Private parties

In my experience a fairly recent phenomenon is the house party whereby I am booked to perform to a small group of, usually, girls either in a house or in a hotel room.
This started to happen when the smoking ban came in and allows the girls to smoke at will. This, coupled with the financial depression, meant we still got bookings at the same fee.
My initial feeling was that, as I am a mime act designed to be watched from the auditorium of a venue with some sort of stage, it wouldn't work. However, by just scaling back my gestures, makeup and mannerisms, it has turned out to work very well.
I turn up with my PA system, set it up with a low sound setting and away we go. The audience are very close and can see every wrinkle but their experience is enhanced by having a very personal performance.
This weekend I performed for just 8 girls in a hotel suite and we had a whale of a time. The bride-to-be was beyond over-excited and told me the night had made the lead up to her wedding perfect. I always aim to please!

Frustrated performers

Every now and again I, along with virtually every other performer, will be criticised by a venue owner or event organiser who thinks they know better than us what our show should be.
I recently did an adult cabaret show where I was kept waiting an unprecedented hour and a half past my contracted onstage time. Having given my all to a largely uninterested, drunken audience, I left, disillusioned because my show had not been as well received as usual.
Imagine my incredulity when, the following day, my Agent contacted me and said he had had a catalogue of faults passed to him by the Bar Manager of the venue. He forwarded the email to me and, over the phone, we went through every point that had been brought up. Each and every one was either blatantly untrue or was complaining that I had not provided something for which I was never contracted to do (i.e. sing live and dance!)
At first I was at a loss to understand where this litany of alleged shortcomings had come from. Then a bolt of realisation hit me. In a conversation on my arrival the Bar Manager had confided to me that he was a failed/retired club singer. It all fell into place. There is nothing so bitter and venomous as a failed performer who misses the spotlight.
I thought back to another couple of instances when these sort of complaints had filtered through to me and in each case they had come from ex-performers.
Speaking to other acts I have heard similar stories of interference and bitterness. A friend of mine, a drag act with many years' experience, was resident in a pub and the manager pressured him constantly to modify his act. It turned out he was a wannabee drag act.
I have been doing my act for many years and am very aware of my capabilities and failings on stage. There is no point in my trying to be what I am not.

Sometimes the smallest things make your day

Driving up and down the country doing gigs it is always important that my car is in tip top condition.
To this end I have cultivated a nice working relationship with my local back-street garage. Over the years I have spent a fortune on servicing and spares so it is nice when that investment pays a dividend.
This week, prior to having to put in some serious miles for work, I noticed I needed a new headlamp bulb. Nothing expensive or complicated to do but not something I was willing to risk a nail for!
So off I went to see my favourite collection of grease monkeys; a whole heaving garage of black boiler-suited lads in their twenties, grease under their nails and dirty smudges across their faces. The mere smell is always enough to make me quiver!
So I went into reception and told the ancient crone behind the desk my woes. She disappeared out into the workshop and summoned one of the gloriously filthy mechanics. I tossed him my keys (that was all unfortunately) and sat by the window while he worked his magic. A mere five minutes later (barely time for me to wonder where to find a Diet Coke to chuck his way) he was back. Job done. He refused my offer of payment and waved me on my way. Bless him.
So not only did I get my headlamp repaired but I had had my wank bank topped up and all at no cost. Aint life great?!

Do they think I am stupid??

I got a call today at 3pm asking if I could work in Coventry tonight. It was only 25  miles away so there was plenty of time to get there

They had been let down by another drag act

So, I arrived, as stated, at 9pm ready to be onstage at 10.15 or thereabouts

Everyone was saying they didn't think many would turn up so I waited in my dressing room (a storage cupboard) downstairs in the club

Three people turned up so the management asked me to take half my fee and go home.

By this time I was fully made up and ready to go onstage so I said no, I had arrived on time, I was ready to perform therefore I was going to keep the full fee.

Fortunately my Agent had insisted that I was paid on arrival. I had secreted the cash in my locked car. This proved fortuitous.

The performance was moved upstairs and into the bar where there were a few people and the area was much smaller.

Eventually, at 11.30pm, I went on. The act I had prepared involved me having to dash back to the dressing room towards the end for a quick change. As I was so far from the room I had to get extra music played to cover my absence.

Running down the stairs in my high heels I noticed a member of staff suddenly pop out of the doorway from my dressing room/storage cupboard. He had no reason to be down there

I thought no more about it until, having finished my act, I was getting dressed and noticed that my car keys were in the back pocket of my jeans instead of the front pocket.

Someone had gone through my pockets, obviously to try and find where I had stashed my cash. The mistake they had made was to put my car keys back in the wrong pocket. Otherwise I wouldn't have noticed.

The other thing that occurred to me was that perhaps they had used my car keys to go through my car looking for the cash

As soon as I was loaded up and ready to drive away I checked the money where I had hidden it. It was all there.

The postscript to this was that on the morning after the venue contacted the agent and expressed their thanks for my performance and would be happy to book me again!
As I told the agent, over my dead body!

Disruptive audience members

Most performances suffer from disruption of some sort or another from audience members during a show.
There are, of course, as many ways to deal with these as there are heckler put-downs.
My favourite way is to first stare them out until they realise the rest of the audience is waiting for them. If this doesn't work then threatening a single person with the 'naughty step' is surprisingly effective. Invariably I don't even have to follow the threat through.
Another great line is to say "I am trying to work and I don't turn up and talk at the foot of your bed when you are trying to earn the rent"
Occasionally, just occasionally, karma comes into its own.
Tonight was once such time and the Gods of Karma served me very well.
I was at a very nice venue with a great bunch of girls who were up for a great night. There was me and two male strippers so the evening was destined to be fun.
All through the first half one table of five girls kept up a permanent chattering akin to a cage of budgies in the sun. A couple of times I tried to gently shame them into being quiet and, although it worked for a while, they always went back to their incessant chirruping.
Halfway through the second half, just when I was beginning to wonder if I would have to resort to being rude, I heard a clunk as something fell to the floor. Expecting it to be a phone I went over and asked, on the microphone, if they had dropped a phone. They were uncharacteristically quiet. Then I saw why. Nestled amongst the handbags scattered under their table was an almost full half bottle of vodka. Oops!
Revenge was going to be sweet.
I carefully slid the bottle into view with my foot and tutted loudly. I picked it up and walked slowly to the bar where I handed it over to the staff.
Funnily enough they behaved for the rest of the night.

Cancelling gigs

Sometimes it is necessary to cancel a gig.
In the past it has usually been, on my part, for health reasons (I won't go into the weird and wonderful reasons clients give for cancelling a booking).
However, given the current weather conditions (it is snowing a blizzard all across south west England), it proves impossible to get to a venue.

Today I was booked to perform at a beautiful Golf Club complex on the Welsh borders. Unfortunately even some of the motorways have been closed with snow drifts and this morning it was obvious that I wouldn't be able to travel to the venue and, even more importantly, the audience would not be able to get there either.
This is where a good agent comes into his own and earns his commission.

I got a call just before lunch saying the client would appreciate it if we could postpone the event until after the bad weather had cleared. I am assuming sometime in the next month or so.
I agreed to postpone. I was very dubious about making it to the venue anyway and having the agent negotiate on my behalf meant there could be no bad feelings on either side.

This easily demonstrated why, even in these days of the Internet and instant communication, an agent has a place in our business.

Venue Owners

Sometimes  I do wonder about venue owners.
Sometimes it seems to be impossible that they can actually make a living.
Sometimes it seems that they are hell bent on financial suicide!
I was recently booked to do a hen night in a northern town (the location has absolutely no bearing on the situation). I turned up with my full PA system in the back of the car (as is usual) to find that they had a huge sound system installed in the venue and a DJ booked to work it. The system included double CD decks, double cordless microphones and, at either side of the stage, a stack of speakers from floor to ceiling, at least 20 feet high.
To my mind this was great news and I expected the sound quality to be perfect and ideally configured for the room. How wrong I was on so many levels.
The venue owner (note I said owner, not manager) constantly instructed the DJ to turn the sound down all night until, finally, at the start of the second half, it was so low as to be virtually inaudible to the audience.
What sort of moronic venue owner deliberately sabotages his own event?
His control freakery was such that he did everything he possibly could to ruin what should have been a great night and a credit to the venue. He charged the girls £7.50 a ticket and I would not be surprised if he was flooded with complaints and demands for their money back. Additionally, he was so tight he refused us free drinks even though our fee was abnormally low.
On top of his disruptive attitude I was instructed to keep the swearing to an absolute minimum so I only used the 'f' word once. That provoked a complaint, ironically from one of the most vocal, foul mouthed, disruptive women in the audience.
On reflection I think one of the issues was that the venue owner was either an ex-act of some kind or was a frustrated performer. I have come across this professional jealously before and it always manifests itself in some form of  'I could have done that better' nit picking