Page 28 of Always the Bridesmaid

Nevertheless, I can’t stand hecklers. It’s bad enough knowing you are dying on the stage from the silence of the audience when your punchline is dropped, without being thrown-off by dickheads who think they are funny, when all they really are is inconsiderate bullies.

I feel sorry for the girl on stage. I laugh where I know she has predicted a laugh. I laugh harder than necessary, like that guy in an office job on a work night out when they want to make clear they are the loudest and most powerful suit in the gang. And at times, even though I can tell she doesn’t find the act funny, Sarah follows my lead, laughing loudly, showing just how empathetic she is.

When the break between comedians comes, she turns to me and says, ‘I admire you guys. I couldn’t get up on stage each night and expose myself like that, especially not knowing how the crowd will respond. How do you do it?’

I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that question, given I have no idea how I myself manage to combat my anxiety every time I go on stage. I tell myself what many actors, comedians and sports stars seem to say in interviews or when ‘writing’ their autobiographies (Ross Geller air-quotes intended): that nerves make me perform better. But if that was true for us all, if nerves make us all better, I wouldn’t have just watched the first act of the night crash and burn.

Perhaps it was that long twenty minutes watching someone’s demise on stage. Maybe it’s that I am a little embarrassed and dreading that Sarah is probably wondering what she’s got herself into and whether the rest of the night is going to be just as bad. Whatever the cause, my usual steady climb to a peak of anxiety just before my set has raced ahead to raging nerves. There are two more acts before I take to the stage and I can already feel my palms getting clammy. I can feel sweat forming under my armpits and on my brow.

‘I’m going to get a pint of something with actual alcohol in it,’ I tell Sarah. ‘Can I tempt you with a hair of the dog?’

I watch her stifle a yawn in that way people do when they try not to open their mouths to show their overt boredom and the yawn comes out of their eyes, glazing over the irises.

‘That sounds like a good idea to me. I’ve held off long enough on the basis I didn’t want you to think I needed you to call the AA again.’ She smiles. ‘I’ll take whatever the measure is – a pint, did you say? – of London’s finest light beer. Whatever you recommend.’

Now this is my kind of woman. None of those fluffy cocktails or fancy fizz like we’ve been having in Surrey. A proper drink.

Either the alcohol helps loosen us up, along with the rest of the audience, or the next two acts are genuinely funny. Their jokes are landing and I notice Sarah laughing heartily of her own accord, without having to give me a sideways glance to check if she ought to be laughing. Sometimes British humor is understood by Yanks.

Regardless, it only serves to lighten my mood and suppress my anxiety enough to hold polite but monosyllabic conversation.

Though once the third and penultimate act has finished, my anxiety is at fever pitch.

No longer able to think of anything banal to say, I make an excuse to spend the twenty minutes before I am due to go on stage alone. Not in a fancy green room but in a cold corridor off to the side of the stage.

With a second pint of beer in my hand, which will also act as a stage prop, I lean back against the cool, damp, slightly dirty and in-need-of-a-lick-of-paint wall, with a towel wrapped around my neck, catching any sweat to stop it from leaking onto my Hawaiian shirt, which I have pulled on over my Marvel T-shirt, again as a slightly eccentric stage prop. I asked for a glass of water with ice from the bar before coming backstage and having downed the cool liquid and wrapped the ice inside my towel, it is now pressed against the base of my neck, trying to cool both my nerves and my temperature.

I can feel my heart beating hard in my chest. If I didn’t experience this every night before I went out to do a gig, I would be thinking I am having a heart attack. As I run through the highlights of my show in my mind, I feel my stomach churn and know my standard loose bottom will arrive soon. Hopefully, not until after my appearance.

It dawns on me, as I am running through the main gags, just how much of my real life I bare to the audience. It hasn’t occurred to me before, other than as a good idea to both get the audience on side and take the piss out of myself rather than others, which is something I don’t like to see comedians do. Generalist piss-taking is fine but specific is just nasty, using a platform to bully.

The realization brings my breaths thick and fast, something which doesn’t usually come alongside my elevated heart rate. It’s a new feeling and I don’t like it.

Why now? Why tonight? Why when Sarah is out there?

Why does she want to stay? Does she think that she has to because I have driven her into London? God, I hope not.

I would actually like nothing more in this moment than to step out onto that stage and see that she has left and gone elsewhere for a drink or sightseeing of some sort whilst I perform. I don’t tell people close to me about my life for a reason and only now it’s occurring to me that it is wholly absurd that every night on stage, I tell strangers all about it. It doesn’t bother me in front of people I don’t know and will never see again; I use it to my advantage. It doesn’t even bother me in front of people like Jake and Jess, who know about my upbringing in the system. Who know me well enough not to judge me for it.

Tonight, for some reason, it is bothering me. A lot.

I slide down the wall until my bum reaches the cold dirty tiles of the floor and I take control of my breathing.

‘Charlie? Are you okay?’ Sarah asks.

I look up and register her concern. Pasting on a beaming smile, I spring to my feet, briefly seeing flashes of light in my vision. ‘Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Just, you know, running through my lines.’

She nods but I don’t know if she believes me.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she says. ‘Your manager said it would be okay for me to pop back here. You left these on the table and I just thought you might need them.’

She is holding up several pieces of paper folded into a pocket-sized rectangle, which contain bullet points from my repertoire, on the off chance I have a mind blank and need them. Not that I ever have done.

‘Right, yeah, no, it’s great that you’re back here. Great.’

I take the papers with thanks and endure an awkward moment of silence until Sarah says, ‘Break a leg then.’

‘Yep. Will do.’ I sound like an idiot.

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