The Ultimate Rarity.


It’s very seldom something like filming a show goes well without question, so I was extremely fortunate and grateful for how last night’s recording of my solo show at The Market Theatre went.

For starters, I was amazed we sold out, as that only tends to happen when we host an act at Mostly Comedy that’s a big pull. I’ve cancelled countless performances through the years (admittedly primarily in London) due to poor - or no - turnout, so I’ve grown to expect people won't come; each time this happens chips away at your self confidence despite the many perfectly justifiable reasons for it, so I was genuinely surprised and delighted when ticket sales suddenly picked up last week. Admittedly the venue has a small capacity, but last night’s crowd were responsive enough to be an audience three times its size.

I was pleased with how easy our get-in was too. Glyn, Paul and I began at around 2pm (though to be fair Glyn had been there earlier to prep the space) and managed to set the PA up quickly and get a good sound without any problems. We then zipped through lighting it and getting camera angles we were happy with before Glen Davies arrived (who had kindly agreed to essentially do a half-hour’s warm-up) with plenty of time to run his set, rather than there being a race to-the-finish as per usual.

Best of all, the show itself genuinely went as well as it possibly could in the circumstances, and I mean that in a positive sense. Prior to last night I’d lost a little faith in whether it worked, partly because I'd downed tools for a while and partly because I'd read too much into how sparsely it sold at the Fringe. As time goes by, it's harder to remain positive in the face of how difficult it is to get good representation to move my career on as I'd like; I begin to feel like the industry is metaphorically avoiding my eye based on an arbitrary decision in the past. Then, despite how well the show is received by its audiences, you lump it all together and question if it even works.

Last night, I had the boost of a crowd who were behind me from the beginning, plus a rare sense that a show performed on my home turf (which can be surprisingly difficult) went as well as it could. Everything I’d learnt in Edinburgh fell into place and the material got big laughs with everyone going along with the more challenging material too - and despite what the only review I got in Edinburgh said, the songs didn’t jar either. Now at least I'll have a copy of it I can hawk around a bit to show what I do; let’s just hope we switched the cameras on...

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