SECRETS OF MY MAN DRAWER
MY WIFE, Kitty, and son, Lucas, were the source of a lot of my new material and Kitty had helpfully just given birth to more potential material, too. My best new routine, however, was inspired by our old flat. Just outside the ‘galley’ kitchen was a built-in dresser with two drawers. The bottom one was used for storing tablecloths and napkins. The top drawer belonged to me and became known as my ‘man drawer’.
My ownership of the drawer was never discussed, I just laid claim to it over time, using it to store a combination of manly things and things I couldn’t bring myself to throw away, like: batteries of indeterminate life; takeaway menus, despite the fact we always ordered the same thing anyway; light bulbs; foreign currency that was no longer in circulation; old mobile phones; radiator bleeding keys; keys from homes we no longer lived in; a tape measure; electronic cables whose function I didn’t understand; instructions and guarantees for appliances — you get the idea. I began describing the contents
of my ‘man drawer’ onstage and it immediately resonated more than my other new material.
I genuinely never know which ideas and thoughts are going to ignite an audience but, from the first time I started riffing about my drawer, they were with me.
Laughter is a message of encouragement, it’s a green light to keep mining an idea. So night after night the jokes about my drawer grew. I would ask the audience what was in their drawers and added them to the routine.
I soon began concocting a scenario whereby I would suddenly need all the hoarded contents of my drawer, pretending to receive an anonymous phone call in the middle of the night instructing me to carry out various tasks.
‘You must go to your old home via the side gate...do you still have the key? There will be an elderly man awaiting you, you must pay him ...in Drachma...he will have with him an Argos toaster circa 1998, do you have any idea how it operates? . . . you must also bring with you nine triple A batteries . . . that don’t work . . . and then order a Chinese takeaway...on a Nokia 3210.’