The Wrong Demographic.


I think yesterday’s Mostly Comedy was the most I’ve been aware of people coming solely to see the headline act.

It’s not like the audience were unfriendly. Far from it. They were nice. I just felt like a barrier between them and who they wanted. Either that, or our style wasn’t to their taste.   

The club's ethos has changed a lot in seven years. There was a time when the majority of our acts were unknown. The audience had taken a punt. These days they’re enticed in by our headliner. Despite this, we don't usually bomb.

There have been other shows when I expected it to be worse. Last September, we followed Stewart Lee. We were very aware that everyone was there for him. We expected people to leave after he’d finished, but most stayed. Not only that, they were quite responsive. Well, as much as you could hope from an audience who’d been blown away by one of the country’s top stand-ups. We felt like a welcome bonus.

It didn’t help that last night I did ten minutes of untried solo material. The reaction was polite, yet muted. I found the response hard to predict. At one point I compared the relative merits of McBusted and the Traveling Wilburys as a supergroup. Though the crowd were slightly older than usual, they sided with McBusted. I didn’t expect that. Comedy can be a fickle business.

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