Speaking lessons from a dead man

'Everybody wants to be a killer. Nobody wants to die.'

Hi it’s me Al. Welcome to this issue of The Speakeasy. You're probably familiar with the phrase 'killing it.'

It's used quite often in comedy.

Comedians ‘kill’ when a set goes well. But they can also ‘die’ - that is ,when it goes poorly.

This is the story of how I died.

I was young. I wanted to be a comedian. Well, I was a comedian, in as much as I’d done four shows and nobody had thrown anything at me.

I’d obsessed over my material for the first one. Every day for weeks I’d paced my room, committing the lines to my mind through a combination of sheer will and mortal fear.

The second and third I loosened up a little. I was still terrified. I did the same set of jokes, rehearsed to within an inch of their lives. But the words flowed a little easier. I started to move my arms. I wasn’t a robot.

On the fourth I dared to test the waters with some audience interaction. It worked. What a rush! It was like swimming with crocodiles and coming out unscathed.

The fifth rolled around and I got cocky. We’ve all seen big names conjure laughs with cool ease. Their jokes seemed to float on air. They plucked them out at will and served them fully formed.?

How hard could it be??

So that night I walked on stage with a blank canvas and stars in my eyes.

The Grim Reaper sharpened his scythe.

‘Hi I’m Alistair. It’s like Talisker. We’re both Scottish and ‘single’... umm, malt.’ Sadly that was the funniest part of my set. It went off a cliff after that.?

I started stumbling through a mix of jokes I’d half remembered and new ones I was trying to make up. My face made strange shapes. Not that I was aware of it. I was in the basement of my brain wandering around with a flashlight looking for anything coherent to say. Empty.

Faces hardened. Smiles disappeared. Cringe entered the chat and pity joined the party soon after. First the audience looked at me like I was a little bird stuck in a bog. Then they willed me off stage with their eyes. I wanted to run. But I couldn’t move. I’d read about giant sinkholes in Japan that swallow cars. I yearned for one.

I spluttered through the rest of my ‘set’. Dead man talking.?

R.I.P. Alistair. ‘Like Talisker, but not very funny.’

It was the hard way to learn about the value of preparation. For a comedian, bombing like that is arguably a rite of a passage. When you’re presenting however, it can mean ‘deal’ or ‘no deal’.

Preparation gives you confidence and freedom

When you see a good comedian on stage they seem to have this ability to tell a story on demand, to ‘remember’ something hilarious. It seems easy and natural. But there is a lot of preparation that goes into that. Refined lines, rehearsed cadences, pauses.

They’re in the business of being convincing. And if you’re in sales then you’re in the same business. Confidence comes from knowing what you’re talking about.

You need to prepare. Don’t wing it. You’re not Batman.

The benefits of preparation

• Being prepared makes you more relaxed. When you’re more relaxed you’re able to think clearly and be more reactive to your audience. Preparedness gives you the confidence and freedom to venture off topic because you have a firm grasp on its roots.
• Saying something you have prepared and know about lets you say it with confidence. Even if you don’t consciously realise it (there are ways to improve it too), there is an air of confidence and authority that you carry when you are prepared.
• You have a better understanding of your objective. By preparing, you see your own material from different perspectives. You begin to understand how it is being received, over simply how you are delivering it.

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