By Mike Belgrave

1. Sleep with a member of the audience.
2. Sleep with another comedian.
3. Fall out with a comedian that used to be a good friend.
4. Fall out with a promoter.
5. Drive to a gig with too many people in the car.
6. Be threatened by an audience member.
7. Cover for a comedian who’s failed to show up.
8. Wish death on a comedian for over-running.
9. Question why certain people aren’t booking you.
10. Got lost on the way to a gig.
11. Get home late from a gig because of redirected traffic.
12. Turn up to a gig and realise at the last minute you have to share a room.
13. Get a cab from one gig to another on the same night.
14. Get a bad stomach from eating too much service station food.
15. Drive with a psychopath in the car.
16. Sit in a car with a psychopath driving.
17. Turn up to a gig and have it cancelled due to lack of audience.
18. Play to a room where there are more comedians than audience.
19. Wait more than six months to get paid.
20. Get a one star review.
21. Know someone on a really shit TV show.
22. Do a gig drunk.
23. Do a gig on drugs.
24. Do a solo show at the Edinburgh fringe.
25. Have an audience member throw up during the show.
26. Do a gig abroad.
27. Double book yourself.
28. Get stuck in traffic so bad you don’t make the gig.
29. Eat the free meal offered at a gig even though you’ve just eaten.
30. Hang out with audience members after a show, not because you want to, but because there’s nothing else to do.
31. Masturbate in a hotel room.
32. Bring your own booze to a gig you’re performing at.
33. Do drugs backstage.
34. Be naked on stage.
35. Sleep on comedian’s sofa.
36. Have a comedian sleep on your sofa.
37. Wear the same clothes to gigs two days in a row.
38. Turn up to an empty gig because the promoter forgot to tell you it’s been cancelled.
39. Stay in your hotel room because it’s more entertaining than wandering around the godforsaken town you’re performing in.
40. Get stuck in a conversation with an audience member who spits when they talk.
41. Have someone say you can use the racist joke they just told you.
42. Have someone dull think you’re going to start writing jokes about their insignificant life.
43. Talk about a gig, to have another comedian say, “And who books that?”
44. Lose all your friends.
45. Split up with someone because they never get to see you because of your gigging.
46. Gig with someone famous.
47. Be on the bill with a group of comedians whose material you don’t care for.
48. House share with another comedian.
49. Have a promoter constantly promise to book you but never does.
50. Have a conversation about Bill Hicks.
51. Watch either Mr Show or Arrested Development to show that you ‘really know your comedy’.
52. Try to write a novel.
53. Shudder when you hear people quote Monty Python.
54. Go to a party and tell people you do a different job because you’re fed up with people asking you where you get your material from.
55. Have someone ask you where you get your material from
56. Have a soldier, policeman or fire-fighter tell you you’re brave and how they couldn’t do your job.
57. Have some prick say to you: ‘Tell us a joke then.’
58. Have someone really cute say, ‘Tell us a joke then’ and when you tell them a joke they don’t laugh.
59. Lie awake at night thinking you’re not funny.
60. Get up in the afternoon in the name of comedy.
61. Try to write a sitcom.
62. Get an audition for something that’s completely unsuitable for you.
63. Have some of your stand-up on YouTube.
64. Have a famous person’s number in your phone.
65. Have a fight kick off while you perform.
66. Read Steve Martin or Frank Skinner’s autobiography.
67. Watch Jerry Seinfeld Comedian.
68. Feel rusty after not gigging for ten days or as your partner calls it ‘a holiday’,
69. Have a website.
70. Have business cards.
71. Do a charity gig and wish you hadn’t bothered due to it being so badly organised.
72. Go to a party or a gathering where it’s just comedians.
73. Have a break from gigging.
74. In the spur of the moment accidently use a line of someone else’s material and feel really guilty about it for months after.
75. Get all angry and indignant about joke theft.
76. Break down on the motorway.
77. Try to write a screenplay.
78. Have your photo on a poster.
79. Met another comedian you know at a service station on the way or coming back from a gig.
80. Get on really well with a comedian you technically shouldn’t have anything in common with.
81. Hear an act talk about how great they are then proceed to see them die on their arse.
82. Dislike a comedian when you first meet them then eventually become good friends
83. Have a crush on a comedian you get on with, but never do anything about it.
84. Have a Saturday night off and don’t know what to do with yourself.
85. Get a standing ovation.
86. Die horribly on your arse.
87. Perform to complete and utter indifference.
88. Cherry-pick a quote that makes the review sound a lot better than it actually was.
89. Have someone’s mobile phone go off in the audience and you answer it.
90. Have your own phone go off during your own performance.
91. Have your own phone go off during someone else’s performance.
92. Write one-liners and put them on Twitter.
93. Refer to non-comedians as ‘normal people’ or ‘civilians’.
94. Take yourself and the importance of what you do too seriously.
95. Have an argument with another comedian.
96. Swear that from this day onwards you will write jokes every day and then go back to your usual routine of being a wise arse on Facebook the very next day.
97. Play with your smartphone before you go on to relieve the boredom.
98. Have an audience member insist they have a photo taken with you.
99. When a joke goes wrong, tap the mic and say, ‘Is this thing on?’
100. Read lists about being a comedian and think, ‘Yeah I do that.’

Published: 12 Apr 2012