I’m a good comedy MC.

No ego involved, I’m good. The rules of the game are simple but most MC’s are frustrated comics. I’ve just come from a gig, friday night, Comedy Cafe my home base.

We used to get a lot more foreign comics passing through. Guys whose careers were waning in the US; young hippity-hoppity black guys; a whole slew of Brits who since made it on Auntie Beeb and other terrestial channels; quirky Yanks; the odd Antipodean; the always funny Irish and the in your face Scottish; plus the Canucks, drug tried and tested.

I’ve played sports cafeterias, libraries, cafes, bars, music dives, municipal theatres, pop festivals, Schouwburgen and parks. I’ve remained professional through every low-life bar full of morons and drunks and every shithole’s technical fubars. All you need is a raised platform, a spotlight and a mike for fuchs sake!

I’ve bullied and bartered with audiences. I’ve scolded and mocked them too. but my act has pretty much always been the same. I belong to the Bob Hope/George Burns school where old jokes become new when you deliver them fresh. And when you’ve lined em up right it can fly!

That’s what comedians crave. You’re the centre of attention and you’re playing it isn’t a big deal and seemingly riffing. Though your colleagues at the bar are sliding imaginary sharp and blunt objects into your swollen ego. putting in effect a meta-layer into your act, making it funnier, for them.

Certain comedians I can hear time and again just for delivery, timing, build of set, and timing. Even shite joke-ripping hack comedians have good audiences and achieve flight. It’s what keeps ’em coming back. Or they are the owner’s son or brother of a famous comedian. A phenomenon that deserves the attention of some degree seeking sociology student somewhere.

I like the honest comedians and the absurd ones. humour is the great leveller in human interaction. No subject is taboo in my ears.But be original not banal. Shock is only funny with a twist that keeps ya thinking.

Especially delivery with a high non-verbal content opposing the words. The resigned look after the realisation that you’re about to slip on a banana peel. Sudden shifts in perspective are also good for a chuckle or two from me. Wordscraftsmen rate highly too. Forgive me but fart jokes elicit my English shoolboy education.

The influences I peed myself laughing at are in a short list: Billy Connolly, Monty Python, the Goons, the Goodies, Tommy Cooper, Spike Milligan, Alexei Sayle, Jim Carrey.