had booked a spot at, and there were several members of the public already keen to watch the gig. I couldn’t believe it. The last time I was there, there were barely a few real audience members and tonight there was a full room. The first comedian on even mentioned the fact that it’s not usually that busy.

One of the other comedians was doing his second gig after his comedy course showcase. I told him not all open mic gigs are like this. I’m sure he’ll soon find out anyway.

We found out as the gig went on some of the audience came from a meet-up group, some came to support friends performing and some had just wandered down from the bar. The best thing about them was that they were laughers. Not smilers. Not the sort that hold it in and then vaguely acknowledge a joke. They smiled louder than I’ve heard other people laugh. They clapped at jokes they really liked. No bitchy resting faces either. They genuinely looked happy to be there.

Everyone on the night was well received, but not in a pandering way either, the audience still had a compass on which jokes were better than others. I did 3 of my older jokes, a few new bits and some audience interaction/improv/chatting. I had a good time.

I think a few things helped the night along as well. There were only 12 acts on, as opposed to the usual 15 – 20 at other open mic gigs. The MC (Sonia Aste) spoke directly to audience members and got them involved, invested and laughing from the beginning. (It astounds me how many MCs don’t do this and then wonder why the audience are not as relaxed).

Generally, open mic gigs need to be better promoted and the length of the night reduced. It’s counterproductive to have too many acts on and you can’t get a true gage of how funny your new jokes are if the audience are too tired to laugh (or too self-conscious if there’s not that many of them). Plus they won’t come back again if they haven’t had a good time.

The logic that more acts equals more people and therefore more audience doesn’t work, as performing only to comedians is both unhelpful and soul destroying. Hopefully more open mic gigs will make steps in future to make them more enjoyable experiences, but probably not. I’m off to guest MC an open mic gig now. Or maybe just a room full of comedians.

If You Like it Then You Shoulda Put a Review on it

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Reviews are important; they give you useful quotes and stars that you can use on posters and flyers to get more people to come to your future show. After all, if one person from one magazine/newspaper/website thinks you’re good, then you must be good!

Last year I was part of a two-hander show called ‘Nymphonerdiac’ with Ella Murray, and on our first night, we got an email from Laughing Horse telling us that Kate Copstick was coming to review our show. We panicked, as she’s notorious for being harsh on female comedians and we didn’t think our show was ready to be reviewed.  Luckily she ditched us last minute to go and see ‘Hate n Live’ and in the end, a guy I used to date came to the show, which actually made me way more nervous.

We did eventually get a review from one of Ella’s friends, as she was writing for the site Loose Lips. It says *** but then it says (2 stars) next to it. So either someone can’t do maths. Or we actually got a total of 5 stars. Ella was described as being ‘achingly funny’, whereas the quotes about me are interesting, but don’t really mention whether I’m funny or not.  For example: “Her set challenges you to like her in spite of not being ‘nice’ in the way a girl ‘should be’” and “her material takes you on a rollercoaster ride through her dark fantasies and warm heart”.

Rollercoasters are amazing. My favourite one is ‘Stealth’ at Thorpe Park. But don’t forget before you come and see my comedy: I’m a challenge to like as a person, and girls should be nice, but I’m not.

Anyway, this year I was determined to get a review (from a non-friend) for Love Hate Relationship. I emailed at least 15 different publications with our press release. I got two replies saying they would put us on the list of shows for their reviewers but no one actually came. So as someone who is clearly succeeding at not getting reviewed, here is my basic guide on:

How to Not Get Reviewed

1 Register on the official Edfringe website late

Jake and I were originally offered our show in May by Freestival, but then we were caught in Cowgateheadgate and lost our venue, so we went back to Laughing Horse and asked for a free venue. Luckily Maff Brown who had booked Bar 50 at 11pm had cancelled his show so we got the venue that Ella and I had last year. But due to all the late planning, we paid for flights and posters/flyers at the end of June, so couldn’t afford to pay for Edfringe registration until end of July.

This is the main site that the public check and reviewers check, so if you don’t want a review, register as late as possible. (Although bear in mind that it took them around 9 days to put us on the app and the website, as they were confused about the whole Maff Brown thing so we had to flyer more as a result for the first few days of our show).

2 Start sending press releases in mid-July after everyone has already sent theirs

Again, due to the whole last minute show thing, we didn’t have press releases ready to send until a bit later on, by which time, many publications have already decided what shows they are going to review. Also don’t mention that you’ve done Edinburgh before. I found out later on from a pro act that reviewers are interested in consistency and will want to know if you’ve been in shows already, so make sure you leave that bit out when you’re emailing.

If you really don’t want people to review your show, send your press release so late that by the time they read it your show is already over.

Either that, or don’t send them at all.

3 Don’t do the full run

I’m convinced that not doing the full run puts you at a disadvantage as reviewers want shows that are committed to spending more time at the fringe so their readers have more opportunities to see them. The shows I see getting reviewed are always doing the full run, so make sure you have day jobs or other life commitments that mean you can’t possibly stay in Edinburgh for the whole of August.

4 Don’t have previous reviews from the reviewers you want to review your show

The best way to get a review is to already have lots of reviews. It’s like when you need experience to get experience. If you follow all the steps in this guide, you won’t get reviewed which means you probably don’t need to worry about getting reviewed.

5 Keep forgetting to mention the fact that you are looking for reviewers

During our show, Jake and I put up pieces of paper on the stage background with our Twitter details and would mention at the end that we were looking for audience reviews and reviewers to come to our show, so if they knew anyone, then they should let us know. If you forget to do this in around half of the shows, it lessens your chance of actually being reviewed.

6 Deliberately don’t ask review sites that you know to come and review you

I’m sure I could have got someone from Female Arts to review our show, but as I used to write reviews for them (yes, I’ve been on the other side) I thought it would be better to have a publication I wasn’t already affiliated with to write about us, and thus ruled out an almost definite review.

7 Make a YouTube video asking for reviewers to come to your show

Reviewers are like normal people, they want something they can’t have. If you’re too desperate they will lose interest and go to review a show that definitely doesn’t want them there. Make a video begging for people to come and review your show and no one will come to review your show.

8 Don’t be famous or successful

Being famous and successful means reviewers will get excited when they see your name. If you never win any competitions or perform at any big clubs, your name will be ignored and they will go and see someone else who is doing better at comedy and therefore better at life. Stay mediocre and under the radar and reviewers will treat you like the open spot that you are and therefore not worthy of reviewers’ approval.

9 Be unlucky

Bruce Dessau mentions on his site that sometimes you could just be lucky, once he wandered into a show once and nominated a joke for best joke of the fringe and it won (although he still didn’t actually review the show). Use up all your luck on getting a venue you thought you wouldn’t get. Then make sure you walk under ladders, let black cats cross your path and stare obsessively at one lone magpie in the run up to the fringe and reviewers will suddenly be overcome with the desire to walk the opposite way when they accidentally come anywhere near your venue. You won’t win joke of the fringe either, which we also totally weren’t trying to win with our one liner section of the show.

So that’s my expert advice on how not to get a review. It’s a shame no one came to review our show, but there’s only one thing worse than not getting reviewed, and that’s getting a bad review, so at least we didn’t get that. And no exes turned up either. Result.

If you went to see ‘Love Hate Relationship’ and you would like to write an audience review, or you would like to review ‘Love Hate Relationship’ on the 6th of September in London, please contact me. Or don’t, whatever, it’s cool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Relationship Status

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Me: (for the hundredth time that day) Free comedy show tonight!

Man: (looks at flyer) Is that you?

Me: Yeah that’s me!

Man: Oh that’s so cool. Wait… is that your boyfriend?

Me: Yeah, we do the show together.

*Man cries out ‘NOOOOOOO’, drops flyer, stamps on it, sets fire to it and storms off into the distance to go and see ‘Single Comedians Trying to Impress You’ instead*

Yes, I’m exaggerating, but this sort of thing did happen, albeit to a lesser extent. While I was performing ‘Love Hate Relationship’ at Edinburgh Festival for 10 days with my boyfriend, Jake Pickford, I noticed that sometimes men would lose interest in the show as soon as they found out my comedy show partner was also my real life partner, which got me wondering – is your relationship status important as a performer? More importantly, should it be?

I was speaking to a comedian after a gig, before I went to Edinburgh, and she was telling me about building up an audience, talking to your fans after gigs and making sure you give them business cards to add you on social media so that they follow you and want to come to see you again. This is great advice and something I definitely need to more of (business cards coming soon), but then she said something which surprised me – she told me to stop talking about my boyfriend in my set and pretend I’m single.

She explained that even while she was in a relationship she used to give off the illusion of being single in order to gain more male fans. The idea is to make them think they have a chance with you, even if they have no chance in hell.  I said that I couldn’t really do that since my boyfriend is also a comedian, plus we are doing a show together. We’d have to take our relationship status off Facebook for a start. Cue a large amount of concerned “are you ok” messages, if we changed it to single.

Of course she’s not the only one; I know other performers who keep their relationships on the down low, even some who still do jokes or whole shows about being single. Musicians and actors have been doing it for years to attract more fans. Britney Spears even went as far as to pretend she was a virgin to keep her male fan base in the hope of being the one to ‘hit’ her for the first time. According to some internet sites, her mother has now said some guy at college got there even before Justin Timberlake.

I do understand why some performers do it, but I just can’t. If it was the other way round and Jake was going round telling women he was single to get more fans, I’d be upset and annoyed. It took me 15 years of dating to finally find someone who is so proud to be with me, and it would feel insulting to be hidden away.

There are tons of comedy couples who are successful, because they are funny, not because they are available. So now we just need to work on the funny part.

If you don’t want to come and watch me because there’s no way I will sleep with you; that’s okay. There are plenty of other people who don’t make all life decisions with their genitals. Like the audiences who came to see our show and enjoyed it.  Whether they were single, coupled, or even the Facebook classic ‘it’s complicated’.

‘Love Hate Relationship’ will be at The Plough and Harrow on the 6th September 2015 as part of the Comedian’s Club, 8pm