Be a Great Stand-up: Teach Yourself

289 Pages·2010·0.714 MB·English

by  Logan Murray

Be a Great
Stand-Up
Logan Murray
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Long renowned as the authoritative source for self-guided
learning – with more than 50 million copies sold worldwide – the
Teach Yourself series includes over 500 titles in the fi elds of
languages, crafts, hobbies, business, computing and education.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record
for this title is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: on fi le.
First published in UK 2007 by Hodder Education, part of Hachette UK,
338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH.
First published in US 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
This edition published 2010.
Previously published as Teach Yourself Stand-Up Comedy.
The Teach Yourself name is a registered trade mark of
Hodder Headline.
Copyright © 2007, 2010 Logan Murray
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to all the comedians who contributed to this book.
Thanks also to all the comics at the Fortnight Club who have
made hosting the nights such a pleasure over the last couple of
decades. And to Maddy Carbery for keeping the club going despite
numerous venue changes – a thankless task! You are much missed
on our Monday evenings.
Thanks for the Comedy Course 1,500, who ’ ve taught me so
much and made me laugh far too much. And a special thanks to
Hils Jago for her tireless work in organizing everything.
I ’ m also grateful to Steve Armstrong for inadvertently setting this
whole thing in train, and to Victoria Roddam for her invaluable
suggestions.
Lastly, a massive thanks to Katy Bagshaw for teaching me the
meaning of punctuation.
Image credits
Front cover: © Creative Crop/Digital Vision/Getty Images
Back cover: © Jakub Semeniuk/iStockphoto.com, © Royalty-
Free/Corbis, © agencyby/iStockphoto.com, © Andy Cook/
iStockphoto.com, © Christopher Ewing/iStockphoto.com,
© zebicho – Fotolia.com, © Geoffrey Holman/iStockphoto.com,
© Photodisc/Getty Images, © James C. Pruitt/iStockphoto.com,
© Mohamed Saber – Fotolia.com
iii
Acknowledgements
Contents
Meet the author viii
Only got a minute? x
Only got fi ve minutes? xii
Only got ten minutes? xiv
Introduction xix
Part one: Theory
1 Where do jokes come from? 3
Do we create funny ideas or do they come and fi nd us? 4
Practical creative games 5
Some modern theories of humour 8
What is a joke? 14
Attitude, the comedian’s secret weapon 15
Attitude games 18
2 Building a joke 24
Extreme attitudes to specifi c points can lead to humour 25
Always ask yourself: ‘What is the comedian’s answer
to this particular problem?’ 26
Finding the joke 28
Afterthoughts 28
Afterthought games 31
3 Comedy ground rules 41
Style or content? 41
Kill little Mr/Ms social control in your head 42
Remember 44
Stupid name game 44
Bad geography 46
What’s your attitude to the subject? 46
More attitude games 47
Be specifi c 50
Games to develop specifi c thinking 52
Be concise 54
iv
The longer the set-up, the funnier the punchline
had better be! 57
If it doesn’t add, it distracts 58
Avoid the temptation of burying your routines
in the past 61
Always remember: start with your best stuff; fi nish
with your best stuff; let the middle take care of itself 62
4 What sort of comic are you? 66
Your persona 66
Comedic fl aws and how to use them 67
Comic archetypes 69
Mixing and matching 77
Games to uncover comedic fl aws 78
Part two: Practical sessions
5 Unlocking your creativity 83
Don’t worry about the result: just write! 84
Writing activities 84
6 Emotional exaggeration 95
Breaking the habits of a lifetime: be bigger, be broader! 95
Why comics start exaggerating their emotional
responses 96
Reasons why new comedians might overlook their
emotional performance 97
Why comedians need to be more extreme 98
Remember 99
Activities to encourage emotional exaggeration 100
7 Creating material 106
Workshop 1: the thank you list 107
Workshop 2: building routines 111
Workshop 3: putting your set together 115
‘Less is more’ activities 119
Workshop 4: the hate list 120
Remember 121
Workshop 5: creating your own lists 121
Workshop 6: joke forms 123
Workshop 7: fi nding different voices 130
v
Contents
Stereotype activities 131
Creating a character act 133
8 Stagecraft 136
Think about your attitude to your audience 136
Remember 137
Treat the audience exactly as you would treat
your friends 137
Force yourself to look at the audience 138
Try to ‘read’ the crowd 138
Slow down! 139
How to deal with nerves 141
9 Microphone technique 149
Microphone mistakes 150
Remember 153
10 Hecklers and crowd control 155
Why a gig can go bad 156
How to make a gig better 156
Hecklers 159
Crowd control exercises 161
11 What other comics think 164
Milton Jones 164
Richard Herring 166
Steve Hall 171
Sarah Kendall 172
Pat Condell 175
Katy Bagshaw 177
Marek Larwood 179
Mark Maier 181
Robin Ince 183
Greg Davies 186
12 Business 188
How to get started 189
Learn to market yourself 190
Etiquette 193
Do your time on stage 193
Building your set 194
Compèring 195
Beyond stand-up 196
vi
Competitions 197
Festivals 198
Agents and managers 200
Remember 202
13 Your fi rst gig 204
Booking the gig 204
Three or four days before the gig 205
The day before the gig 205
On the day of the gig 206
On the evening of the gig 206
On stage 207
After the gig 208
14 The future 210
Appendix 1: group games 212
Appendix 2: the fall and rise of stand-up comedy 235
Taking it further 251
Index 252
vii
Contents
Meet the author
So, you want to be a stand-up comedian?
The best advice I can offer you, regardless whether you buy my
book or not, is just to do it! Write some stuff that you think is
funny, take a deep breath and book in a fi ve-minute try-out spot
at a comedy club in your nearest city and give it a spin. If the
feeling of elation outweighs the fear you felt before you went on,
then it ’ s probably worth a second shot. After the gig, think what
worked and what didn ’ t work: try to maximize the laughs in
the bits that the audience liked, and try to work out what didn ’ t
work in the bits that the audience seemed indifferent to. That,
in essence, is all that every comedian I have every known does.
There you go; if you ’ re reading this in a shop I ’ ve saved your
wallet the strain of the recommended retail price of this book!
If you enter the world of stand-up, you ’ ll fi nd most people are
just as nice as me.
If making total strangers laugh has always been a secret
ambition of yours, then you really should give it a go. Lots of
people have taken the plunge and have found it has changed
their lives in remarkable ways .
viii
About Logan Murray
Logan Murray has been a working comedian since 1984.
Over the years, he has performed in every conceivable venue,
from a converted public lavatory to 3,000 people at the
Glastonbury Festival, in the United Kingdom and throughout
the world.
During his career he has written for TV and radio. He has
appeared in variety shows, sitcoms, documentaries, panel shows
and game shows.
In 1994 Logan Murray created his alter ego, the monstrously
bitter, tired old showbiz hack Ronnie Rigsby, who has a
showbiz career of live dates and TV and radio appearances to
rival his own!
Logan Murray was also one half of the infamous 1990s double
act ‘Bib and Bob’ with Jerry Sadowitz. They have appeared all
over the country, including a West End run at the Criterion
Theatre (the police were called twice and the critics lauded it as
the best bad taste show ever).
He has directed the stage shows of award-winning comedians,
lectured at Middlesex University and teaches comedy at the
BBC.
Logan Murray regularly holds highly acclaimed courses in
London and is acknowledged as one of the best comedy tutors
in the UK.
ix
Meet the author