Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (17 page)

As one’s star rises so, it
seems, does one’s currency in the world of ‘corporate entertainment’. This
covers anything that pertains to professions and businesses providing
entertainment or awards for their employees. Traditionally these companies have
a fair bit of money to throw about, so they pay extremely well on a sliding
scale depending on how popular/famous you are.

I quite
like doing corporates, not necessarily for the obvious pecuniary reasons, but
because they tend to be arenas which stretch your comedy skills. Once people
know who you are and come to see you specifically there is a sense that the
danger element has melted away That’s not to say that you don’t have to make
‘em laugh — you do —but there is the cushion of the audience always being fans.

On the
whole, corporate event organisers tend not to tell their audience which
entertainer they will see, until said entertainer is announced onto the stage.
And I can tell you that on many occasions I have tripped onto the stage
accompanied by an audible sigh of despair from the audience when they realise
it is me and not Jimmy Carr/Jim Davidson/Michael McIntyre or whoever it was
they wanted.

Over
the years I have taken part in corporates as diverse as the Mother and Baby
Awards (heavy security when I did it, as apparently the year before, a fight
had broken out between two tables), the Heating and Ventilation Awards, the
British Association of Air Conditioning Engineers and quite a few
media/advertising awards.

Obviously,
many of these awards or dinners contain an audience who are not my natural
constituency and therefore I have had to work my proverbial bollocks off. It’s
a bit like starting at the bottom of a big black pit, looking up at the
audience and trying to claw your way out.

At the
Heating and Ventilation Awards, I was faced with an audience composed mainly of
middle-aged men in suits. I had managed to get hold of a copy of their trade
magazine, unsurprisingly called
Heating and Ventilation Monthly/Weekly
…
whatever it was. They looked at me with suspicion as I came on. I started by
waving a copy of the magazine at them and stated, ‘This magazine is the
bollocks!’ It was a risky strategy which could have gone horribly wrong and I
was lucky that it worked. A big laugh went round the room, thank God, and I was
halfway up out of my deep, dark pit.

There
have been many occasions when my strategy
hasn’t
worked. I remember
being in a hotel in Birmingham once with probably the most pissed group of
people I have ever met, outside of the Comedy Store Friday-night late show, and
I had been placed right in the middle of them with a slightly crap mic on a
very low raised platform. There then followed half an hour of drunken abuse,
which I attempted to parry as best I could with a few well-aimed put-downs,
picking on the troublemakers like a teacher and using only the jokes which I
knew normally stormed it. Eventually the whole affair just descended into
mayhem, with people throwing bits of bread roll, shouting at me to get off and
turning to chat to their mates. Oh, the humiliation.

Eventually
I got off, roughly five minutes before my allotted time-slot, and escaped to my
dressing room —which was akin to a broom cupboard halfway down a corridor — and
contemplated the cheery three-hour drive home examining my failure.

Other
very difficult corporate gigs tend to happen when you find yourself not only
doing the stand-up bit at the beginning, but hosting the awards as well. This
means that you are on stage for about two hours on average, and the more awards
there are, the more likely it is that at some point the audience will lose the
will to live. However much you throw at it, eventually they just want you to
shut up — and I have every sympathy with that.

I once
did an international TV awards ceremony at the Hammersmith Palais with Ruby
Wax. There were 100 awards and we tried to steel ourselves for a long night. We
thought at least we would be able to banter a bit with each other to keep it
going. Rather disastrously we discovered our mics had been set miles apart and
the way the sound was organised meant that we couldn’t hear what the other was
saying. So we spent an excruciating three hours going ‘Pardon?’ a lot to each
other and looking miserably at our scripts as the audience descended into a
coma. Nightmare.

Perhaps
one of the hardest awards I ever did was an advertising bonanza. It was on at
the huge cavern-like room in the Grosvenor House Hotel, which used to be an
ice-rink, and there were over 1,000 guests who, shall we say all had a diploma
in getting very drunk, very quickly I found myself taking the piss out of one
particular company that just kept winning everything. It was very good-natured,
there was a lot of banter and the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Finally we came to the last award of the evening, which was for Company of the
Year — and sure enough, this company won again. Mayhem ensued.

I’m
making all these corporate gigs sound like nightmares, but obviously the ones
that went wrong are more interesting. On the whole they can be really enjoyable
and give you a huge sense of satisfaction that you have fought and won a battle
against a group of people who often seem determined not to like you.

Awards Ceremonies

I tend not to go to awards
ceremonies myself because I find them hard work. As someone who’s pretty crap
at looking smart, the red carpet’s always a bit of an ordeal. I’m making it
sound like I get invited to loads. I don’t. I do get asked to the British
Comedy Awards, but that always looks like such a bunfight I’d rather watch it
on the telly.

Awards
ceremonies are, in short, a huge ordeal. First of all you have to run the
gauntlet of paps on the way in, and there are the usual concerns such as, ‘Have
I got a bogey on show?’ ‘Are my pants going to fall down?’ ‘How am I going to
stop myself hitting them?’

I went
to the BAFTAs with Trinny and Susannah, and that was enough for me. Just the
atmosphere of barely controlled hysteria on that one occasion was enough to
last me a lifetime. And I didn’t even have to sit through the bloody thing
either. I was back stage having a laugh and still it seemed to drag on
interminably.

I also
think it’s really hard for the judges to make a decision about who is the best
because there are wildly different programmes and personalities in each
category. How can you compare Harry Hill with
QI
with Ant and Dec? I
wouldn’t have a clue.

Of
course, the main awards which come up for me are the comedy bits of telly
awards and stand-up awards. I managed to get out of my first awards ceremony at
the Glasgow Comedy Festival simply by not being there. Hattie Hayridge and I
had done a stand-up show together and then gone back to London and so we
weren’t actually there when they announced the winners. We each received a
little boat-shaped award in the post, and I gave mine to my mum. I was very
pleased, but in a lot of ways I wonder what the awards really mean. I won’t get
all philosophical here; suffice to say I don’t immediately reach for the
bread-knife if I don’t win things.

The
Comedy Awards, which are held every year, are normally hosted by Jonathan Ross,
and ever since some ‘inappropriate’ contributions by some of the performers in
the past, the event now seems to be pre-recorded most of the time. Each one is
subject to the moods, aided and abetted by a fair old sloshing of alcohol, of
the comics present.

I won
the award for Best Newcomer one year and an award for Best Stand-up another
year. The awards are heavy glass-type things containing a joker from a pack of
cards and would be perfect for knocking out a burglar, should the need ever
arise. Because I didn’t go to any of the ceremonies I was asked to record a
little acceptance speech earlier so I knew I’d won something, but I have heard
recently that some awards organisers, if they hear a performer isn’t coming,
give the award to someone else. So, at least I can convince myself that I have
actually won and they’ve given it to someone else if I haven’t turned up.

My
highlights from the Comedy Awards over the years have been:

1. Sean
Lock, who on receiving a Best Newcomer Award, gave a little speech which
included the words … ‘and I’d like to say hello to all my new friends.’ Hugely
cynical maybe, but very funny.

2. In
1993, Julian Clary declaring to Jonathan Ross that ‘I’ve just been fisting
Norman Lamont’ back stage. Norman Lamont was a Tory politician and Chancellor
of the Exchequer at the time. The punch line that followed was drowned out
somewhat by the guffaws of laughter: ‘Talk about a red box.’

The best thing was the
shock and outrage of the right-wing tabloids the next day who reported that
there was shocked silence. That’s strange, because everyone I spoke to who was
there said the entire audience pissed themselves laughing.

Charity is big business
these days and charities all seem to feel that they need a high-profile face
attached to them in order to garner support and more importantly dosh. Over the
years, as my profile has risen, so have the requests for benefits, patronage,
auction items, cartoons (can’t draw to save my life), poems and TV appearances
for big fundraisers such as Comic Relief. I do try to do as much as I can in
terms of benefits because I think if you are in as fortunate a position as I
am, you should do what you can for others who aren’t.

There
is, of course, the argument put forward by cynics that comedians only do big
benefits to advance their careers — but then again, you wouldn’t be asked to do
big benefits unless you were fairly high-profile anyway.

On the
comedy circuit in the eighties, many charities started to run benefits to
publicise themselves and raise money I did several benefits for Amnesty
International, including one to raise money to fight against the imprisonment
of two comedians in Myanmar (once Burma), just for making jokes about the
military government. God, if you were thrown into prison in this country for
taking the piss out of the government, we’d all be in there.

I think
comics do have a part to play in raising awareness, and giving their time for
these sorts of events.

Performing
live at benefits is an odd thing. On many occasions, audiences have been
slightly strange, giving the impression that they’ve paid their money and now
they want to be entertained. It’s hard to describe, but there is a slightly
critical feeling in the air. Hence a lot of benefits have been rather subdued
affairs. This is not to say loads of them haven’t been great, but on a number
of occasions I have found myself thinking, Bloody hell, I’ve come all the way
up here and they don’t even seem that pleased — but that is the childish
resentful side of my personality that wants people to be grateful, and I
apologise for that.

One
charity I’m a patron of and of which I’m very fond is the Alzheimer’s Society I
try to support charities which are slightly unfashionable, non-cuddly and not
particularly attractive, a bit like me. The elderly in this country are a
forgotten generation and let’s face it, we’re all going to get there at some
point — me probably before most of you.