Day 363
Tuesday July 2, 2024
Out for our regular Tuesday today and we can now add another regular to our dates. Regular comedian and very much friend of the Ramshackle Antonio asks us if we’re interested in doing a gig with him every Monday. Wow. Yeah. OK. This is to be a comedy night in Highbury, north London. The idea is for us to play in between the various sets of comedians he books for each night. Brilliant. For a long time we’ve been thinking we would be a good matchup with a comedy night. This was part of our thinking when we went to the Edinburgh Festival where we managed one great night of performance but drew a blank absolutely everywhere else. But now here in London, almost a year to the day since then, we have become a booking for a comedy night. Brilliant. Oh, and the venue is just two train stops away from us on the overground from Camden, which itself is super close to us. Less than 20 minutes door to door.
As for tonight, we’re back after missing last week and we decide to give new song Till Sunset Burns another runout. It really is good to be starting to get some of the new ones out now. We have quite a few waiting in the wings to get their own starts sometime in the coming weeks and months.
Day 368
Sunday July 7
Second time out with Ant playing snooker today. Brilliant. This time we don’t have the upstairs venue to ourselves. Which was lovely last time, but today there’s a bit more of an atmosphere in here, even with just two or three other people, which is its own kind of special. And one of the regulars in today is having his own practice session which he invites Maja to join. Which means me and Ant get on with having our own game while Maja gets to learn from a snooker jedi. ‘Watch out,’ says Ant. ‘She’ll be kicking all our arses by the time she’s finished over there.’ Yes, she does indeed return to us armed with a whole new set of skills. And given the rate at which Maja learns, there may well be a bit of snooker related kicking going on around here soon. After this it’s onto a local pool hall for a totally different experience. There must be around 20 tables in here, all buzzing with games and fizzing with shots. To that we add our own. And after battling the huge wide expanses of a snooker table all afternoon, rather than making any great claim to cue mastery, I think it’s at least fair to say this is very much like running on a road after training on sand.
Day 369
Monday July 8
The first of what is now set to be what we do on Mondays. Yep. The Diaries’ first residency. This is a free comedy show in a really cool community hall type venue above The Brewhouse and Kitchen bar in Highbury. Normally when you say above a bar you think a place up a bunch of stairs and kind of secretly hidden away. This isn’t like that at all. Instead, it’s fully up front as you enter the beer garden that you have to walk through to enter the bar proper. As you do, if you look up you’ll see a glass fronted room which is reached by a staircase from the beer garden itself. So, very open and not at all secretive. However, there is another way to reach it and, having missed the front entrance, we do indeed go through the bar. To be directed to a staircase at the back of what really is quite a large bar. Up that staircase we go to find a long, dark corridor. Still no sign of any venue. So we sheepishly venture down the corridor wondering exactly where it is we’re heading. Of course, there’s only one thing to say, nay, shoutout, fists aloft, in such a situation. And yes, we do. ‘Hello Cleveland. Hello Cleveland.’
End of the corridor and we still haven’t found anything. Just a door leading to the open air. Oh. OK. But oh. We step outside to find ourselves on a balcony overlooking the beer garden. Behind us is a glass frontage and what looks to be something of a venue. I do believe we’ve found it. Yep. Here we are and there’s Antonio and his co-host and drag performer Rubynia. Welcome to The Funny Brewer.
Not massively attended tonight, but a good smattering of comedians and a few friends that have come along with them. There is a bar up here, but it’s unused so we’re all kind of on our own and it’s set up as a seated venue, all in rows facing the performance area. Behind this Antonio has set up a projector onto which the name of each performer is displayed behind them as they do their thing. Brilliant. Everyone has their own backdrop. So no, this is not an open mic, instead it’s a curated evening with everyone having been booked, and ourselves in there introduced by Antonio as the headliners. Yep. We’ll take that.
Right from the beginning we’ve said that we’ll play to 10 people like it’s ten thousand. Damn, we’ll play to one person like it’s ten thousand. Antonio has exactly the same mindset. The lights go off, the music comes on. Then he’s on the prowl, walking up the aisle in between the seats, a big welcome through the speakers from Rubynia behind him, so we hear, ‘Now please, welcome to the stage, Antonio Fadda.’ And here he comes. Just like he’s walking through his own comedy club full of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of cheering spectators all seated in thrilled expectation of a great night full of never before seen wonders. This is the image you need to project. As people are watching you, could they imagine you on the big stage? In the stadium? In front of a baying crowd, on your side or not? Because if you come out meek, that’s all they’re going to say. No, they could never cut it in a real arena. Or they just won’t see it. But come out and own the place? That person might be thinking, ‘You know, maybe. Just maybe.’ Or even, ‘Oh yes. I can see this now.’ Hundreds. Thousands. This is just what it would look like. And yes, this person could be up there doing it. Yes, I see them on the stadium stage, or walking among the aisles of the huge comedy club.’ Maybe they even imagine it as they’re watching them up there doing their thing. I’ve seen it myself at a few tiny open mics. Two particular performers come to mind. One was the first time I’d ever seen it. On the stage in the tiny upstairs venue at Fred Zepellins in Cork, Ireland. He came out and, seriously, I could have sworn the guy was on a west end stage and had projected his hologram to us little mortals who could only make it to an open mic in Ireland. The other was Sally in Madrid. The first time I saw her on a tiny stage in a basement bar that looked like a cave – at Triskells incidentally – I thought, ‘I’m watching her at Wembley. She is on the Wembley stage right now.’ A little while later, quite a while later, she was the singer in my blues band.
And now this is Antonio. Right here. Fully formed. Already huge, no matter the size of the audience. Rubynia is also very game in this environment and fully puts it out there in the staple of the drag queen. The lip sync performance.
A few comedians do their thing, Antonio compering between them, then it’s our turn. What’s been decided is that we’ll play during the break. So, comedians on. Then us. Then on with the show. Problem. And I really did see this coming. We’re in a room upstairs with a non-functioning bar. The real bar is downstairs. The toilets are also at the end of that very long corridor we came down and it’s not ideal to sneak out to the toilet at a sit down comedy show. So as soon as the end of the first half is announced and it’s our turn. Yep. You know what’s coming. Everybody leaves. Everybody. Remember I said we’d play to one person like it was ten thousand? Well, ta daaa.
That one person is Rubynia who very graciously stays behind and takes in our entire performance of four songs. Not only that, but she really fully gets into it. I like to think that we have something to do with that and it’s not just pity reactions. I really don’t think so. As we get to the end, people are starting to come back, and when we finish our fourth and final song, there are big shouts for encore. Well, as big a shout as four people can make. What can we do? Can’t let down our public. That wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do at all.
Hello Cleveland…
When it’s all over, myself, Maja, Antonio and Rubynia all stay behind and have drink in the now empty(er) venue. It’s a great setting and really quite dramatic. This could well be the beginning of a movie and I make that point as we’re sitting there. Newly cleared venue, still brushed with the sparse detritus of an audience. Chairs scattered and musical and stage equipment half put away. And us sitting at a table we’ve pulled to the back/front? of the venue so it’s now at the long wall to wall windows looking out onto the balcony and Highbury high street beyond. We tell each other it’s all a really good show. Just needs to be found by an audience. There’s also a rethink of our half time show. Not quite The Superbowl was it? It’s decided that instead of playing the interval next time we’ll be integrated into the actual show itself. Not fully thought out yet, but the direction of thinking is that we’ll play two songs at the end of the first half, then two songs to bring the second half back in. Yep. Sounds good.
Day 370
Tuesday July 9
So this is two regular gigs now. Out at Highbury on Mondays, then in at Ramshackle on Tuesdays. Yes, Ramshackle is an open mic, but we feel we’ve adopted it as so much more and that does feel mutual.
And oh, we just missed out on Ramshackle and Ten To One being our 100th gig. Tonight is gig number 99.
But.
First, it’s happening on the ninth.
Second, someone in here has a birthday tonight and they’ve brought along a cake to share with everyone. It’s a flake cake. The flake is the chocolate bar used to make a 99.*
Third, we get our 99th follower on Instagram.**
*I always thought it was called a 99 cos it cost 99p. But I’ve just looked it up and this thing was first put together in the 1920s when it couldn’t possibly have cost 99p. And no-one knows where the name does come from. Theories apparently include two different addresses where the first ones were constructed – 99 Portobello Street in Portobello, Scotland, and 99 Wellington Street in Manchester. Maybe they cost a penny or something like that back then. Four quid or more now. But inevitably, at some point between those prices it would have cost 99p. Which I seem to remember them being when I was a kid.
**Our 99th Instagram follower is comedy drama performer, Marigold. She’s taken an excerpt out of her one woman stage act as an isolated performance for open mics and the like. When she says she’ll do the follow thing, we have no idea we’re at 98. Oh, and I should mention that our relatively low number of followers could be attributed to us having only recently re-picked up on actually using Instagram. We’ve also quite possibly not been as active as we could have been.
The only thing we were possibly missing tonight was red balloons.
But…
Day 375
Sunday July 14
We’re back in at Ten To One tonight. Not to play, but to watch the soccer Euro 24 final. Which somehow and incredibly, England have made it to. The colours of the English flag are red and white. We enter the bar tonight and it is full of…
Drum roll
Drum roll
Drum roll
Red balloons.
For the second Euros in a row, England make it to the final but lose. Still, fun to be making it to finals. Before the last Euros, and with the glorious exception of 1996, England’s record in this competition had been disastrous to mildly acceptable. Now they’ve helped us mark gig number 99. Now, onto 100.
