My act is going for a song!
THE Art Of Comedy is a funny thing. Not in a ‘Funny ha-ha’ way – although the ultimate aim of trying to make an audience laugh is to be funny ha-ha, otherwise you’re just giving them a lecture.
I meant comedy is a mysterious, often intangible, nebulous entity that, for reasons that some of the greatest comedic minds in history have pondered and never found the answer to, is a bit like your very first car, bought second-hand from a friend’s mate who owns a garage . . . Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
A singer with only a middling-toaverage voice can make a living, as long as they hit the notes they are aiming for.
If they are outstanding singers with loads of charisma and a great management and song-writing team behind them, the sky’s the limit.
Arena tours, CDS going platinum and lucrative seasons in Vegas beckoning. In order to achieve this, all they have to do is sing in tune. And never get a sore throat. However, if your career involves having to tickle an audience’s collective funny bone, you only have to deliver a couple of dud lines in a row and people will shift uneasily in their seats and wonder why they paid to see you.
Some rowdier audience members may even start to heckle.
Hopefully, you’ve still got some cracking lines to deliver, you get the audience back on your side and eventually you can get out of the venue in one piece.
Then when you get home, you pour yourself a drink and start thinking about a career change!
While songs have longevity, comedy has a short shelf life - often due to nostalgia for the time and the place you first heard the jokes.
If someone tells you a joke you’ve already heard, you probably won’t laugh, unless you’re a sensitive person who doesn’t want to hurt the joke-teller’s feelings.
In which case, do come to any future shows of mine you see advertised.
With a song, you might have heard it 50 or more times and never grown tired of it.
I think the answer is, next time I get up on stage, I’ll sing my routines!