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| Mark Watson: Never trust a comedian who says 'the other day …' | Mark Watson: Never trust a comedian who says 'the other day …' |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| However well-planned a routine might be, as a comedian you always know that an unexpected event may cause you to start from scratch. In this case – in the moments leading up to what was one of the biggest gigs of my career at that point – I watched on the backstage monitors with a mixture of fascination and horror as Rich Hall, the compere for the night, brought an audience member on stage and duetted with him on an unorthodox version of Country Roads. I bit the bullet and spent the first section of my act talking about the fact that I'd been overshadowed before I even got on stage. It wasn't much of a hardship: I tend to relish the moments when things deviate from the norm. Most TV editors shy away from showing those moments – but not on this occasion. | However well-planned a routine might be, as a comedian you always know that an unexpected event may cause you to start from scratch. In this case – in the moments leading up to what was one of the biggest gigs of my career at that point – I watched on the backstage monitors with a mixture of fascination and horror as Rich Hall, the compere for the night, brought an audience member on stage and duetted with him on an unorthodox version of Country Roads. I bit the bullet and spent the first section of my act talking about the fact that I'd been overshadowed before I even got on stage. It wasn't much of a hardship: I tend to relish the moments when things deviate from the norm. Most TV editors shy away from showing those moments – but not on this occasion. |
| Reading on mobile? Watch the routine here | |
| When the routine does finally get going, it's about the two main staples of contemporary standup: water and carrots. I've always been amused by the long-winded sales pitches which appear on bottled water: "This water first appeared in Derbyshire over 12 million years ago", and so on. It's a real feature of the age that you can't buy any food or drink product without reading an extensive introduction on the label, and in the case of water it seems particularly extraneous. Who do they think is going to pick up the bottle and go "Ah, it's from Derbyshire. Good. I won't buy any water made in the south-east"? The good thing about this little series of gags is that it looks like it's more or less spontaneous, inspired by glancing at the bottle I'd just been given, rather than the truth: that I meticulously premeditated it like the comic assassin I am. | When the routine does finally get going, it's about the two main staples of contemporary standup: water and carrots. I've always been amused by the long-winded sales pitches which appear on bottled water: "This water first appeared in Derbyshire over 12 million years ago", and so on. It's a real feature of the age that you can't buy any food or drink product without reading an extensive introduction on the label, and in the case of water it seems particularly extraneous. Who do they think is going to pick up the bottle and go "Ah, it's from Derbyshire. Good. I won't buy any water made in the south-east"? The good thing about this little series of gags is that it looks like it's more or less spontaneous, inspired by glancing at the bottle I'd just been given, rather than the truth: that I meticulously premeditated it like the comic assassin I am. |
| After that I banged on about carrot packaging and the fad for "upselling" which makes shop assistants offer you products quite unrelated to the thing you are attempting to buy. In this period of my career I rarely invoked my personal opinions, but these were both subjects relatively close to my heart, in the sense that I'd grumbled about them under my breath in a range of supermarkets. The incidents described on stage did both happen in real life – a checkout lady giving me an entire carrier bag to carry a single vegetable, and then trying to get me signed up to buy a DVD I'd no desire for – but on separate occasions. With further cold-hearted ruthlessness, I conflated them to produce one single "nightmare trip to the supermarket". I think comedians generally lie less than you'd think, when it comes to making up stories, but we do play fast-and-loose with time structures, distilling 10 years of misfortune into a single story in order to make it sound fresh and topical. Never trust a comedian who says "The other day …": it could mean any of the last 34,000 "other" days. | After that I banged on about carrot packaging and the fad for "upselling" which makes shop assistants offer you products quite unrelated to the thing you are attempting to buy. In this period of my career I rarely invoked my personal opinions, but these were both subjects relatively close to my heart, in the sense that I'd grumbled about them under my breath in a range of supermarkets. The incidents described on stage did both happen in real life – a checkout lady giving me an entire carrier bag to carry a single vegetable, and then trying to get me signed up to buy a DVD I'd no desire for – but on separate occasions. With further cold-hearted ruthlessness, I conflated them to produce one single "nightmare trip to the supermarket". I think comedians generally lie less than you'd think, when it comes to making up stories, but we do play fast-and-loose with time structures, distilling 10 years of misfortune into a single story in order to make it sound fresh and topical. Never trust a comedian who says "The other day …": it could mean any of the last 34,000 "other" days. |
| This little snippet is an example of the art of saying virtually nothing of substance and still looking as if you're imparting something worthwhile, partly thanks to the generous cutaways to audience members cackling. Three years on, I like to think my act has become a bit bolder and more ambitious. But on the other hand I'm not sure what I've done with that smart suit. | This little snippet is an example of the art of saying virtually nothing of substance and still looking as if you're imparting something worthwhile, partly thanks to the generous cutaways to audience members cackling. Three years on, I like to think my act has become a bit bolder and more ambitious. But on the other hand I'm not sure what I've done with that smart suit. |
| More from Behind the joke | More from Behind the joke |
| • Frisky & Mannish: how we tamed the Pussycat Dolls• Pippa Evans: me and sozzled singer Loretta Maine• Al Lubel: my performance anxiety on Letterman | • Frisky & Mannish: how we tamed the Pussycat Dolls• Pippa Evans: me and sozzled singer Loretta Maine• Al Lubel: my performance anxiety on Letterman |
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