This week's 5 Minutes of Fame had it all, jokes, banter and a near riot! Brilliant learning experience for my 5th attempt at compering.

Long story short, one of the acts had a lot of friends with him, some of whom were clearly more interested in getting tanked up than watching a comedy show, chattering and attempting to heckle (although poorly due to their chemically induced confusion). It finally reached the point where the act who brought them dragged two of his friends out by the collar and literally kicked them up the stairs.

I have to admit I could've handled the whole situation better, reacting to almost every utterance when most of them could have been ignored. As a result, I was probably egging them on more than putting them down. This is encouraging, as I really did want to do more audience interaction, and now I can work to pull it back a touch, and learn to pick the best moments. Sadly enough, I lost my temper slightly at one point, but think I managed to pass it off as part of a "teacher" act.

I have to hand it to Mark Talbot who was willing to exclude them completely from his performance to get to the "true" audience behind.

After the ruckus had ended, the rest of the night went really well, with the remainder of the audience, although small, determined to enjoy the rest of the acts. That said, all the acts did a great job under sometimes hard circumstances and look forward to seeing them again in the future.

I almost feel like I'm ready to perform to students now.