My 25th gig, compering at 5 Minutes of Fame again, and possibly my toughest one yet. Although it also probably taught me the most of the few I'd done so far.

Boy, this was a hard one! Audience was a little thin on the ground (at least compared to last week) and at times somewhat lukewarm. Although the acts did admirably and plenty of fun was still had. I tried my hand at more audience interaction, and think I'm beginning to get the hang of it.

Rather than taking general "who came from places" surveys to drum up conversation, I tried going straight to a single person or group (over anything, even something as mundane as their clothes), and that seemed to work a lot better. It certainly helped to get a little engagement from specific areas of the audience, but I'll need to be careful not to neglect everyone else in the process. One thing I could look into for next time would be finding some little games and such to keep energy high, particularly if it can involve individuals directly. The least I can do is to get a warm welcome for each act.

I did a lot less pure material this time, although happily, a few topical gags I'd written up on the tube on the way in went down quite well - might even turn them into a blog entry over the weekend. I still felt I could have told even less jokes overall, and could probably have kept things moving a lot quicker early on - after all, people aren't there to see the compere, they came to see the acts.

Finally, discovered a big don't for future nights: if you talk with an act that hasn't been on yet, don't mention their spot, you (or they) could end up accidentally revealing an aspect of their set, and blow the surprise!

So a lot to take away from this one, and hopefully some good ideas for me to try out in future. Roll on next time!