So A Comedian Walks Into Church

by Paul Kerensa

I follow them, and sure enough they walk right into the McDonald’s next door to a small church. I leave them to it and wander into the Tardis-like building: traditional and wee on the outside, but ultra-modern white walls and funky chairs on the inside.

  ‘You’re most welcome. Do take a seat anywhere,’ a sidesman says.[5]

  There’s a huge bookshop at the back. Not just a mobile trolley with a few dog-eared copies of The Purpose Driven Life. This is like a mini Waterstones. There are commentaries on every book in the Bible, sections on Mission, Church History, Hermeneutics, Epistemology, Semiotics and several other words that I’ve vaguely heard of. I always thought Hermeneutics was the session at our sports centre between Zumba and Bodypump.

  The worship band strikes up, and sounds more like an orchestra. Not only drums, guitars and keyboard, but we also have a cellist and a fiddler. It means the opening music has a truly Celtic feel to it. I’m slow to sing along - it sounds that beautiful - but when we move into ‘Amazing Grace’, you can’t help but get swept up in the moment. The strings section, the location, the fact that I can hear the Scottish accent in the congregation’s singing, all make this the finest version of John Newton’s great song that I’ve ever heard or had the joy of singing. I have visions of Welsh churches at the same moment belting out ‘Bread of Heaven’, Irish churches giving it ‘Danny Boy’ and English churches muttering something about an ‘English Country Garden’.

  The musical worship gives way to the welcome, and I half-want the cello and violin to continue under the whole service, like the backing for a Visit Scotland commercial. Instead the dulcet Hibernian tones of the minister greet us. This is an accent I could listen to for hours, and nearly do, as church news and banns of marriage alone last for fifteen minutes. But it’s Glasgow city centre, and there’s a lot going on. Fair play to them.

  The reading is from Ephesians 5: ‘Wives, be subordinate to your husbands as to the Lord.’ Controversial, and not often preached upon. I presume we’ll get a nice placatory explanation of how actually you can read it to mean we’re all equal. I presume wrong. Most would focus on the later verse instructing husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church. Not this guy. We’re not in a C of E now. This is C of S. There’s no watering down of wine or sermons here.

  Still intoning as the vocal equivalent of hot chocolate, the minister proceeds to tell us how women should promise to obey their husbands. No room for ambiguity here. My, does it get uncomfortable, especially for the couples who’ve just had their banns read. The minister marrying them may not give them the vow-flexibility they had hoped for.

  The minister encourages that during our time of prayer, we consider the challenges of what’s been said, only looking at women as he says so. Wow, they’ve been given homework.

  As we bow our heads though, my focus is on last night’s gig. It is challenging being a comedian who’s a Christian,[6] and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I like to think I’m an example of human loveliness when I’m onstage. Last night I was an example of how to needlessly start a pub brawl.

  Closing worship is a chance for me to reflect. As another holy concert plays, courtesy of the string section, I resolve to try and be more ‘me’ onstage and less what the audience expects from a comedian. I resolve to accept when a gig is getting out of hand and that, sometimes, I’m powerless to turn it. I resolve to put it behind me and just be glad that, for all I know, there were no priests there. And I resolve to listen to more folk music (it really is a lovely violin).

  The inevitable invitation comes: ‘Do stay for coffee.’ It’s practically part of the blessing in churches nowadays. You can roll it straight into, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ... ’. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that in the 1665 prayer book there’s a section of alternative invitations:

  The minister says:

  Do join us for coffee.

  or

  You’re welcome to stay for coffee.

  or on festival days

  Do stay for coffee and biscuits.

  The congregation may reply:

  Thanks, but I’ve got to rush off.

  The coffee must be good here - there’s a big queue. So while it dies down I browse the bookshop, run by an elderly lady so tiny she barely appears above the table of books. I hope she doesn’t have the job of stacking the shelves.

  ‘New here or just visiting?’

  ‘Just passing through. I’m working here this weekend.’

  ‘Oh, whereabouts?’ she continues, sipping a coffee that she must have fetched during the closing blessing, the wily lass.

  I’m not proud of last night’s show so I consider lying, saying that I’m working at Prestwick Airport and taking a trip to far-off Glasgow. But I’m in a church branch of Waterstones, and there are rules against deceit.

  ‘The comedy club up the road.’

  ‘Oh, Matt and Emily went there last night,’ she says, and I gulp. I blink and she’s gone to fetch them.

  Uh oh. Perhaps no priests there last night, but these guys were. As the jolly couple join us, I wonder if they’d be even jollier if last night’s opening comedy set had been better.

  ‘Hi!’ says Matt with a handshake. It’s the spectre from last night, but I make a conscious effort not to imply I’ve ever even met his mum.

  The wee bookkeeper nudges Emily with her elbow, hitting slightly above her knee. ‘He was one of those turns in your show.’

  ‘Last night?’ checks Emily. Here it comes. The accusation. How as a Christian can I utter such twisted words? Then the half-hour compulsory prayer session. ‘Oh you weren’t on first, were you? The babysitter kept us waiting - we only got there in the interval. I’m so sorry.’

  I’m saved! A sentence often uttered in churches (though perhaps not often enough) - only here I’m saved from social embarrassment and quiet grumbly judgment.

  ‘So you’re a Christian?’ Matt asks. ‘Typical we missed it. How great that you can stand up there and be a positive influence.The other acts on the bill were all smut and being rude to hecklers.’

  I stay silent. It’s not the time or place to confess the truth (all right, I know it’s exactly the time and the place).

  Our conversation ends when Matt tells Emily to finish her coffee and fetch their coats. She obeys, which implies to me they were probably married in this church by today’s minister.

  So yes, I got away with it. Part of me feels cheated that the comeuppance I thought I’d get never came. For that brief moment, I knew I’d been caught out, until I wasn’t. I’m sure in that audience of four hundred last night, there must have been one or two Christians there - I’ve just avoided meeting them. I know I deserve to be found out though, so I decide that one day, if I ever get to write a book about experiences of life on the road as a Christian comic, I should confess my reckless run-in with a heckler in those pages. One day...

  1 My irrational fear of Scottish head-butts can be blamed on Russ Abbot c.1987.

  2 Especially if you start talking about ratios.

  3 It’s always a ‘him’.

  4 i.e. There were two stag dos after one hen do.

  5 If the old kids’ game is to be believed, he should have said, ‘Sidesman says take a seat,’ before I obeyed him.

  6 ...as opposed to a ‘Christian comedian’, which implies putting on skits at parish away days.

  2

  Local Hero

  Uniting with the URC

  I entered my third hour of being trapped in the unfamiliar bathroom.

  The neighbourhood wasn’t one I knew. If you’d have given me a hotline to the local police station, all I could’ve said was, ‘I’m on the outskirts of Newcastle ... Well can you just try all the houses till you find me? I’m the one yelling through frosted glass wit
h just a small travel towel for clothing.Yes, it is surprisingly compact for packing...’

  Life on the road necessitates staying with friends, especially when the gig fee barely covers the petrol. I normally try and bring a bottle of plonk as rent, but sometimes even the cost of that pushes the gig into becoming a loss maker.

  Sofa-hopping means gatecrashing a lot of people’s Saturday mornings, when no one gets much done.That was exactly what I was doing right now, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in the street still not dressed at midday. Judging by the response to my hoarse shouts though, perhaps I was the only one in the street.

  I generally try and travel light, but not this light. I had just a towel and a toilet bag; my clothes were a room and a world away. I had no help, no hope and no one in the house for two full days. Forty-eight hours! Two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes![7]

  Someone would miss me surely, and call for help. Well, no. I’d got a new girlfriend, Zoë, but when I said I was off to the north-east, she thought that meant Walthamstow. Besides, we were still at the stage where if I didn’t call for five days, she’d just think I was playing ‘hard to get’. In fact I was playing ‘hard to get out’.

  To be fair, I had been warned about this room. As soon as I’d arrived at Jo’s on Friday afternoon, she’d said that the bathroom door was,‘a bit dodgy’. She’d reminded me too that she was leaving at dawn for a weekend away with friends, due to me mistiming my visit to the north- east. But I could come and go as I pleased till I left on Sunday morning. Fine in theory, but I couldn’t come and go anywhere. She’d be back on Sunday night, which at the moment was looking like my best chance of escaping.

  She’d explained very clearly that if I use the bathroom, don’t, whatever I do, let the door completely shut. She was having some work done, the inside handle had been removed - and with it, all possibility of leaving, should the door close completely.

  ‘Not a problem,’ I’d said, and indeed early on Friday evening it was not a problem - my memory lasted the few minutes needed to apply this information.[8] Then came the gig: a pleasant arts centre show with two other acts. Except they were stuck in traffic and never arrived, so my twenty minute slot turned into an hour. The audience would never know the difference, until they looked at the poster on the way out and wondered where their twelve pounds had gone.[9]

  So I’d dredged up old material and tried to remember new. I’d bantered with most of the audience, and after my poor brain had tried to hold a dozen or so audience names, as well as jokes from notebooks and from yesteryear, it’s no wonder that when I arrived back, memory of the cursed bathroom door was all but gone.

  Only tiredness meant I didn’t slam it shut late that night, and I then took to my sofabed and curled up with a Choose Your Own Adventure book I’d plucked from Jo’s bookcase.[10]

  Saturday morning was not so kind. Jo had left early for her weekend trip, which I’m sure was genuine, and not just booked at the last minute because I’d announced I was turning up. Bleary-eyed, I’d staggered to the bathroom with a wash bag, a towel, a yawn, and the clothes I was born in. I pushed the door behind me ...

  ... and slam.

  Ah.

  My first thoughts were of disbelief: No, it must open - ‘You’ll get locked in’ is just the sort of thing people say, it doesn’t actually happen. Then panic: If I pull hard enough, it’s bound to open through sheer desperation.Then a period of alternating prayer words and swear words.

  I checked and double-checked the door, and Jo was right - once that latch had clicked into place, there was no budging it.The door was flush. Where once was a handle, there was now a hole about a centimetre in diameter, revealing a square gap that the mechanism of a door handle would fit into perfectly, had I one to hand.

  Instead I had nothing, but time. With her gone for two days, I weighed my options:

  Shout. A neighbour would hear eventually. Maybe one that works as a 24-hour locksmith.

  Bash the door down. Granted, the only sizeable object in the room was a wicker laundry basket, but I reckoned that after several hours of insanity, I could do some serious damage with it.

  Dig. If it worked in The Great Escape, it could work here. I just needed a spade, a forged passport and a grasp of basic Geordie in case I was caught.[11]

  Make my peace with it. I wouldn’t die here. In fact I’d probably picked the best room to be shut in - I had a working toilet, taps full of drinkable water, a bath to sleep in and toys to alleviate boredom. Jo’s rubber ducky may have been bought ironically, but I figured I’d have quite a few chats with him over the next thirty-six hours. I even had toothpaste in my wash bag should I need some sustenance. I counted my blessings that I’d only just invested in a new tube of Aquafresh - enough for breakfast, lunch and a light hors d’oeuvres, and with the tri-stripe effect, I could pretend it was Neapolitan ice cream.

  Well what would you do? I’ll lay it out for you.You’ve got a handleless door. On the back of it is a hook. On the other side is freedom.To the right of the door is the sink, on which is a flannel, a beaker with a toothbrush, some toothpaste[12] and some squirty hand soap.

  Next along from the sink is the toilet. Nothing to see there. All right, there’s the standard ballcock flush mechanism, but I can’t see how that can be manipulated to make a working handle or crowbar, given no tools or DIY ability. Below there’s a toilet brush and above is the bathroom cabinet. There’s a frosted window, then the bath, with shower attachment over it and shower curtain across the side of it. At the foot end of the bath is the aforementioned wicker laundry basket, which brings us back to the door again.The evil door.

  So how would you get out? Well, what played in my head was the book I was reading the night before: the Choose Your Own Adventure book. If you’re new to the genre, it’s quite self-explanatory. You, the reader, are on a quest and via various permutations and combinations you devise your own route. Traditionally the adventures would involve fighting goblins in a maze, or breaking out of a towering citadel. Here the adventure is far greater: only a few choices stand between you, and Escape From the Bathroom of Doom.This is no ancient castle; this is Newcastle.

  Each quest used to last a whole book. This one’s shorter, because there aren’t many things in a bathroom. So, given the above room layout, and your inventory (a wash bag with duplicates of the above accessories, and a towel), what would you do first?

  1

  If you opt for pulling the door very hard from the hook on the back of it, go to 2.

  If you choose to climb out of the window and lower yourself down with the shower curtain, go to 3.

  If you want to charge at the bathroom door with a heavy lump of porcelain, go to 6.

  2

  Well done, you’ve just broken the hook off the back of the door. Now you’re stuck in a bathroom and you owe the owner a new hook.This is fast becoming the worst day this week. So what now?

  If you decide to have a go getting out of that window, go to 3.

  If you wish to investigate the sink area, go to 6.

  3

  You yank down the shower curtain from the bath. It’s quite dramatic.

  But just think for a moment.You’ve got no clothes on.When up against the window, that frosted glass doesn’t protect the outside world from much, let alone if you’re clambering out of it.What if some neighbour decides not to help, but to snap the event on their camera phone? Either way it’s a moot point.The window’s far too small to fit through. You really should have checked that before ripping down that shower curtain.

  You wave the shower curtain out of the window for a little while, shouting as you do it, but stop after five minutes when you realise people must think you’re beating a carpet while wailing to Motorhead.

  If you want to wear some clothes from the laundry basket, go to 5.

  If you wish t
o pull the sink off the wall and throw it at the door, go to 6.

  4

  Oh no! You’re trapped in a time loop from another Choose Your Adventure Game. As the dark maze walls surround you, the riddling goblin in the distance gives a wild cackle.You tighten your clutch on the broadsword from the dragon’s lair. To attempt escape from this temporal glitch, you have two choices:

  Run left through the black hole, and hope to escape this broken record of time. Go to 4.

  Sidestep right into the wizard’s force field, and utter the magic words:‘Will this eternal time-loop ever end?!’ Go to 4.

  5

  The laundry basket - home to clothes! They’re not yours and they’ll have been worn, but hey, it’s getting nippy with that window open for three hours.You could close it, but look what happened last time you closed a thing. Door wouldn’t open again. You approach the laundry basket thinking it may not help you escape, but it might keep you toasty and dignified as you plot your exit. Granted, Jo is female, and you’re not,[13] but there are different levels of dignity. Dressing up in a woman’s unwashed clothing is still a notch above where you currently are.

  It’s empty. Probably for the best.

  If you want to know how you’d look if the laundry basket wasn’t empty, go to 7.

  If you wish to assert your masculinity by trying to break the door down with the sink, go to 6.

  6

  You approach the sink. It’s a sturdy unit, so sadly will not budge from the wall. Probably for the best - you’d have to explain why you’ve destroyed the bathroom, and you’re not a home wrecker (I hope).The items on the sink just rattle a little as you shake. These wash-time accessories are more mobile, but less of a threat to the door. You can’t charge at the door with a flannel.You can, but you’d look foolish.

  Do you want to try charging at the door with a flannel? Go to 7.

  Do you want to give that a miss and examine the toothbrush? Go to 8.