February 1:25pm on Friday 18th in the year 2000 and 5

I’ve got another booking! Just had a call from Chris Judge. He books for The Spacebar open mic night. He seems like one of the goodies in this story. He was really helpful and despite the fact that March the 22nd is full he said he’d fit me on the bill. Brilliant. As long as I had something rehearsed and wasn’t just going to turn up and try and make it up as I went along. There’s a fine line between making it clear you’ve never done it before on the one hand and then on the other, coming over as too confident. I’d rather walk on the “never done it before” line. But I’ve got to be positive at the same time.

Not as positive as Wootus though. That bloke we saw last night got back to him. There’s a spot on the Friday, it’s part of a theatre tour. I don’t rely too much on swearwords do I? F#cking hell. When we were first told about him he ran an open mic night. It’s clear that’s not the case. He must have packed that in. Ruined. However it’s a trap that frequently seems to pop up. We know too many people who are in a position to put us on a real stage infront of real people.

Anyway back to how great that Chris Judge is. Here’s his advice on finding and getting gigs: post again on Manchester Comedy with something like, “Looking for open mic nights – open spots March 20-26th”. Don’t tell people you’ve never done it before. Say you’ve done a few. Go on Chortle.co.uk and post the same string in the industry notice board section. Make sure you’ve got something practiced! Interesting considering Toby’s advice last night. He also implied I should lie to the bloke about Beat The Frog and their need for an Irish joke.

Chris rang when I was on the phone to Tom. Tom’s been going over my set. He thinks I should be ruthless and cut it down. This is the set that I’d already changed this morning prior to him re-hearing it. All his advice makes sense to me though and we both agreed the bit is starting to shape up quite nicely. I told him Toby’s advice and his response was similar to what I’ve written in my last entry. He also added “If you’ve got your material written out you can record your performance and look back to the script to see which bits need taking out. It ups your confidence for future shows.”

So, I'm going to press on and learn my material back to front then when I’m onstage put in little asides if I want. This of course increases the need to cut it down in it’s current form. It currently weighs in at around 4 minutes. I’d rather do 3 minutes of funny material than four minutes of slightly rubbish material. I don’t intend to busk it.

NM