Back at Touching Cloth this week for a 5 minute spot. After a less than stellar outing last time, I was a little bit nervous of this one, but I was determined to please the crowd this time!

With the World Cup on TV upstairs, audience was a little bit thin on the ground, but those of us that were there were pretty determined to lend each other support. As a result, reactions were a little bit muted, but the atmosphere was still very friendly and welcoming. I was on second, though, so I didn't get chance to appreciate this fact, leaving me with a certain amount of nerves.

I was sticking to my "short form" material, and this time I'd rehearsed, and done a little chopping and changing to throw in some new gags and pull out some of the clutter. Running through, this left me with about 3 minutes of material, which surprisingly turned into at least four and a half on stage. I'd like to say this was all due to waiting for laughs, but I seemed to add an aside after nearly every punchline, not many of which were particularly entertaining. I either need to stop myself doing this, or take an improv course and come up with good spontaneous lines.

It wasn't my best gig, but also wasn't a disaster, so I wasn't feeling particularly suicidal afterwards. I'm liking the shorter gags, its giving me chance to experiment more and be a little more personable with the crowd, rather than trying to fit a "character" around a story. Got a couple of nice comments afterwards, remarking on my being more "myself" and having a "likable" attitude, which were nice boosts.

Not all my new gags went down too well. One joke about my weight in particular got absolutely no reaction. This either means I don't look as fat as I think I do, or the joke wasn't even slightly funny. I'm going to assume it's the former.

Update: There's now a video of this set on the Dead Comedian's Socks YouTube page.