The Life of a Comedian

All right, here’s why I don’t do stand-up very often. Now I’ve seen the Jerry Seinfeld documentary ‘Comedian’ more times than I can count and the life of a stand-up comic looks like quite good fun. Craft some material, perform it, rewrite it, and perform it again. Hang around in well-appointed clubs with your like-minded fellow comic pals. Stand around outside the comedy clubs on balmy summer evenings trying to pick up girls. It all looks quite appealing and better than the life of an office drone.

Some weeks ago I agreed to do a spot at Linsays monthly comedy club in Edinburgh. I intended to write a load of new material for it. I came up with a couple of bits, but of course didn’t spend enough time on them to really do them justice, so had to dig out the old stuff and incorporate a couple of new lines. But never mind it’ll be all right.

I headed off for Edinburgh at 5 in the afternoon, scored a double seat on a busy bus and all was well. On alighting in the capital I headed off for my tea. I had made my plans to go to Tempting Tattie on Jeffrey Street for Edinburgh’s best and biggest baked potatoes. However when I got there I discovered it was shut for Easter. Cracking.

A fair bit of hanging around on my own at the gig followed though Carly Baker and Gus Tawse were both happy to stand and chat. Both down from Aberdeen they both did really well. Carly especially. She went on third and to be honest the room hadn’t really taken to the first two acts, but Carly warmed the place up nicely with her tales of adjusting to life in Scotland as an American. Not only that but she was also nice enough to buy me a drink.

For my part I went over okay. My new stuff went down all right, but since I was saying a lot of it out loud for the first ever time, it wasn’t as good as it should have been. I also fumbled over a few of the words. But I think a 1-0 win was a fair assessment of the performance.

On after me was the undoubted star of the evening Jim Hobbit. It’s really hard to describe his act if you weren’t there. A lot of frantic rambling, some obscure music references and using a kazoo and a bendy guitar he closed his set by doing a lengthy Chuck Berry/Marty McFly impression.

I headed for the bus before the headliner, Aggie Elsdon, came on.

The bus was reasonably quiet with only a handful of folk onboard, though the driver did force several people, Jim Hobbit included, to either wolf down their hot food or put it in the luggage hold, before he would let them on.

Midway through the journey the Young Baillieston team up the back kicked off with some of their Buckfast fuelled hi-jinks. The bus driver made futile half-hearted attempts to get them to be quiet, but you knew he was never going to do any more than shout from his seat. He was just trying to get to Glasgow as fast as he could before anything major kicked off.

When they sauntered off in Baillieston, a girl came down to the driver to say that one of them had hit her and what could the driver do about it? Well love, not much. As she said herself, if he called for the Police they would be long gone. The driver said he’d have done something had the bawbag still been on the bus, but since he wasn’t there wasn’t much he could do. The lassie kept on for a bit as the young team banged the side of the bus. After the girl finished with her protestations the driver finally decided to take off though by this time one of the Young Team was dancing in front of the bus in the middle of the road. The driver had no real hesitation in aiming the bus at him as the bawbag jumped out of the way.

At Buchanan Street I said my goodbyes to Jim Hobbit and made for a late night bus home. My thought process was to find the quietest stop, but it made more sense to get the 62 on Hope Street and Gordon Street. Luck was in however as one turned up right away. I only had to put up with an old guy on a night out with his wife, shoving in to me as I got on.

Pretty much any bus that passes through the centre of town is liable to mental after midnight on a Saturday. In fact you have a high chance of a bam or two any time after about 8pm.

It didn’t take long for the Celtic sing along to start as two half-cut Celtic minded strangers joined forces to bang their feet and sing Sellik songs at the top of their lungs. They even decided to sit together, yes right behind me, arms round one another belting out some of their favourite tunes.

At the stop just before I was due to get off, in Partick, the bus filled up. It then bottle necked, with too many folk onboard, the driver shouting in a vain attempt to get people to move up the back of the bus. A shouting match broke out between two girls. This caused some impatience amongst the passengers, several of whom began shouting to the driver to get moving. The shouting match at the front then developed into a bit of hair pulling. Then some wee guy got involved which kicked off a mini riot at the front of the bus with the wee guy and one of the girls having a full blown fight.

“Pullin a lassie’s hair. Pullin a lassie’s hair. You’re a cunt. Pullin a lassie’s hair,” the lassie shouted.

One of the other passengers, a guy probably in his mid thirties grabbed the wee guy round the throat and pushed him off the bus. The wee guy seemed to be gasping for breath as he held himself up at the bus stop. The girl was screaming the place down as the driver attempted to restore some kind of order.

The wee guy pushed his way back on, which caused another scuffle as the lassie went for him. When that settled down and the girl got off, the wee guy was shouting that he couldn’t see cos he had lost his glasses. The guy who was earlier throttling him, got off the bus to retrieve them from the pavement and the bus slowly moved off.

When I got off the bus, about a hundred yards further down the road, pushing and squeezing my way past the crowd, the same guy got himself involved in another fight, this time he got off the bus for good. I walked away as the bus driver stood up behind his door shouting “This bus is going nowhere until people move further up the bus.”

Thankful that I was out of the riot on wheels I walked over to the 24-hour shop. In there was a guy, steaming drunk, staggering backwards periodically, chatting to the shopkeeper.

“You’re a Muslim eh? I’ll tell you what I don’t like about youse. Youse put yer women down eh?”

“No. No,” the guy behind the counter replied, trying to keep the discussion, such as it was, light.

“Aye youse dae. See ahm a Catholic. We’re no like that. See if any cunt said anything aboot ma Maw…” and at that I headed out the shop and along past the cricket ground to a quiet stroll back to the flat.

I don’t remember stand-up being quite like that in ‘Comedian’.