When you start out in comedy, you’re pretty desperate for two things: stage time and money. And in those early days, if there’s the promise of both, it’s incredible what gigs you’ll say yes to. Which is how I ended up saying yes to performing at a Mexican food franchise in the middle of the day to promote their new three-dollar taco meal.
This sort of thing gets offered to comedians all the time. Someone who works in events or PR will go to a great night of comedy and marvel at how it all seems so off-the-cuff and easy. Then, after about three beers or so, they’ll think, why not use this to promote their product?
The truth is that good comedy happens in places where someone has put a lot of thought into the sound, the lighting, the way people are seated and the ease at which you can get a drink, and if all of those things are just right, then maybe, just maybe, it works.
The exact pitch for this gig was that this particular chain wanted to get a different comedian to perform at every store on the same day all across Australia. They figured these impromptu shows would be an uproarious success and that the randomness of it was sure to go viral.
This sounded like a terrible idea to everyone who was asked to do it, but the fee was five hundred dollars and a free meal, so nearly every comedian they approached said yes. The problem was that there were simply not enough professional comedians to have one at each of their stores Australia-wide, so, in the end, most of the people who ended up doing it were very new to comedy, including myself.
Most comedians got to perform in their local restaurant, or at least one relatively close by, so it wasn’t that big of a deal if it didn’t go well – they could simply eat their free meal and slink out afterwards, five hundred dollars richer. But, for some reason, I was asked to perform at a store in a town in regional Queensland. I was to be flown two and a half hours north to do ten minutes of stand-up comedy to a bunch of unsuspecting customers who were just there to wolf down a secret burrito in their lunch break.
I boarded the plane, not knowing what I was in for but thinking that as long as there were four walls, a microphone and a speaker, it couldn’t be too bad. Once I landed, I turned on my phone and was bombarded with texts from my comedian friends, who regaled me with horror stories from their gigs thus far. Some had turned up to stores where the staff had no idea what was happening, and there was no microphone or space for them to perform. Luckily, most of those who encountered this scenario were turned away and told they would still get paid, which is the ideal outcome.
Others had performed anyway and been mercilessly bullied by passers-by. One of my friends did the gig at one of the franchises situated in an outdoor mall. He told me there were kids on bikes doing laps around him, calling him a ‘fuckin’ poof’. At one point, he thought they’d gone for good, but they had just left to rally more of the troops and returned with ten or so more kids who had some of their own customised insults ready to go.
These stories filled me with dread, but also some hope that maybe I would also be turned away – that way I could fly home and still pocket the money without having to humiliate myself.
I waited in the pick-up area for the franchisee, who was going to drive me to and from the airport as had been arranged by the promoters. After waiting a while, I eventually heard four vicious beeps that came from a silver Toyota Camry.
‘G’day, I’m Trudi! Get in!’ barked the driver, a woman in her mid-fifties with a face painted like a tiger.
I got in the car and it became clear that I would not be as lucky as some of the others. In fact, Trudi couldn’t wait to tell me that her store was extremely prepared for today and very excited to have a comedian come and perform!
‘We had a big staff meeting about it last night,’ she said excitedly, as I began experiencing the early stages of a panic attack. ‘We can’t wait to see the comedy. We’ve put up balloons, we’ve got a face painter,’ she jabbered on, pointing at her face like I might have thought that was her regular day look.
I tried to match her enthusiasm by asking questions. ‘So when we get to the restaurant, what—’
She held a hand up to stop me. ‘Oh, it’s not a restaurant, darl. We’re in the food court in a shopping centre.’
My heart sank.
‘We’ve put everything into the place. It’s been a struggle, but we’re finally starting to see some returns. Mexican food is only getting more and more popular. But my husband’s a cunt – you’ll see, biggest cunt you’ll ever meet.’
As much as I had been dreading the gig, I had at least envisaged doing the show at an actual restaurant with a little stage area and a good sound system. But when we arrived, I realised she wasn’t lying – it was literally in a food court, sandwiched between a Terry White chemist and a McDonald’s.
I tried to keep calm and look as though I was a professional, but inside I was a nervous wreck. Trudi didn’t pick up on my energy at all and instead began eagerly introducing me to the employees: a couple of pimply teens and an older Korean woman who looked very uncomfortable with having to have her face painted.
I briefly thought about getting my face painted too. How good is the artist? I wondered. Can he make me look like a completely different person? Perhaps I can convince people that I’m Carl Barron?
I wanted to throw myself in front of a car so I wouldn’t have to perform. Instead I was plonked down at a plastic table and chairs in the food court and handed a chicken burrito, which I choked down while going over my very limited material, trying to figure out what set could possibly work here, considering my act at the time centred mostly around my vagina and the men who’d been inside it. I looked around – the only other people in the almost-deserted food court were some tradies in hi-vis singlets looking at their phones, a couple of ratbags who looked like they should have been at the magistrates court rather than the food court, and a woman and her child who were sitting in stony-faced silence eating their McDonald’s Happy Meals. None of these people looked like they were up for an impromptu comedy show. You show me someone on their lunch break who wants to make eye contact with anyone, let alone an inexperienced comedian like myself.
I continued to spiral. Every now and then I’d look up from my table and Trudi would be watching me, her gleeful face beaming like crazy over the glass countertop. Each time we made eye contact, she’d give me the double thumbs-up. I’d meekly return the thumbs up, arrange my face into the best version of a smile I could muster, and then keep obsessively scrolling my phone, as news of my friends’ cancelled gigs continued to roll in.
Eventually Trudi’s cunt husband came over to me, wheeling a little portable speaker with a microphone attached, like the ones used by people who spruik products outside of men’s clothing stores that cater to fellows on the larger side.
‘That’s my microphone, is it?’ I laughed as he brought it over.
‘Yeah, is that gonna work for you?’ he replied with not even a hint of a smile. I could tell that it was going to have to work for me.
‘Trudi reckons you should start in the next five minutes,’ he said, then he walked away. I sat next to my little speaker with an attached microphone, feeling like I was about to be taken to the gallows.
The actual ‘performance’ is a bit of blur – my brain simply won’t allow me to access the exact memory of what happened lest it send me to a loony bin. But here’s what I remember: I stood up with resolve and wheeled the speaker through the table and chairs, trying not to knock into anyone. I eventually ended up in a spot halfway between the counter of the Mexican place and where the food court seating began. I timidly began the official spiel about the new taco meal that I’d been given by the promoters, and then explained that what was happening here was happening nationwide and there was a hashtag people could use if they wanted to ‘tweet about it’. I saw an elderly woman shaking her head as she packed up her handbag and walked away, and who could blame her – her husband had probably died in a war for my freedom to do this.
I then awkwardly launched into the first minute of my stand-up routine, which you could barely hear over the din of the shopping centre music. At first, there were a few middle-aged people who smiled at me encouragingly, but once I told my first dirty joke, all goodwill was lost. The mother put her hands over her child’s ears and they walked away. She turned back for a moment to give me a look that was far dirtier than my joke.
I looked away from her and locked eyes with a fifty-something-year-old man who had joined the chorus of people forlornly shaking their heads at me. He kept clutching at his wife’s arm, as though checking to make sure his idea of what a woman should be was still real. I tried to keep going, but the microphone was crackling in and out, and people kept standing up to leave or, worse, chatting among themselves, obviously bored by my anguish.
I thought about Jesus receiving his lashes in public. It must have gone on for some time, and surely after the first horrific fifteen minutes, people started to get bored and left. Not that I’m comparing myself to Jesus, but if you’re suffering in public, you at least want people to be interested in it. It’s somehow worse for them to be bored by it.
It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life, made even worse by the fact that after two minutes or so, Trudi came over to me and said, ‘That’s okay, love, that’s enough. It’s not working.’
I agreed with her, thanked the non-existent crowd, then clipped the microphone back onto the speaker and wheeled it over to my plastic seat.
‘I’ll just finish up with this burrito order and I’ll whizz you back to the airport, alright, love?’ said Trudi.
I thought the trip to the gig was bad, but it was nothing compared to the trip back. I had to sit there knowing I’d disappointed an entire workplace, and the hardest thing was that Trudi’s face was still painted like a tiger. We drove mostly in silence, except for the few times she recommended I check out various comedians she’d seen over the years who were really funny.
‘You know, we get all the big comics here, and they’re great. It’s just practice, isn’t it, love? You just need a few more years under your belt,’ she said, smiling at me sympathetically.
I nodded wearily, wondering how those comedians she’d listed would go performing in a shopping-centre food court.
To her credit, though, she wasn’t wrong. A couple more years was all I needed and I would never have to do a gig like that again. Or so I thought.