On Joke Formations
It’s five minutes before I’m due to be announced onstage. I check my flies, my hair, and pace the dressing room one last time. Watching me doing this, are all of my jokes. They sit there, waiting nervously, as I begin scrawling the team-sheet onto my hand for tonights performance.
It’s a standard 20-minute weekend-comedy-club set, which means I’ll be picking my best 11. Well, probably 16 actually. If I only use up 11 bits of material I’m going to need a lot of applause breaks. That or a particularly derailing heckler.
So, who am I playing?
Well, some jokes are guaranteed starters, they effectively pick themselves. Some jokes will be unlucky to miss out though. They’re just as good as other bits really, but I can’t play everyone. In the end I decide to go for the team that started last weekend. After all, it’s hard to change a winning line-up.
It’s good to have competition for places. It wasn’t always the case. When I started I just had to field whoever was available in order to make up the numbers. My poor Schrödinger’s Cat joke, too weak, too niche and arguably problematic. Bless him, he tried his best week in, week out, but he was never really capable of doing it at a professional level. I’ll sometimes bring him out at a midweek new material night just for old times sake, but even in a friendly he’s lucky to get titters.
These days I’ve plenty of options. Good options too. In the 15 years I’ve been doing this I’ve managed to build up the squad from literally nothing to around 25 solid bits I can trust to get a consistent reaction on the majority of occasions.
There’s versatility in the squad too. Some jokes do better with older demographics, whereas others can get down with the youth. I have ones that work best in theatres, outdoor-music-festival-gig specialists and several gags I only ever really do in Edinburgh or London (they let you get away with the odd wanky bit there).
You pick the team you think you need for the night in question, but it is just a starting line-up. Things can change once we get underway. Perhaps this crowd are snootier than they look. Maybe it’ll turn out they just want the dirty stuff. If things start to go sour, I may have to make tactical changes. Some jokes that were on the bench might end up getting a run-out after all.
In the last 12 months, two new jokes have been added to the starting line-up. You may feel that adding a mere two new jokes in a whole year is a pretty poor showing. I wish there were more coming through, believe me.
The problem a new joke has is, if I’m going to fit you in, I’ve got to drop one of the other guys, so you’ve got to perform to the same level.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to bring in new jokes. Seeing a new bit of material get a round of applause for the first time, that’s the most satisfying feeling there is in this job. I understand they’ve got to be introduced carefully, and I’m prepared to give them a bit of leeway as they find their feet, but I can only protect them for so long. At some point they’ve got to deliver.
I’ve tried to bring other jokes through in the last year, but for whatever reason they haven’t made it. True, some of them were total no-hopers to begin with, but sometimes there were other factors.
Some of them just didn’t suit my persona. Ideally they required me to have a different build, gender, sexuality, or age to really get the best out of them.
Some were just unlucky. They’re good jokes but, they’re too similar to bits I already have. Why put them in, when I already have a better one in that position? You can’t play Lampard and Gerrard in the same team, just doesn’t work.
Some have shown promise. They’re definitely amusing. And a few of these I’m pretty sure will make it, eventually. They’re just not quite ready yet.
It’s hard to tell which of them will end up superstars and which ones won’t quite cut it in the end. It’s usually the least ambitious stuff that breaks through, but you genuinely never know.
Some new jokes worked once and looked like world-beaters, but then failed to ever scale those heights again. Some work at a new act night, but then go awol in the heat of battle. On the other hand, I have jokes in my set that started out as pretty poor new bits, but we put in the work and finally something clicked, now they’re solid dependable routines that have been part of the repertoire for years.
It’s always painful to have to let a new joke go. It’s like I’m losing part of myself. They’re aware of the odds though. As soon as they emerge, the moment I scribble the genesis of an idea on a notepad, I tell them, ‘look, I promise that I’ll say you out-loud at least once, but the truth is, you’re probably not going to make it’.
See, it’s a results business at the end of the day. A joke either works or it doesn’t. The audience laughs or they don’t. I have to be able to trust that whoever I put out there is capable of doing the job. It’s not like politics. A joke gets into my set on merit. Not because I like it, or I owe it a favour, or because it was related to an older routine.
You can’t be too sentimental. There’s a newer bit I have on Medusa that I’m really fond of for example. I give it a run-out sometimes, but it’s not always firing. We’re tweaking it, moving it to a different place in the narrative arc of the set, shaving off the odd word in the build-up, playing with an extra pause before the punchline, all those things you can do to maximise the impact of a joke. It’s not quite happening. It may yet, I hope so, but at some point a decision needs to be made.
I hope it works out. Because you always need new jokes around. It freshens up the squad. Keeps all the old ones on their toes.
You need to be able to rotate. Even a great joke can go through a bad run of form. It's understandable. They’ve been playing every Friday and Saturday night for years, they get tired, complacent, they start phoning it in.
Sometimes a rest is all they need. Give it a month, make a minor adjustment, and they’ll come back with a new lease of life. Sometimes they’re better than they’ve ever been.
Not always though. Sometimes they’re just not the same after that. I had a joke about pirates once. Used to crush every time. It was the first name on my team sheet. Then one day it became a liability. I never could put my finger on why. Maybe the zeitgeist had moved slightly, maybe I no longer suited it. Whatever the reason, it had to go. I can’t have passengers here.
Luckily for me, even when I drop a (formerly) great joke, they never complain. In fact, there seems to be real harmony in the changing room. If one of my jokes hasn’t been used for a while they don’t start agitating in the press for a move to Jimmy Carr’s set. And when they’re finally forced to retire, they don’t become shock-jock TV pundits, reminiscing about the old times when they helped me place 3rd in a new act competition, or making snide comments on how jokes have gone soft, that they aren’t what they used to be in their day.
Some of my jokes are pretty old now, but they still do the business. In fact, they show no signs of slowing down at all. It’s like I’m the England manager and I still have peak-condition Bobby Charlton available. It’s weird that he’s still in the team after 50 years, I’m sort of embarrassed in some ways, but if he’s still smashing it, I can’t drop Bobby Charlton can I?
Look, as I say, it’s a results business. I need results. I need to be rebooked. I’ve got a reputation to maintain. What if a TV producer is in the audience? I can’t let up. If the quality of my act starts to slip, there’s a hundred other comics ready to take my place. So yeah, I’d love to just play the kids, but I can’t mess about out there.
I’m now backstage. The MC should be announcing me any moment. As I listen in, I can hear that he seems to be doing a bit about handjobs. Great, that’s one joke I can’t do now, too similar (shame, because mine is better).
I’m sure he’s overrunning. Yeah, he’s started another routine. I should already be on here. Wait, that bit was quite whimsical, and they’ve totally lapped it up. Maybe this crowd are actually up for something more esoteric? In fact, I’ve just remembered, my confirmation email said the regular show manager was ill, the promoter isn’t even getting any feedback on this night.
Fuck it, ok Medusa, you’re in.