Who Am I, Again

by Lenny Henry

  Our habits lead to our craft. It could be as simple as ring-fencing five minutes of every show – or more, if you’re brave – to riff on whatever subject you choose. Ben Elton would start a new tour by performing big chunks of the previous one, while incrementally adding new bits as he went along, until the new material had eventually shafted the old.

  If this sounds like a lot of work to you, you’re absolutely right. But if you want to be really good, then it’s worth investing some time. It’s worth hunkering down and watching all of your favourite comedians online, in chunks, to see if there’s any connective tissue between what they do and what you’d like to. Craft is everything, and coupled with your instinct, it could lead somewhere very profitable indeed. Not just in terms of money – although that is a consideration – but in terms of job satisfaction. Who doesn’t want that?

  5. Mindset

  You’ve got to get your mind right before you perform, in the same way as you’ve got to get your mind right before you write. Are you a solitary person? Do you need utter silence and tranquillity before you can slip onto the runway in order to taxi before take-off? I like sitting in my dressing room listening to quiet music, making notes and slowly gearing up for the performance. The music gets louder and thumpier the nearer to the performance I get.

  I used to like tinkly music, candles and solitude when writing, but now I find that peace and quiet and some company in the other room or nearby seem conducive to a better way of working. A deadline helps: the nearer you get, the harder you have to work to produce. And a critical friend to help you discern the wheat from the chaff comes in very handy indeed.

  There are some people who like an entourage, one or two people whose job it is to ‘fluff’ them to the extent that they can go on stage and kill because they’ve been cracking gags with their pals all day leading up to this moment. I once saw a comedian in New York who showed up with his four mates, talking loudly at the bar, and then when he was introduced on stage he continued the conversation he’d been having with his friends at the mic! They’d shout out to him, ‘Yo, dude, do dat shit about yo’ mama,’ and he would!

  It seemed to work for him, but writing with an entourage is a bit trickier. Who owns the intellectual property at the end of the day? You couldn’t really say you’d written it on your own.

  Victoria Wood would sit at her kitchen table and basically grind it out day after day, year after year. Whether it was routines, jokes, songs or plays, she sat down on her own and did the work. This method can bear fruit if you have a strong work ethic and a determination to get it done. There’s a saying: ‘Don’t get it right, just get it written.’ If you sit down every day and write for two hours, you’re going to come up with something. It’s just a matter of making sure you get the right feedback when you need it. And you will need it.

  I used to make lots of lists before a performance, because at that point there are two ways to go: either meditate right up until the beginning of the show, so that you’re not thinking about the show at all; or make lists! My list-making could range from writing out in note form every routine in the show to remind myself of its shape and content, to trying to reduce the show to ten bullet points. Or I could fill the pre-show zone with yoga, or shoulder and neck massages, or singing drills. Whatever I do, there’s a sense that it’s all leading into the show.

  The needier performers tend to have the promoter and a dog and a child and a best mate and a parent hanging out with them in the dressing room right up until show time. I saw somebody in Edinburgh whose huge dog began the show on stage and then wandered on and off at various moments whenever it suited him. It was a bit distracting.

  Whichever method you choose, bear in mind that at the beginning/open-mic stage, you might not have a dressing room or a space in which to prepare. A lot of places make you wait by the bar or sit in the room during someone else’s performance. This can be frightening. I was never very good at it because if you’re about to follow someone who has just slayed the audience, even to the point where the staff are banging on tables and saying, ‘Stop! Please!’ you might feel you owe it to yourself to step outside, climb into an Uber and go home, vowing never to return.

  Whenever I was in New York, I would either stand in the reception or the foyer, or if possible, ask someone to give me a three-minute warning so that I could enter the venue when I was ready, rather than having to endure Mr or Mrs Comedy Genius Pants in the preceding slot.

  It’s tricky to get your set together in the midst of meals and drinks being served, heckling, bravura stand-up, gut-busting laughter. If there’s any kind of meditation process you can train yourself to do, this is the place to deploy it. Don’t let yourself get rattled.

  A fellow comedian told me that if someone was on just before her and they had brought the house down, it was her job to walk on after them and use their energy and what they’d done with the room. She would acknowledge how good they’d been, but she would also carefully prepare the way for her own material, so that it was as clunk-free as possible. She would refer to their material or to an audience member who might have had the piss taken out of them; or if the comic had roasted a particular movie, she might comment on that movie too. All are survival techniques.

  If, by necessity, you have to be in the room before it’s your turn to take to the stage, then take this opportunity to read the room and make a mental map of the kinds of things the audience are laughing at.

  Some comics make a point of homing in on a comic from out of town and chatting to them in a genial ‘mine host’ kind of way in order to try out their material. I remember having a fantastic conversation with a Canadian comic at the Montreal Comedy Festival. It was as though he’d just decided that I was going to be his best friend. He chatted and chatted and chatted, made lots and lots and lots of jokes. I roared with laughter and felt special. And then the bastard went on stage and repeated that entire conversation to the audience, who dutifully laughed in all the same places I’d laughed. He was rehearsing his act on me, which is the comedy equivalent of a dog dry-humping your leg.

  So meditation in the dressing room, list-making, yoga, some form of exercise, music, writing or … total immersion in the room you’re about to play.

  6. What to Wear

  When you’re starting out, it’s important not to overdress. At the open-mic stage, a lot of comedians walk on in whatever they happen to be wearing at that moment, and even when you’re at the three-shows-a-night-’cos-the-cash-is-pretty-decent stage, unless it’s a particular affectation of yours to wear a tuxedo and a bow tie, a general rule of thumb is: wear the clothes in which you’re comfortable.

  At the beginning of his career Robin Williams looked like he was fresh from the commedia dell’arte or mime school. He wore berets, loose-fitting tracksuit bottoms and garishly coloured sweaters or T-shirts. He looked like he was in one long continuous improv class, which is perhaps why his performances were so loose and Hydra-headed. Robin always looked ready for anything and was dressed down so that if he had to roll around on the floor or climb the scenery, it wouldn’t matter so much if he tore something or got grubby. His comedy at that point was experimental, improvisational, which demanded an informality. No suits allowed.

  However, some venues stipulate that performers dress to a certain standard. If you were booked for cabaret or a theatre performance in the late 1970s/early ’80s, you were expected to wear a suit and tie and shiny shoes. You couldn’t go on scruffy, or else the promoter or stage manager would tell you off. Max Bygraves once told me: ‘When you walk on stage, take the applause and give ’em a minute. Let ’em see the suit.’

  I have to admit that from the very early days of my career, I equated being on stage with dressing nicely. I always wanted to look good on stage, and only later, after I’d seen the Comic Strip, did I think that I could get away with wearing a leather jacket and a pair of jeans.

  Steve Martin’s white suit hinted at what journalist Nathan Heller calls his ‘buttoned-up-b
ut-libertine, childlike-but-arrantly-adult routine’. Steve wore the white suit so he could be seen beyond the first twenty rows at an arena gig. I think he also wore it to look cool. There was a sense that he was pandering to the more conservative crowd, while also sneakily preaching to the hipsters. As Heller says, ‘One moment he seemed to be trying to force the sixties back into their box. A second later, he was sucking on his balloons to get high.’

  Billy Connolly at his peak, on the other hand, looked like a Hell’s Angel or a rock star: big shaggy hair, tights, Doc Martens, baggy leopard-skin shirt. It was a statement. He was an alien; he wasn’t one of us. He carried a guitar, which in folky terms meant, ‘Oh, he is like us. He just dresses like a weirdo.’ Jasper Carrott wasn’t as out there as Billy back in the day, but he had a look: long hair, rugby shirt, jeans, trainers. It was an anti-showbiz appearance that said, ‘I’m not one of those cabaret guys.’

  Don Maclean took me to his tailor when I was starting out. I was just about to embark on my first summer season with the Black and White Minstrels. This was in the mid-1970s. I admired Don’s stage clothes. He looked slick, sometimes in a black tuxedo and floppy bow tie, other times in well-pressed beige or sky-blue cotton or velvet, with flares and patent leather shoes. His tailor measured me up for three suits, all of which gave the impression that I was a forty-something club comic. To the Minstrels’ audience, I looked like a seasoned performer from 1970s UK clubland. But now when I see those pictures, I can’t help thinking that I look ridiculous. I was seventeen, of Afro-Caribbean descent, and loved going clubbing and wearing clothes that reflected my age, musical tastes and class. I usually wore Oxford bags, tank tops, loafers and shirts with the rounded collars. Why, then, was I dressed like a depressed middle-aged northern club comic? Only when I was free of the Minstrels, summer season and pantomime, and beginning to explore elements of the alternative comedy world, did I begin to think that there was another way to present myself on stage.

  When you’re on stage, you have to be able to sweat, move, dance, do whatever you want. If your clothes don’t allow you to perform to the best of your ability, then, as Jay-Z says, ‘just change clothes’.

  7. Mic Technique

  The mic is there to help you. It is not there to be eaten, to bang your head against, to perform elaborate sexual jokes with or anything else. It is there to magnify your voice and help you to be heard by most of the audience.

  However, a skilled comedian will often use the microphone to make sound effects. Bill Cosby was into this. Listening to his albums, his use of dynamics and sound effects (cars, martial arts-style hits, pouring water, glugging down alcohol, etc.) is a masterclass in storytelling. As someone who listened to Cosby albums from the mid-1970s, I was very aware as a young comic that using the mic as a tool to enhance your comedy was a no-brainer.

  But there are some things you have to consider. Would you use a microphone that somebody else has breathed all over on stage? Would you use a microphone that your predecessor has just simulated oral sex with or rubbed all over their body? Lots of comedians put the mic in their mouth, beatbox with it very close to their lips, or lick or spit on it. My advice is, if you’re going to be that kind of comic, then buy your own mic. Plenty of people do, and it saves your fellow comedians from having to confront your oral hygiene, or lack thereof, mid-performance.

  Because of hip-hop culture, there’s a lot of mic dropping going on at the end of performances. If you’re using somebody else’s mic, don’t do that, or else find a way to drop the mic without slamming it to the ground and thus damaging its internal workings. Otherwise, you may end up with a bill.

  8. The Grind

  It goes on and on till the break of dawn. The grind is a state of mind. It’s all about the work, and if you don’t get it now, you never will.

  My favourite grinding inspiration is Rocky Balboa – that moment when he realises he better get his groove on if he’s going to challenge the greatest heavyweight champion there has ever been, Apollo Creed. So he gets up in the morning at holy mackerel o’clock, says ‘Hi’ to his two pet turtles Cuff and Link, then goes to the fridge and cracks raw eggs into a container and drinks them. Then, as the sun peeps over the horizon, we see Rocky begin his morning training regime, which involves a lot of running – through the market place, down by the docks, up endless steps. By the end of it we’ve got the idea: training is tough; training to take on the heavyweight champion of the world is much, much, much tougher.

  The point is, if you have the talent to be a comedian, grab the brass ring and run with it. But if you’re not gifted with a visible comedic talent, then you’re going to have to work at it. There are plenty of comics making a living who don’t look or behave in a naturally funny way. These comics say funny things and have a funny attitude, but they don’t slay you. They don’t have that extraordinary visual comedy garnish when they act out situations. Their comedy is all from the neck up, whereas Robin Williams or Richard Pryor or Steve Martin or Lee Evans, at their height, all chose to physicalise everything they did. They certainly inspired me to move and groove on stage. I wanted to be like them and tried my hardest to act out everything I could. The grind isn’t just about technique, though; there’s the boredom of repeatedly getting up and doing bits whenever you can.

  There’s a sequence in Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedian that is about what you do when you have to start again from scratch. The film tells the story of the aftermath of Jerry dumping all his old material into one final TV show. Now he sets himself the task of building a new show from zero, and we see him writing new bits, fiddling with them, trying them out on colleagues, flying to terrible comedy clubs, cellars and pits, just to get stage time with his new material. That’s what every comedian has to do: write, rehearse, try out, edit, repeat until sick.

  There’s something strangely rewarding about working in a new bit. If you’re a well-known comic, you get some play time – maybe two or three minutes up front – to mess around with the crowd using your old, dependable stuff, before slowly easing into the new material. If you’re not well known, do your best three jokes to open, save the next funniest thing you do for a closer, and pack the middle with the new stuff. What have you got to lose?

  I think if you’re gifted enough to craft your own material, then go with God and craft away. However, if you’re funny but are all over the place (like a lot of us), then you’ll need a collaborator – either a friend, colleague or director – to sit with you and listen to the material and help you make choices. Choosing what works and what doesn’t is tough when you’re on your own. You’re fine in a troupe like the Pythons, because everyone’s smart and has an opinion and wants the show to be the best it can be. You’re fine in a double act like French and Saunders or Morecambe and Wise or Laurel and Hardy, because there’s two of you, and one of you is going to have an opinion about exactly how the show should be. If you’re on your own, you’re relying mostly on the audience, so ask someone to audit the act and give you feedback. It’s essential.

  If you love jokes, you can work with someone who cares only about the jokes per minute ratio. They can tell you if there aren’t enough or too many, or if some of them are weak or not in the right place or whatever. If you love narrative structure/shape/coups de théâtre, then sit with a director and create not only a safe space for you to do your thing, but also a show with a clearly delineated beginning, middle and end, correct pacing, etc. Directors tend to cost money, so get your family or friends to come and watch your show. Ask them to be brutally honest – you need that.

  9. Open Mic

  I talk about these a lot but haven’t done many of them. They’re a good way of getting a foot on the bottom rung of the stand-up ladder. They’ll be in a room in a pub. Sometimes there’ll be forty people, if you’re lucky; other venues hold between a hundred and two hundred punters. There’ll be a bar somewhere in the vicinity, which means you’re going to have to deal with drinkers and clatterers and talkers. Of course, the ideal environ
ment for your brand-new, scorching-hot material is a place where the audience sit respectfully and laugh at every single one of your carefully crafted jokes. Most of us, though, have to deal with sneezes, coughs, involuntary screams, inappropriate comments and heckles. Audiences rarely sit still for long, and if they do sit there quietly, they invariably aren’t enjoying themselves.

  At your usual open mic there’ll be a compère; it was probably his idea to have an open mic night in the first place. My brother Paul did it for a while. He and a couple of others researched a venue, convinced the pub landlord that he needed a comedy night and – BOOM! – suddenly there were all these people off the telly turning up to try out new material. If you’re new, you will show up on the night when they allow new people to come on and do five minutes. You can’t just rock up at 8.45 p.m. and expect to get a slot; you have to be respectful, ring ahead, show up ahead of time, get your name on the list.

  Then there’s the tricky question of ‘What do I do when I get up there?’ Well … you can just riff and storm it, but what happens the next night when you try the whole riff thing and it doesn’t work? I advise that you don’t riff. If you’re writing stuff and there’s a sequence of jokes or events or anecdotes that go down particularly well when you’ve tried them out on your friends or family – I’m talking things that always get laughs – then do that bit your first time out. It’s an odd experience – you’re trying to make complete strangers laugh.