Help me become less shit as a stand-up comedian

[Nooses Give]

Last Sunday I performed stand-up for the first time. It went pretty well, actually: I garnered some laughs and several people remarked that they were surprised it was my first time, and one guy bought me a beer. I even found a girl who took an interest in me! I spoiled it really quickly by being too drunk, but still, an actual live girl! I was helped by the fact that it was a very small and supportive crowd - the club where I performed is explicitly for trying out new material - and that I almost exclusively picked on myself and my frail mental health, provoking no one.

Now I hunger for more, but I'd be grateful for some advice from true comedy aficionados such as yourselves. I would like to ask the following:

1. If your routine went down well in one place, are you supposed to take it to other clubs and hope for the same positive response there, or is every performance a one-off? I doubt that the latter is the case, but I'm paranoid about being wrong and thought it better to ask.

2. My style... doesn't exist, really. I've written hundreds of jokes but they lack cohesion (not to mention that most of them suck), and I feel like I need to watch a lot more taped shows by the greats so that I can copy them be inspired by them as a first step, and then use what I've picked up as building blocks to create my own shtick. Thus I would be grateful if you could make a list of people I ought to watch, preferably being representatives of different styles, what show/s by them I ought to watch (for instance, is "Old Baby" a good introduction to Maria Bamford or should I start with another one?), and crucially, where can I watch them? Bear in mind that I'm in Sweden, so internet based solutions are preferable (also, I'm poor).

3. My humor can be a tad divisive, so it's not a question if but when and how badly I will bomb. How does one survive that? As mentioned above I'm not very stable mentally. But I need this opportunity to leave the house and socialize: I'm on disability benefits and have very little in the way of friends, so I must take every chance to shine that I can get.   

[Red82]

I think at least in the Uk scene, you start out with 5 minutes of written comedy and you perform it again and again trying to perfect it.  That may seem boring but essentially you are an act and that's how comedy is done.  Once you've mastered 5 minutes and made an impression you will start to be given more time.  One of my friends is a performing stand up and although he's very very good he is really only known in our city and few other nearby cities.  It's something that's very, very hard to become famous or successful at. Even if you're good.

Other people will be able to help you more than I can.  We might have some actual standups on this forum. I'd say it was odds on that we do. And that they will be able to help you.

[Dr Rock]

Many of the top (US) comics say in the first year they hadn't found their voice, and were imitating stand-ups they admired but ultimately it was totally wrong for their style. So experiment until you find your stage persona/style.

Good luck x

[markburgle]

I did stand-up for a couple of months in London (quickly crashed-and-burned as I was suffering general burnout at the time. My usual all-or-nothing approach wasn't sustainable).

I loved it though, and my first set, like yours, went well. The MC announced after that it had been my first time, in tones of disbelief that were echoed by the crowd, and a few other nice things happened.

I then went into my 2nd performance with unwarranted cockiness and bombed. My voice started wobbling the way it used to when I did class talks at school. There was nothing to do but try and get the words out (to complete silence) and get off.

Bombing is tough but seeing how it happens to everyone makes it hurt less - you'll see people do great one night and terrible the next with the same material. I found bombing far less painful than the various quiet moments of misery/desperation that can just happen in normal life - scarier, yes, but at least I'd chosen it, and there was a bit of courage and artistry involved. Maybe if you've done it for years and not just 18 times like me such comforts start to pale, I dunno.

Anyway I'm just sharing my experience, which is only slightly greater than yours. Of course you can just do broadly the same act repeatedly, in the same venue or different ones (if you keep going back you'll witness others doing the same). Gets a bit awkward when the crowd is mainly the other comics and they've seen your stuff already, but they'll understand.

Anyway good luck with your 2nd spot. I don't have any recs as to who to watch, but watching a lot is a good shout, good and bad, just hoover up whatever you can find, the good can inspire and the bad shows you where the cliches are and what to avoid

[Memorex MP3]

Is there any downside to just doing 3 or 4 minutes instead of 5? Feel like running over at all would be much more of a faux pas


Is the whole London scene for new people plus one driven?

[Small Man Big Horse]

Last Sunday I performed stand-up for the first time. It went pretty well, actually: I garnered some laughs and several people remarked that they were surprised it was my first time, and one guy bought me a beer. I even found a girl who took an interest in me! I spoiled it really quickly by being too drunk, but still, an actual live girl! I was helped by the fact that it was a very small and supportive crowd - the club where I performed is explicitly for trying out new material - and that I almost exclusively picked on myself and my frail mental health, provoking no one.

Now I hunger for more, but I'd be grateful for some advice from true comedy aficionados such as yourselves. I would like to ask the following:

1. If your routine went down well in one place, are you supposed to take it to other clubs and hope for the same positive response there, or is every performance a one-off? I doubt that the latter is the case, but I'm paranoid about being wrong and thought it better to ask.

As others have mentioned, it's about honing those five minutes, but that doesn't mean you can't do three or four minutes of tested material (and polishing it perhaps, and exploring different ways to deliver jokes and adding to them) and two minutes of new material, there's no hard or fast rules there.

If you really want to do this professionally I'd suggest gigging twice a week, and use the second gig to try out new material, not every week, but this is a chance to be playful and explore what your persona is, and how it'll pan out.

2. My style... doesn't exist, really. I've written hundreds of jokes but they lack cohesion (not to mention that most of them suck), and I feel like I need to watch a lot more taped shows by the greats so that I can copy them be inspired by them as a first step, and then use what I've picked up as building blocks to create my own shtick.

I wouldn't worry about that too much this early on, I do think that wanting to know about other comedians work is important, especially so that you don't perform material which others have been doing for a while now, but it should come over time.

Thus I would be grateful if you could make a list of people I ought to watch, preferably being representatives of different styles, what show/s by them I ought to watch (for instance, is "Old Baby" a good introduction to Maria Bamford or should I start with another one?), and crucially, where can I watch them? Bear in mind that I'm in Sweden, so internet based solutions are preferable (also, I'm poor).

I'd check out the "best stand up from the last five years" thread recommendations, and if you're broke torrenting might be the answer.

3. My humor can be a tad divisive, so it's not a question if but when and how badly I will bomb. How does one survive that? As mentioned above I'm not very stable mentally. But I need this opportunity to leave the house and socialize: I'm on disability benefits and have very little in the way of friends, so I must take every chance to shine that I can get.

Oh, bombing's horrible but everyone goes through it. Just try to ascertain why it happened (sometimes an audience might feel exhausted if you're the 20th comic on the bill, or if you misjudged a bit of material). But don't take it personally, and know that chances are you'll never see these people again. Also, be self-deprecating, even apologise as it's new material, though never blame the audience, as that will be put their backs up, and I've seen a fair few high profile comics do this, and then try and get back on board with some tried and tested jokes.

I did (open mic) stand up for about three years and largely enjoyed it, but I didn't have the ambition to gig four or five times a week, or to take a show up to Edinburgh, and while you definitely don't want to do that now, have it in the back of you mind in a year or two if you really want to try this out as a career.

[Wayman C. McCreery]

I then went into my 2nd performance with unwarranted cockiness and bombed.

Neil Admin considers rewrite.

[Milo]

If listening rather than watching is fine, there's a fair bit of comedy on Bandcamp, a lot on a 'pay what you can' basis or free. Daniel Kitson, John Robins and Michael Legge are a good start.

[markburgle]

Is there any downside to just doing 3 or 4 minutes instead of 5? Feel like running over at all would be much more of a faux pas


Is the whole London scene for new people plus one driven?

In myyy daayy (2013), it was a mixed bag. There were "bringer" gigs (if that's what you mean - bring a friend/friends in return for a chance to perform), but I avoided them. Last thing I wanted was to do my semi-panicked try-outs in front of friends. Total anonymity was required. Most acts hate them anyway (you quickly run out of friends to bring so it's not a sustainable system).

I think my first set was 3 minutes. No one's gonna hate you for it

[Jockice]

Well, I wouldn't say it was stand-up - I'm in a wheelchair after all!!!!!! - but I have performed what could probably be described as a comic monologue in public three times this year. At first I had no intention of performing but as it is basically based on personal experience and I can't imagine actors queueing up to do a piece called Nice Bloke But I Wouldn't Shag Him it was put to me that it would be an idea if I did it  myself. And working on the principle that even if I got booed off it wouldn't even be in the top 100 embarrassing experiences of my life...

My first time...well...it was at an open mic thing, which apparently a dozen performers signed up for. Four turned up, I was told I was second on...and the place had a power cut five minutes before the thing started. So we ended up performing in the bar under gaslight. The woman on first (who I know) worked the small crowd really well...and then I appeared to general bemusement. I had a couple of visual gags which I cocked up - I really have to be on a stage for the main set-opening one - and no microphone (and as I've mentioned before, a quiet, slurred voice) so I wasn't even sure if people there knew what I was saying. It was gruelling but I was glad I did it. I recently revisited the venue for other reasons and one of the staff said I'd 'brought the house down.' Not what I remember - couple of small laughs near the start followed by silence and a sympathetic round of applause at the end after I'd completely ballsed up the ending.

I have done the basically the same set twice since and it's gone down really well. Despite the second day apart from my ten minutes on stage being an utter disaster. My trousers fell down at one point. And I lost my mobile phone both days.

I was lucky enough to get some professional coaching before the first of these and was told what worked and what didn't - although there are a couple of bits I didn't agree with - and did them on a stage, with a microphone and a screen showing the script behind me, which worked well as there are a couple of bits which work better in print even if you are lucky enough to be able to understand everything I'm saying.

I don't intend to try and make a career of it but I've proved to myself I can do it. I also joined in an online comedy Zoom course recently during which you had 15 minutes to write a monologue on a randomly generated subject and then a further 10 minutes to rewrite it after everyone else had judged it. Again mine went down well, although I chickened out and got the course leader to read it out. I had a sore throat that day. Really.

You see, I can be funny, although admittedly not often on here. People laughed when I said I wanted to become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now. Because I'm still not a comedian.

[Mr Vegetables]

Find a dog with no nose, and bring him on after the "how does he smell bit?", thus undercutting the whimsical setup with the tragic reality

[dontpaintyourteeth]

If there's ever any awkward pauses you should be filling them by going "got any grapes?"

[Jockice]

Find a dog with no nose, and bring him on after the "how does he smell bit?", thus undercutting the whimsical setup with the tragic reality

Or do the: "I'm sure my dad's looking down on me now,'' line, adding: "Because he's dead, not condescending."

[thenoise]

Trousers falling down while in a wheelchair is some achievement!

Never tried it myself but I've been to open mic events and the audiences are quite used to people being a bit shit - we'll have forgotten who you are 5 minutes after you leave unless you were incredibly offensive, flounced off the stage in tears or were incredibly funny. Also worth pointing out that silence isn't always terrible - we could be listening and enjoying your stories and finding them gently amusing. Which is fine.

[Jockice]

Trousers falling down while in a wheelchair is some achievement!

Never tried it myself but I've been to open mic events and the audiences are quite used to people being a bit shit - we'll have forgotten who you are 5 minutes after you leave unless you were incredibly offensive, flounced off the stage in tears or were incredibly funny. Also worth pointing out that silence isn't always terrible - we could be listening and enjoying your stories and finding them gently amusing. Which is fine.

I might as well tell you the full story. It was in a town I hardly know, I couldn't find anywhere to park, except in a multi-storey and the only space I could find there didn't leave me room to assemble the chair, so I had to get out on my hands and knees and lift it and the wheels separately through a small gap and crawl across to put it together. That done, I wheeled to the theatre, arrived late for rehearsals for which there was a tight schedule...then realised I didn't have my phone, which had my script on it. And part of the script involves checking my phone. I did one run-through, rushed back to the car park and luckily found the phone on the floor behind the car next to mind. It had obviously fallen out while I had been weightlifting.

I'd also discovered on my way back that there were disabled parking spaces just round the back of the theatre (I'd tried checking beforehand but nobody seemed to know they existed) so decided to go and park there. Which meant getting out of the chair and crawling back into the car. So I did, lined the car up next to the chair and went to get out to put it back in. At which point my trousers fell down. And my back seized up to I couldn't bend down to pull them up. I managed to get back into the car and pulled them up as far as I could. But I still couldn't stand. So I had to ask a woman who was also planning to take her car out if she would mind taking the wheelchair apart and putting it into the car for me. Luckily she didn't. Because if she hadn't, there was no way she'd have been able to get her car past mine.

On arriving in my new space, I soon discovered that I still couldn't stand up, so had to ask a passer-by if they could get the wheelchair out and assemble it for me. And the same happened after the performance. Different passer-by though. So as I've said, a crap performance wouldn't be anywhere nearly as embarrassing as the rest of the day, let alone the rest of my life. The only problem with it is that I'd been sweating so much my hair was all over the place, and as the event photographer was working from a slightly-raised position, it looks like I've got a crap combover. I mean I am balding but I look presentable from the front. I've edited those pictures so the top of my head isn't showing.

It's a new wheelchair as well. My old one was on the verge of collapse during the previous performance and finally fell apart and was condemned a couple of weeks later. So count my blessings eh? And on that occasion I only lost my phone in the venue itself.

PS on the subject of silence, the first minute of my performance - ten minutes long! - consists of me sitting there saying nothing. If I ever do it again I''m going to extend it as much as I can. I was thinking something along the lines of 40 minutes.

[waste of chops]

1. If your routine went down well in one place, are you supposed to take it to other clubs and hope for the same positive response there, or is every performance a one-off? I doubt that the latter is the case, but I'm paranoid about being wrong and thought it better to ask.

Ordinarily, yes, pretty much! As others have said, it's normal to perform material, keep and improve what works, ditch or revise what doesn't, and keep going until you have a honed 5-minute set -- a "tight 5". But you're just starting out, doing open mics, and you haven't found your style yet, so don't feel like you have to stick to those first jokes you performed right now -- if you want you could set them aside and do an entirely different set if you like (maybe use your strongest jokes from the first set as an opener and closer), experiment with things, etc. Then after a few gigs you can start taking the jokes that get the best reaction and look at how you can build a standard set from those.

But equally, if you're broadly happy with the material already then by all means, give it a polish  and perform it again. Just don't feel like you MUST perform that same set again while you're still new.

(And if you're not already then definitely record your sets, even if it's just with the voice notes app on your phone, so you can go over it later)

2. My style... doesn't exist, really. I've written hundreds of jokes but they lack cohesion (not to mention that most of them suck)

What do you mean by "lack cohesion"? That there's nothing that connects them? Or that they're a jumble of different styles (one-liners, stories, etc.). Because honestly, both are fine.

If there's nothing that connects them and the disjointedness bothers you then it might just be that you haven't spotted connections yet; if there's some broad topics you've written about (eg. mental health, religion, money etc.) then you can gather together the jokes on those topics and see if you can link them together.

If your jokes are a jumble of styles then that's fine! There's nothing that says a comedian must stick to one style for an entire set. If it really does bother you then you can look at how you can work one style into another. So if you prefer telling stories on stage but have lots of one-liners, then is there a way you can bring those one-liners into the longer routines? You should generally be aiming to keep the audience constantly laughing (unless you have a specific reason not to -- building up dramatic tension for example) so if you have a longer story that has some dry spells then maybe some of your existing one-liners can slide in there?

I feel like I need to watch a lot more taped shows by the greats so that I can copy them be inspired by them as a first step, and then use what I've picked up as building blocks to create my own shtick. Thus I would be grateful if you could make a list of people I ought to watch, preferably being representatives of different styles, what show/s by them I ought to watch (for instance, is "Old Baby" a good introduction to Maria Bamford or should I start with another one?), and crucially, where can I watch them? Bear in mind that I'm in Sweden, so internet based solutions are preferable (also, I'm poor).

800 Pound Gorilla have a lot of hour specials on their channel. As a starting point I'd be leaning towards their Worldwide Comedy playlist but only because it's mostly comedians I already know and like.

NextUp Comedy have a lot of 5-10 minute sets on their channel recorded at comedy clubs which might be useful to watch. If you have £35 you can subscribe to their site for a year which gives access to tons of hour shows plus they do a lot of live streams from comedy clubs (at least 1-2 week).

[Twilkes]

If a booker sees your act in one place, and books you to play at the gig they run (paid or unpaid), don't turn up with a totally different set of material, particularly if it's not fully tested. They booked what they saw and that's what they want to get.

It takes about thirty gigs to have excelled and bombed enough to realise what you're doing and how you can handle those nights where you're not firing off zingers. So don't cover think it at the beginning, just keep doing it.

Someone else's suggestion of a new 1 minute bit of material for every 4 minutes of tested material I'd good.

If you can't hack repeating the same material over and over again, be a writer not a standup, that's  pretty much what the job involves unless you're Ross Noble. :)

[flotemysost]

Interesting stories/advice (especially Jockice!) - best of luck to all giving it a shot.

I did standup for the first time a few weeks ago (5 min slot) and it went alright, I think (though it was a showcase following a writing course, so I think the crowd was mainly just friends'n'fam of everyone on the course).

Also worth pointing out that silence isn't always terrible - we could be listening and enjoying your stories and finding them gently amusing. Which is fine.

Absolutely. It sounds a bit deso, but I'm so used to being talked over/ignored (in meetings/conversations etc.) that my default mode is filling every silence and getting words out as quickly as possible; it feels very unnatural for me to "hold" silences/pauses and expect people to actually stay interested. But they do, and getting over that discomfort pays off massively.

Someone filmed the whole show, and once I'd got over the skin-crawling horror of watching myself back that was actually quite useful too. Never realised I say "err" so much (not because I'd forgotten my lines, it's just how I talk and it's immensely annoying - I probably need a Day Today-style intervention).

Also some drunk old bloke came up to me at the bar afterwards and told me I was "too left wing and anti British" and I was like WHY THANK YOU

[Peabo Bryson Is Not Dead]

Echoing all the sentiments here.

I have been doing stand up in NYC now for a year. I'm not a comedian yet, barely a comic. I'm still deep non-league in comparison to the levels of talent in the City, not that they get that metaphor here.

Aim for a consistent 4 minutes of material. Constantly write, rewrite, edit, mess around with mouthfeel. Some like to ramble, some like to perform verbatim, there is no wrong way. Not sure what the mics are like in the UK but they should be safe spaces where you can literally go through the motions. No one can bomb at a mic, it's training.

I got a quick start. Did a showcase as soon as I finished a class, got show bookings... got bored with my 5 minutes quickly, tried new material every show, started to go on bombing runs that Commander Harris would've been proud of. Soon learnt that bombing is actually freeing and constructive. You can get a feel of where your beats are going wrong, you get to know where and how you can fix gags and flow. And the best thing is the support from other comics and bookers. You get to see the best of people.

Video and audio record as much as you can. When you think you've bombed, you can watch back and see you've done ok. When you think you've won the crowd, you can watch back and realize it was abysmal. Being on stage is a lovely bubble, just embrace those moments you're in control.

I'm nowhere near finding my voice, my persona, but I'm enjoying the journey. What a cliche. I have wild dreams and imaginings but it's all about putting the work in and it is work. The best stand ups are not necessarily the funniest people.

But avoid most bringers. They can be the devil's gooch to escape from. Oh, and enjoy!

[Jockice]

Double post sorry. Er, I'm not saying my wife's fat. Because I'm not married.

[Jockice]

Interesting stories/advice (especially Jockice!) - best of luck to all giving it a shot.

I did standup for the first time a few weeks ago (5 min slot) and it went alright, I think (though it was a showcase following a writing course, so I think the crowd was mainly just friends'n'fam of everyone on the course).

Thanks. That's how I got started. I applied for a playwriting course. got on it, wrote a piece without me on stage, then a longer version of that and also a short separate piece. All of which have been performed. Then I mentioned I was planning a piece with the aforementioned title (as a joke really, I hadn't written anything. It's just something said about me in my 20s which had stuck with me) then got encouraged to write and perform it.

The really weird thing is although I'd never done anything like that in my adult life. And the highlight of my childhood acting career was my part as the boy who coughed during assembly when we did a bit of Kes for school prize night) I didn't feel remotely nervous either before or actually being on stage. Maybe I actually am Morrissey, a shy wreck in everyday life whose real self comes out while performing. Bit late for me to find out but there we go.

I've never done an actual comedy night though. All my performances have been at open mic/scratch nights with a variety of other acts - ranging from a sweet Asian lass in her early 20s reciting poems about her family to a bloke with green hair dancing around to choral music wearing high heels and a strap-on dildo - so I don't know how well it would go down if it was a night of pure comedy. I remember a relative of mine telling me how he and some friends ended up pissed at a comedy night and heckled one of the performers on stage and hassled him after he came off. He seemed to think it was a great laugh but I wasn't impressed. And that was years before I'd ever even thought about going on stage myself.

Good luck to anyone else trying it anyway.

[Deano]

Adam Bloom's book is terrific for new acts.

[Maurice Yeatman]

^_Kidding!

[Nooses Give]

Thanks to everyone except Maurice Yeatman, whose clip was very hurtful. I've misplaced my reading glasses and can't make out the fine print below the link but I'm sure it was a very hurtful message as well. I won't be able to reply to each and everyone of you as thoroughly as you have replied to me, and I apologize for that. But know for sure that I will revisit this thread repeatedly. And thanks for the well-wishes. 

A special mention goes out to Jockice, whose posts have been almost disgustingly inspiring. If you can do it - despite being Scottish and all - then I can do it as well! flotemysost and thenoise, I will keep your  words about pauses and silences in mind, but flotes, seriously: try to be a bit more rightwing and pro-British next time, you clearly hurt that poor man's feelings.

If listening rather than watching is fine, there's a fair bit of comedy on Bandcamp, a lot on a 'pay what you can' basis or free. Daniel Kitson, John Robins and Michael Legge are a good start.

I'm afraid not, my English hearing comprehension is terrible so I need subtitles. But I will check out the guys you mentioned if I can find them on video. Your avatar and quote are pretty great, by the way. Was I the only one who was disappointed with the Netflix version?

Find a dog with no nose, and bring him on after the "how does he smell bit?", thus undercutting the whimsical setup with the tragic reality

That's a great idea, your boy NG is all about mutilated animals!

If there's ever any awkward pauses you should be filling them by going "got any grapes?"

I wish I understood what you mean, but I'm afraid I don't. Is it a reference to something?

Adam Bloom's book is terrific for new acts.

I'll check it out, thanks!

I'm not sure what I want to achieve with this, actually. I don't think I could make it as a professional even if I tried as I am drugged and drowsy most of the time (a side-effect of my anti-anxiety medication) and thus am incapable of working as hard as I would need to do to succeed. I think that my primary goal is to get out of the house and hang out with someone beside my cat, ideally a cute girl with a really fucked up taste in men. But the most important thing may be that I'll get to feel like something more than just a welfare case, which is what I am. But when I performed I managed to parlay that into something people responded to positively, as opposed to their usual response of "how do I extricate myself from my conversation with this man?". It's nice to get to feel like something else but a burden to society, to have some kind of agency, even if it is limited to telling dick jokes in a cellar (why is it always a cellar?).

There's a consensus in the thread that I will develop by doing more or less the same routine several times (I'll try to mix it up a little bit at least, not everything worked out). But I'm curious as to how? Does your confidence grow? Does your faces and intonation improve et cetera?

It's a good thing to hear that you can not only survive but even evolve through bombing repeatedly, because with my penchant for tasteless jokes it's very much in the cards. A few months ago I was assreamed on here (not saying that I didn't deserve it) and I felt really horrible. I wonder if my bombing on stage will feel worse than that? Probably not, because I appreciate and respect almost every poster on here, making it impossible to discount the criticism; hopefully it will be easier to disregard the views of random Stockholmers.

[Nooses Give]

What do you mean by "lack cohesion"? That there's nothing that connects them? Or that they're a jumble of different styles (one-liners, stories, etc.). Because honestly, both are fine.

They're just all over the place, even though I have put them into neat little subdivisions. Tone, quality, genre, there's just no consistency to them. But I'll stop worrying about it and try not to be so fixated with perfection. And thanks for pointing out that I'm allowed to combine them, I hadn't really thought about that...

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out. Hopefully I'll do fine without spending the £35, the pound is fucking annihilating the Swedish krona right now...

If you can't hack repeating the same material over and over again, be a writer not a standup, that's  pretty much what the job involves unless you're Ross Noble. :)

Nah, I'm an attention whore through and through!

[Red82]

Do you people really sleep with others just because they are involved in standup comedy some how?  I might get involved myself here. (I won't)

[thenoise]

There's a consensus in the thread that I will develop by doing more or less the same routine several times (I'll try to mix it up a little bit at least, not everything worked out). But I'm curious as to how? Does your confidence grow? Does your faces and intonation improve et cetera?

Try varying the wording, speed, order of jokes and other subtleties of delivery. Does it work better if you pace about or keep still? Or address one side of the room and deliver the punchline as an 'aside' to the other side? Or stand in one place and deliver it quite neutrally? Work out what gets more laughs and also what feels more natural for you.

A few months ago I was assreamed on here (not saying that I didn't deserve it) and I felt really horrible. I wonder if my bombing on stage will feel worse than that? Probably not, because I appreciate and respect almost every poster on here, making it impossible to discount the criticism; hopefully it will be easier to disregard the views of random Stockholmers.

Random in a bar will probably enjoy a tasteless joke, but if not, just move on. Like Stewart Lee when he says the n word on BBC2 - even though the audience booing undermines the point of the whole routine.

[dead-ced-dead]

Do you have any video footage that we could watch, just to give more specific advise?

[jobotic]

You see, I can be funny, although admittedly not often on here. People laughed when I said I wanted to become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now. Because I'm still not a comedian.

They could still be laughing then, if it was the idea of you being a comedian that they found so amusing. I'd go with "because I stopped saying it".

And that's why I am a very successful comedian junior manager. 

[Maurice Yeatman]

Thanks to everyone except Maurice Yeatman, whose clip was very hurtful. I've misplaced my reading glasses and can't make out the fine print below the link but I'm sure it was a very hurtful message as well.

I gave up open mike nights to concentrate on being a data entry clerk. I've never looked back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOBlyK_ig1c&t=75s   😉