Another week, another couple of gigs and another horrendously late gig report. This week, I was at the monthly night at William IV (now moved to a Tuesday), and Touching Cloth, a new material night at Dirty Dick's near Liverpool Street.

Sticking to my phrasebook material, my recent foray at Jester Jester's had given me the confidence to try playing around with the set a little, trying different emphasis and pacing. Overall, the reception I got was pretty good, although the room was mainly full of acts, about half of which were either worrying about their set or possibly trying to maintain the straight faced melancholy their character demanded.

I might have gone a little overboard with the energy at times, in particular with my rant on the French. I rekon I finally crossed the line between enthusiasm and having a minor fit. Lesson of the day? Articulate rage is funnier than fevered raving.

My second gig of the week was the very next day, at Touching Cloth, a fantastically well fun new material night (hats off to Frank Cassidy for keeping things well under control and cramming a huge number of acts into a very strict time frame).

Quick tip if you're going to do this night: use the street address to get an online map (hint - its near Liverpool Street), Google seemed to be convinced that the postcode was smack in the middle of the Barbican centre, which left me a little confused and with a bit of a longer walk than I expected. Luckily, I was running rather early. Excessive punctuality triumphs again!

Wasn't my best gig, this. There was a guy sat smack bang in the middle of the front row who was either extremely drunk, or on a moderate quantity of drugs, or both. He wasn't exactly heckling, but was chipping in whenever he seemed to think the person on stage was talking, which was decidedly off-putting, as he tended to chip in over punchlines. The compere (the aforementioned Frank) did a good job of controlling him, basically threatening with moving him if he didn't shut up (entirely reasonable given the kind of night it was), and his friends were forever poking him and making "zip it" gestures. The first act also did a great job of putting him down, and speaking to him later, had a good 3 years' experience - a good case for keeping at it.

I ended up going on fourth, when it was still unclear as to what the guy might do. So I was nervous as hell, trying to look anywhere except the centre of the front row. I got a few titters, and some people looked like they were enjoying themselves, but stuff I'd counted as 'A' material before was getting hardly any reaction. Again, I really need to stop letting things like this bother me, as it saps my energy. Also, I think I need a stronger opening to the phrasebook routine. Perhaps cut out the rubbish audience participation bit and just get straight to the statistics...or I might put a joke in first.

On the plus side, I had a few nice comments afterwards about my material, and one guy even said I looked extremely confident on stage. If I look confident on a day like that, I must look positively arrogant when I'm not nervous!

As a odd twist to the saga, the chemically-addled heckler in the front turned out to be an act. The audience weren't having any of it. He didn't even get into material, just started spouting rubbish, until his friends started yelling at him to actually do his act, and the compere cut him off. Karma can be oddly satisfying sometimes.