Get Up, Stand Up

The man pictured above is Jasper Carrott, and was my first memory of stand-up comedy.

I remember he had a weekly show which would involve stand-up comedy, a skit he did about two inept detectives which latter on became a full blown sitcom called 'The Detectives" and spoofs of ads during the supposed commercial breaks (even though the BBC didn't do commercial breaks between shows, for some reason I fell for it every single time). He also had another show called "Carrott's Commerical Breakdown" where he would show a compilation of the most hilarious and insane ads from around the world.

Sure, I watched a lot of other British comedy and stand-up comedians, but when I try and think back of my very first memory of stand-up comedy, it all comes back to Jasper.

However, he wasn't the most inspiring of the stand-up comedians that I looked up to. No, that mantle belongs to the Fuck You Man:-

That's right, Eddie Murphy.

Whilst Jasper Carrott was someone I loved watching, Eddie Murphy was someone I looked up to and wanted to be. I remember catching 'Beverly Hills Cop' on TV when I was a kid and even though it was censored I loved it and from then on would always search out for his movies. The only Murphy movies I haven't seen are 'Harlem Nights', 'Norbitt' and 'Meet Dave'. I once rented his 'Best of Saturday Night Live' video from the rental store and just let the late charges build up. Before sending it back and paying the late fees I recorded all the audio onto tape so I could always play it back. I loved his ability to mimic celebrities so well, I loved his delivery, I loved his laugh, I loved it all.

And discovering his stand-up comedy was like discovering a tiny explosive charge in your brain - mind blowing.

Sure, everyone watched 'Raw' because it was the most widely available one and for me, that was the first one I watched too, but when I discovered 'Delirious' it just blew 'Raw' out of the water. To this day, it still has me in stitches.

Other stand-up comedians I've admired and aspired to over the years have included Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Chris Rock, Mitch Hedberg and much more. I'd always loved comedy and loved writing and performing comedy, but performing stand-up was something I'd always wanted to try, at least once in my life...

...and on the first Thursday of November, I did.

The seed of attempting this first started when I heard a friend of mine who's interned as a crew member for me quite a few times named Leonard told me he was gonna try the open mic of a stand-up show. I'd been hearing that quite a few stand-up comedy shows had been steadily popping up in KL, most notably the ones organized by TimeOut KL.

A while after that I bumped into Davina outside KLPac and as we chatted I discovered that she was gonna be trying stand-up for the first time as a newcomer on the TimeOut KL Comedy Thursdays slot held every month.

A few months ago, on a completely random whim, I messaged Davina asking how I could go about trying stand-up. She hooked me up and soon, before I knew it, I had a date slotted as a newcomer.

And I had no idea what I was going to talk about.

I spent the two months before the show thinking constantly about what kind of material to do. How would I deliver it? Should I do impressions? Should I be political? Which accent would naturally pop up when I'm on stage doing stand-up - my American or my British?

I had all kinds of possible ideas - the power of Facebook, self-hating Malays, when Garmin's go wrong, the list went on, but the question remained -

Was it funny?

That's the thing about stand-up - it's a solo effort. I've been on stage countless times as a musician, an actor and as an MC, but doing stand-up comedy is scarier than anything I've ever done on stage before. When you're playing music you have your other band mates, when you're acting in a play you have the other actors. When I play solo spots I get the most nervous but even then I still have a guitar with me, so even if the audience hates my guts I can just finish the frickin' song and disappear.

With stand-up, your next line depends on whether or not the audience dug the line before that. You're entire performance depends on the audience's reaction. That is some scary shit. A lot of my friends asked me to try out my material on them but I knew it wouldn't be the same and what's worse, I'd be able to see their reaction, eye-to-eye, and I knew it would affect me too much.

My main worry was the joke-to-minute ratio. I was supposed to do five minutes and every idea I had so far required me to spend about a minute and a half to set-up the information needed for the joke to take effect. Far too long. This thought troubled me to no end.

In the meantime I was also rehearsing in a play during the weeks leading up to the moment of truth and it was at this play that I got to know Ollie, my co-actor in the play who had also done stand-up for TimeOut and, as luck would have it, was hosting the night that I'd be coming on stage as a newcomer.

This information will show its importance in a moment.

The night before the show, with still no proper material thought up, I decided to sit down and try and write out something as if I was writing a stand-up comedy scene in a script. I sat down in front of my computer after a very long and tiring day at about midnight and started writing it just like dialogue.

And if this was dialogue, the first thing the character would probably say after Ollie introduces him (me) would be to thank Ollie for the introduction.

And that's when the ideas started rolling in.

From that one sentence thanking Ollie the words started forming - from thanking Ollie to mentioning the play we were both in, from mentioning the play to comparing it to Hostel, from Hostel to sex in eighties movies, from sex in eighties movies to sexual bondage fantasies, from sexual bondage fantasies to pornography... and done.

The next day I went to the Havana Club to find my friends waiting for me. Jordan, Benji, Dique, Cammy, Shirin, Sandy, Vera, Jake, Paul, Naren and Ahmad all came to support me on my debut night. I was feeling alright, not too worried, and walked over to talk with Ollie about the set. I was feeling fine, till Ollie said,

"If you mess up and the audience doesn't find you funny, don't worry about it. We'll signal you from the side in case you should get off the stage early."

If I mess up? If they don't find me funny? That night, up until that point, the thought that I wouldn't be able to pull it off had never entered my mind until he said that. After that I was shitting bricks, nervous as hell and insanely jittery. Could I do this? Could I pull this off? Will they laugh?

Too late. Name's called. Get on stage. DO IT.

And I think I did.

I wish I could describe the reactions from the audience but in truth, it felt like a complete daze. All I have as reference is the video above which was actually trimmed down a bit due to the YouTube ten minute maximum thing and in fact, this should've been the pace of the material all along. During the last joke I had, which had a big build up, I chickened out half-way because people were starting to get quiet and I was worried that there were no laughs so I kept sticking in jokes in-between as I was setting up the final gag even though I had written it so that it required that long set-up to make the final joke really hit hard with a bang. Apart from that, based on the vid, I reckon I did ok for a first-timer.

And to all those that came and supported and all those that made it possible, thanks peeps. Another dream-come-true I can cross off the list.