I was sitting in a hot tub recently when somebody asked how I manage to remember a 45-minute stand-up comedy set.
This may not sound the ideal setting for a discussion about performance technique. Hot tubs are normally reserved for conversations that would seem deeply inappropriate anywhere else. Within minutes of entering one, complete strangers will tell you about their knee replacements, unfortunate bowel habits and disappointing cruises around the Adriatic.
Nevertheless, the question got me thinking.
Thanks for the memory
People assume comedians remember their material because they possess extraordinary memories. I don’t. If I had an extraordinary memory, I wouldn’t spend half my life walking upstairs and then wondering why I’d gone there.
The truth is that I remember a 45-minute set because it has a structure.
The audience hears a pleasant conversation.
The comedian sees the scaffolding.
If you could peer inside a comic’s mind while he is apparently meandering through a story, you would probably be alarmed. Many performers use what memory experts call a “mind palace”. In my case, I am often wandering mentally around a familiar building, finding stories and jokes hidden in different rooms like absurd pieces of furniture. It sounds ridiculous.
Which is precisely why it works.
That glimpse beneath the bonnet took me back to my own curious journey through comedy.
A funny hobby
I have been fascinated by funny things for as long as I can remember. As a boy I consumed comedy with the enthusiasm of a Labrador discovering unattended sandwiches. Eventually I graduated from merely enjoying comedy to attempting it.
After university I flirted seriously with the funny business, writing professionally and mixing with some of the biggest names in British comedy. I learnt how jokes were built, tested, shortened, strengthened and positioned. Most importantly, I learnt that what appeared effortless on stage was often the result of astonishing amounts of work backstage.
Then I did something unexpected. I became respectable. Faced with the choice between comedy and a pension, I chose the pension. Medicine, management and academia occupied the next few decades while comedy remained an obsession lurking quietly in the background. I continued collecting stories, characters, mishaps and absurdities in the hope that they might one day prove useful.
Retirement eventually gave me the chance to return to performing.
And that was when I noticed something interesting.
On the circuit
As part of my re-education, I spent time with younger comedians and often asked them about their ambitions. I expected dreams of becoming the next Tommy Cooper or Billy Connolly. Instead, many wanted a travel programme. Or a quiz show. Or a panel show. Or indeed anything that would allow them to stop doing comedy.
I found this slightly disconcerting.
Imagine boarding an aircraft and hearing the captain announce, “Welcome aboard. I don’t really care for flying. I’m hoping to move into property development next year.” You would spend the remainder of the journey studying the emergency procedures card.
It struck me that something had changed.
Not the quality of comedy. There are still wonderful performers around. But the relationship between performer and audience seemed different.
Trust me, I’m a comic
The comedians I grew up admiring inspired trust.
Going to see Tommy Cooper, Morecambe and Wise, Billy Connolly or Dave Allen felt less like attending a performance and more like lowering yourself into a warm bath. The audience knew why it was there. The performer knew why he was there. The arrangement was beautifully simple.
The comedian’s job was to make people laugh. The audience’s job was to enjoy themselves.
Tommy Cooper understood this instinctively. He would sometimes arrive late, switch on his radio microphone and then remain backstage chuntering away while an accomplice fussed around with the curtain. The audience would already be laughing before he appeared. Such was the trust he inspired.
That trust gave comedians enormous freedom.
Dave Allen could wander into religion. Billy Connolly could begin with a story about a Glasgow shipyard and somehow arrive at mortality. Tommy Cooper could spend ten minutes apparently failing to perform a magic trick.
The audience followed willingly because they trusted the guide.
The great comedians rarely dragged audiences anywhere. They seduced them.
I’ve discovered that the principle still works today.
Permission to shock
When I first started performing on the Women’s Institute circuit, I kept the material scrupulously clean. Then one day a booking secretary took me aside and explained that the audience were perfectly capable of coping with stronger material. The trick, she said, was to do it with care, respect and timing.
In other words, earn their trust first. She was right. Older audiences do not object to challenging material. They object to clumsy material. They suspect a hidden or overarching agenda.
And that brings me back to structure.
The secret lies in what I think of as the joke beneath the anecdote. People often imagine that comedians simply wander on stage and start chatting. The best ones rarely do.
The comedians I wrote for treated jokes rather as engineers treat bridges. They were carefully designed, tested and positioned. A joke was not simply a laugh. It was a structural support.
Once the joke had been securely planted, the performer could relax. He could reminisce, digress and appear conversational. The audience relaxed too because, consciously or unconsciously, they sensed they were in safe hands.
What neither side worried about was where the next laugh would come from. The comedian already knew. It had been built into the structure.
In my own modest way, I still work like this.
Testing the water
At the start of my two main sets, I use a number of jokes disguised as anecdotes. They are diagnostic tools. Depending on how they land, I can tell whether the audience is cautious or adventurous, lively or reserved. Within minutes I know how steep a hill I have to climb.
Modern comedians often use audience interaction to gather this information. That can be lazy, antagonistic, risky or confrontational, especially if you are sitting on the front row.
I rely on hidden jokes of known potency. Once I know where I stand, I can relax. The structure gives me confidence. Without it I feel as uneasy as a pilot without a flight plan.
Which takes me back to that hot tub. I realised I wasn’t really talking about memory at all. I was talking about structure. About doing the hard work beforehand so the audience doesn’t have to. About carefully planting a joke and then taking a leisurely stroll towards it. The audience hears an anecdote. The comedian knows a joke is waiting underneath.
Those, I suspect, are my comic roots.
