My Experiences in Stand-Up Comedy: The Course

Firstly, apologies that there's absolutely no chronology in this blog - I can only state that it's because I have absolutely no self-discipline or indeed any idea of how to structure anything lengthy.  Anyway, having undertaken a great deal of singing, dancing and drama courses with the sublime City Academy in London I took the plunge with my Christmas money (not received from various relatives in denominations of £5, I'm not ten years old you know!) and used one of their 20 per cent discount codes and booked myself on an eight-week course commencing in January 2012.  I was a little nervous about it, but I shouldn't have been - there were eight of us and we all bonded fairly well from the start.  The tutor, Kate Smurthwaite, who's an accomplished stand-up as well as a feminist campaigner was friendly and encouraging and took us through a series of writing and performing exercises.  One of my favourites was being able to deal with hecklers and I particularly enjoyed heckling my fellow classmates.

The aim of the course was to perform a five minute comedy stand-up set in a showcase (basically a room above a central London pub) at the end of the term.  This, was incredibly daunting, but Kate stated that the audience would comprise of friends and family and would be a convivial and welcoming atmosphere which was in complete contrast to the majority of clubs in the UK and abroad.  Myself and my fellow would-be comedian classmates used to convene in the pub after the sessions and discuss the process of being funny, which as you can imagine, is pretty subjective; I seem to recall that after the second lesson the others said that I was the funniest person on the course.  I must admit that I'm cringing even typing this and my head is expanding to fill the dining room, but it felt good at the time, that's for sure.  In retrospect I don't think that I was the most talented person, we were all very different performers, but being effortlessly amusing all of the time must be very difficult and something even the biggest names in the comedy world have suffered from.  Have you ever read about a comedian who wasn't slightly mad, egotistic or just downright depressed?  It's rare not to.  How can you keep up that level of wit on an everyday basis?  I can't.