No Accounting for Comedy by Fred MacAulay
Much has been made of the fact that I used to be an accountant and perhaps I’ll simply extend the stereotype of the accountant’s preoccupation with facts - and more importantly figures - when I tell you that the ‘day like this’ for me was 19th May 1988.
But there’s good reason for remembering because my day really began the evening before when I had to absent myself from my young wife, even younger daughter, and baby son on our 4th wedding anniversary…..and that’s a date no-one should ever forget. I honestly can’t remember what the excuse was but I probably just said that there was some kind of comedy event on in the Mitchell Theatre which I wanted to see, which would only take an hour or so. My wife knew I was a fan of stand-up comedy and the statement was factually correct, but the event I wanted to see was Heat 1 of the 1988 Mayfest ‘So You Think You’re Funny’ Competition, and my eagerness to see it was because I was scheduled to appear in Heat 2 the following evening and I wanted to find out what the standard of comedy was from the other entrants. I say ‘entrant’, because it was far too early in any of our careers to use the word ‘comedian’. For a large number of those who hit the stage over the next three nights the word comedian would never be used, except perhaps in later years in an accusatory fashion….
”….of course, that was the night when you thought you were some kind of… comedian!”
It was time for me to turn my interest in stand-up comedy into a fully fledged love affair… and there aren’t too many men who can confess to a love affair on their 4th wedding anniversary and still be looking forward to celebrating their silver wedding anniversaries.
Watching the first heat was a bit of an eye opener as some of the material was excellent, some genuinely original (which is what it was ALL meant to be) and the performers displayed a remarkable amount of confidence and stagecraft. But it didn’t put me off. There seemed to be no reason why I couldn’t put myself through my allotted slot of 5 minutes as they had done and then manage to walk of stage still breathing, still alive… even the ones who had just ‘died’ on stage. Nope, it pretty much looked like I could do this and survive. But there was much more to it than that.
I would say that I’m not much of an adventurer. I needed coaxed over the edge of a building to do my first abseil by two exceptionally well trained instructors. I’ve flown in a Tornado jet, white water rafted (which ironically left me more dry-mouthed than anything else), raced a motor car on a race track in a professional race, skied a downhill, but in all of these things it was either someone else in control, or I could put the brakes on and slow down. With stand-up, it was simply me, a microphone and the words I’d chosen to utter and whilst you might argue that I could have put the brakes on and walked off if it hadn’t been going well, to me that wasn’t an option. This was something I was going to see through from start to finish. After all…..how long could five minutes be?
Fred MacAulay presents MacAulay and Co on BBC Radio Scotland
