How do you get your family to do what you want them to?
Embarrass them. Always works for me.
Recently – on the Comedy Workshop in Greece – we got the chance to show off big time. It was fun. I loved it. Came back home with a whole set of tools to make relations run a mile or fall in line.
One of our top comedians, Arthur Smith, who was running the course, told us in no uncertain terms when we were being funny or not. He taught us the difference between Funny Ha Ha, Funny Peculiar and Funny Boring. Actually I made the last one up: it’s just ‘Boring’.
Now, he’s got me a gig this week in London. I have 5 minutes to make a fool of myself as a Stand Up in a well known Comedy venue.
I have no studio to hide in and the Heir Raising Mums can’t come with. All alone in front of 60+ expectant strangers – as well as some family and friends if they remember to come. (Probably will – always worth a trip to see your sibling look stupid I reckon).
Above is a picture of me practising my set.
The family are well impressed.
If you never hear from me again, I’ve emigrated to a place where there’s no voice or photo recognition.
How exciting! Good luck! We want to hear how it goes!
Oh thanks so much Sarah – I’ll be dishing the dirt next week if I haven’t been swallowed up by a big hole in the ground x
Oh, Jo, you’ll have to do another post now to tell us how it went! I can’t wait!
Must admit – I’m terribly in awe of you! Stand up is terribly hard. Saw Sarah Millican yesterday do it without a rehearsed script and even she struggled a bit. Tonnes of good luck!
Hi Alice – don’t know where to start, but must grapple with edit software and upload my showing off video to the next post somehow. In short, got a fantastic response, especially for my first gig. I do like Sarah Millican, she is so quick on her feet – wonder what would have happened if I’d had any serious heckling the other night. Having said that, growing up in a family of 4 kids, I suppose one got used to the scrabble for attention and we were all unconsciously ‘heckling’ each other all the time 🙂
I grew up in a family that was constantly vying for attention from our parents. Being the oldest I was naturally the quietest, so didn’t learn the quick-witted, if sarcastic, rhetoric that my siblings acquired. It’s not much use coming up with a fabulous response several hours after the occasion has been and gone…
Ha ha esprit de l’escalier! I know that one. As you say the best answer seemed to come ages after the conversation had turned into something else. We didn’t have the volume : age order at home. I was very shy and lacking in confidence. Took a long time to make myself heard. Besides which, no one was allowed to ‘best’ our father!