Bananas

Warming Up

8463/21382

Sad news that the Balham Banana is closing down this year. The two Bananas (maybe there were more) in Acton and Balham were amongst the earliest clubs I played back in 1990 and unusually I have mainly happy memories of the Balham one. My early stand up career did not go very well, but I wasn’t really committed to the form. After my unpleasant experiences in Edinburgh in 1988, where I was (as I may have mentioned) heckled by seemingly ever stand up in the country at Late n Live and bullied by Keith Allen and Malcolm Hardee on national TV, I was somewhat sceptical about the stand up world. I was much more into sketch and character comedy. I reluctantly attempted to do gigs, but with very varied success.

I am not sure I ever settled on what I wanted to do and have wiped a lot of it from my memory. I think I performed with a broad Somerset accent (like Mark Watson would later do with a Welsh one). At University I had only played characters and unlike Stew had not attempted straight stand up before. I was 22 years old, trying to entertain people who were generally older than me and I was well out of my comfort zone. In many ways it’s surprising that I have any happy memories of that time and I have plenty of ones involving humiliation and tears. It’s best summed up by sitting on the platform of St Margaret’s station, weeping almost uncontrollably after facing off an unfriendly crowd at the Bearcat Comedy club. At least I didn’t cry til I was on my own, but it felt like my comedy dreams were in tatters and it was just another in a long line of me ending up as the bullied victim of comedy (and occasionally comedians) and probably as much a reaction to that terrible experience at the Fringe, which I still haven’t fully processed as a 58 year old man.

It seemed to be the case that whenever I did a club and the booker was in I’d have a terrible gig and when they weren’t there (often the same club the day before) I’d have had a relative stormer. That’s not my memory of the Balham Banana.

The place was so popular that in the early 90s if you gigged there you’d get to play two rooms on the same night - the amazing, almost Shakespearean main room with the circular balcony and then a smaller room upstairs. I had done well enough at the venue previously to get to do an early slot in the main room and then close the show in the upstairs room. Bob Mills, an excellent comedian, flying high at the time, was the main room headliner.

I can’t remember how I did in the main room, but in the upstairs room I had probably the best gig of my solo 1990s stand up career. Everything landed, I did my 20 minutes and then the audience called for more. It was my first encore (and sadly I think it might have been my last - I genuinely can’t remember having to do another one that wasn’t built into a show) and I had to admit to the audience that I’d already done every single joke and routine that I had. I think I might have dredged up an old University sketch about Scooby Doo unmasking Jesus as Charlie the Caretaker trying to set up a new religion to cause endless centuries of war and schism. I’ll let you try and guess what he then said to the Scooby Doo gang.

Student comedy. I am Scooby Doo.

Anyway just as the tears on St Margarets station were the nadir, this night was a delightful triumph where it suddenly felt possible that I might be able to do solo stand up (though it would be over a decade until I actually managed to start doing it successfully and I would stop doing solo gigs in about 1992 after a humiliating gig at some student venue where I’d ended up inviting a heckler on stage to see how he did and we’d somehow both ended up having to take off our trousers, which was a humiliation for me and a triumph for him. I went on to a party or some gathering with friends and told them that I was quitting stand up.

But back in Balham, Bob Mills came up to me, maybe grabbed me by the collar and mock-threatening said “Don’t ever do better than me again.” It meant a lot to me that he had accepted me as a comedian, when rightly or wrongly, I felt like no on else on the circuit did.

I’ve been back to do gigs there this millennium too and aside from a charity one where I was a bit rusty and blown off the stage by the proper club comedians, I’ve always had a fun time. It’s always a pleasure to see Dave who runs the place and to know he remembers me from the 90s and didn’t think I was shit then (even though I was a little bit). I cannot blame him for calling it a day and I hope he has a very happy retirement.

Plus I did another Craven Newsround. Watch it here.