On a long drive it can be difficult to stay awake if you’re on your own – you have to open the window, turn on the radio, or chew something. Normally it helps to have someone to talk to, but this time I’m giving a lift to Tony Tundass and he’s rambling on and on about the clubs that won’t book him. The window’s open and I’ve been through two packs of wine gums, but I’m still fighting a losing battle with consciousness.
‘…I wouldn’t mind but it’s not as if they offered us a drink.’
I’ve no idea what the first part of that sentence was. Leigh Delamere, Membury, Chieveley, Reading, Heston. These are the service stations on the M4 coming back from the West. Unlit until you reach Reading. The dials on the dashboard stare back at me like small black caves, or perhaps they’re three mini covered stages at a tiny rock festival. Their numbers are approximate – my petrol gauge is about half full when it indicates ‘a third’, and if you travel for sixty miles at sixty miles an hour it always takes longer than an hour. There’s a thin layer of dust on the matt black dashboard – you can’t see it in the dark, but several times in the sunlight I’ve vowed to give it a wipe.
‘That’s the thing about bloody women comics isn’t it?’ he says, flicking his hair back before re-tying the band holding his pony-tail.
‘Yeah,’ mumbles the driver, past caring what he’s agreeing to.
Best keep inside these dotted lines, in case someone suddenly decides to cut along them with a giant pair of scissors. Sometimes, you can kid yourself that you are staying still; that it’s the road that’s moving, on rollers like a running machine.
‘1986 wasn’t it?’
‘Er, something like that.’
We’ve just been to Bristol where I saved the show. Tundass was booed off after about seven minutes and I came on and did far longer than my ten-minute half spot, to fill the gap. It was a rough night, with lots of interrupting. But I’m learning how to deal with it now – to accept their ideas and to run with their suggestions, boomeranging them back if I can. After all, they’ve spent half an hour building up to their big moment, but they weren’t banking on a conversation – you have a microphone, you should win.
Dealing with an unplanned interjection can look like magic. But people tend to shout out the same sorts of things – about how you look and what you say. After a while you’re ready for them. But there are good and bad heckles, help and hindrance. Hindrance is negative, self-indulgent, unclear. Help is positive, on subject, funny – but not too funny. (Although ‘hindrance’ poorly executed can turn into ‘help’.) But the buzz of a new bit working – that’s the best thing. When it’s fresh, it’s like gossip burning inside you, dying to be told.
Just then Tony laughs.
‘Huh,’ I offer, ambiguously.
Bizarrely he thinks his gig was okay, but then Tundass is notorious. He’s been going for seven or eight years with limited success. He’s what the listings describe as an ‘experienced comedian’. Not ‘funny’, ‘inventive’ or ‘stylish’ or any of the other prefixes accorded to acts who’ve been around half the time he has. He still finishes with a card trick, which climaxes in him revealing the three of clubs tattooed on his chest (which at least shows commitment).
Behind his back the joke is that he’s only booked by three clubs. His material is generic – you’ve seen something like it all before – he’s really only doing an impression of a comedian, with routines about going to Amsterdam, cats and dogs and inbreeding in the West Country. (The last one being particularly ill advised this evening.)
‘So do you think that would work?’
‘Nah.’
‘Why not?’
‘What?! I don’t know. Say it again.’
Drifted off there.
Occasionally there is a ‘klunk’, a line he persists with that doesn’t work on any level but I fear these are just the ones he’s written himself. In his hands good gags are wasted – like someone trying to shell pistachios with oven gloves.
In truth, his biggest problem is that on stage he’s just not very likeable, or off stage, come to that. But crucially his skin is so thick he doesn’t seem to care or notice, choosing instead to blame his lack of success on countless perceived vendettas. He’s an unpredictable man and best given some space, like a car that’s driving along with its indicator on for no apparent reason. He wants to know who’s in with who, how much so-and-so pay and always, for some reason, how old people are.
‘Forty-nine! Arnie Zoot is forty-nine!’
He repeats with emphasis on the nine, which must mean he’s in his forties too. Eventually Tundass begins to splutter less and less, like an engine that’s getting used to dirty petrol, and now I can just make out from the angle of my passenger’s head that he’s finally nodded off.
My back is soaked and I’m hunched over the steering wheel. Slowly I begin to relax. The moon is huge tonight, an enormous dusky pink. Perhaps it’s a giant snooker ball skudding towards the earth, to pot us all into a black hole. Suddenly my passenger snorts in his sleep. Now I keep very still in case he starts up again, like one of those electric hand-driers that responds to movement.
‘How much do the Bearpit pay in Durham? That cow won’t return my calls…’
Too late.
But now I’ve had enough. Claustrophobic. Doesn’t he get it? I’ve just had to clean up after him, like a dog-owner with a plastic bag. I was going to turn into these services coming up but if I put my foot down perhaps I can get it all over with a bit quicker.
‘I’ll tell you how you can bloody improve one of your gags…’ he begins.
That’s it!
‘I’m just going to pull into these services and get a coffee.’
He carries on moaning while the car slows down, and as we get out, and stride across the car park towards the neon island. Here I’m delighted to meet Spaz and Pete Pendleton on their way back from Cardiff. It’s quite common to meet other comics in the early hours. After all, on any one night there can be up to a hundred of us criss-crossing the country, tickling the regions. When we meet like this we talk like professional murderers comparing weapons and contracts.
‘How were they?’
‘I killed. There were these drunk guys on the left but I just kept hammering them.’
Individualists who can only be united for the briefest of causes – a journey or a coffee. On stage Pete is a cod French waiter. A character act with loud opinions, an eye for the ladies and ‘would you like garlic breath with that?’ When the crowd go with it he’s difficult to follow – but when they don’t, they really don’t, and he has nowhere to go, apart from France I suppose.
It’s apparently an ironic attack on British attitudes towards the French. But that’s not always how some blokes in pubs see it. The longbow men of today are happy to settle for the perpetuation of a stereotype, unless the room I saw in Chelmsford chanting ‘Kill the frogs!’ were doing it in some sort of ironic way, of course. Off stage Pete behaves more like a shy accountant, and I know for a fact he enjoys bird watching. He’ll end up on TV soon though, you’ll see, he’s an instinctive mimic and a good actor.
‘Don’t tell me, Tony’s telling you all the clubs that won’t book him,’ scorns Spaz.
‘No, no,’ I reply. ‘We were talking about flower arranging.’
‘Did you see that sign – Tundass can kill, take a break!’ We all laugh, even Tundass, then incredibly, he starts up again.
‘The Racoon in Cardiff won’t book me either…’
‘That’s because you’re shit!’ Spaz explains thoughtfully.
(Good comics have a knack of getting to the point.) We all laugh, even Tony. Presumably he thinks it’s a joke. Spaz has hit the nail on the head. But the nail hasn’t noticed.
An elderly couple – the only others in the place – turn round. But, just as on stage, Spaz gets away with it because he does it with a smile. ‘We’re all monks on a day off,’ he explains.
The couple take it in good heart. Just then the extra chips Spaz has cajoled out of the girl behind the grill arrive. (Flirting in Berkshire at two in the morning.) I’d watched him do it. So naturally, so nicely – she melted from grungy teenager, embarrassed by her uniform, to giggling girl touching her tufty hair with long female fingers – a smiley Goth for goodness sake.
‘How come you got chips?’ says Tundass.
‘Charm,’ says Spaz. ‘You should try it sometime.’
‘She fancies you, doesn’t she?’ Spaz just shrugs.
‘Why don’t you introduce me if she comes back?’ adds Tundass as if Spaz should have thought of it earlier.
‘That’ll make her night.’
Then Tundass begins to unwrap the cling-film from some sandwiches he’s brought along, all this while droning on about more clubs and comics he has a grudge against.
‘You know he won’t offer you any petrol money either, don’t you?’ Spaz whispers to me.
Tightness: the coldest of vices. Just now Tony suddenly became preoccupied with the overhead menu when we all came to pay our bill at the checkout, hoping that someone would get his. The most frightening aspect of being addicted to scrimping is how it looks – that extra economy of self-awareness. I see Spaz has already hinted at some sort of rehab, by deliberately buying him two coffees.
Now everyone’s laughing again. Spaz has got on to the tale of a magician we all know, who was employed by an old lady to do a show for what turned out to be her cat – well, it was his birthday. Tundass wants to know how much he got for it.
The smiley Goth is back. ‘Excuse me sir, you’re only supposed to consume food bought on the premises.’
Tundass finishes what’s in his mouth. ‘Really, your hair looks weird!’
There’s a gap and then, all at once, the rest of us clutch our sides and spray into our sleeves in embarrassment. The girl retreats distinctly un-charmed.
We’re in the Gents. ‘Gentlemen’ – the English often revert to an archaic language when dealing with anything that might cause embarrassment. A distancing over-politeness – a verbal pair of gloves – to help deal with an awkwardness of bodily function. Danny Bullen always calls me ‘Mr Stevens’, and talks about ‘repairing to a hostel for some beverages’. But I get on with him. I think I know what’s happening behind his eyes and I trust his downbeat appraisal of people and situations. I don’t understand Tundass.
Not all comics are depressed, but we all have a bit of grit that makes us who we are. Sometimes I think Spaz is trying to escape from some terrible secret. (But I can’t help thinking of the prisoner who escaped from Colditz by feigning madness, but when he arrived back in England he had to be admitted to an asylum.)
Growing up, most of us were outsiders: geeks, bullied, bullies, service kids. Constantly finding ways to fit in or to stand out, whatever would make us accepted. It’s just now we’ve turned professional. Marita says I’m passive aggressive. At first I didn’t think anything of this – then I got really angry, well that’s what would have happened in a sitcom. But it’s not like other jobs. You can start off bad, get good, and then go bad again. (About how many comics do people say ‘I preferred their early stuff’?)
But Danny’s act has been the same for years – a time capsule from the early nineties replete with references to Trainspotting and John Major. He makes a living by sheer unpretentious persistence. Having a thick skin of course can also make you insensitive, and Tundass is fast becoming a walking cautionary tale. Am I like him and no one will tell me?
We drift back to our cars, but Tundass lingers in the Gents, after all he did finish both the coffees that were bought for him. Spaz dares me to drive off without my passenger. I accept his suggestion, get into the car and drive off, laughing all the way until just before Reading. From here on, the motorway is lit, and now it doesn’t seem quite so funny. Briefly I consider going back to get him. Briefly.