ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

TUPNews recently took in some stand-up comedy at the Round Table pub in Covent Garden. I went with members of my book club. In a tiny, antique room at the top of the pub, a crowd of no more than twenty packed in to watch five low-rung comedians.

The tension in the air was palpable from the start. Stand-up takes more guts than any other type of performance – you simply cannot hide from not being funny. The audience also shares in the fear of failure: what could be more excruciating than watching a failing comic at such close quarters?

This was, in fact, what we got right from the offing. The compere was a sympathetic yet visibly drunk girl who hashed through ten minutes of poorly-improvised banter, to limited nervous laughter. My colleagues cringed; I found it electrifying. Such a crucible! My friend Al had expressed some anxiety beforehand: he had been cajoled into audience participation at a previous comedy show with embarrassing results, and feared a repeat. Sure enough, he was picked out right away by the compere for some what’s-your-name-and-what-do-you-do. “Mark, maths teacher” was a sturdy forward defensive, but did not prevent him from being appointed applause captain for our side of the room. I delighted in his stoic discomfort.

The first comic upped the ante even further, dispensing with his routine and making an apparently cocaine-fuelled attempt to base his entire set on free-flowing audience interaction. The results were miserable – long silences, baiting of tourists, a total inability to convert what scraps he was offered into anything resembling comic bronze, let alone gold. By the end, some audience members were openly begging the guy to tell a joke. It was awful, and utterly compelling.

Thankfully the rest of the comics actually had routines, and the standard steadily improved across the night (although the last two were polished to the point of being somewhat bland). It was not until the final comic was well into his act, however, that the knot in my stomach began to unwind. We walked out into the night breeze sighing with relief, as if leaving a tricky yet well-handled examination.

I don't know if I'll be back in a hurry, but there was a low, furtive thrill about the whole affair that has stuck in my mind, even if few of the jokes have.