Pretty late with this report, as I've just moved and still have no internet at home (sneakily typing this up at work). But enough fumbled apologies, I've got two gigs to report on before taking a break over August - no Edinburgh for Tom, I'm decorating.

Monday's gig was at Jester Jester's. Turned up early and managed to blag an open spot. I was expecting to be put on fairly late, but ended up going on second due to a surprising level of trust the compere placed on me. I revived a couple of older gags - one short-form and one to replace my current story - as I needed to get in some clean material for later in the week. More on that later. One of the two I revisited I had rewritten a little to try and make the turnaround clearer, which worked to some extent, although it wasn't amazing. The story was ok, but I'm a little rusty with it. I think there's some life in it, though, as the humour for the tale is mostly observational, which should be a nice contrast to the puns and such earlier on in the set.

Keeping up the pace still seems to be working nicely, I probably should be aiming to come off stage exhausted, or at least a little worn, and in need of a drink (but for good reasons). The newer material I debuted the previous week also went down great. It also seems I've discovered a new tool: setting up a pattern so people can fill in the punchline themselves. There's something about people laughing at what you might say next that makes you feel clever, and probably makes the audience feel that way too.

The second gig of the week was a bit of a special one. My sister got married on the Saturday (another thing I'm behind on, getting piccies on Facebook!) so she'd arranged for her vocal group, The Harmonettes to put on a show at the local pub the night before. Methinks this was a sneaky way to avoid getting herself too stressed about the wedding itself beforehand. This was the first time I'd seen them perform live and have to say I was massively impressed. If you need a harmony group for an event, give them a call!

Surprisingly enough, they'd asked me to introduce them (guess they hadn't seen any videos of my previous compering). Initially I was hugely flattered to be asked, but then realised I had a serious lack of family-friendly material - even if I didn't swear there were far too many overt sexual and drugs references.

 I figured I only needed to do a few minutes to get the crowd's attention and warm them up, most of which I could pad out with an "applause level check" (which always seemed to work for open mic nights). Even so, I was still left with pretty much just two puns. I'd done my best to bolster this over the previous weeks' gigs and managed to get together about 3 minutes' worth of short gags, including a few I'd written on the day - bad habit I know, but they went down pretty well.

This was technically the first gig I'd done that wasn't an open mic (nor a pure comedy night) and the difference in atmosphere was shocking. Being a free night's entertainment in a village pub/restaurant, there were a lot of people not really paying attention and even those that were chatted a bit throughout, but surprisingly, this didn't phase me at all. I think having a lot of friendly faces in the audience helped, but it just goes to show that you really don't need 100% of everyone's attention to get by.

Another thing that struck me was how differently this audience reacted. Jokes I'd previously thought were my "A" material raised a few titters, while some of my "weaker" gags got a huge reaction. Guess this is where a truly skilled performer would be able to read the audience and choose the best jokes for the crowd. I have a long way to go.

In the end, I was pretty pleased with my warm-up, I got everyone's attention and whipped the crowd up into a nice frenzy for the Harmonettes. I even dealt with a few friendly heckles. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed compering. I should ask around some open nights to see if I can fill in one evening.

So all in all, a great week to go out on before my little August break! And congratulations to Sarra and Ross for tying the knot on Saturday, was a fantastic day.