Surviving in the Bush

Last Thursday (4th December) I played the Holly Bush Tavern in Cradley Heath for the first time.

The Bush is a smallish pub in the Black Country with a tiny back room where comedy legends are born. I hope.

I really enjoyed the gig and my stuff went down very well. 

This was not a crowd of middle-class "chin strokers". To be honest it was hardly a crowd at all - there were only about 20 people there. But what they lacked in numbers they made up for in good down-to-earth feedback. 

I came out of it well. At the end of my set, one audience member rose from his seat and raised his hands in the air cheering as if he was at a Birmingham-West Brom derby match. I wasn't sure if he liked the material or if he was cheering because I had finished. To my relief he later informed me that I was a top bloke and funny as f*ck. He was my favourite punter ever.

I had been worried because I only had 5 minutes of tried and tested material. I was planning to tag another 5 minutes of new stuff onto the end of this. In the end, I decided just to add something new into each section of the existing set and stretch it out to 10 minutes. It worked!

Everything went down well apart from the routine about "our Sheila's boob job" which flagged a bit. It usually goes really well but I made a mistake - I said the word "darkness" when I usually say "shadow". I've found that this simple detail makes an unbelievable difference to the effectiveness of the joke. I need to rehearse it and rehearse it to embed the word "shadow" in my brain for next time.

I haven't got any more gigs planned until 5th January - but I aim to do at least 50 gigs in 2009. There's also the chance that I might get asked to stand in for someone at the last minute at the Frog, which I find hard to resist.

Sam Brady Stand-up Comedian