June 28th, Saturday. Gig No. 61, Monkey Business, Sir Richard Steele pub, Belsize Park

A few weeks ago at a gig I walked on stage feeling really relaxed for some reason. And all I did was smile and I got a big laugh. They liked me instantly. Then afterwards, one of the acts said to me that ‘You have instantaneous likeability’. That stuck in my head. It stuck in my head and made me overly conscious of it. And now, every time I make my entrance, that weighs on my mind and I feel pressure. So I'm not relaxed. It’s made me overly conscious of the ‘likeability’ when I walk on stage, and it's become a mental albatross. Once it became a conscious thing, it made me feel uncomfortable, like I had to replicate it. It makes me worry about not replicating it. It's become a thing.

It's weird. It’s like when you fail to get an erection one time with a girl. It's so embarrassing, you worry about not getting one the next time you sleep her. And when you do get her back in your room, (Or dungeon, whatever you’re in to) your anxiety about it kills your erection. And it becomes a thing. Before you know it, you're actually impotent. You can’t get an erection with women at all. Every time you see a naked girl on your bed/torture rack, your penis shrivels up like wet cling film. Then you start to question your sexuality. You worry that you might be a homosexual. So you dabble in gay sex, and threesomes with young Moroccan men. And with them you don’t have any anxiety about getting erections, so you convince yourself you are indeed gay, and spend rest of your life in a loving partnership with a nice man called Donald. You live in a quiet cul de sac in Surrey, where you grow geraniums and dress up in leather bondage gear and cock and ball torture kits. Well, that’s what my entrances are like.

Those first few seconds on stage are actually crucial. They are key. If you don’t seem relaxed, and you’re uncomfortable, that transmits immediately to the audience that you have no faith in yourself and thus are probably not very good. And they lose belief in you. They have to believe you’ll be funny. If they don’t believe it, they won’t laugh. Even if your stuff is really good, proven funny, repeatedly, if on a particular night you walk on looking hesitant and awkward, they’ll think you’ll be shit and sit there, staring at you like a group of tired, pissed off haemophiliacs.

That’s part of the job. Convincing the audience you are funny. I’ve seen very, very good acts with superb material slightly hesitate when they started, or not quite commit with any conviction to their material, the audience lost faith, and they died like an anxiety fuelled penis . Conversely if someone sees a super confident young act with slick, well rehearsed delivery and who follows all the right patterns in their writing so it ‘sounds’ like stand up, and it is delivered with commitment and conviction, the audience will become subliminally convinced they are funny. Thus, we have J**k W*******l. As funny as anal bleeding, but rehearses his act so well doesn’t he? (His favourite method is to go off on a big rant that goes on forever, and then at the end round it off with a climax. He does this a lot. Audiences instinctively give a round of applause, essentially because he’s remembered a big rant and rehearsed it really well. It’s a con. J**k W*******l is to comedy what Andy Coulson is to phone calls.)

So anyway, that is my note to self: Stop over thinking about your likeability and learn to commit with conviction to what you’re doing. And con people into thinking you’re funny.

Gig No. 61 done. MC/Promoter Martin Besserman