Do not post pictures of yourself next to an elephant, even if you are on holiday in Thailand, lying on a beach minding your own business and it happens to walk past, especially if you have just acquired 77,000 new fans who now think you support the elephant trade in Asia.
Get really dressed up and ask hotel reception to take a picture and then go back to bed.
Don’t cry. Or if you are going to have a picture of you crying, use a cool filter and # it.
For the love of God, always use a filter. Always.
I moved around Thailand and found a hut on Bottle Beach for £12 a night. I arranged for my mum and my sister to fly out so we could have our first holiday together. Neither of them had ever been to Thailand before and I loved having them there. Thank God for the women in my life who have always come to my rescue, no matter what, no matter where. My mum and my sister totally saved me.
When I got back from Thailand, I met up with Debi, to see what we could do, my clip was on like 15 million views but TV people weren’t showing interest. ‘Maybe it’s because you say bitches a lot?’
I wanted to leave the industry, to leave Debi. I loved comedy and the gigs but just the politics and the business side of it all. I didn’t know what more I had to do. I had a joke that was now on 15 million views, and I had £800 in my account. Why is it always £800? That’s my go-to number. As long as I have £800 I am all right. That’s a lie; I start getting worried when I have minus £800. You got to think rich. Think like you have money. And I do. I’d flown my mum and sister out and we’d had an amazing holiday. But I earned that, I needed that, I want to be able to go on lots of holidays. I want to be able to take my mum on lots of holidays. I don’t want money to be an issue.
Off the back of my clip, my promoter booked some live dates around the country, little 150–400-seaters, and they sold really well. People were now coming up to me and asking for selfies. As soon as I came on stage to do my pre-show dancing, they were quoting my thigh joke back to me. I liked touring this time around, it felt so much easier, and I made an effort to book myself in nicer hotels and be more comfortable. It was a last-minute tour though, so one day I would be in Glasgow, the next in Cardiff, the next in Newcastle.
As well as Debi and a promoter, I had another agent called Charlotte who booked my little gigs for me. My little gigs kept clashing with my big gigs and it was tricky trying to honour all of my bookings. So on my day off in Newcastle I would have to go and do 20 minutes in Bristol. It was pretty full-on but at least I was working.
On my Manchester tour date, I got Zoe to come and open for me. It made such a difference having a friend with me there at a tour show. It was so much fun and Zoe is so funny, it was awesome to share a stage with her again.
After one of my shows in Manchester, I got this beautiful message from a guy called Richard.
Hi Luisa,
I brought my girlfriend to come and see your show tonight and was blown away. My girlfriend has been suffering with depression over the last few months. For the last few years she has been working in a really stressful job and it’s begun to really take its toll. She struggles with her self-esteem, she is so beautiful but doesn’t see it. I have never seen her laugh so hard as she did tonight. She came out so happy and inspired and I have never seen her look more beautiful. Please keep doing what you are doing, thank you for making the woman I love happier than I have seen her in ages.
Messages like that make it all worth it. I feel very lucky and thankful to be able to do my show and do what I do. That right there is why I do comedy.
I heard that Live at the Apollo were booking their new season and got really excited, hoping that they would let me try out for it. You do a twenty-minute set and then they show the best ten minutes. The trials were happening over the next few weeks but I wasn’t asked to be seen. They didn’t think I was ready. Why wouldn’t they at least let me try? I swear if I was a guy and my solo shows had the same mass appeal to men, they wouldn’t have hesitated to trial me.
Then some good news came. Debi kept hustling and got me booked for The John Bishop Show, BBC 1 prime-time Saturday-night TV. It was a four-minute set at the Hackney Empire. I was so excited, I had loved going to the Hackney Empire, the audience were always young, black and totally up for it. The atmosphere at the Empire can be insane! I was so excited and went on stage and did all right. They just looked at me like I was a bit mental. I did the exact routine from Melbourne, the same one that had gone viral, but this lot were not impressed. The audience were not what I expected at all, not young, just older, middle-class, middle-aged white couples who looked bemused. Ahhh. So this is why TV isn’t booking me.
But if my Australian gala clip had taught me anything, it was that I knew I had an audience. And sure, I need to be able to play any room, but just because I might not be the BBC’s version of mainstream, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a mainstream audience. What I needed was more online content. I was now on 30 million views, on Facebook, not YouTube (you don’t make money off Facebook videos, only YouTube ones. D’oh).
But I don’t care about not making money from the clip; I care about using it to my advantage to build my fan base. My new promoters booked in a tour date at the Bloomsbury Theatre in central London. It’s a 500-seater and they organised it so I would play the week after The John Bishop Show went on air. The idea is that TV sells tour seats. So as soon as the show went to air, I should see my ticket hotline bling.
It got to the airing. The prime-time BBC show made no difference to my ticket sales. This was weird. Instead we just put up my old viral clip as an advert on Facebook and the Bloomsbury show sold out.
This is how I reach my audience; social media is changing the game. This is what I should be focusing on. Well actually what I should be focusing on is writing more jokes, but I’m a business, I have to think about writing jokes and building an audience, and doing more shows, and reaching more people and making enough money to be secure. It’s not enough to just write the jokes. My audience go bat-shit over my shows, the shows are not enough. I have to find a way to let people who will love my shows know I exist. How can I reach these people?
So I decided to record my show at the Bloomsbury and release it online as a download. This was the best way to access my fans, it means people can download it all around the world. Now I just needed the filming crew. I got in touch with my friend Rosie, a wonderful new producer who, like me, was super hungry to work in comedy. She had lots of production experience and said she could help me draw up a budget. We worked out that I needed £10,800 for filming alone. That didn’t include editing or any post-show stuff, it didn’t include the website hosting for the downloads; that was just for filming.
How was I going to raise over £10k? I don’t have that kind of money, even though Debi kindly offered a loan if I needed it. I got in touch with my friend Darshan, who runs a start-up company. He said he could build my website for me and help with the downloads, and as for raising money for the filming, why not crowdfund it?
Crowdfunding is utilising social media to get people to help you fulfil your dream. So that’s what I did. I set a crowdfunding budget of £10,000. I would offer a pre-order download for £10. Then, if I got enough pre-orders, I could use that money to pay for the crew and the filming. My friends all pitched in to help, my flatmate Kat helped me come up with little video ideas to ask for money, Katerina helped me write my pitch, Delia said she would do my hair and make-up for the shoot, my friend Monica volunteered to be a production assistant, and Pas offered to help out in any way she could. I thought, I can make this happen, I can make a DVD. Now I just needed a director.
I called my friend Sarah Townsend, an amazing director who had worked on several comedy specials. She had seen ‘WWBD’ and was a fan, and loved ‘Am I Right Ladies?!’ too. I asked her advice on the best way to shoot the show. She said, ‘Luisa, if you can get the budget for the crew, I can help you film it.’ Yay, I love the universe.
With crowdfunding,
you set prices and perks and then people can pay for the perk they want. Mine were:
£5 – love and luck and a wish to the Good Sex Fairy
£10 – a download of my show
£20 – a download of my show and a signed poster
£100 – a download of my show, a show credit, and some ‘Mind the Gap’ home-made pants
£500 – a producer credit and all of the above
£1,000 – I would come and do my show in your living room for you and your friends
I didn’t think I would sell any of my £1k perks but I had nothing to lose by offering it. Then I logged onto my Facebook page and got a message:
Hi Luisa, it’s Beth, I believe my boyfriend wrote to you after your show in Manchester. Your show was amazing and has really helped me. We have just paid £1,000 towards your crowdfunding but have a request. We would love you to come and do your show for us as it meant so much to us, but the gig is an unusual one. Richard proposed and we are getting married. We have booked a restaurant in Wilmslow in Manchester, friends and family think they are coming because we have been together ten years; actually it’s going to be our secret wedding. Nobody knows yet and it’s only a small ceremony, but we would love you to come and perform your show as part of our big day.
Wow, wow, wow, wow. What an honour to perform at their wedding, I mean, sure, I would have to deal with the day not being all about me, but I think I could manage that ;P. So that was one of my gigs. I performed my show at Richard and Beth’s wedding, in front of their gorgeous friends and family. It was amazing. They had a beautiful ceremony in a family-run restaurant, we had an amazing dinner, and afterwards they cleared all the tables aside, set up a stage by the window and I did my show. Such a privelege. I did the whole show in front of the window, as in all of it, including the bits where I pull my trousers down and do my thigh gap joke. I did that. At a wedding ceremony, in a restaurant, by the window, facing Wilmslow Road, with people walking past. I love my job.
After the wedding party I went back to my hotel. As I checked in I bumped into Larry, my old mate from my stand-up class at uni. We got chatting and went for a drink. We reminisced about Salford, our stand-up classes. He had lost touch with everyone at uni and so I filled him in on Zoe and what I was up to. He said he never gigged again after uni but instead went to work for an advertising firm in Hulme. His girlfriend had recently kicked him out of their one-bed so he was newly single and planning to work abroad for a year. He was leaving on Monday.
Well if this wasn’t a sign for him to be my new boyfriend then baby you need to write clearer signs! Larry was being super flirtatious and complimentary. He was really impressed with what I had achieved. He wasn’t threatened or intimidated by it; he actually seemed quite turned on by my alpha-ness. He tried to kiss me but I turned him down. I have been here before, I am not going to be someone’s sloppy seconds.
Instead we just kept chatting and he kept calling me beautiful and telling me how golden my skin was. Thailand was still showing. He said I looked like a goddess and I took that as another sign (hello, surely only a future boyfriend would call you a goddess). But I kept my sensible hat on, I mean sure, this was all very nice, but I still wasn’t going to have sex with him. He is leaving the country. I hadn’t had sex in two years and then I had it with Juice. Look how that turned out. No siree, no more sex for me!
But I was tired, tired of fighting, tired of waiting for it to be right, and tired of wanking, by myself, alone. Here was this gorgeous man, who I’d known for years, offering me attention, yes he will never be my boyfriend, yes he is leaving the country, but would it be so bad to enjoy his attention? Am I making the same mistake again like with Marley, Klaus, Dave and Juice?! The signs are here Luisa (the ‘no, he is not your boyfriend’ ones). He is not available!! I did what I do in all these crossroad situations, and called every one of my best friends. The first and only one to answer was Pas. Thanks Pas.
Pas is very balanced and very good at making informed decisions. (One time when a guy dumped her she just never called him again. I know, right? Not even an email. Weirdo.) I broke down my dilemma (like Nelly to Kelly, lol), and called on the Kelly in my life.
‘Pas there’s this really sexy guy who I fancy and have known for years. He is randomly staying at the same hotel as me tonight, I am at the bar with him, and he keeps stroking my skin and my body really likes it, I think he is offering me sex but the only problem is he has just been dumped and is leaving the country on Monday so I don’t think he is going to be in a position to marry me. But he did just call me a golden goddess, what do I do?’
Pas said, ‘Hey Luisa, he absolutely might come back after travelling and propose or he might die in a horrific plane crash. So, either way, probably best if you just fuck him. Just for tonight anyway, just in case.’
‘Thanks Pas, you’re the best!’
Long story short, we fucked. We fucked all night and all day. Never had I met someone where the sex was so good from the beginning, bam. Or wham bam! Hello! Sorry. I think this was the universe’s way of telling me I was doing the right thing. It was some of the best sex of my entire life. It was as if we had fucked before in a past life. We fucked on the floor, on the bed, on the windowsill, in the shower. It was on point. He treated me like a goddess and just kept telling me how beautiful he found me and how amazing it felt to be lying next to me. And that felt nice. Jesus, all this time, this was what I’d wanted and needed. Some human spirit interaction, not just a physical connection but some sensuality and some sex.
I’d missed that, I don’t think I’d ever had it like that. I left the following evening knowing full well I wasn’t going to see him again. I felt amazing, I’d had the nicest time and had allowed myself to just let go. There was no disappointment to be had; I knew exactly where I stood. I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy who fucked her brains out and was leaving the country. Perfect.
I ended up selling four more private shows as perks (as in my comedy shows, not my all-night-banging ones). It’s safe to say I have the best audiences in the world. Within 30 days I had beaten my target and raised £11,500. Filming was on!
I’d got my team of friends, a director, five cameras, sound, runners, a neon sign that spelt out my name. The funds would cover the filming and that was enough for now. With editing and website the costs were coming closer to £21,500, but I could worry about that later. I set up a production company and started paying for the extras in instalments. My mate Darshan said I could take the website costs off for now and pay him when I had it; now I just needed £6,000 to help with the filming costs. I got paid £3,000 from my Australian tour and that went straight to my DVD fund.
BBC3 offered some money to do a taster tape for an online pilot, so not a pilot but some money towards a tape that if I did have a pilot would be what my pilot looked like. They were after an entertainment documentary-style show, I know it sounds bad, after all my yearning to get some TV, but I just didn’t care; I needed help with my download recording. That was the only show I wanted to put on TV, that and Beyoncé.
The recording couldn’t have gone better. The audience were exceptional and I had all the footage. The following Monday I got an email from Debi: ITV2 had come back and said they thought they’d made a mistake and would like to offer me a pilot. I went in for a meeting with them. They said, ‘It’s difficult with you as an artist on your own, we need to put you with a team you will listen to.’ Debi set up some meetings and I met some more production houses. I met with a production company called King Bert. I warmed to them instantly, it was all women I met on the team, and between them they had worked on Miranda, Absolutely Fabulous and The Vicar of Dibley. I liked this production company.
However, the ITV2 pilot would take a few months to organise and right now my priority was my recorded show, I had pre orders I needed to fulfil, I couldn’t let my audiences down.
I went up to the Edinburgh Festival again and played a few nights in a 500-seater of ‘Am I Right Lad
ies?!’ My shows generated approximately £15,000; I got paid approximately £2,000. I am playing to 500 people, self-funding a DVD and yet still have cling film on my windows.
The money went straight towards my editing costs. I know, I know I keep saying you have to speculate to accumulate, but how about speculating so things are easy for a while and then I can have a bedroom with double frickin’ glazing, huh?
Ummm glazing, I love yum yums, I digress.
I was £4,000 short for my editing costs and was feeling the stress and the burden of getting my show up online. I was organising it all myself and I couldn’t focus on anything else. People had invested their money in me and right now I wasn’t earning enough to pay for an editor to edit my show to send out to people. I didn’t like where I was at. I had gone my own way, but I didn’t see myself as having any other choice. My going my own way was hard.
It shouldn’t be like this, so I called Debi; I wanted to talk to her because I wasn’t happy and I didn’t understand why.
Her response was: ‘What are you not happy about now? Are you not happy about the ITV pilot they have come back and offered, or the BBC3 pilot, which I am discussing tomorrow, or are you not happy about your book deal or about the fact that I have confirmed dates for you in Australia next year, or are you not happy that you might be going to America again at the end of the year? Which of these are you not happy about Luisa?’
And I said, ‘All of them.’ I don’t know why I said that, it’s what came out. I was just tired and a bit burnt out. I hadn’t really stopped apart from my holiday in Thailand and I had spent most of that crying.
Every time something amazing would happen, like my Bloomsbury show, I would feel fantastic but then wouldn’t be able to deal with any disappointment, TV stuff, filming costs, tour budgets, etc. My highs were really high and I spent all my time trying to chase them. I could only deal with one project at a time, I want to do one thing and make that one thing excellent. I couldn’t cope with several plates spinning. The downloads, the pilots, the book (hello you), the shows.
What Would Beyoncé Do?! Page 24