Take my advice... and ignore everyone's advice | John Hastings has some words for comedians heading to Edinburgh next week

Take my advice... and ignore everyone's advice

John Hastings has some words for comedians heading to Edinburgh next week

It has been four years since I have ‘done’ the British comedy circuit, so everything that follows may be out of date ­- or only ever applied to me. For the record, I quietly moved to America in the autumn of 2018. The most significant deciding factors were England's awful weather, Brexit, and just the feeling that I wanted to try and make it in the movies.

So if the British comedy circuit has changed so much that the following no longer applies, sorry. Ignore the words below and have a hoot mocking me in green rooms and Whatsapp groups. I thought I was so clever saying what I am about to say, so dig in. Give me some of that classic mocking behind the back, but to my face, give me the classic ‘I don't read Chortle, but I heard you wrote some words.’

To me, advice in comedy is like HPV. Omnipresent in my twenties but seems to have died off. That said, I would like to stop something from being reborn, so I am gonna partake in the naughtiest vice. Ad-vice. (I.am.a.cunt).

It will take me a second to get there. First, let's remember how comedy was during Covid. All us clowns were rendered illegal, seeing as how stand-up comedy is the dictionary definition of how to spread a respiratory infection.

Basically, it's a job where you march 100 people into a small unventilated room to meet a spitting performer who, in many ways, wants you to succumb to a scratchy throat. Those of us who missed performing took to Twitch, Zoom, and the common areas in our homes to disturb anyone who might be lingering there with Covid-themed comments.

 Podcasts were formed at a rate that rivalled Covid viral infection, and comedians did almost as many Zoom shows as there were tweets about how Zoom comedy sucked. In other words, they took away the one thing comedians need, which is an audience, and we kept going. 

I really want to remember this spirit as we head to the big stinking question mark of the preview season leading up to the Edinburgh Fringe of 2022. We kept going through the pandemic and made it back. Maybe this is just me, but as each stupid stinking August approached in previous years, I would enter the preview process as a comedian and leave something closer to a fist with eyes.

My head was a broth of questions I cannot control or answer: ‘Did I get the right PR?’ ‘Oh sure, I am at a cool venue but will it be cool this year now that I am involved?’ ‘Is my producer actually good at their job?’ ‘Do I need a producer?’ ‘Should I have paid for bigger posters?’ ‘Do I need posters’ ‘What is a poster?’ ‘Did I just hear flyering is dead?’ ‘Is now the time to reevaluate my sexuality?’ ‘If I bomb does that make this art?’ ‘What does a panic attack look like?’ And of course: ‘Was this the year to try a clown show where I kill off my dad?’

I would race through the Fringe with all these thoughts careening between my ears. Standing in the rain and yet very much inside with worries about the choice I had made that may hold me back, or leave me with a gap in my diary or the action I took that would give me cancer. It left me with little time to think about my show. Oh, don't worry, I just won't sleep.

I have gotten some therapy. I have gotten some distance, so let me just say this. This August, if you are worried and if the above remarks make sense to you, just do what you think is right, at that moment. You are a comedian. Write the jokes you like, tell them the way you want to and then fuck off home after Edinburgh is over.

Do not listen to the rules, which everyone will say don't exist, but I heard them. Every 'rule' you are being told about showbusiness will be wrong one day, so right now, just ignore them. In the ten years since I started paying for Edinburgh homeowners’ full-year mortgages in one month, I have been told the following never changing concrete rules about Edinburgh.

  1. You have to have a PR, or nobody is coming.
  2. PRs are a waste of money (PR said this to me).
  3. You have to be at the Pleasance.
  4. You should never play the Pleasance (said to you at the Pleasance London, by someone who is still playing the Pleasance, (for the record, if the Pleasance will have you, have at it)).
  5. Flyers do not move tickets.
  6. Flyers are the only thing that moves tickets.
  7. You have to get nominated to make a Fringe appearance worth it (without looking, tell me who got nominated in 2019).
  8. You have to do the Fringe every year.
  9. You have to do late shows.
  10. Late shows are killing the festival.
  11. The Fringe is dead (long live the Fringe).
  12. Podcasts saved the festival.
  13.  You have to have a callback at the end of your show.
  14.  You should never have a callback at the end of your show.

…and the list goes on and on and on.

None of this matters, seriously. Careers are long, and showbusiness is more extensive than we all realise. You can never do the Fringe and sell out arenas. Don't believe me? Ask Paul Smith.

This brings me to my advice. Just do what makes you happy in comedy. If playing clubs with the same 20 minutes for years is what you want to do, do it. Just accept that it is all you need and that people telling you to do something are talking about themselves and are insecure. They actually don't care what you are doing. They are talking, and I say choose not to listen.

Our profession might not have come back after Covid. Comedy may disappear under the weight of the cost of living, nuclear war, or whatever Boris does to distract us from his party-hearty attitude in 2020 and 2021. So let's stop acting like someone followed a plan to get where they got. Let's just do what we want to do and see if it works.

To conclude: comedians missed Edinburgh. Let's have fun, leave the baggage that populated artist bar conversation in 2019 and concentrate on fun things in 2022, like how good my show at Monkey Barrel Carnivore is at 8:15pm every day.

John Hastings’ stand-up show Do You Have Any Ointment My John Hastings?   is on at… oh, he just told you.

Published: 25 Jul 2022

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