A host of reasons why it's great to MC

Please welcome your compere for this piece, Michael Monkhouse

If stand-up’s purgatory, MCing’s hell.

For what could be more terrifying, tedious and traumatic than the task of compere? You have to be furiously funny right through the night – absorb the anger of the inebriated,cover for the clangers, get overshadowed by the strong acts… Best stay at home eh?

Balls. After two years as stand-up I just bust my MC cherry, and in my humble opinion it’s the most fun you can have without the use of Cameron Diaz.

Take preparation time. For stand-up, in my paranoia I would go over my few minutes around eight billion times a day, and still feel unready. As MC all you need are a couple of minutes opening, a couple of minutes closing, and a dashing of good humour in the meantime. Pardon the analogy, but think of it as flying a plane: get it started, bring it to land, and in the meantime… enjoy the ride.

And what a ride! Ask anyone why they won’t perform and you always get the same response: ‘Oh God I simply couldn’t get up in front of all these potential hecklers, beer in one hand, girlie in the other, their arms crossed and their legs crosseder, going, “Come on knobface, make me laugh…”’

It’s simply not true. Audiences are there to have fun. They’re on your side. Watch comedy at home and you can be as critical as you like – if you’re on this website, you probably ARE pretty critical – but if punters make the effort to get to a comedy night, they’re willing to be entertained. You wouldn’t go to a party thinking ‘Hope this is shite so I can go home again’ would you?

So introduce yourself, have a laugh and be yourself. Oh, and don’t take over – this isn’t your show with guests, it’s their show with a presenter – and you’ll be surprised how much fun you can have. In fact – paradoxically – the more you prepare, the worse you may come across. Imagine the scenario:

Act about politics – You force in a (fantastic) prepared joke about cheese – Act about vegetarians.

Compare and contrast:

Act about politics – You react, having listened carefully, then introduce – The act about vegetarians.

Smoother. And funnier.

For if you come up with something off-pat, it doesn’t have to be witty, it will just seem that way. I had an American act going on about how the English use question-tags all the time – you know, isn’t-it, aren’t-we, don’t-they etcetera. As she left I said, ‘That was good – wasn’t it?... You saw what I did there, didn’t you?’ Try that at a party and you’ll be lynched, or at least you should be. In the live context you feel like Oscar Wilde.

Said comic also expressed anguished confusion over Cockney. I opined, ‘My favourite is Berkshire – Berkshire hunt… Doesn’t matter.’ Put that level of comedy into your stand-up set and you’ll take it out straightaway. But again, as off-the-cuff MCing, you’re not only OK, you’re on to a winner.

Plus, if you only have one shot, you’re under pressure: muck that slot up and you’ve mucked everything up. As MC you have as many opportunities as there are performers, and if one gag gets stupefied silence, no one cares because you’ll get another chance later – and you are, after all, only the presenter. You’re reflecting in the performers’ glory – and getting a free ringside seat into the bargain.

Best of all, being MC gives you the maximum opportunity to notch up those stage hours. Like everything else – writing, singing, sex – the more you perform, the easier it becomes. And the MC gets an entire show to be in or around the stage, which sure as hell beats half-an-hour of terror, three minutes’ performing, then the rest of the night getting rat-arsed. That’s how I used to do it anyway.

So MCing isn’t the comedian’s nastiest nightmare. It’s his mightiest mate.

Published: 4 Apr 2012

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