Putting down disruptive audience members

The current obsession with taking selfies is most annoying, especially when you are trying to work!!
I was recently at a venue where the stage was barely a foot high. As I walked on to do my first number this attention seeking, selfish mare tried to clamber up the step to take a selfie with me.
I quickly ushered her back onto the floor and carried on with my number.
In a sulky protest she placed herself dead centre in front of the stage with her back to me.
When I picked up the microphone the first thing I said was for her to sit down. She refused. This gave me the opening I needed.
"Of course, silly me. You spend all your working day on your back or on a street corner. You don't know how to sit down."
She behaved herself for the rest of the night.

The things I see from the sidelines ....

Very occasionally I find myself doing two shows in one day.
At my advanced age I wouldn't want to do it very often but today proved .... educational.
So it was an unusual evening that went better than expected, despite the Glastonbury-style mud at the first venue where we were performing in an inflatable pub in the back garden of Big Brother's Chelsea Singh’s doppelganger and his white ex-hippy wife.
It hadn't occured to them to consider that I had to walk in high heels across their carefully manicure lawn. Some hastily thrown down planking and carpets soon sorted that problem.
The daughter was much better looking than either of them deserved and had obviously picked up some bad habits from her mother. As the stripper dragged the bride-to-be onto the floor and positioned her on all fours, she obviously went into auto-pilot mode and discreetly reached round and slid her thong to one side!

This was almost as bad as an occasion a few years back 

Late Cancellations

Sometimes a gig is cancelled. It is inevitable in the grand scheme of things that, for various legitimate reasons, occasionally an event can't go ahead.
Tonight was one of the worst, most unprofessional cancellations I have ever come across (almost).
I was booked to do a Hen Night in a large (very large) nightclub in a city over 100 miles away. Bearing in mind that it is a Friday and I knew that there was wholesale traffic diversions in the city, I left early, ensuring I had plenty of time to skirt round any commuter hold-ups and to try and wend my way through the closed roads and diversions near the venue.
The organisers had asked for me to arrive for 7pm so imagine my horror, disgust and downright fury when I got a text at 6.15 to say the event had been cancelled (no doubt through poor ticket sales) with no thought for us performers. I imagine that none of the strippers, who would have been recruited locally to keep their fees down, would have left home yet but I had done 100 miles by then. I was barely 10 miles from the venue when I had to turn back.
The Agent has been informed and has been instructed to press for my full fee as I did actually turn up even if I didn't exactly knock on the door.
Should the venue renege on their contractual obligations then I will be naming and shaming the venue in due course. I will also be involving Equity to recover my fee through the courts and to blacklist the venue.
Update 26/6/16 - The agent is currently suing the venue for our full fees

A lack of professionalism

Recently I was booked to do a ladies' night in the North East. I was asked to be there for 7pm. On arrival I spoke to the organiser/manager of the venue and she said she wanted to start the show at 8.30, which was when she was told the strippers would arrive.
I spoke to the DJ/sound engineer and, as he couldn't get his system to work properly, I said I would put my system in and use it for the evening. Despite the initial problems he eventually got his to work.
So far, so good.
I started to get ready and the boys (!) arrived just as I was due to go on. Hurriedly I told the first guy he would be onstage at 9pm and to get ready.
This was when the disagreements started. He said he wanted to go on at 9.20. That would have meant a 20 minute gap between when I finished my first spot and when he came on. I put my foot down and insisted he was ready to go on at 9pm.
He wasn't!
At 9pm he was still faffing around in the dressing room. I walked off the stage and asked for his music. He didn't have any! He had assumed that the DJ would have some. I said 'I am the DJ!' Eventually he went out on stage having picked a girl out of the audience before he even started and did exactly 5 minutes of apathetic gyrating before walking off the stage.
Back in the dressing room I warned him that the organiser would be very unhappy with that performance. He should have done 15-20 minutes, full monty and tied up. His response was that that was all he usually did. Well, if that were true he would never be working.

In the second half his co-conspirator did exactly the same thing.

I managed to 'save' the evening by coming up with a third spot right at the end, solely so that the event ended on a high.

The event organiser was livid with them. To my mind they were the most unprepared, amateur charlatans I have every come across. I don't know how little, if anything, the organiser paid them but it was too much. Fortunately, for me, I had nothing to do with booking them and the agency that supplied them, Fantasy Strippers of Newcastle, should be ashamed of themselves.

Show Etiquette

Working on Ladies' Nights I am very aware that my job is, as well as being entertaining, to keep control of the crowd. To this end I am expected to fill in when a stripper is late arriving or has a 'slight mishap' when getting ready for the show. I am also expected to make sure that the boys have enough room to actually perform. In many venues there is not a stage as such and we have to perform on the floor, sometimes an actual dance floor but often just a clearing in the jungle of tables and chairs.
Recently I was working in a club that actually had a stage and lights. Raised up above the audience sat at tables this made sure everyone in the room could see. Now while this is the ideal setup the boys are so used to working on a floor that they automatically get down off the stage and make the performance more intimate.
This makes my job a little more difficult if we have a boisterous audience and they are trying to get up close and personal with the performers as they go through their routines.
So, there I am at this venue, all is going well and the stripper is bouncing around on the floor in front of the stage with a room full of howling women egging him on when I spotted one, camera in hand, climbing up onto the stage behind the performer filming the action. I immediately switchedon my microphone and ordered her off the stage. She hesitated so I strode down the room towards her and said, off mike, to get off the stage.
'But,' she protests, 'I am the Manager'
'I don't care who you are. Get off the stage'
'But I'm the Manager. I work here' So I had to explain to her that if I let her climb up on the stage then the rest of the audience will think it is OK to do the same and chaos would ensue. She didn't get it and just kept repeating that she was the manager.
She obviously credited her audience with far more intelligence than I did. When a baying crowd of horny women see an opportunity to get closer to a naked man they will take it.

Every now and again, just occasionally, customers/clients/audiences surprise me

I got a call recently from an agent with a very urgent, last minute request to step into the breech and cover a job someone had let them down on.
I was available and, despite it being over 2 hours away, I quickly packed a suitcase, loaded up the PA system and headed out the door once I had confirmed with the client what they wanted.This is often essential with last minute bookings as they often need to compromise on their expectations. In this case although they had been looking for a live act they were happy to settle for my comedy mime routines and live patter.
I rushed down the motorway and got to the venue only a little late. The organiser was waiting outside, grateful that I had actually turned up. A small army of bar staff were co-opted into unloading the car while I found a legal parking spot.
Once inside I set up my sound system and retired to the lovely room they had allocated to me as a dressing room. The organiser came to see me, paid me (a strict requirement for this agent's jobs) and we agreed a schedule for the evening.
As I was running a little late I hurried to get ready for 9.45pm, the agreed start time. At 9.45 the organiser came in and said they were running 5 mins late. I was happy with that and she returned a few minutes later to say they were ready for me.
I made my entrance and went through my first two numbers to enthusiastic applause. Then it went wrong and I am blowed if I can make out why!
The most important rule when working a hen night with an actual bride-to-be present is to remember it is their night and they need to be centre of attention. Some gentle ribbing is obligatory. I ploughed straight in with some cheeky remarks about how flat her chest was and next thing I am beckoned to one side by the organiser and told to stop, leave the room and go home as the bride was upset!
Now the only thing I can think of is that the hen was sensitive about her breast size or had some sort of medical condition. In either case the organiser should have warned me that it was a delicate subject. I am not a mind reader!

Conversations

When I am working, during the break, I use the time productively to chat to my punters. I can pick up all sorts of things both about the audience and about women in general.
While the closest I have ever got to being inside a woman was a trip up the Stature of Liberty on a visit to New York, I have garnered an awful lot of inside knowledge from many chats in various beer gardens and smoking shelters at Ladies' Nights. Maybe a few straight guys should try listening to woman. They will definitely learn a few things to their advantage.
At a gig last night a woman asked me how I knew so much about girls and their feelings? Did I study them? Was I secretly straight?
Nope. I just listen.
I get told so many secrets. Some of them I wouldn't dream of repeating but most I regurgitate on stage night after night LOL
I had the gory details of botched boob jobs, half assed hysterectomies and butchered birth canals related to me in all their horror while I share a small sherry and a Lambert & Butler with an overweight Sharon in a very tight size 14 Primark special. My job is so glamorous!