Weird Gigs as seen in SMH....Anymore?

[OOshy]

March 07, 2007 SMH Gag Reflex
Some situations mean comedians have to think fast. Charles Purcell finds out what happens when the course of comedy turns into a truly weird gig.

The Umbilical Brothers

We've had our share of weird gigs - performing violent slapstick in front of a replica of Jerusalem's Wailing Wall at a Sydney bar mitzvah, acting out a wild animal attack using glove puppets for the Queen last year - but the most surreal was Woodstock '99, when we went on after [the late "godfather of soul"] James Brown.

The 100,000-plus crowd was told we'd be making an announcement about drugs and responded with appropriate derision. But once our speech started resembling a state of altered consciousness - changing tempo, morphing species - the audience got right into it. Killed.

Leaving the stage as gods in our own minds, we passed Wavy Gravy, a veteran of Woodstock '69, who said, "Cool, man." Mind you, he was walking a rubber fish on a leash. Then we went and performed in front of 5000 metal fans and died in the arse. It's all a matter of balance.



Bev Killick

One was a gig at the Comedy Club in Melbourne. I must have had PMT because I went out fightin'.

I was supposed to be the MC, but Dave Hughes, who was booked to feature, wanted to get away early for his radio gig the next morning. Great. I have to feature when the almighty Hughesy has stood onstage before me.

I was terrified. I looked over at the manager of the club and enquired how much Southern Comfort they had available. I did the usual Bev schtick, then realised halfway through [the audience was] listening and enjoying. People started buying me drinks and putting them up on the stage. I drank them and kept going, in a blur. It was like feeding a Tamagotchi comic.

I went over time and tried to finish, and the audience just wouldn't let me go. I was on this almighty rave and started sorting out marital issues; people started telling me all sorts of intimate details. I kept asking if I could stop and the drinks kept coming and I kept drinking. Cocktails started appearing.

I must have done an hour and a half by now and was sloshed and pleading to stop. The manager finally let me finish. Women were thanking me, guys were rubbing their heads. There was a stockpile of drinks at the bar for me that I started handing out.

Every time I play at the Comedy Club the staff remind me of that.

Scared Weird Little Guys

Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada, October 1993.

The snow had just started falling, making us Aussies feel excited as we drove into the community college for our early-evening show. The local students were already drinking to try to forget they were in for a solid nine months of winter.

Taking the stage it was tough to get focus but after a few songs we had their attention, until we began talking excitedly about snow activities.

John asked, "Who here has a skidoo?", naively thinking that that was the generic term for snowmobile. Some people cheered while a few others jeered and the mood changed. "Yamaha, Yamaha," chanted one group. "Polaris, Polaris," chorused another. Before our eyes, a chair was hurled from one side of the room to the other, and it was on!

"Thank you, goodnight!" we shouted and ran for cover.

Jason Ryder

The most weird was in Papua New Guinea. [Fellow comedian] Vince Sorrenti and I stayed in a hotel that resembled something out of Mad Max: huge steel gates, barbed wire, security guards with batons and machine guns.

Within two minutes of being in the complex [the guards] set upon a thief with the butts of these guns. I couldn't believe it! I was screaming, "Stop! Use your batons, they're much more effective!"

The next morning I de-barricaded my hotel door and Vince and I embarked on the most horrifying four-seater plane you have ever seen. Three people and a pig got on the plane. I sat next to the pig.

Our refreshments on the plane were courtesy of the captain, who opened a bottle of Coke, took a swig, then passed it back around the plane. Even the pig knocked it back!

Finally we arrived at the gig to be greeted by a couple of locals who had codpieces on and bones through their noses.

When I went backstage, Vince asked me what was the matter. I said, "Those guys are freaking me out." He said an old trick is if you're nervous, just picture the audience nude. I said, "They are!"

The weird thing was that they got all the jokes and laughed. They even started heckling me in pidgin English - things like "Coo-coo-umba-gumba, you look tasty". Let me tell you, there's no comeback to that.

Chris Radburn

I was doing a gig at the Murwillumbah golf club in NSW. At the time, I was doing a joke about the conspiracy about whether man went to the moon and how people think it is a hoax. My joke was, it got me thinking about other hoaxes that are around - like the hoax that [swimming legend] Dawn Fraser is a woman. The crowd fell silent; you could hear my hunger pains, as I don't eat before a gig.

This guy yells out, "You should not have said that, mate."

"Why?" I questioned.

"Because that's her brother, there," and points him out to me.

"Yeah, right," I said.

He continues, "He lives in Murwillumbah and when she visits she drinks here at the golf club. We are all friends with her."

I got Dawn's brother to stand up. He was the spitting image of Dawn Fraser, so I said, "Well, how about this, he is the spitting image of Dawn Fraser, so he has just proved my point." Let's just say the next 15 minutes was tough.

I don't do that joke any more. You never know how many brothers Dawn Fraser might have.

Cal Wilson

An impro gig at a chicken-factory Christmas do. We were hired specifically so the stage would block access to the bar, to slow their drinking down. Sounds good already, right?

By the time we got there the factory workers were already drunk. And angry - management had given them chicken as their party food. Hurrah.

We did about five minutes and then they started pelting us with chicken. We left in a hail of drumsticks. It's the only time I've been heckled by food.



Rachel Berger

I could have run away when the smell of warm beer and urine lashed at my face. Or at the sight of women posturing in trackie daks and sling-backed stilettos.

It was a pub in Bundaberg. They usually had a stripper but I'd been booked to make the joint chick-friendly because "that'll draw the blokes and we'll sell more [booze]". The Sydney booking agent hadn't shared these details.

There's no cheese as sharp as the taste of my own fear. I got onstage: four milk crates covered with a couple of stained carpet squares. My saliva was so brackish I could've pickled onions in my mouth.

A guy in a ludicrous white John Travolta-style trouser suit started heckling as soon as he realised I wasn't going to strip: "Get orff yer shtoopid effin' lady effin' comic. Yer crap."

My knees shook so hard I thought my undies would slide down my legs - which would have worked - but I couldn't stop talking and I couldn't run away.

Something snapped, I tossed my head back, flexed my tongue and spat language so feral even the cane toads lay low 'til I left town.

When I finally stopped I was staring into a sea of gobsmacked faces. Silence. Then applause so loud, rumours spread that a tropical cyclone was approaching.

Who knew?

Jordan Raskopoulos

About four years ago, Optus was rewarding some of its employees with surfing lessons. I was hired by Optus to be a surfie tour guide for the bus trip from North Sydney to Bondi.

So there's me, a pasty, overweight and hirsute ethnic man, dressed in board shorts and a terry-towelling hat, on a bus with a bunch of suits, pretending to know about surf culture.

I think I pulled it off.

Dave Hughes

I did a 40th birthday for a guy at a mansion in Toorak. I was a surprise for him. When I got there, his wife made me put his tracksuit on and I had to hold his tennis racquet and walk into the lounge room where the party was on. He had recently lost his high-powered job, so I had to pretend to be him and tell jokes about how I was on the dole. His upper-class grandparents didn't really get into it.

Eddie Ifft

One time, I did a show at a comedy club that was rented out by a nudist club. The entire audience was naked and let's just say they weren't pretty. In the middle of my set, a guy stood up and bent over to pick something up. It was the first time I have ever been heckled by an arse.

Tom Gleeson

I entered a comedy competition in New York to get some stage time.

When I got there I found out it was $US5 ($6.40) to enter and whoever won got to keep all the money. The MC kept digging into his pocket, showing the audience the $US85 you could win.

The only thing was, the audience was entirely made up of other stand-up comedians in the competition. There were no genuine audience members, just comedians. My opening line was that it was a fine line between a comedy gig and a help group. Begrudgingly, it got a laugh.

I came second.