Читать книгу Sarah Millican - The Biography Of The Funniest Woman In Britain - Tina Campanella - Страница 10
Оглавление‘An audience not laughing is nothing when your husband’s just told you he doesn’t love you anymore.’
Kate Fox had seen a lot of raw talent when she first watched Sarah Millican perform her two-minute monologue on divorce. She had been an integral part of Newcastle’s thriving spoken word and open mic scene for a number of years and was used to seeing people give performance art a go, before giving up.
It’s an exciting but difficult world. Any aspiring comedian or poet will tell you that it involves a lot of waiting around, getting nervous and brightly smiling in the face of sparse but critical audiences.
But there was something that lifted Sarah above the rest of that Newcastle scene – a spark that Kate could see had enormous potential – and it was for this reason that she booked her a gig at The Dog and Parrot pub in Newcastle.
It’s one thing when others have faith in you, but it’s quite another to have faith in yourself. And raw talent will only take you so far – Sarah knew she had a lot of work to do to prepare for her first gig.
She threw herself into it like she had done with every task she performed as a child – diligently. If she was going to do it, she was going to do it the best she could. So she knuckled down and applied her strong work ethic to this new life direction. Delving deep into the pain of her divorce, she began to chart all the darkly funny moments she had experienced since her husband had told her it was over. Then she booked herself into a number of workshops to hone her performance skills.
These workshops took place in low-key and comfortable surroundings. One was at The Bridge Hotel – a hundred-year-old public house, situated next to the historic High Level Bridge and known for its popular live music nights. Another took place at The Cumberland Arms, which was, at the time, just starting to become a haven for the local comedy scene. It was, and still is, home to The Suggestibles, a talented group of award-winning Newcastle improv comedians, who perform on the last Friday of every month.
By day Sarah worked in her civil service job, helping others to get back on their feet by finding them work. By night she helped herself to do the very same thing – by working on her first ever stand-up set.
Finally the big day arrived. Sarah got ready at home, putting on a batwing top, before going downstairs and telling her dad she was off to do a gig. ‘I dressed like I was going to a disco,’ she has since recalled.
Philip was surprised.
‘You? On stage?’ he asked, incredulous. ‘You cannot be serious. You’re the quietest, most reserved person I’ve ever met!’
His surprised reaction was understandable. But he was also excited and wanted to support his daughter, like he had done throughout her life. Whatever Sarah wanted to do, he wanted be the first person to cheer her on. He asked: ‘Can I come?’
‘No you can’t!’ was her swift reply. It was going to be hard enough without having her family in the audience.
She made her way to The Dog and Parrot, and waited nervously for her turn at the open mic event. It had been organised by Kate as part of her New Word Order project, which ran from 2004 to 2010. Kate acted as compere for the regular events, introducing a variety of acts for short five-minute slots. It was a chance to test material out and gauge audience response and was perfect for Sarah’s first time on stage.
Located on Newcastle’s Clayton Street, close to the main train station, The Dog and Parrot now bills itself as the city’s only indie rock and roll bar. It’s a cool, relaxed environment, dedicated to good music, and is an avid supporter of the local live singing and comedy scene. It recently won the Chortle award for Best Northern Comedy Venue, because of its regular comedy slot Long Live Comedy.
Comedians who have performed there include Kai Humphries, former Byker Grove actor Phil Harker, and Dan Willis – better known as Harold Bishop from Neighbours, who has been performing there in his infamous specs and leather jacket for years.
Sarah had never been to a comedy club before taking to the stage at The Dog and Parrot. ‘I’d seen two tours of comedians, in one of the big theatres, but I’d never been in a comedy club,’ she has admitted. ‘In some way it helped. Some comics see loads of comedy but it means at times they end up emulating people they admire. But because I had not seen anyone like that, it was just all about me. Everything I ever do is personal and entirely factual or based on fact and then exploded for comic effect.’
When Kate announced Sarah’s name, she walked out to face the 50 people in the audience. It was the first time that anyone would have seen the timid looking bespectacled brunette ply her new trade. It was the first time anyone would have heard her sweetly soft, high-pitched, lilting tone, delivering her now infamously sarcastic wit.
One of Sarah’s early reviews said that she ‘looks like a primary-school teacher with the mouth of a biker’, which she has always quite liked. ‘It’s better than being the other way round,’ she has since said. The audience must have wondered what this demure looking girl was doing on the stage.
Pale and quiet, she began to speak.
For the first two-and-a-half minutes, arms were folded and not a chuckle was heard in the crowd. One woman who was in the audience that night blogged about what she saw, saying: ‘She was quiet and I thought a little aloof (as some talented performers seem to be). I thought her material was funny with a cynical edge; the guy next to me complained.’
Undeterred, Sarah thought back to her family and their clumsy attempts to soothe her broken heart. She began to tell the audience a familiar story… sobbing in a flood of tears and snot, her husband had just told her he was leaving. Doing an impression of her father, she said: ‘Well you’re bound to be upset.’
Then she paused.
‘You’ve lost everything.’
She paused again.
‘You’ve got nothing left!’
And with those poignant words, the small crowd erupted into fits of laughter. The combination of tone and timing in her impersonation of a practical Geordie man trying to cope with an emotional landslide was instant comedy gold. The audience was finally hers. Enthused, Millican poured out more of the same, and as her confidence grew, the chuckles kept coming.
She has since said of that night: ‘It was a tough audience. For two-and-a-half minutes no one laughed and that felt like a lifetime. Then I described how my marriage broke up, how I moved back home with my parents and how my dad tried to comfort me as I was sobbing all day, every day. The room went from silence to a massive laugh and I thought, “Right, that’s going at the beginning.”’
It’s an attitude that led her to begin constantly honing and perfecting her act, something that she still does today. Whenever she puts on a new show, Sarah says she does at least 30 previews at small venues before she even sets foot on a main stage. She tries things out, checking what works and discarding what doesn’t.
‘I love writing new jokes,’ she says. ‘I love trying new jokes out. I love the feeling they get when they work. I love the process of shaping a show. It’s a bit like gardening – you know that not all your seedlings are going to take, but at the end there’s going to be a good tomato plant.’
It’s a process that she took very seriously, even at her first gig. ‘It’s hard work. It’s not hard work like being a nurse or being a fireman. But it’s hard in that there’s no magic formula. You’ve just got to work your arse off.’
As she finished that first five-minute slot, she bounced off the stage, feeling more alive than she had in months. She was in control of her life again, and it felt good.
After being congratulated on her performance, the first thing she did was pick up the phone and call home. ‘Yeeess!’ she squealed, full of excitement. Her next words were particularly poignant. ‘Dad, he may not love us, but there were 50 in there who did,’ she enthused. ‘It was the best night of my life.’
It was the ultimate therapy for Sarah and it helped put the pain of her husband’s rejection into perspective. For the first time, she must have understood that she was starting to heal. As she herself has explained: ‘I’d already had the worst kind of rejection. An audience not laughing is nothing when your husband’s just told you he doesn’t love you anymore. To have one person look at you and go “No”… somehow 50 people in a room going “No” isn’t so bad. They’re only judging you on 20 minutes of material, not a seven-year marriage.’
Sarah had finally found the direction she wanted to take in life. She wanted to be a stand-up comic. And most of her early material would be inspired by the one thing she loved more than anything: her family. After all, her audience had found the jokes about her dad hilarious.
She threw herself into gigging, supported by her family and friends, Kate Fox, and her civil service work colleagues.
Sarah was focused. Determined. After each performance she would listen to herself on a dictaphone, analysing her performance and the audience’s reaction to her jokes. Only a solitary giggle? Out it went. A raucous belly laugh? The joke was moved further up in the running order.
She also worked on perfecting her pre-show routine – a must for any stand-up. There’s nothing glamorous about it: no final sweep of blusher, or spritz of perfume. Instead, Sarah’s is fundamentally practical. ‘I always have a proper last wee,’ she says. ‘So, like, I might do a few wees but then I’ll have to do the big one that’ll be the last one. And I also check my nose. I blow my nose and then I check that it’s clear because I think if you came out to an audience and they didn’t laugh, one of the reasons they didn’t laugh shouldn’t be that you had something hanging…’
Ever sensible, Sarah kept her day job, filling out forms and tapping away at her computer, while itching to leave the office. Because at night she would get in her car and drive to wherever her next gig was – and she loved every minute of it.
Sitting backstage with other comics, she finally felt truly comfortable. ‘I was never very popular at school, but here I was funny and interesting. I could be myself. Comics are a bit messed up, but when you put us all together, we’re okay.’
She had found her career and her people. She didn’t care how long it took, or how much hard work it would be. She would make this world her own.
