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

My purpose in life

Booking a drag act you should expect several things. Hopefully you will be entertained with an array of glamorous frocks; there should also be an opportunity to get involved, sing, dance, heckle. What you should not expect at a drag show is to be able to sit on the front row and not be included into the show

I was recently working a hen night up north. Me and two male strippers has spent many hours driving to one of the more remote areas of the north west.
As is my wont, straight after my introductory mime numbers, I started working  round the audience with a live microphone finding out about our punters. I had spotted this young girl seated in the front row paying more attention to her phone than to me so I stopped mid-gag and pointedly walked over to her. Often I will berate someone for using their phone to chat or text but this time I decided to use my current favourite put-down.
I looked her square in the eye and said 'You are looking lovely tonight. I can see you have made an effort. You have even had a shave but can you keep your legs together as it is distracting me' This was made even more cutting as the girl had thighs the size of tree trunks and was wearing a completely unsuitable micro mini skirt in ripped denim. She was patently unable to keep her knees within hailing distance of each other.

She welled up and I thought she was going to cry.
For the rest of the evening she looked daggers at me.

This might have been the end of things if, at the end of the show, her mother took me to one side and tried to explain her daughter's reaction.
'She has only just turned 18' she said
'And?' I said
'Up until recently she was a virgin'
'What does that have to do with anything?' I asked
Before she could explain her daughter returned and I never did find out how her age and late viginity explained her tears

Usually I don't consider it a good show unless I have at least upset one member of the audience.

Random ramblings

As I stumble around the country entertaining the great unwashed things happen (or don't happen) which I think are sometimes worth recording.
 A few weeks ago I was booked to do a hen night.
It was in a beautiful location but was sparsely attended, mainly because the organisers were unversed in the best way to get slappers to buy tickets!
As a result it was painfully obvious when one person decided to behave badly. She was going to be trouble right from the beginning; first off she wanted to get up and dance as soon as the music came on an hour before the show. This would have been no problem at all except she didn't like all the music playing and tried to change the track on my PA system, thus ruining the scheduling of the evening. I had to run out of my dressing room with half a face on to rectify the situation.
Then when I came onstage to start the performance she kept trying to climb on the stage.
Eventually, especially when the strippers came on, she had to be forcibly sat on to prevent her storming the stage.

This weekend I was out in the wilds of Norfolk when I came upon yet another symptom of too much alcohol.
I had a nice packed house and the crowd were enjoying themselves. Towards the back were a couple of older women who, quiet at first, gradually got more raucous and demanding of attention.
One of them, a short dumpy woman with spiky hair, I called a lesbian (due to her appearance). It got a laugh so, every time she demanded attention, I called her various permutations of being a dyke.
At the end of the night, finally nearing her alcohol capacity, she got all emotional and complained to the manager that I had called her a dyke when she wasn't one. I volunteered to talk to her to smooth things over.
We were talking and she was apologising for being so drunk and emotional when her husband came over and said that if I hadn't apologised he was 'going to take things further'. I was all I could do not to laugh out loud. Silly old sod!

At the same venue I was told a story in the interval about one of the girls in a group to the side of the stage. This often happens and, be warned, these tales will always be repeated on stage that night.
So it was that I related to this packed audience the tale of one of the girls who, having read 50 Shades of Grey with her boyfriend, decided to try out some of the tamer stuff in the book. Thus it was that she found herself handcuffed to the bed by her partner when her mother walked in! Awkward!

Some publicans really deserve to fail in business.
Last night were were in a pub performing on a hen night organised by the local Ann Summers rep. As with these nights the Ann Summers rep does all the organising, pays the performers and does all the promotion. All the venue has to do is provide the room.
As the venue doesn't have to pay for anything it is accepted practise that the acts and Ann Summers reps get free drinks for the night as a thank you for bringing in dozens of customers and bar takings.
Last night the manager/owner made the silly mistake of refusing to give us free drinks and made us all pay for them. He will never get another hen night booking again and has lost the potential for all that increased bar takings. On top of that he had to endure the humiliation of my referring to his tightness on stage!
This was the same occasion when we had a very drunk bride-to-be sat in the front row. Apparently the party had been drinking for 16 hours, egged on by the bride's alcoholic sister.
Several times she had to be forcibly restrained and placed back in her seat. She fell over innumerable times and must have woken the following day covered in bruises, if not broken bones.