Comedy

I’ve made the mistake recently of having put comedy on my ipod. In a way, this is great, because it’s Sean Lock, and he’s absolutely hilarious. It’s also bad, because I end up sat on the bus, staring into space, guffawing like a halfwit every time anything strikes me as funny. It’s compounded by my attempts to suppress the laughter, because every time I do that something sneaks up behind that joke and catches me unawares, making me do that mad spluttered snort that makes au pairs shield their young charges’ eyes and makes decent people concentrate on the horoscopes in the Metro really intently.

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In less amusing fashion, we went to the comedy night at the Camden Head in Islington. All I can say is there’s nothing less conducive to laughter than a sparsely filled well-lit room on a Wednesday evening. Actually, there is, and it’s a sparsely filled well-lit room on a Wednesday evening watching unfunny, underprepared comedians die on their arses. Well, that was the first couple of acts – a nerd doing jokes about batman and sly references to obscure science fiction being among the highlights. I enjoy going to the comedy, but I don’t think there’s an experience comparable to the anguish of seeing a comedian floundering around desperately trying to remember something funny while an all-too-visible audience examines its shoes. I went out to get drinks, and L got the biggest laugh (before the post-interval arrival of the competent comedians) for suggesting that my anguish was down to discovering that there wasn’t a bar upstairs. That was only partially true.

I did hear the best breakfast cereal-based heckler putdown of my life last night, though. I don’t expect to hear a better one any time soon either.