Week 47 of My Comfort Zone Challenge – Stand up Comedy.

A couple of months prior to actually doing this task, I was approached by work colleagues, Tony, saying I should do stand up comedy at one of our corporate events. My instant reaction was “No way, not a chance”. I consider myself to have a good sense of humour, but I don’t see myself as a funny person. Over the years, I’ve made a name for myself for having terrible gags and being proud of them. So going up on stage, and actually trying to make people laugh… I’d given myself no chance.

It took a few weeks of peer pressure and convincing until I agreed to do it. Out of all the challenges, this probably took the most convincing. I’m no great public speaker, and adding the ingredient of laughter felt like a recipe for disaster.

Two months on… And here I was, just days away from writing my stand up comedy. Tony, who does lots of after dinner speaking and event hosting, gave me some advice. Find a theme and go with that route. Don’t just reel off one liners, you’ll forget them. Make it unique. I thought to myself, what is more unique than the challenges that I’ve been doing? So writing the jokes wasn’t actually too hard.

The ‘acting’ element of stand up is where I really needed my practice. I’ll be honest, using a presentation may have been cheating a bit, but I needed all the help I could get. In the build up, I have no shame in saying I would practice in my room alone with a hair brush as a microphone. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Thankfully there is no photographic evidence of this.

I’ve always been one to hate roleplaying and practicing things that aren’t in the real situation. So I only practiced this in front of my flat mate once. He gave me some laughs, so I was happy.

I got to the day of the event, and it was borderline torture. All I wanted to do, was get it over with. My hands were sweating. I was pacing up and down the office all morning. People were winding me up about the microphone not working. I was a mess. I even struggled to hold conversation in the hour leading up to it. This was even with two glasses of wine to try and settle the nerves!

I have to say though, once I was up there. It was fine. It all came out… I missed one joke, but the rest was okay. PEOPLE LAUGHED. It may have been from sympathy or humour, I don’t care, they laughed, I’m having it.

I was congratulated many times after doing it, and many people said to me “Well done, I could never do that”. That was me, 12 months ago. It’s an old cliche, but if I can do it, anyone can do it. Fear of failure is what often stops us from succeeding. This, to me, was a success. It felt overcoming a hurdle, doing something I doubted even I could do. I joke that life doesn’t begin at the end of your comfort zone, but challenges like this have amazed me to what one can really do in life.

It is with great pleasure to share that this even, raised just over £600 in donations from the kind people at The Boundary Club for The Seaview Project and Surviving Christmas. I’m still amazed by this, and so grateful for everyone who donated. It takes my total raised up to £1,038 with gift aid! You can still donate here

Have a watch of the set for yourself!