The Tour

by Denise Scott

  I will never forget how sick I felt that night standing backstage and looking through the slight crack between the double wooden doors and seeing my mother and aunt marching down the grand marble hallway towards the venue. How my stomach heaved, and how I prayed with all my heart that the earth would open up and swallow me, or at the very least bring on a mild stroke that meant I couldn’t perform—anything rather than have my mother in the audience. Of course, there was a contradiction going on here. On the one hand, all I wanted was my mother to acknowledge my work; on the other, when she did show up I literally wanted to die.

  As showtime drew near I went over my script in my head and groaned, knowing for sure and certain my mother would hate it, especially my Rage Against the Machine routine, and specifically my observations regarding their song ‘Killing in the name’. For those unfamiliar with the song, the lyrics include several appearances of the f-word. In my routine I proposed that this song was all well and good but asked what the young fans would do in their old age for their weekly singalong in the retirement village, whereupon I proceeded to sing the ‘no way, get fucked, fuck off’ lyrics as an elderly woman might, with a sweet, quavering, church choir voice. I guess you had to be there … which, unfortunately, my mother was.

  I was halfway through the show when a huge theatre light came crashing down and landed not five centimetres away from me. There followed the collapse of the entire lighting and curtain rig, including heavy scaffolding, more large lights and thick black velvet curtains—all toppled down around me. The Comedy Festival SWAT emergency team, which until then I hadn’t known existed, arrived within a minute: six burly men with dreadlocks, walkie-talkies, hammers, drills, power tools and ladders raced into the room and onto the stage. They immediately began reconstructing the set. I had no choice but to go and sit in the audience and improvise, using the time to introduce my mother and aunt to everyone. Mum was quiet but seemed to enjoy the attention—anything was better than having to watch her daughter do stand-up—although who ever knew for sure how she felt?

  It is a cardinal rule during Comedy Festival time that, since there are so many shows in each venue, you must stick to your allotted sixty minutes. Consequently, because of all the mayhem, I didn’t get time to do my Rage Against the Machine f-word spectacular, which led me to conclude that God had come to my rescue.

  After the show Aunty Noreen congratulated me; Mum said nothing. This was absolutely the norm. Even when my mother came to see me in acceptable shows, such as the highly acclaimed Canadian hit Mum’s the Word, which had no swearing (an extraordinary feat, given it was about childbirth and the rearing of small children), she would say nothing at all about them, as though the shows simply hadn’t happened.

  * * *

  I’m sure that if my father had lived to see my comedy, it would not have been such an issue between my mother and me. Dad would have loved what I did; he was that sort of dad. He wouldn’t have noticed the swearing or the fact that jokes fell flat or that there were only five people in the audience. He would have brimmed with pride regardless, because it was his daughter standing up there on the stage. He could have been the buffer Mum needed. She could have come to see me perform and hidden her disapproval behind Dad’s uninhibited, rapturous response.

  But that wasn’t to be. And so, early in my career, my mother and I came to an unspoken agreement: we would never talk about my comedy. We would pretend it didn’t exist. While I childishly continued to crave her approval, my mother resolutely and stubbornly continued to withhold it.

  It was a tension that sat between us always.

  We never spoke of it.

  Ever.

  chapter eleven

  Post-awakening

  From the moment I walked in our front door and announced, ‘John, I think we should have sex more often’ (whereupon John fainted and I had to slap him back to consciousness) it was obvious something of great importance had taken place on the tour of 2009. I realise there may be some eye rolling in response to my claim that what I experienced was an awakening. Those inclined to cynicism may even dismiss the event as nothing more than the consequence of a middle-aged woman drinking to excess. But, I put it to you, they’d be wrong.

  I may well have been on all fours vomiting my guts out at the time, and in a state of trauma trying to get some confi rmation as to whether I was twenty-four or fifty-four years of age while Gid and Stu resolutely refused to answer the question, but what happened to me that day on the road from Mount Spec to Townsville was an epiphany! Damn and blast it, that’s what it was! How else do you describe a major turning point in life? I swear, from the moment I stood up I felt lighter—and not just because I had vomited so much. It was as though I’d been relieved of a heavy burden. I had a profound awareness that life is precious and wonderful and that more to the point we don’t get long to experience it. I didn’t want to waste any more time being negative and feeling shame. I wanted to be positive. I wanted to enjoy life. I wanted to celebrate and appreciate all that I had—John, kids, friends, family, work, two legs, two arms and one, albeit sundamaged, head.

  And, call it New Age mumbo jumbo, but it was at that moment by the roadside that I finally let go of trying to please my mother. Coincidentally, it was also the moment I stopped hating being a comedian and stopped hating myself.

  I know. Wow!

  For those of you feeling the urge to stick your fingers down your throat, I assure you I still adore the odd bit of negative thinking and am, as ever, prone to bouts of self-loathing and self-doubt, and thank God I am, because I think these are attributes that make for an interesting life. Put it this way: I’d rather have dinner with a cranky, crusty old borderline alcoholic than some happy-faced lentil-eating positive thinker on a liver-cleansing diet. It’s just that I stopped those negative forces ruling my life.

  My mum had actually stopped judging me a good five years before my ‘awakening’, her reservations about my work evaporating into thin air. She became content to just love me ‘to bits’ and, what was more, she was unafraid to show it, often beaming with unrestrained pride. This perhaps surprising change in attitude came about not so much through a moment of enlightenment but more because she developed Alzheimer’s and completely forgot I was or ever had been a comedian, more often than not believing I was a nurse. It was one of the few positives during those nightmare Alzheimer’s years.

  In letting go of trying to please my mother I also inevitably let go, to some degree at least, of guilt. And, given that guilt goes hand in hand with having a parent with Alzheimer’s, there was a lot of it. If my guilt were measured in oceanic terms it would have filled the Atlantic and Pacific and Indian oceans. Even Lake Eyre would have lost its tourist status, because it would have been full all the time.

  Mostly, my guilt was to do with my mother living in a locked dementia unit. It was a sad fate and yet initially I had been upbeat about it. I thought the place Mum was in was marvellous. There was a joy and real commitment to giving the elderly residents’ lives some purpose—singalongs, craft activities, bingo—they may not sound like reasons to live, but the residents were happy. Initially, my mum seemed to thrive: no longer having to live in the outside world with no memory was a huge relief to her. The staff were in the main brilliant, so caring, kind and dedicated to the residents, just as my mother had been back in her nursing days. But, like many of the ‘caring sectors’, aged-care facilities became victims of budget cuts, and so the yoga sessions, the music therapists, the massage therapists, the movement therapists, the Friday ‘happy hour’ with wine and beer, all disappeared.

  And then there were the health regulations that meant my dog could no longer come into the unit with me. And smoking was banned from the patio area, and that really broke my heart, not because I smoked—I’d given up years earlier, as had my mother. The reason was because sitting outdoors on the patio with the carers and the few residents who did smoke had been fun; there was an almost festive atmosphere, and people both with and with
out dementia chatted and laughed together about their lives. Mum loved it; it was what she’d always done at her home—sit out the back of an evening and have a cup of tea and a smoke. But that became a thing of the past, and the facility was a sadder place for it. Even though the staff remained excellent throughout, I knew my mother deserved better—at the very least she deserved that I check out other accommodation possibilities; after all, I was her daughter, and she was relying on me to look after her. But I did nothing. I told myself my mum was in the best place for her needs, she was happy there, and it was close to my home, within walking distance, and that meant I could visit three times a week. The problem was that over the years the visits had dwindled to two, sometimes only one a week. Hence my ocean of guilt.

  chapter twelve

  Success is …

  It wasn’t as if all my guilt magically disappeared that day by the roadside outside Townsville, but I did cut myself some slack, told myself I was doing the best I could for my mother and that it was time to stop using her Alzheimer’s, in the same way I had used my kids when they were young, as an excuse to avoid really going for it with my work. I needed to find out if, when I gave it my all, I could have a successful career.

  I dreaded what could happen—what if I gave it my all and it turned out, as I’d suspected, that I really was a failure? The answer to that question came almost immediately. Within months of my return from the tour, my career, as they say in the trade, began to take off. One door opened, and then another, and then another …

  One door opened onto the stage at the Comedy Theatre, and I got to fulfi l my childhood dream: to stand alone there and perform my own solo show. It was called Number 26. There were people in the audience! A thousand people! And they’d even paid!

  If you are to appreciate the following tale it is essential I describe my costume—a large, fluffy white dressing gown. Underneath, I wore a high-cut black leotard and a pair of fishnet stockings, which the audience didn’t see until the big reveal at the end of the show, when I performed a tap dance routine to the ‘131 008, silvertop taxis—why wait?’ jingle. I’ve always been a firm believer in bringing home a show with a leotard—it can distract the audience from the fact that you haven’t got a decent closing joke.

  The first time I performed Number 26 at the Comedy Theatre all was going well until my microphone stopped working. It was one of those tiny lapel mikes, the sort newsreaders wear clipped onto their jacket. It was attached by wires to a battery pack that was in turn attached to a belt that I wore under my leotard. When the battery went, not wanting to prematurely reveal the leotard I decided to leave the stage so the stage manager could change it in private. It wasn’t ideal, but what could I do? I simply told the audience to talk among themselves; I’d be back soon.

  A few minutes later, with a new battery in place, I stepped back onto the stage and continued with the show until the new battery stopped working. Like a brave soldier refusing to leave his mates at a time of crisis, I declared to my audience, ‘I will not leave you again.’ And so I stayed onstage. In the true spirit of showbiz, in order not to reveal the leotard, the poor manager—thankfully a woman—was forced to lie on the floor underneath me and virtually put her hand up my arse in order to change the battery.

  With that mission successfully accomplished, once more I set forth, regaling the audience with stories of life with John and the kids at Number 26, until ten minutes later that battery died.

  This time the stage manager had to admit that never in the history of the theatre had three battery packs died and that there was no other battery to be had, at which point she gave me a handheld microphone—the sort normally used by stand-ups. The problem was, this wasn’t a stand-up show; it was more like a play. I’m not saying it was Shakespeare, but if you can imagine Juliet on the balcony saying, ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’ into a handheld mike, you get the idea. Not that I cared how odd it looked; nor did the audience. The important thing was they could hear me, and so on I went, mike in hand, until the battery in the handheld died.

  For one mike to die was unfortunate. Two was unlucky. Three was unheard of. Four was downright spooky. I wondered if my unbridled excitement about being onstage at the Comedy was causing me to send out electrical frequencies so powerful that any technical equipment I came into contact with exploded under the pressure.

  Mortified, the stage manager once more appeared, with the news that there was no other battery for the handheld. Rightio, then. I had no choice but to work without a microphone, and so I finished the show yelling my guts out. The leotard reveal worked a treat, and the audience seemed to appreciate the fact that they had seen my show as no other audience ever would.

  While I was performing at the Comedy I was asked to audition for a new TV show called Winners and Losers, a ‘dramedy’. I had no idea what a dramedy was, but it sounded impressive.

  I’d already been called back three times to audition when my agent rang and said they wanted me to do a fourth. I asked him why.

  ‘Scotty, they’re just not sure if you know …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘… that you can act.’

  Fair enough. At that stage I certainly had doubts.

  This called for unprecedented action. I phoned Alan Brough, a man famous for the musical knowledge and quick wit he displayed every week on the much-loved TV show Spicks and Specks.

  ‘Alan, I need your help.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I need to learn to act.’

  ‘You can already act, Ms Scott! I’ve seen you tell a comedian how much you loved their show after you’d just finished telling me how much you loathed it. It was a very convincing performance.’

  ‘Maybe so, but I can’t act at auditions.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I guess I’m not used to it. I usually perform as myself, so having to act feels goosey.’

  The next day Alan stood opposite me in my kitchen taking me through my paces. Naturally, I was playing the role I was auditioning for, Trish Gross, while Alan took the role of Jenny, my character’s twenty-seven-year-old daughter. It was quite a dramatic piece. I had to express anger and disappointment and upset …

  ‘Eye contact, Scotty, that’s what acting is all about. Eye contact. No matter what, just keep looking at my eyes.’

  It wasn’t easy. Apart from the fact that I’ve always been uncomfortable holding anyone’s gaze, Alan was 6 foot 5 to my 5 foot 2. By the end of the session my neck ached. But it worked. I got the job. To be cast in a TV part in my midfifties, while overweight, with irregular teeth, no botox, facial hair issues, warts and sun damage—as far as I was concerned this was a miracle right up there with Lazarus!

  And, let me tell you, since then I have become quite the celebrity. I was in a public toilet standing in a long queue and at one point the woman in front of me said, ‘Has anyone ever told you that you look like the actress in that show …?’

  That’s the thing about us women in our fifties: we can never remember the name of a person, place, animal or thing, the miracle being that it doesn’t matter—we understand one another perfectly anyway. And so without hesitation I replied to the woman, ‘It is me. I’m Denise Scott, and I’m in Winners and Losers.’

  This woman gasped in shock. ‘Oh my God, you even sound like her.’

  I said, ‘That’s because I am her. I’m Denise Scott.’

  And then she said, ‘You couldn’t possibly be. Denise Scott is much fatter than you.’

  I’m still in the process of deciding whether this was a compliment or an insult.

  * * *

  Getting the Winners and Losers gig was a high point, but I have to say that performing at the Langwarren Ladies Probus Club luncheon eclipsed it. It was a favour for my cousin’s wife Wendy, whose grandma Bernis, in her role as president of the club, had requested me. I didn’t get paid, of course, but Wendy, who kindly drove me to and from the gig, got fifty dollars petrol money.

  I will nev
er forget turning into the Probus Club car park to be greeted by seventy-eight-year-old Bernis, arms outstretched, legs wide apart, her president’s medal, as big as a dinner plate, hanging on a ribbon around her neck. ‘Thank God you’ve arrived, girls. I’ve been standing here for over half an hour saving a parking spot for you.’ The fact that the car park was pretty near empty at the time was neither here nor there to a woman like Bernis.

  The hall was full of women aged from their mid-fifties to their nineties. Bernis gestured towards an old lady in a wheelchair. ‘Don’t expect any laughs from her. She’s as deaf as a doorpost, and her mind—it’s completely gone, poor thing. Still, she enjoys a day out.’

  We had lunch—roast beef and vegetables—and then Bernis introduced me as ‘the greatest little comedian in Australia.’

  The gig was going well when out of the blue I experienced a real-life senior moment: I couldn’t for the life of me remember my closing joke. I could remember the set up: ‘I’d like to leave you with a quote from one of the best motivational speakers I have ever heard. He said things like, “Success is …”’

  Nothing.

  For years I’d finished with the same gag, must have said it a thousand times, but suddenly it was gone. Where there had once been a punchline was now an eternal expanse of blankness.

  ‘Um, success is …’

  More nothing.

  ‘Success is …’

  Again, nothing.

  I had to confess. ‘I’m really sorry about this, but, well, I always end my routine with the same story, but for some reason I’ve had a total blank. Sorry. Please bear with me. Success is …’

  ‘Chocolate? Is it something to do with chocolate, Denise?’