Travels With My Bongos Pt 4 : Nice in Neath

I have this feeling that we are going to need to recap some of the action from previous episodes of Travels With My Bongos, especially the one set in Bath. Few people can truthfully say that they have been stuck in the disabled toilet in the Bluebell Hotel in Neath (which my phone autocorrects to ‘Death’ but I wish that it were the other way round) but there I was with all my best stand-up material about frozen peas when ... hold on, I feel a voiceover coming on ...

Previously on Travels With My Bongos ...

The scene is the bus stop in Bath at around eleven o’clock at night where I am waiting for a bus with one of the other comedians from the Bath Comedy Festival. He believes that he can get a bus back to the city centre and then a bus to London for a connection to Norwich and be in work the next day It was here that he said, “You should try to be more like other people” and “You shouldn’t do songs”. At this point, the thinks bubble would appear above my head and in it would be the idea of doing the next spot as something slightly different.

The scene fades out and we are taken to the world of amateur comedy where comedians are glamorous, young people who hang around making witticisms to adoring fans while on the verge of their big break. Then you wake up and find that the microphone is broken in this venue too.

I am a member of an online group called ‘Rough As’. I cannot remember now where I came across it but, despite the title, it is not for people who woke up this morning feeling like Neath warmed up. It is for comedians and describes itself as ‘the comedians’ comedy club’. Unfortunately, its regular events are all in Swansea on a Tuesday. Swansea I can cope with (there is a bold statement), but Tuesday ... why does everything happen on a Tuesday? I do sometimes feel as though Tuesday night is a big magnet attracting all the events. For that reason, I have never been to a Rough As night, but when I saw that there was a Sunday afternoon in the Neath Comedy Festival devoted to Rough As acts, I had to sign up.

I like Neath. I have always had a certain fondness for the place and so I feel guilty that I am sitting here thinking that when Donald Trump and Boris Johnson succeed on bringing on the apocalypse, we will be greeted by The Four Horseman – War, Plague, Pestilence and Neath. “What?” asks Neath, with a shrug of the shoulders, “It was autocorrect!”

To be technical for a moment, you all remember from the ‘Previously ...’ that I had come away from the Bath Comedy Festival feeling that there was no room to compromise my comedic art just because someone at a bus stop says it. By that, of course, I do mean that I need to compromise my comedic art. If you have seen me do a two hour show (and if not, why not – Saturday 7th September at Virgin Money Lounge in Cardiff for the next one) then you will know that I can do twelve or thirteen original songs peppered with parodies to much effect. My question was as to what worked best in five minutes and whether I might have tried in Bath to be more like everyone else #BusStopAnalysis.

As Neath was about trying out new things, I would try to construct an eight minute act made out of just parodies. I would tie it together as the ‘Dai Bongos Five Minute History of Popular Music as Interpreted On the Bongos’ and Dr C has had no end of meetings with me now where I have thrown ideas for what music people would know and what music they would not know. I had sung the selection several times in the car and I think that I had my timing. I was ready!

On Sunday afternoon, I made my way towards the Bluebell Hotel in Neath. I went in and my first thought was that it was not a great space. There were tables everywhere, no clear stage and some people were eating. It was not a place for comedy. Indeed it was not, it was the restaurant next door to the Bluebell Hotel.

I have never quite understood nerves. I saw a recent interview with Phoebe Waller-Bridge where she said that before going on to any stage she had a moment of asking, ‘Oh God, what am I doing here?’ and that I recognise completely. However, once I am on my way to an event, there are no nerves. There is no turning back.

When I did find the back room of the Bluebell Hotel, I found a group of comedians milling around waiting for the event to start. They were, at least, talkative rather than the nervous atmosphere that was evident before the Bath Comedy Festival. This should have been in the ‘Previously ...’ section, but I cannot resist reminding of you when the MC arrived in Bath, realised that the audience was made up entirely of comedians, asked, “Hasn’t anyone brought friends?” and I replied, “Do you think that I would be doing comedy if I had friends?”

Our MC soon arrived and soon established that the microphone was not working. I looked around the room – was that Ignacio Lopez, who often appeared in BBC videos on my Facebook timeline? How I wonder did he ascend to such heights? What skills did he have that made him invaluable in any joke-telling environment? He fixed the microphone. Actually yes, that is the most important skill for anyone at a stand-up gig.

Our MC did not initially say the order that people would be called in to perform and so I ordered a pint of lemonade but was given a small bottle of 7UP instead. This would become more significant than you might imagine as I was called upon as the last act in the first group of four. Everyone was getting up to ten minutes, with a promise from the MC that she would ‘flash us’ when there was a minute left.

Fourth was a good position to be in although I should note that I firmly believe that if there are twelve comedians performing, you should watch all twelve. It is not just about appreciating other people’s skills (maybe one day I can learn how to fix a microphone), it is politeness. They have sat through your act waiting to go on, you should sit through theirs. Sadly my experience of these things is that the room slowly empties as the acts carry on ... and I do not just mean that people leave when I am performing.

I was called up, adjusted the microphone and introduced myself as Dai Bongos. That got a laugh. I am so used to being called that in Swansea now, I had forgotten that people laugh. I started off into the experimental Dai Bongos History of Popular Music As Interpreted On the Bongos. Someone asked me this week about feedback and, honestly, I could tell you every point at which someone laughed and every point at which they failed to laugh. I can also tell you the point where I realised that I had not drunk enough lemonade.

I realised that when I do two original songs as part of a ten minute set, I get a break while the audience applaud the first song to drink some lemonade (or water if I am feeling weight-conscious). If you have seen me doing the two hour sets then you have probably imagined that the pints of clear liquid lined up next to me are vodka but no ... oh what the heck, let us maintain the comedy is the new rock’n’roll image, of course they are vodka.

However, my mouth started to dry up. It was okay, I carried on singing, but when I delivered a spoken line, i struggled to get the words out. I could have stopped, made a joke out of it or done something else but I was close to the end now and I decided that if I could sing through it, I would be okay. I could still sing but weirdly the corners of my mouth started to feel as if they were paralysed, This was turning into potentially the freakiest act seen in ... oh hold on, this was Neath. It did spoil things a little as it meant that I would finish on a repeated chorus rather than a joke, which was hardly the big finish I had planned.

Then I noticed our MC holding up her phone and I wondered if she was going to take a photo. That would be strange, especially as I was not thinking that I was looking my best. It seemed to be flash photography too. Oh hold on, that was what she meant by being flashed with a minute left!

After I had performed, i bought some more lemonade (obviously) and talked to some of the other comedians. I have written before about how I would like to write a radio sitcom about being an amateur comedian and sometimes you do think that these events are prime material. My highlight was a comedian my age berating two younger comedians about the fact that they had never heard of Rik Mayall. ‘He died five years ago today!’ was the exasperated shout which, in the sitcom, would be followed by one of the younger comics responding with, ‘That’s a shame – was it shit material? Bad timing? We all die occasionally ...’

I stayed through the rest of the acts and there were some great people performing. I really do need to try to alter my life so that I have more free Tuesday nights to go to the Rough As regular events. However, here is the main difference to Bath – there were none of the post-gig discussions about the set or suggestions from the audience and so on. In the discussion that followed Bath on my Facebook fanpage, Becky pointed out that I sing about things that people can relate to and so they feel a connection. I had already pointed out that a song like ‘Desperate Rhymes for Desperate Times’ involves the audience in trying to guess each rhyme before it happens.

In other words, parodies are more conventional and more like what other people are doing, but they do not have the same emotional connection with the audience that you get when you are performing something original and something which makes you come across as vulnerable. The comic is the master (or mistress – there were some great routines about smear tests and sanitary towels, it is good to see comedy leaving its very male traditions) of the stage and you are encouraged to laugh with them. As I observed after the performance in Bath, the intro line, “Debbie dumped me after two dates but I got two songs and a short story out of her, so who’s really winning?” encourages the audience to join my self-delusion and sympathise. We have all been there trying to pull some comfort out of being dumped.

Much as I enjoyed the experience and trying the new way of doing things (and what a wonderful thing Rough As is to give that opportunity), I think that i prefer to do things my way. Rather, I could take a song like the bad chat-up lines song 'Tania Shakes Her Head', give it a few minutes of standard jokes beforehand and still make a ten minute set out of it. Everyone else can do what everyone else is doing, I will stick to not winning comedy competitions but having an emotional connection with the audience.

Even if among the high-placed regular comedy professionals, it might sound like a fate worse than Neath.