Are You Here For Comedy?

I found out Catie Wilkins was playing a gig literally 5 minutes from my house. I shouldn't go out - I should be sensible. I'm up at 5am, but hey - I'd be home by 1030. Unfortunately there was a mix up with Time Out. "Are you here for comedy?" said the compere? Looking around, I said "I hope so, but I'm not sure" - Catie had already warned me in a tweet that the gig was sparse and it turned out I was the first one. Another two turned up before they decided to pull the gig.

I think it was unnecessary of the compere to go on stage and tell the 3 of us this through the microphone though...

Anyway, I decided to hit Shoreditch to the Storytellers' Club to see Michael Legge. Turns out I'd already missed Bennett Aaron. Damn. Anyway, I got my pint from the completely empty bar upstairs and headed down.

The first comedian I saw was rather dull. Actually he was shit. He came out and told us his "crazy" stories from Glastonbury, but the only people laughing seemed to be the people that ran the club and the nervous people at the front. Most of his material seemed to be in jokes though. Thankfully he finished. But seemed to go on for ages.

I went up to get another beer and the bar man said he had ran out of pint glasses. They were all downstairs. There were only about 40 people downstairs. They must have more glasses than that ?! He retreived a couple and disappeared into his secret room for 5 seconds. He came out brandishing a dripping pint glass and poured my beer into it.

"Have you cleaned it?"
"Oh yes I gave it a good scrub."
"I think I'd prefer it in 2 half pint glasses."
"Sure"

He poured the beer from the scabby pint glass into a half pint. I looked at him with disappointment.

He sensed this and poured 2 new half-beers from the tap.

After all this waiting around and nonsense I went back down to see a funny woman (whose name I can't remember) say funny things for a bit. I wish I could remember her name. And I wish the bar man got me my drink quicker so I could have seen more of her. Havng said that I wish the beer had run out as I had earlier met up with a mate - to help him shop for a hard drive in Argos - and had started the beer thing much too early. But in my defence, I wasn't planning on going out tonight at all.

Michael Legge came on next. The audience seemed undecided. Though the reading of his "Quinola" blog seemed to eventually get them on side. After Michael left the stage, the rather bland compere (name unknown) decided the audience wanted an encore. To be honest I think the audience should decide on these things for themselves.

Michael came back and read his Li Ping blog which seemed to go down very well, though I do think if he wants to use these stories he should learn them as routines rather than read them out, He has a stack of material he could base a lot of gigs on as he writes  I think at the 'Pointless Anger - Righteous Ire' shows he does with Robin Ince they work better when read, but that is probably because Robin spends some time ranting from books too.

Read Michael Legge's blog here...