#ThisIsHowTheComedyWorks Week 2: Popping my Cherry.

Many thanks to everyone who has donated, the support and love I’ve been getting genuinely humbles me! Please help by spreading the word, I’m using the hashtag #ThisIsHowTheComedyWorks, and/or buying tickets for the event on July 8th and/or donating to Cancer Research!  Check out my JustGiving page for more information! justgiving.com/fundraising/thisishowthecomedyworks

I welcome you dear reader to Magor Services on the entrance to Wales, where I’m writing this weeks’ blog update as I wait for Ben. Ben and I are on our way to visit a customer. Ben is late. I found out recently that Ben is also from my hometown. Which, like me, means he can’t read or write, never mind telling the time. It also means he avoided being an apprentice at the steelworks and escaped. Ben, also like me, misspent his youth in Henry Arikas on a Sunday getting pissed, when he should’ve been revising for his GCSEs - ‘cause that’s how you roll when you’re from Scunthorpe.

So… I performed and popped my Cherry. It was nerve-wracking as hell, but I delivered a 60-second joke in front of twenty or so other comedians. Possibly the worst audience ever to do your first ever stand up joke, not that they’re horrible people, but it’s like presenting in front of an audience who know more than you about the subject you’re talking about. I got there, mostly. Feedback was good (it had to be, Chris banned anyone being slagged off - good man!) Fluffed a couple of lines and lost my place at one point. What was useful is I knew exactly where I’d gone wrong and very clear about what to do next time. So from that perspective, it was very, very useful.

Everyone who performed, I genuinely thought was brilliant - everyone has their own distinct personality, and we’re really coming together as a group. There’s definitely some in the group there who are going to go really far with this. The joke I’d picked was a Greg Davies joke from “Throwing Cheese Balls at a Dog”, which if you find it on Spotify, is about 42:20 in… I’ve started to think about broad themes I’d like to joke about when I perform on July 8th (did I mention you can buy tickets to see me?) current favourite being my glorious 13-year old daughter, who is just a goldmine of comic genius every time she opens her mouth. Other areas may include motorway services (although Rhod Gilbert has this covered), and signing in at reception and being from Scunthorpe…

If you do know someone who’s funny but not mainstream, please, please do let me know. You can find me on twitter @JohnMoody, I need to get as much exposure as possible as I work on my ‘style’, which at the moment is very much “Enthusiastic Labrador”. I’m starting to venture further afield in the comics I’m listening too, there were some excellent suggestions from class last week, and I’ve had a couple of people DM me comics I should check out.

This weeks’ homework revolves around creating 5 jokes based on one or all of three words, one hard, a connective and an easy one. Work is in progress on these, and I think I have the start of a nice story which I’ll expand on over the next few days. Unfortunately, I won’t be at class next week as I’m off to climb Ben Nevis to raise a bit of awareness about the event. I intend to make my jokes up there and send them in.

So that's it for now - some lessons learned and a few more to go!

The support you’ve all given me has been, and I’m genuinely grateful to all those who’ve donated and bought tickets. If you’d like to donate to Cancer Research in support, then please visit my JustGiving page at justgiving.com/fundraising/thisishowthecomedyworks, and if you’d like to watch me perform, you can buy tickets here https://bit.ly/2wEsNUy or preferably, from me directly - just get in touch @JohnMoody on Twitter.