After having told a story about a gig that went badly I’d now like to balance things out by telling you the story of a gig that went well, to prove that good gigs can be just as damaging as bad gigs.
I was doing a show in Bath where the promoter provides the acts with free accommodation in a flat right next door to the venue. As the only act who didn’t live nearby I would have the flat all to myself that night. My days of sleeping in bushes were behind me; I had free reign of an actual property now – I had made it.
After the gig finished the venue turned into a nightclub, so at the end of the final act’s set I was hastily making my way towards the exit door when I was stopped en route by a woman who had turned up as part of a hen party. She said she had enjoyed the night and thought we were all very funny so I instantly liked her. She bought me a drink and we chatted about stand-up for a while. Then she told me that the hen in her group had to kiss a man for every letter of the alphabet depending on what their name began with. She asked me what my name was again (and I told her because I am that free and easy with my personal details).
‘Oh cool, she hasn’t kissed a J yet!’ she said.
‘I’ve got to kiss your friend?’ I was clearly not fully on board with this game but then she said, ‘You can practise on me if you like.’ Full props. I’ll admit, up until that point literally no one had ever hit on me before so maybe the line seemed better than it was. Reading it back now, it definitely sounded smoother at the time but then again that line will work on 100 per cent of the single straight men alive today, I promise you.
Her friends came over, took her to one side and they had a conversation while peering over at me from time to time and then she returned with her coat and bag.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said and, maybe because I looked disappointed, she asked, ‘What are you doing now?’
‘Well, I’ve got the flat next door . . .’
She looked angry. ‘Oh, do you think I’m that kind of person do you?’
My stomach clenched, I had totally misjudged this and now felt awful. ‘Heavens no, not at all, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, if you want my number it’d be great to meet up another time. Sorry.’ We swapped numbers, she left and I returned to the flat feeling like a sleazeball.
I was in the flat for five minutes before she rang me. ‘I’m outside!’ she said.
I opened the door and she ran into the flat and into the living room. As soon as she entered the flat she changed into a completely different person. I followed her into the living room; she turned around and pointed at me. ‘Go and get me a Chinese takeaway!’ she demanded. I looked taken aback so she reiterated, ‘Go and get me a Chinese takeaway now!’
‘We can go to a restaurant together if you like?’ I tried. ‘There should be somewhere open still if you want to get dinner together.’
‘No, you have to go and get me a takeaway!’
At this point I started to worry that I was about to get robbed. Maybe this was a trick she regularly played on comics who played the club next door – get invited back, send them out of the flat for Chinese takeaway, then totally fleece the place in their absence.
‘I’m not going to go and get you a takeaway, we can order takeaway on the phone if you like and get it delivered?’
‘No, you are the man and therefore you have to go out and get me, the woman, a takeaway!’
‘Well, I don’t think that’s true,’ I said rather feebly, unsure as to whether the man getting Chinese food for the woman was a thing or not. She folded her arms and sat down, looking grumpy.
‘Fine! At least make me a cup of tea,’ she said without looking at me. A cup of tea! The perfect middle ground between fetching her a takeaway and not doing anything for her at all. I went into the kitchen, made two teas (obviously paranoid that while I’m in the kitchen she’s passing the TV out of the window to the rest of the Hen Do, saying ‘There you go, you haven’t kissed anything beginning with “T” yet’) and when I came back into the living room, she had raided the board game shelf of the flat, had found, and had already set up, Twister. (Strictly not a board game, I know, but I’ve been to Kettering Board Games Club and there weren’t any boards there either so I think Twister still qualifies. Also Twister would be the worst game to bring with you to Kettering Board Games Club. I can’t imagine what they would make of it or if anyone would join in and play with you due to the overwhelming amount of physical contact involved.)
She pointed at the Twister mat and quite angrily said, ‘We’re playing this!’
I was still holding the teas. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
‘It’s sexy,’ she snapped back.
So I set the teas down and we played Twister, just the two of us, with her spinning the spinner and playing at the same time (credit where it’s due, that’s impressive). I don’t know if you’ve ever played two player Twister but it drags on. We were nowhere near each other for the entire game, because all the spinner ever landed on was feet so we were essentially just walking around a Twister mat, occasionally having a swig of tea because we could, and she was getting increasingly frustrated that the game was not as sexy as she’d thought it would be. After half an hour she gave up, threw the spinner on the floor and sat down, declaring that Twister was a stupid game for stupid idiots. Then we had an argument.
The argument started with her making a statement: ‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.’ I nodded as I was familiar with that term and then she said, deadly serious. ‘No. Literally though.’ And, like a moron, I took the bait.
‘Well, not literally.’
‘Yes literally, that’s what I believe, what do you believe then?’
‘Both from Earth,’ I said.
Both from Earth! That’s what I once said to someone during a disagreement – both from Earth! Where are you from, James? Why, I’m from Earth, of course, a man from Earth. This argument went on for longer than I care to remember, and at one point she said, ‘Well what about the creation story in the Bible, do you believe in that?’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘Well, I do,’ she shot back.
‘But you said we were from different planets!’
‘I’m allowed to contradict myself!’
‘I’m allowed to contradict myself’ remains the best line I’ve ever heard used in an argument because once you’ve decided that you are allowed to contradict yourself and that you no longer care for the rules of debate then the other person is left utterly helpless, which I was. I was about to tap out when she ended the argument with the line, ‘Oh just shut up and run me a bath.’ And so I did.
I ran her a bubble bath immediately. I then sat upstairs and reflected on the evening so far. It had not gone well. She had demanded I went out and got her a takeaway, we had played a game of Twister that had somehow ended in a draw, I had defended the fact that human beings were from Earth and she was now in a bubble bath that she had told me to shut up and run for her. But in a typical male way I was also thinking, ‘There’s still a chance . . .’
She then walked into the room (not naked, you pervs) and unexpectedly kissed me. I know it sounds ridiculous but it’s like she’d changed once more into a different person and no longer hated me or thought that I worked for her and I clearly was so desperate to kiss someone that I wasn’t going to say no. There is no way of saying this next bit without sounding like Alan Partridge but . . . she then raised the question of protection.
I had nothing on me because I had never been in this situation before so wasn’t used to leaving the house prepared. She told me that she had seen a twenty-four hour shop across the street that would surely sell what we needed and that I should go there and come back. I agreed in a heartbeat. If the Chinese takeaway order had been a ruse to get to me to leave the flat so she could rob it, I certainly didn’t care now. I was clearly happy to risk the entire bounty of the comedian’s flat at the faintest possibility of sex. However, when I got to the shop I learnt that it was not twenty-four hours and it was closed. I didn’t want to return empty-handed for fear of another argument and also for fear of not sleeping with her. I saw a nightclub in the distance that was clearly open so I decided to go inside and see if they had one of those machines in the toilets.
This nightclub turned out to be very popular and I had to queue up for twenty minutes outside in the cold, only to be turned away at the door because by the time I got to the front of the queue it was closing time. I looked around and saw another nightclub in the distance so I walked there and tried the exact same plan only to achieve the exact same result – queued for twenty minutes, turned away at the door. I had now been out of the flat for forty minutes, maybe fifty. If she was going to case the joint it was done by now; if she was going to have sex with me that was probably done by now too. I had to admit defeat and go home. As I was walking away from the nightclub I began to accidentally walk in tandem with another guy. I don’t know why I did this and, even though it worked out well, I will never do it again because it is creepy and borderline insane, but I asked this stranger if he could give me a condom (!!!) and he, against all the odds, handed me an entire pack. It felt kind of gross but at least I had achieved what she had sent me out for. Although technically what she had sent me out for wasn’t another man’s condoms.
I said thank you to my Good Samaritan but quickly realised my troubles were far from over. I had walked so far from the flat that I now had no idea where I was. I did not own a smart-phone at the time so couldn’t access maps. I was simply lost. I finally get myself into a position where I’m getting accommodation provided for me after gigs and it’s looking like I’m going to end up sleeping in a bush again. I didn’t even have a red dress on me this time; I would have to stretch a full pack of condoms over my arms, heads and legs to provide me with any insulation. How had I allowed this to happen?
I took a guess and walked in what I thought was the general direction of the flat, quickly lost faith after ten minutes and so made my way down a different road that just ‘felt right’. At this point I had been out of the flat for an hour and I was in a right tizz. That tizz only got worse when I heard the rushing of feet gradually getting louder behind me. I looked up to find myself surrounded by about fourteen teenagers. There was a pause as I waited to get mugged, desperately scanning their faces in case Alistair and the boys had finally tracked me down and I was about to get my just desserts. Just when I thought the kicking was about to commence they all started jumping up and down, clapping their hands and singing a song. The song went: ‘Olly Bongo, Olly-Olly Bongo, Olly Bongo, Olly-Olly Bongo’ over and over again forever. This was one of the most surreal moments of my life. I still don’t know why it happened. All I know is it wasn’t what I hoped I would be doing by that point in the evening. Eventually they stopped singing and then ran off into the night, I assume to sing the ‘Olly Bongo’ song at some other bewildered boy who’d been out begging strangers for contraceptives.
I didn’t realise it at the time but having those boys sing the ‘Olly Bongo’ song at me was actually as nice as my evening was going to get. There’s no nice end to this story. The truth is I returned back to the flat, she told me she wasn’t in the mood any more (there’s not a person on the earth who would be in the mood any more, let’s face it) and so I went to sleep and was awoken a couple of hours later by her leaving. When I asked her why she told me not to be such a baby.
But let’s look at the positives. She didn’t rob the flat, I got a lovely song sang to me by a late-night flash mob, and after a quick online search I’m proud to say that I was right – women and men are both from Earth.
I’d like to say I learned my lesson but there was another occasion where I went back to somebody’s place with them and the next morning as I was leaving her flat I was unexpectedly chased down the street by a white Highland terrier wearing a pink T-shirt that said ‘I Heart Bones’ on it. All in all, I am glad to not be in my twenties any more.