Current issues, domestic issues, personal issues – all thrown into the hopper. He opens his funnel mouth to let a flow of invective spray out, his mouth is a fire hose spraying down the audience, watering down their watered down beer, as he tries to dredge a laugh from their silt pit souls. They’ve come along to be entertained to be taken somewhere else through rupturing laughter, but this one’s not doing it. It’s open mic night so its a pot pouri of good and bad flowers, some dry and some bursting with flavour like juicy grapes, unfortunately the previous woman was pretty good so now this lame gun is shooting blanks. The occasional bursts of laughter sound more like a croaking frog than a whinnying horse. Their beer seems to taste as if someone’s added dishwater, the bitey salt and vinegar chips mince around in people’s mouths like wet flags at a funeral. He’s trying hard, jokes about his wife , his mother in law, the trains, the economy, politicians, all seem to fall flat. He just hasn’t got the ‘edge’, whatever that might be. ‘It’ what ever that might be.

You know it when you’re on it, riding along a parapet somewhere between fear and exaltation, feeling as if you could scoop up the crowd in the palm of your hand and make them follow you wherever you might choose to take them, exceptional, doesn’t happen often. He can’t see them of course in the muted lights, but he does perceive their response- or lack thereof and inside him heavy weights start to hang on his heart and his hopes, they start dragging him down to depths of despair he’s not encountered before. Does he really want to do this? Is it worth it? Will I ever be any good?The usual diet of self doubt that needs to be worked through to prove your self to your self.