My brief encounters with showbusiness
When Tom Dickson performed with comedy sketch troupe Just These Please at last year’s Fringe, he fitted in the lunchtime show with his day job as a maritime lawyer. It worked so well, he and the gang are back for more
They say that comedy can be summed up with the following equation: Comedy = Tragedy +Time. There is a further limb to that equation which is as follows: Comedy = Tragedy + Time x Maritime Law.
The beginnings of what would eventually become our sketch group, Just These Please, were formed whilst I was at law school in London; frantically scribbling notes on the minutia of the 1996 Arbitration Act whilst daydreaming about the concept of a slug chairing the animal kingdom’s annual general meeting. At the same time, William Sebagmontefiore – a friend I made at Newcastle University – was at drama school physically embodying a slug, no doubt daydreaming about the Arbitration Act.
We began cobbling together filmed sketches and swapping ideas and scripts at a rate of knots (knots being something that I have since learnt more about). Fortuitously, Will was comedy improvising with Philippa Carson and performing in a play with Georgie Jones at the time. After exchanging scripts and giggles, the four of us decided to form an official sketch comedy troupe with the usual ratio of 3:1 comedians: lawyers. And thus, Just These Please was born.
The first challenge was to find a way to balance my work with the rest of the group’s. Around the same time that we were taking our first show onto the London North-west End, I began working as a trainee solicitor in the world of Shipping Law. The law that supports the industry is, to my mind, very interesting indeed. It has given me the opportunity to work closely with experienced litigators (not to be confused with alligators)
and provided me with some great adventures, including a night spent aboard a bulk cargo carrier after the vessel had run aground in a river channel.
Law, as any lawyer will be only too glad to tell you, tends to take up quite a bit of time; “Any chance we could push rehearsal back to a 9pm start?” These late-night rehearsals involved numerous trips to shops with ‘local’ and ‘express’ in their title and we found ourselves dropping wheatbased snacks on the counter, saying ‘just these, please.’ This phrase must have seeped into the recesses of our brains, for later, whilst scouring our collective consciousness for a name, Just These Please bobbed to the surface. As I recall, the name seemed like a great idea at the time yet has proved to have all the sticking power of a Teflon waterslide. “Oh, how is just...erm…just... you know, your sketch group,” people ask encouragingly, with the pained expression of someone who has been asked to describe their favourite barcode. However – and perhaps ironically – we’re stuck with it.
I suppose that both law and comedy, when boiled down to their very bare bones, could be said to be (to misquote Eric Morecambe) a case of attempting to put all the correct words into the correct order. One clear advantage of law must be that, whilst there may be various pressures upon those words to “do their thing”, there is little pressure on them to be funny.
Comedy would be a perfectly pleasant pastime if it were possible to lock the writing in a little wooden box and for it not to see the light of day until happened upon by a wellmeaning relative in many years to come. Instead, the writing is scrutinised closely by a group of highly discerning and demanding clients. And that, so they say, is the fun of it.
My firm have been supportive and kindly allowed me to make my way to Edinburgh in August last year. My Edinburgh routine ran as follows: working in the morning, doing the show over the lunch break and returning to work in the afternoon. This did have a bit of a Jekyll & Hyde feel to it but it worked well and it made a welcome change from the usual lunchtime: Al Desko with only a forlorn-looking sandwich for company. This year has been made easier as we have comedian Jack Mosedale who jumps aboard for shows when I’m embroiled in ship seaworthiness disputes. Whilst Jack and I are doing our best to look as much like each other as possible, the mad world of show-producing, prop-collecting, posterdesigning, tech-rehearsing and the dreaded admin (all the bafflingly detailed bits and bobs that go into staging a show) are tackled by Georgie, Will and Philippa who generally champion the idea that comedy is more important than sleep.
Amongst this whirlwind during our debut last year, we were writing, filming, editing and releasing videos for Youtube which happened to go very viral, another peculiar talking point in clientfacing work meetings. When I first went to the Fringe I was in a school play about the Argentinian military coup in the 1970s – a real crowd pleaser which proved to be about 53 minutes too long. There was a notable improvement in 2018, where we took ourselves out for a drink to celebrate one million views on our video ‘When You Order Coffee With An Irish Name’. I never expected us to eventually have over 22 million views online (although as many as 12,000 of them may have been my mum). We quite literally danced back to our little flat that evening, only stopping momentarily to wipe off the rather poetically ironic dog poo that had found its way on to my dancing feet.
Our new show Suitable comprises 25 sketches and songs we’ve written and edited as a group. “I like that idea, we just need a way to make it funny,” is a phrase often shared with necessary candour between us during the writing process. Oh, the writing process! A sketch about a fruit smoothie seemed to take about as long to draft as a cross-jurisdictional loan facility agreement. The end result is a mix of character comedy, observational humour and word play involving 82 characters, 12 and a half accents and four unfathomably sweaty suits. I have had to learn the hard way to keep performance suits and work suits separate to avoid the risk of reaching into a pocket and pulling out a bald cap rather than a business card. Or, indeed, vice versa.
If anyone out there is considering embarking upon the double life of shipping lawyer/sketch comedian, I would wholeheartedly encourage you to do so – and together we might put the finishing touches to my magnum opus: ‘Bad Buoys 2’. Both the worlds of comedy and of law present their own challenges and pressures but I wouldn’t swap it for all the tea in China. The transportation and logistical implications alone would be a complete headache.
● Just These Please: Suitable is on at the Gilded Balloon Teviot at 12:15pm from 31 July26 August (not 12 Aug). For tickets and more information go to: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/just-theseplease-suitable
A sketch about a fruit smoothie seemed to take about as long to draft as a crossjurisdictional loan facility agreement