My 10 year Journey from Consternation to Inspiration
Or how I will make Daniel Kitson my Wife
The Bride – Bob Slayer
Roughly ten years ago I did my first open-mic comedy gig in my then local pub on Haven Lane in Ealing (for those that are familiar with Ealing, or are of a pedantry nature, I am afraid that I do not recall the name of the pub, but it was the one that didn’t do lock-ins). On the same bill that night was a then newish comic with glasses and a stutter… he was so amazingly good and left such an impression upon me that whilst chatting with him at the bar after the gig I decided ‘what is the fucking point…’ and didn’t do another gig for 9 years. The comic was Daniel Kitson, who at the time had yet to win the Perrier Award and I believe was just making the transfer from open mics to paid gigs.
So I didn’t become a comic and I continued with my job of tour managing rock bands… Now this often involves having to pop onto the stage in order to make the odd announcement. After I fleetingly lost my comedy virginity I increasingly found reasons to get on stage and share with the audience some such ‘important’ piece of information about the evening. After a while I began to announce the acts while I was up there and before long I was regularly acting as MC for gigs all around the world.
This went on for several years and then one night in Melbourne the guitarist of Japanese band called Electric Eel Shock who I manage, came up to me and said that: he thought that my part introducing them, as great as it was, was maybe getting longer and longer and was somewhat eating into their set and perhaps I should look to exercise my own, clearly talented performance muscle, on my own fucking stage (of course all he actually said was: “bugger off our fucking stage” but you get good at reading into the sub-text when you have spent weeks living out of the same van, crashing on floors and living in hotels together). So in Feb 2008, a year ago to this very month and nine years after my first comedy gig, I did my second open mic comedy gig…
I have since done many comedy gigs in London and the UK, set up my own night at Dirty Dicks in Liverpool St. As I am still travelling with bands, I have been lucky enough to grab gigs in Ireland, Hong Kong and the Netherlands (where I have already gone down well enough to start getting paid gigs!). I also performed at both Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, the latter of which I had the opportunity to go and see Daniel Kitson perform but was not brave enough to face him at that stage.
Now here is where we come to the point of this ramble – last night I finally felt ready to face my demons and to revisit Daniel Kitson live on stage. I chose as the venue for this confrontation one of Kitson’s work in progress gigs at the Hob (I am not stupid I am not going to face my demons at full strength!).
10 years ago I saw a young comedian, who I had thought was maybe my peer. I was blown away by his effortless brilliance to such an extent that he made me feel completely and utterly inadequate and that there was no point me even trying to achieve something that I could never attain. It goes without saying that the gig at the Hob was pure effortless genius. I also got to have a beer with Daniel at the bar and tell him a little about my experience at his hands, and such is his love of a story that he insisted that I finish telling him despite a couple of interruptions. I am very glad to be able to report that finally seeing Kitson on stage again and having a second chat over a pint, was, far from the initiation of another 10 year hiatus, a completely inspirational experience.
I realised that although I may not be able to get close to what he does, I actually have something that Daniel will never have: I am a 16 stone ex-jockey who has toured all over the world with rock bands and once had to give mouth to mouth to an Eastern European hooker who had choked on the Jagermeister test tube that she was using to demonstrate the technique for deep throat. Beat that Kitson! Now this may not actually be much up against such natural talent but it is the cards that I have been dealt with and I am going to play them the best I can in order to develop my own distinctive voice.
And my final conclusion is that it is OK that Kitson will always be better than me – but thankfully now I will always be able to say that could be because he has been doing it 10 years longer than me!
The Groom – Daniel Kitson
I have just been told that the source of Daniel’s brilliance is that he actually lives inside his head – he may indeed do that but I think that source of Daniel’s super strength is that he has a unique ability to look around inside all of our heads…
Many comedians that I know are either arrogant, have rather bad social skills or they are just plain odd – and many have a combination of all three. Daniel is none of these, his confidence is too calm and measured to spill into arrogance. Despite, his visual defects and stutter he is obviously very skilled socially, he also demonstrates that he knows the reasons why we all have awkward moments by telling us about our own failings through his stories, each of which are crammed full of hundreds of beautiful little ideas, observations and social commentaries. Oh and surprisingly he isn’t really odd!
Daniel Kitson casually tackles the large subjects such as Death, religion and relationships in the same way way that he chats about fellow passengers on trains, neighbours and driving lessons. If you analyse Daniel’s tales a little closer then you can see that when he talks about Driving Lessons he is equally making observations about Death and when he is actually talking about Death he is not, after all, talking about how dreadful I was on stage in a pub in Ealing all those years ago…
Bob Slayer – Feb 2009 x
Tags: Comedy Promotion, death, drink, kitson, religion
