Cannock Believe It

First apologies for the dreadful title!

I've started branching out a bit with my gigs. For the past few years other commitments have meant I've restricted myself to just working at weekend. Now those commitments have eased and I'm free to work as much as I want.

As a result I found myself in a car with two new comedians yesterday bound for Cannock. All I knew was, it's in the Midlands somewhere, and I think they have horse racing there.

The comedians were Mike Belgrave who was to MC the gig, and a very very new act called Julian Deane who told me that this was to be his 21st gig! I remember when I could keep a tally of how many gigs I'd done...now I have no idea tho I suppose its in the thousands.

I do enjoy road trips, and its always fun to meet new people, so as we negotiated our way through the London traffic and the snow to the M1 we got to know each other a bit better. By the time we got to Cannock we were mates.

The gig was in a place called Bar Sport in the centre of Cannock. The cynic in me envisioned a generic sports themed bar and to be honest I wasn't far out, they even had baseball bats as door handles. The crowd wasn't bit, perhaps 60 people, tho on a cold, wet Thursday I thought it was a decent amount of people. I wouldn't have been there if I wasn't getting paid!

The venue could've done with a few pointers as to how to lay out a room for comedy, sofas are never a good idea. And not having them facing the stage is a no no. Still Mike did his job and got the crowd up for a night of comedy. The first turn was a double act called Rob and Scat (dangerous nickname if you ask me!). They did musical comedy, which I have to declare is not my bag at all unless its done brilliantly - Otis Lee Crenshaw and Steve Gribbin are the only two I can actually enjoy watching - but they got laughs and that's all you can ask for.

After the break it was a very nervous Julian who took the stage. I was nervous for him, he shocked me earlier by telling me he was 30 years old, he looks about 12! I guess some latent maternal instincts came to the fore. Its always dicey when the guy who drives you to and from the gig is onstage, if he has a bad one is he gonna drive the car off the road on the way home, taking us all out with him?

As it happened there was no need to worry, Julian has got some incredible material and he made me laugh a whole lot more than a lot of more seasoned acts around. Yes he was nervous, and there were some technical mistakes, but those will disappear with experience. I don't really wanna set myself up as some kinda comedy soothsayer, but I reckon in another 50 gigs' time Julian will be shit hot...keep an eye out for him.

I had a good 'un, they laughed in most of the right places, and everyone was happy with the way the night went. Cash collected we set off home. Walking back to the car, we were talking about how pretty the town centre looked and Julian said 'yeah there's no flowers on the lamp posts'. This is the new way of telling how safe a place is, no flowers = no recent stabbings!

When I got in, I put the telly on and there was Stan Collymore talking about his childhood on BBC3. Turns out he was born, raised, and still lives in Cannock. If only I'd known before I coulda gone doggin with him after the show!