Old Jokes

Warming Up

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It was the big St Albans Roman Theatre gig tonight. What a thrill it was to perform in this space where 2000 years ago Romans were doing something vaguely similar.

Stand up comedy traditionally goes best in a low-ceilinged room, but in this theatre the ceiling has always been the sky. I worried that intimacy and laughter might be lost, but even in the current dilapidated state of this once great theatre the space worked. Whilst open-roofed theatres might make more sense in Rome than in Hertfordshire (where there are less sunny days and balmy nights and a lot more rain), even with most of the walls gone, I realised that a circular building does a great job of reflecting sound and creating an atmosphere.

And luckily tonight it was not raining. Occasionally a gust of wind would blow across the stage and I’d think that someone must have opened a door, until I remembered where I was.

Not sure if that scenery is part of the original theatre. Amazingly well preserved if so.

We were doing two shows, because the first one sold out so quickly. They probably left it a bit late to put the second one on sale and demand was not as strong as we’d hoped. So we had approaching 200 people in for the first gig and more like 50 for the second. But both shows worked really well. It made me realise how much I’ve missed doing stand up. And also reminded me that I am actually pretty good at it. One of the good things about having limited appeal is that I know how to play to a small crowd and a medium crowd. Boy I’ll be in trouble if I ever get a big crowd. No idea about that.

Luckily it won’t happen now.

I opened with 10 minutes of material about St Albans and the theatre. I decided to try out some of the jokes that might have been told in this theatre many centuries ago.

Some of them don’t make too much sense now, but most of them you can see where the laugh is meant to be and a couple of them still work.

A student philosopher was low on money so he sold his textbooks. Then he wrote to his father. “Good news! I’m earning money from my education already!”

Not bad.

A lot of the jokes are at the expense of student philosophers, again something that hasn’t changed that much. Another is

“A student philosopher, a bald man and a barber on a journey together stop for the night, taking turns to guard the luggage as the others sleep. First turn goes to the barber who passese the time by shaving the head of the student. It’s the student’s turn next. On being woken he rubs his head, finds himself hairless and says “What an idiot that barber is!” He has woken up the bald man instead of me.”

There were a couple that were not politically correct, but this one I was interested in-

Someone needled a well-know wit. “I had your wife without paying a penny.” The wit replied “It’s my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?”

Now it’s not so much the unpleasant joke that piqued my interest, but the fact that the joke is still being told two thousand years later in a slightly less obnoxious form. At least there’s a recent version that goes something like-

A Jewish man came home to find his best friend making love to his wife. He said “Hymie, I have to. But you?”

Whilst some jokes will be come up with again and again over the years, there is a chance that that gag has been relay-raced through time, morphing as it goes. Comedy is crazy.

Then I introduced Catie who did a solid 30 minute set. After the interval I did 45 minutes of stuff, old and new. I’d made a decision in lock down to stop doing any stand-up material from before Covid. I was fed up with doing the same old jokes when I did a short set, but also thought it would be a good way to encourage me to write more. I have stayed pretty true to that for the last six years - only dropping in the occasional one-liner where appropriate. Tonight, as I was gigging with Catie, I thought it might be fun to do the Ferrero Rocher routine again.

I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to relearn, but I listened to it three or four times and then just hoped for the best. It came back to me almost perfectly and it was surprisingly good fun to revisit an old routine after so long. I don’t think I will make a habit of it, but it’s nice to know there are some old routines to fall back on if I need to.

I then did about 25 minutes of the Ball Back show and finished with 10 minutes of new stuff for the 60 show, some of which is really strong already. Predictably it’s the stuff about my withering old penis, but it wouldn’t be a Richard Herring show without a bit (or a lot) of cock in it. The new stuff is crude but has a certain poetry to it and last night I suddenly thought of a topper to one bit, which worked really well. I think if I can keep building on the imagery and the correct language that this could be one of my best routines.

The other thing about being nearly 59 is that doing four sets in four hours was incredibly exhausting. In the second show I accidentally skipped some good gags, but when I realised I wasn’t quite sure if I’d done them already in this performance or whether I was thinking of the previous show. I had to ask the audience to tell me if I was repeating myself (luckily I wasn’t).

It was great to do the sold out show and we were worried that second show might be a bit of a damp squib with a quarter of the number of people in, but they were a great small crowd and tiredness aside it was actually really helpful to have two goes at the material. And we both gave our all to both shows. Because we are pros!

There was a slightly awkward bit when a man seemed to be walking out - but right at the end of the ball cancer stuff. I made the mistake of asking him where he was going and he just said “Prostate Cancer” which as a heckle is hard to deal with. In my tiredness I worried that all the cancer material had offended him, even though logically it would have been unlikely he would have watched all of it and then decided to go. It threw me a little bit and every time I tried to dig my way out of it, I just dug myself further in.

Of course, when he returned I realised that what he’d meant was that he had needed the loo, due to his prostate cancer. We managed to have a fun chat about erectile dysfunction (which predictably had been part of my new stuff) and I asked him if he had a little pump to get his penis up (like Matt Forde had told me about in our CRUK podcast a couple of years ago). The man said that injections were better and I insisted that I’d prefer a pump so I could stare my wife in the eye as I inflated it.

Catie did two terrific sets, with some stuff from her Edinburgh show, but some great new bits that I hadn’t heard before. Really we should have brought the whole family along to do some bits, but maybe that’s for the future. Her slagging off my bad habits and me telling people how much I loved her made an interesting dynamic.

Though I was able to say after her set how wonderful my wife was before adding, “Somebody’s punching right?... but she’s got a nice personality so it’s fine.”

Which I suspect might also be a joke from the ancient of days. Maybe they all are.

Still buzzing, but stupidly tired as I sat at the kitchen table at home, realising I hadn’t warmed up my voice so had fucked up my throat with all the Ferrero Rocher shouting, but it just struck me how much I love doing stand up comedy, but also how important it is to just enjoy the audience you have. It didn’t matter that the second gig wasn’t as well attended - a lot of my gigs aren’t that well attended. All that matters is doing the job as best you can, playing to the audience who is there, not worrying about the people who didn’t come or the comedians who play to huge crowds. Doing a sold out gig and a quarter sold out gig made me realise that it doesn’t really matter about how many people are coming (maybe to my bank manager). All that matters is doing the job and trying to get better at doing the job and entertaining whoever it is who ends up in front of you. All I want to do is keep working. In the unlikely event that my audiences get bigger I won’t be upset, but I don’t mind if my audiences get smaller, as long as I am getting better and doing my best.

The nice thing about getting old is the ambition goes and you realise what is important. I’d rather have a small number of dedicated supporters than huge crowds who didn’t get it.

Which is lucky for me, I guess, cos that’s what I have!

I thought of watching Jimmy Cricket at the Bristol Slapstick Festival a few years back. He’d once played huge theatres and now was in a small half full room. But man, he did his show and he clearly loved doing it and we all loved watching it. That’s what this is about. It’s just something he had to do and he didn’t care about anything but that.

But I was drunk on performing and my head was full of nonsense. Ultimately performing is a drug and drugs are OK as long as you’re still having fun.

I am still having fun. Even if it is going to take me a day or two to recover from working for two hours a night like I did tonight! Hardest job in the world.