After a brief stand up hiatus due to a mild calendar snafu, last Tuesday, I was at Tuesday Night at Torriano's, a bi-weekly night in aid of saving the Torriano pub from being redeveloped into flats.

After a couple of less than stellar gigs, this night was exactly what I needed: the room was absolutely packed, with a warm, friendly and receptive audience, and I rekon that every act had a great time.

I was doing my phrasebook routine again, and after my experience at Touching Cloth, I had cut down the intro somewhat to get to the gags quicker. This cut out a good chunk of time from the routine, and after a couple of other cuts, this let me start with some tried and tested opening lines. This approach gave me a great confidence boost, and helped me keep my energy up going into the body of the set. I was left with a little more than 5 minutes of material, but when I got the "wrap it up" signal from the compere, I didn't mind cutting out a couple of excess lines.

Granted, listening back to the recording I took, it wasn't my most stellar performance. There were a couple of places where I rushed through lines, so some of the impact might have been lost. But with a little more rehearsal (and less time between gigs), I can sort out these kind of things.

All in all, a fantastic night, and a huge thanks go to Sarma Woolf for organising such a great evening, and to the compere for the night, Don Biswas, who kept the energy up and the pace going so things didn't finish up too late.

Save the Torriano!